Voltaire was no friend of the Huguenots. He believed the Huguenot spirit to be a republican spirit. In his "Siècle de Louis XIV.," when treating of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he affirmed that the Reformed were the enemies of the State; and though he depicted feelingly the cruelties they had suffered, he also stated clearly that he thought they had deserved them. Voltaire probably owed his hatred of the Protestants to the Jesuits, by whom he was educated. He was brought up at the Jesuit College of Louis le Grand, the chief persecutor of the Huguenots. Voltaire also owed much of the looseness of his principles to his godfather, the Abbé Chateauneuf, grand-prior of Vendôme, the Abbé de Chalieu, and others, who educated him in an utter contempt for the doctrines they were appointed and paid to teach. It was when but a mere youth that Father Lejay, one of Voltaire's instructors, predicted that he would yet be the Coryphæus of Deism in France.
Nor was Voltaire better pleased with the Swiss Calvinists. He encountered some of the most pedantic of them while residing at Lausanne and Geneva.[75] At the latter place, he covered with sarcasm the "twenty-four periwigs"—the Protestant council of the city. They would not allow him to set up a theatre in Geneva, so he determined to set up one himself at La Chatelaine, about a mile off, but beyond the Genevese frontier. His object, he professed, was "to corrupt the pedantic city." The theatre is still standing, though it is now used only as a hayloft. The box is preserved from which Voltaire cheered the performance of his own and other plays.
But though Voltaire hated Protestantism like every other religion, he also hated injustice. It was because of this that he took up the case of the Calas family, so soon as he had become satisfied of their innocence. But what a difficulty he had to encounter in endeavouring to upset the decision of the judges, and the condemnation of Calas by the parliament of Toulouse. Moreover, he had to reverse their decision against a dead man, and that man a detested Huguenot.
Nevertheless Voltaire took up the case. He wrote letters to his friends in all parts of France. He wrote to the sovereigns of Europe. He published letters in the newspapers. He addressed the Duke de Choiseul, the King's Secretary of State. He appealed to philosophers, to men of letters, to ladies of the court, and even to priests and bishops, denouncing the sentence pronounced against Calas,—the most iniquitous, he said, that any court professing to act in the name of justice had ever pronounced. Ferney was visited by many foreigners, from Germany, America, England, and Russia; as well as by numerous persons of influence in France. To all these he spoke vehemently of Calas and his sentence. He gave himself no rest until he had inflamed the minds of all men against the horrible injustice.
At length, the case of Calas became known all over France, and in fact all over Europe. The press of Paris rang with it. In the boudoirs and salons, Calas was the subject of conversation. In the streets, men meeting each other would ask, "Have you heard of Calas?" The dead man had already become a hero and a martyr!
An important point was next reached. It was decided that the case of Calas should be remitted to a special court of judges appointed to consider the whole matter. Voltaire himself proceeded to get up the case. He prepared and revised the memorials, he revised all the pleadings of the advocates, transforming them into brief, conclusive arguments, sparkling with wit, reason, and eloquence. The revision of the process commenced. The people held their breaths while it proceeded.
At length, in the spring of 1766—four years after Calas had been broken to death on the wheel—four years after Voltaire had undertaken to have the unjust decision of the Toulouse magistrates and parliament reversed, the court of judges, after going completely over the evidence, pronounced the judgment to have been entirely unfounded!
The decree was accordingly reversed. Jean Calas was declared to have been innocent. The man was, however, dead. But in order to compensate his family, the ministry granted 36,000 francs to Calas's widow, on the express recommendation of the court which reversed the abominable sentence.[76]
The French people never forgot Voltaire's efforts in this cause. Notwithstanding all his offences against morals and religion, Voltaire on this occasion acted on his best impulses. Many years after, in 1778, he visited Paris, where he was received with immense enthusiasm. He was followed in the streets wherever he went. One day when passing along the Pont Royal, some person asked, "Who is that man the crowd is following?" "Ne savez vous pas," answered a common woman, "que c'est le sauveur de Calas!" Voltaire was more touched with this simple tribute to his fame than with all the adoration of the Parisians.
It was soon found, however, that there were many persons still suffering in France from the cruelty of priests and judges; and one of these occurred shortly after the death of Calas. One of the ordinary practices of the Catholics was to seize the children of Protestants and carry them off to some nunnery to be educated at the expense of their parents. The priests of Toulouse had obtained a lettre de cachet to take away the daughter of a Protestant named Sirven, to compel her to change her religion. She was accordingly seized and carried off to a nunnery. She manifested such reluctance to embrace Catholicism, and she was treated with such cruelty, that she fled from the convent in the night, and fell into a well, where she was found drowned.