The Huguenots in France

by Samuel Smiles

They were tried by the judges of Toulouse on the 18th of February. Rochette was condemned to be hung in his shirt, his head and feet uncovered, with a paper pinned on his shirt before and behind, with the words written thereon—"Ministre de la religion prétendue réformée." The three brothers Grenier, who interfered on behalf of Rochette, were ordered to have their heads taken off for resisting the secular power; and the two guides, who were bearing the sick Rochette to St. Antonin for the benefit of the waters, were sent to the galleys for life.

Barbarous punishments such as these were so common when Protestants were the offenders, that the decision, of the judges did not excite any particular sensation. It was only when Jean Calas was shortly after executed at Toulouse that an extraordinary sensation was produced—and that not because Calas was a Protestant, but because his punishment came under the notice of Voltaire, who exposed the inhuman cruelty to France, Europe, and the world at large.

The reason why Protestant executions terminated with the death of Calas was as follows:—The family of Jean Calas resided at Toulouse, then one of the most bigoted cities in France. Toulouse swarmed with priests and monks, more Spanish than French in their leanings. They were great in relics, processions, and confraternities. While "mealy-mouthed" Catholics in other quarters were becoming somewhat ashamed of the murders perpetrated during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and were even disposed to deny them, the more outspoken Catholics of Toulouse were even proud of the feat, and publicly celebrated the great southern Massacre of St. Bartholomew which took place in 1572. The procession then held was one of the finest church commemorations in the south; it was followed by bishops, clergy, and the people of the neighbourhood, in immense numbers.

Calas was an old man of sixty-four, and reduced to great weakness by a paralytic complaint. He and his family were all Protestants excepting one son, who had become a Catholic. Another of the sons, however, a man of ill-regulated life, dissolute, and involved in pecuniary difficulties, committed suicide by hanging himself in an outhouse.

On this, the brotherhood of White Penitents stirred up a great fury against the Protestant family in the minds of the populace. The monks alleged that Jean Calas had murdered his son because he wished to become a Catholic. They gave out that it was a practice of the Protestants to keep an executioner to murder their children who wished to abjure the reformed faith, and that one of the objects of the meetings which they held in the Desert, was to elect this executioner. The White Penitents celebrated mass for the suicide's soul; they exhibited his figure with a palm branch in his hand, and treated him as a martyr.

The public mind became inflamed. A fanatical judge, called David, took up the case, and ordered Calas and his whole family to be sent to prison. Calas was tried by the court of Toulouse. They tortured the whole family to compel them to confess the murder;[73] but they did not confess. The court wished to burn the mother, but they ended by condemning the paralytic father to be broken alive on the wheel.[74] The parliament of Toulouse confirmed the atrocious sentence, and the old man perished in torments, declaring to the last his entire innocence. The rest of the family were discharged, although if there had been any truth in the charge for which Jean Calas was racked to death, they must necessarily have been his accomplices, and equally liable to punishment.

The ruined family left Toulouse and made for Geneva, then the head-quarters of Protestants from the South of France. And here it was that the murder of Jean Calas and the misfortunes of the Calas family came under the notice of Voltaire, then living at Ferney, near Geneva.

In the midst of the persecutions of the Protestants a great many changes had been going on in France. Although the clergy had for more than a century the sole control of the religious education of the people, the people had not become religious. They had become very ignorant and very fanatical. The upper classes were anything but religious; they were given up for the most part to frivolity and libertinage. The examples of their kings had been freely followed. Though ready to do honour to the court religion, the higher classes did not believe in it. The press was very free for the publication of licentious and immoral books, but not for Protestant Bibles. A great work was, however, in course of publication, under the editorship of D'Alembert and Diderot, to which Voltaire, Rousseau, and others contributed, entitled "The Encyclopædia." It was a description of the entire circle of human knowledge; but the dominant idea which pervaded it was the utter subversion of religion.

The abuses of the Church, its tyranny and cruelty, the ignorance and helplessness in which it kept the people, the frivolity and unbelief of the clergy themselves, had already condemned it in the minds of the nation. The writers in "The Encyclopædia" merely gave expression to their views, and the publication of its successive numbers was received with rapture. In the midst of the free publication of obscene books, there had also appeared, before the execution of Calas, the Marquis de Mirabeau's "Ami des Hommes," Rousseau's "Émile," the "Contrat Social," with other works, denying religion of all kinds, and pointing to the general downfall, which was now fast approaching.

When the Calas family took refuge in Geneva, Voltaire soon heard of their story. It was communicated to him by M. de Végobre, a French refugee. After he had related it, Voltaire said, "This is a horrible story. What has become of the family?" "They arrived in Geneva only three days ago." "In Geneva!" said Voltaire; "then let me see them at once." Madame Calas soon arrived, told him the whole facts of the case, and convinced Voltaire of the entire innocence of the family.