It has been asserted that the Christians who were stoned to death at Fìadànana and Fàravòhitra in July, 1857, were political rather than religious martyrs; and one ill-informed clergyman has actually gone the length of saying that no Malagasy has ever been martyred for belief in Christianity! He affirms that any who suffered death did so because of their connexion with the Lambert and Laborde conspiracy—with which Ida Pfeifer, the famous German lady traveller, who was in Antanànarìvo at the time, became involved—to dethrone the queen and place her son, the crown prince, afterwards Radàma II, on the throne. There is, however, not only not a vestige of proof for such an assertion, but the following extract from the Native Narrative of the Persecutions gives verbatim the queen’s order for their execution and the reason for it. The royal order for their execution runs: ‘They persist in the practice of the worship which I have prohibited, says the sovereign, and they are grieved, it is said, on account of those I have previously put to death, and state that I have executed as many as 1,300 in one day. These are crimes worthy of death, and I inform you, O ye under heaven.’
Not a single word about any conspiracy—which would certainly have been referred to had there been any foundation for the above-mentioned reckless assertions. The names of all the fourteen who suffered are given in the Narrative, which says: ‘On July 18, 1857, at Fìadànana (an open space a little to the south-west of the capital, and which can be easily seen from the palace-yard), they were stoned to death in the presence of an immense gathering of the people. They were first bound to stakes, and at the order “Fling!” a shower of stones darkening the sky almost like a cloud of locusts was hurled at them. All the fourteen were not stoned together at Fìadànana, only eleven, as Ràmahàzo, who was arrested after the others, was stoned by himself the following day; Ramànandàfy was pounded to death in his own house, and Rabètsàrasàotra, who was caught later, was stoned to death at Fàravòhitra on July 29, 1857. At the execution of all the Christian martyrs, but especially at the execution of those stoned to death at Fìadànana, everything was done calculated to rouse and excite the populace to the utmost. Bands with bugles sounding, big drums and kettledrums being beaten, and cymbals clashing, marched through the streets and lanes of the capital. The royal chanters and the conch-shell blowers paraded through the city, chanting the praises of the sovereign and sounding their shells. The cannon roared from dawn to midday. An immense pile of Bibles, books of the Bible, Gospels, hymn-books, catechisms, and other Christian books was raised on a spot to the north of the palace and burned. The excitement and yelling of the people, who had been wrought up into a state of frenzy, was frightful to see and hear: the city was a perfect pandemonium[19].’
CRIMINALS IN CHAINS, ILLUSTRATING HOW THE MARTYRS WERE TREATED.
The cruel instincts of a people like the Malagasy, just emerging from heathenism, can only be gradually eradicated by time. It will take a long course of Christian training, through many generations—as in our own and other lands—to effect a permanent change. It augurs well, however, for the future of Madagascar that so much has already been accomplished in that direction in so short a time. Volumes might be written on the progress of Christianity during the periods of persecution, as it would take volumes to recount the sufferings of that evil time. Enough has been said, however, to indicate the baptism of blood and suffering which ushered in the new life of that benighted people. It is said that the darkest hour is that which precedes the dawn—and the dawn for Madagascar was at hand.
On Friday, August 16, 1861, Queen Rànavàlona died at the age of eighty-one, after a reign of thirty-three years; or—as the Malagasy rather poetically put it—‘she turned her back on the affairs of this life,’ since they dared not say that a sovereign died. She ended her long life of cruelty and shameless immorality in the darkness of heathenism, without a ray of hope for the future to lighten up the gloom of the dark valley, while terrors of some kind—probably the superstitious horrors of a guilty conscience—seem to have tormented her during her last hours; as if the shadows from the swift-coming eternity were appalling her, chilling her heart, and filling her soul with horrors.
Her reign was a veritable reign of terror, and lives as such in the memory of her people. They tell that when any of her fighting bulls died she had their carcases rolled in silk plaids and buried; but when her subjects complained of the severity of the forced labour which she demanded, she used to say: ‘Make three of them!’ that is, behead them and cut them through the middle! It is believed that during her reign some ten thousand perished from the poison ordeal alone. Her Christian subjects were treated as common criminals, and chained together by the neck by hundreds, a gang of them sometimes extending to nearly half a mile. If one of the gang died, the dead body had to be dragged along by the living, until the guard struck off the head and released them from the ‘body of death.’
In the interior of the island, in the Bètsilèo country and wherever the Hovas had jurisdiction, criminals were kept in chains. Some of the condemned Christians were so treated. Prisoners had to earn their own living, and were only confined to prison during the night. On the days, however, on which the sovereign appeared they were not allowed to leave the prison; or if allowed out on those days, at noon, before the sovereign was to appear, they had all to return to prison, were counted and locked up. Why? Because if one of those criminals managed to secrete himself, and then emerged from his hiding-place to gaze at and salute the sovereign as she passed, wearing her diadem and beautiful in the glory of her royal apparel, he was a free man whatever his crime had been. His chains were at once struck off, for he had looked on the sovereign in her beauty and saluted her—the salutation being: ‘Is it well with you, my sovereign?’ and no one could do that and still remain a prisoner. ‘Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty’ (Isa. xxxiii. 17); ‘Whosoever shall call on the name of Jehovah shall be delivered’ (Joel ii. 32).
Razàka informed me that when tidings reached the province of Vònizòngo of the queen’s illness, he started for the capital with a beating heart. He felt that he was now on the threshold of liberty. When he arrived at the capital he sought out his old friend Andrìambèlo, the pastor of Ampàribè, Antanànarìvo, and asked: ‘How is the queen?’ He was told that she was very ill. Next day he called again and asked, and was told that she was at the point of death.
On the third day, while these old friends sat and discussed the possibilities of the future, they saw first one man run past the house, and then others. They went to ascertain the cause of excitement. They were then told that ‘the queen had turned her back on the affairs of this life.’ ‘When we were told this,’ he said, ‘we could not speak. We took hold of each other’s hands, looked each other in the face, and wept. This was all we could do. We wept for joy; we were free.’ I said: ‘Did you weep for joy, Razàka, that the queen was dead?’ He answered: ‘We did, sir, for we knew that we were free from our sufferings and our sorrows, and free to worship God when and where we pleased; and we wept for joy.’