Chapter XVII: Book II (6)

In terminating this long list of grievances, the Reformed said to the king, “But, sire, we have amongst us neither Jacobins nor Jesuits, who aim at your life, nor Leaguers, who desire your crown. We have never presented the points of our swords instead of petitions. We are paid by political considerations. They tell us the time is not yet come for granting an edict. And this, great God, after thirty-five years of persecutions, ten years of banishment by the edicts of the League, eight years of the king’s reign, and four years’ entreaty. We only ask of your majesty an edict which would permit us to enjoy that which is common to all your subjects. The glory of God, the safety of our property and lives, would be the summit of our wishes and the end of our petitions.”

The king and his council were again for temporizing with them; however, the fresh dangers which menaced the kingdom, the surprise of Amiens by the Spaniards, the resolution of many Huguenot noblemen to remain inactive, instead of drawing their swords for a king who had abandoned them, the conscience of many of their most celebrated men, which at last began to trouble them, caused the Edict of Nantes to be granted in the month of April, 1598, which took its name from the place where it was first published.

In the preamble of this celebrated act, the king acknowledged that God is adored and worshipped by all his subjects, if not in the same form, at least with the same intentions, in such manner that his kingdom will always merit and preserve the glorious title of “very Christian.” The edict was declared perpetual and irrevocable, as being the principal foundation of the union and tranquillity of the state.

This great charter of the French Reformation briefly consisted of what follows under the ancient _régime_—entire liberty of conscience in the domestic circle; the public exercise of religion in all places where it was established in 1597, and in the suburbs of the towns; permission to lords of high rank to have service performed in their castles, and to noblemen of second rank, the right of admitting thirty persons to their private worship; the admission of the Reformed to public employment, of their children to the schools, of their invalids to the hospitals, of their poor to partake of the alms; the right of printing their books in certain towns; equal representation in some of the Parliaments; a chamber of the edict at Paris, entirely composed of (Roman) Catholics, except a single member, but offering sufficient guarantee by its particular object; four academies for scientific and theological instruction; authorization to convoke synods according to discipline; and lastly, a certain number of places of surety.

The (Roman) Catholic church had also its share in this edict. The property of the clergy was to be everywhere restored, tithes paid, and the exercise of (Roman) Catholicism re-established throughout the kingdom. This last article, which restored the mass in two hundred and fifty towns, and two thousand country parishes, narrowly missed exciting an insurrection at La Rochelle.

Yet this was not religious liberty, nor even simple toleration, as we understand it now; it was still a treaty of peace between two people juxtaposed upon the same soil. There was a twofold law; there were two armies, two judicial establishments, and each party had its places of hostage. Henry IV., the head of the whole state, had filled the office of arbitrator between the two camps. But this was already a great step in advance of the past.

The false maxim that there should be only one faith, as there are only one king and one government, had cost France three millions of actual money, and two millions of men. It had erected the scaffold and the stake during sixty years, kindled civil war during thirty-five years, provoked the massacres of Mérindol, of Vassy, and of Saint Bartholomew, and inspired spoliations and murders, and crimes without number. At the termination of the wars, half of the towns and castles were in ashes, commerce destroyed, and the country so devastated that thousands of the peasantry had resolved to emigrate, having no longer the wherewithal to live upon the soil which had nourished their forefathers.

Humanity has achieved the principle of religious liberty through rivers of blood and over heaps of ruins: it has been too dearly purchased to be lost.