The Huguenots in France

by Samuel Smiles

But many resolutely continued to refuse, willing to incur the last and heaviest penalties. Then it came to be seen that Protestantism, although, declared defunct by the King's edict, had not in fact expired, but was merely reposing for a time in order to make a fresh start forward. The Huguenots who still remained in France, whether as "new converts" or as "obstinate heretics," at length began to emerge from their obscurity. They met together in caves and solitary places—in deep and rocky gorges—in valleys among the mountains—where they prayed together, sang together their songs of David, and took counsel one with another.

At length, from private meetings for prayer, religious assemblies began to be held in the Desert, and preachers made their appearance. The spies spread about the country informed the intendants. The meetings were often surprised by the military. Sometimes the soldiers would come upon them suddenly, and fire into the crowd of men, women, and children. On some occasions a hundred persons or more would be killed upon the spot. Of those taken prisoners, the preachers were hanged or broken on the wheel, the women were sent to prison, and the children, to nunneries, while the men were sent to be galley-slaves for life.[46]

The persecutions to which Huguenot women and children were exposed caused a sudden enlargement of all the prisons and nunneries in France. Many of the old castles were fitted up as gaols, and even their dungeons were used for the incorrigible heretics. One of the worst of these was the Tour de Constance in the town of Aiguesmortes, which is to this day remembered with horror as the principal dungeon of the Huguenot women.

The town of Aiguesmortes is situated in the department of Gard, close to the Mediterranean, whose waters wash into the salt marshes and lagunes by which it is surrounded. It was erected in the thirteenth century for Philip the Bold, and is still interesting as an example of the ancient feudal fortress. The fosse has since been filled up, on account of the malaria produced by the stagnant water which it contained.

The place is approached by a long causeway raised above the marsh, and the entrance to the tower is spanned by an ancient gatehouse. In advance of the tower, to the north, in an angle of the wall, is a single, large round tower, which served as a citadel. It is sixty-six feet in diameter and ninety feet high, surmounted by a lighthouse turret of thirty-four feet. It consists of two large vaulted apartments, the staircase from the one to the other being built within the wall itself, which is about eighteen feet thick. The upper chamber is dimly lighted by narrow chinks through the walls. The lowest of the apartments is the dungeon, which is almost without light and air. In the centre of the floor is a hole connected with a reservoir of water below.

This Tour de Constance continued to be the principal prison for Huguenot women in France for a period of about a hundred years. It was always horribly unhealthy; and to be condemned to this dungeon was considered almost as certain though a slower death than to be condemned to the gallows. Sixteen Huguenot women confined there in 1686 died within five months. Most of them were the wives of merchants of Nismes, or of men of property in the district. When the prisoners died off, the dungeon was at once filled up again with more victims, and it was rarely, if ever, empty, down to a period within only a few years before the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The punishment of the men found attending religious meetings, and taken prisoners by the soldiers, was to be sentenced to the galleys, mostly for life. They were usually collected in large numbers, and sent to the seaports attached together by chains. They were sent openly, sometimes through the entire length of the kingdom, by way of a show. The object was to teach the horrible delinquency of professing Protestantism; for it could not be to show the greater beautifulness and mercifulness of Catholicism.

The punishment of the Chain varied in degree. Sometimes it was more cruel than at other times. This depended upon the drivers of the prisoners. Marteilhe describes the punishment during his conveyance from Havre to Marseilles in the winter of 1712.[47] The Chain to which he belonged did not reach Marseilles until the 17th January, 1713. The season was bitterly cold; but that made no difference in the treatment of Huguenot prisoners.

The Chain consisted of a file of prisoners, chained one to another in various ways. On this occasion, each pair was fastened by the neck with a thick chain three feet long, in the middle of which was a round ring. After being thus chained, the pairs were placed in file, couple behind couple, when another long thick chain was passed through the rings, thus running along the centre of the gang, and the whole were thus doubly-chained together. There were no less than four hundred prisoners in the chain described by Marteilhe. The number had, however, greatly fallen off through deaths by barbarous treatment before it reached Marseilles.

It must, however, be added, that the whole gang did not consist of Huguenots, but only a part of it—the Huguenots being distinguished by their red jackets. The rest consisted of murderers, thieves, deserters, and criminals of various sorts.