By deception they imposed on the people, and induced a large number of the freed slaves and poorer people to attend their chapels, and an immense number of their children to enter their schools. The freed slaves were told that the Jesuits had secured their freedom, and the common people were informed that France was a Roman Catholic power, and that if they did not become Roman Catholics they would certainly be regarded with the greatest suspicion, and might be shot as suspects. In some cases they were told that all the Protestants would ultimately be shot. While their chapels were filled and their schools crammed by this and other means, they drew up and sent to France their claims on the government for educational grants. Even for the children they really had in their hands, the grants would have been large; but according to their returns they made claim for more children than there were in all the schools—Roman Catholic and Protestant—in the island. How they made out these long lists can never be understood, unless they included the ignorant adults along with the children as their scholars.
The superintendent of the Norwegian Mission told me (and we had the missionary in whose district the thing actually took place as a fellow passenger on our last voyage home), that a Jesuit priest went through one of their districts, going from hut to hut with two small notebooks, a red one and a black one. Into the red notebook he wrote the names of the Roman Catholics, and into the black all the names of the Protestants, and all who would not consent to be Roman Catholics. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘the government is going to make roads all through the island, to build railways, erect government buildings, and complete the telegraph, and all the work is to be done by fànompòana (corvée), and it will all have to be done by the Protestants, and after it is all finished they will all be shot. The Roman Catholics will have no fànompòana to do, they will have a good time of it here, and then when they die they will all go straight to Paradise!’ Among an ignorant and semi-heathen people, it was not to be wondered at, if great numbers professed themselves Roman Catholics in order to escape the hated fànompòana and shooting. When religious liberty became a reality, however, and the people found out the true state of matters, and saw that, on the whole, the corvée was very fairly dealt out, irrespective of religion, they ceased to be Roman Catholics by the thousand; and their opinion of their teachers underwent a most decided change, their language about them being much more energetic than elegant. Their hatred of them now is more bitter than ever.
The queen’s uncle was shot along with the late Governor of Tàmatàve. Another uncle, Her Majesty’s chief chaplain, her chamberlain, and several nobles were transported to the island of Réunion, while the rank and file suspected of sympathy or connexion with the rising, and those of the so-called rebels who had escaped, or who had thought better of their action and returned to their homes, were shot all over the country by irresponsible officers at Postes, who thought no more of shooting Malagasy than they did of killing vermin, until the central provinces may be said to have reeked with human blood. No doubt the rising was a most serious affair, and, in the interests of all, had to be put down; but that might have been done with less severity, and in a much more humane and merciful way. What took place at Fort Dauphin in the seventeenth century should have been a warning against undue severity.
As the heathen party was the backbone of the rising, some 750 Protestant churches and Roman Catholic chapels were wrecked, 500 of these being connected with the London Missionary Society’s Mission. One poor Roman Catholic priest, and several Protestant pastors, preachers, and evangelists were murdered, while many had very narrow escapes. A few were able to ransom themselves. All Bibles, Testaments, and other religious books found in the churches or in the huts of the pastors or evangelists were burned, while bonfires were made of the pulpits and pews of the churches. The heathen cast in the teeth of their Christian captives, that their teachers had sneaked into the island under the guise of being teachers of a new religion, and through them the fatherland had been lost. ‘While we worshipped the gods of our forefathers,’ they said, ‘we had our fatherland, our own sovereign, and our own army; but you enraged the gods by forsaking them for the new religion, and praying to the white man’s ancestor, Jesus Christ, and now we have lost all.’
It was in vain for the Protestants to try to convince them that their teachers had had nothing to do with the war or loss of the fatherland. As all the foreign teachers were white men and friends of each other, they were looked upon as equally guilty in the eyes of the heathen. ‘If the Protestant missionaries had not agreed to the war, and “piratical seizure” of the fatherland, why did they not appeal to their sovereign-lady to send her soldiers to help the Malagasy to drive back the invaders?’ Such was the argument of the heathen. In the light of such sentiments, how absurd the tales circulated in France, and accepted by thousands of the credulous there as true! The British missionaries were accused of instigating the rising, and the London Missionary Society of supplying arms and ammunition to the rebels!
Many old scores were cleared off by malignant heathen and semi-heathen Malagasy during that reign of terror. Slaves who had been harshly and cruelly treated by their former masters took the opportunity of retaliating, and accused them of being connected with the rising; such people were at once arrested and shot. Debtors got rid of their creditors in the same way, while others cleared off many old grudges against Protestant pastors, preachers, evangelists, and even church members, by simply insinuating their suspicions to the officer of the Poste. After this these were marked men. Being found outside their huts or the village after dark, or returning from a visit, or from the market after dark, or some other trivial offence, was enough to stamp them as suspects, and they were arrested and shot. Arrested after dark, many of them were taken out and shot at daylight next morning, without the semblance of trial.
My wife and I were wakened a dozen times during those terrible months by the rattle of musketry about 5.30 in the morning, and we knew that another batch of poor Malagasy were shot as suspects. According to British law, every man is regarded as innocent until he is proved guilty; but according to French law any one can be arrested on suspicion, and must prove himself innocent. Many a poor Protestant pastor, evangelist, or church member, was arrested at night, brought out at daylight and shot, without getting the chance of proving anything, until even the French colonel-commandant of the capital said, ‘there had been a great deal too much indiscriminate shooting’; and himself rescued some who were to be shot.
Some of the French officers treated the Malagasy very humanely, and some few even kindly. I knew one who confessed he could not sleep at night for thinking of how unjustly they had been treated; but, he added, ‘I am determined they shall have justice in my jurisdiction,’ and they had, with the result that the people adored, almost worshipped that officer, and wept like children when he left.
On the subject of the shooting of innocent Protestant pastors and church members, I content myself by allowing the late Pasteur B. Escande to bear his testimony, by quoting some extracts from the private letters to his wife, written during his stay in the island, which she has published since his murder under the title ‘Nine Months in Madagascar.’
‘October, 1896. You know the events which have changed the political and religious outlook in Madagascar:—M. Laroche recalled, General Gallieni given the charge in the interim of the general residence, finally the state of siege proclaimed in the disturbed parts of the island, notably in Imèrina and Bètsilèo, where the great mass of Protestant missionaries are located.