Chapter XXI: Book III (4)

The (Roman) Catholic commissioner appointed to each general district, was generally a man of consideration, holding a seat in Parliament, or even in the king’s council, and was known for his entire devotion to the interests of the Romish church. The Calvinist commissioner, on the contrary, with very rare exceptions, was either some poor gentleman ignorant of business, or some ambitious individual secretly sold to the court, and nominated by the intendants, sometimes even by the bishops, expressly to betray his duty. The first had all the power that accompanies a state religion; the second, all the weakness of a religion scarcely tolerated. One spoke with authority, invoking the name of the king; the other spoke with humility, in the name of the poor oppressed, whose fears he shared.

The commissioners were instructed to ascertain the rights of exercising worship in the contested districts. But as many churches had no authentic titles, either because they had never supposed that these documents would become necessary, or because they had been lost during the religious wars, they could only maintain their right by actual possession and traditional notoriety. Constant quibbling was the consequence of this—in order to defeat the claims of the churches. The syndics of the (Roman) Catholic clergy were admitted to interfere in these disputes, and sought to invade everything; and when there was any disagreement between the two commissioners, the matter was decided by the council, whose aim was to restrict the Huguenots to the narrowest limits; or by the intendants, who had no other object than that of paying their court to Louis XIV.

It is impossible to count in how many districts the exercise of the Reformed religion was interdicted, how many places of worship were razed, schools suppressed, charitable establishments confiscated for the benefit of the (Roman) Catholics, and how many individuals also experienced crying injustice, however incontestable might be their rights. This would fill volumes.

Some Jesuits and others published lengthy writings, in which, under pretence of interpreting the Edict of Nantes, they demolished it piecemeal. The more skilful they showed themselves in the invention of new sophisms against the execution of the law, the more they thought they deserved from their church. The priest Soulier, author of an _Explanation of the Edict of Nantes_, unintentionally confesses this in his dedicatory epistle to the bishops: “I shall esteem myself too fortunate, sirs,” says he, “if I can second the zeal of your daily labours, after the example of the greatest of kings, for the extinction of heresy.” The explanation was at all events designed, right or wrong, to extinguish heresy.

These writings were sent to the council, to the parliaments, to the procurators-general, and the intendants, who, without approving the whole of their contents, furnished themselves with weapons out of these great arsenals of the Jesuit school, and never failed to use them when they could do so with any decency.

In 1663 the clergy obtained, at the instance of their General Assembly, a declaration against those who _relapsed_, that is to say, against those who returned to the Reformed communion, after having abjured. “These people could no longer pretend,” the preamble stated, “to the benefit of the Edict of Nantes, since they had renounced, and by returning to the heresy, had incurred the guilt of the enormous crime of profanation against the sacred mysteries of the (Roman) Catholic religion.” The ordinance consequently pronounced against them the penalty of perpetual banishment. This declaration is regarded by Rulhières, and other historians, as the first direct attack upon the Edict of Nantes, and the first decisive step in the path of revocation.

There were at that time a certain number of individuals, who went from the Reformed to the (Roman) Catholic communion, without well knowing why, and without any serious intention of remaining. Some gave way to threats, others to momentary seductions, others to weakness, or the natural inconstancy of their minds. It was, in the first place, a great error, to admit them so lightly into the Church of Rome, and some Jansenist bishops, more scrupulous than the others, complained of it. It was a still greater error to seek to retain them there by terror.

But the clergy went farther; they set themselves to invent, and to create backsliders. Attendance at mass for three or four Sundays, the blessing of a priest in a mixed marriage, a confidential avowal to a (Roman) Catholic of a leaning towards his religion, a conjecture, an appearance, a hearsay, or some mention of abjuring fifteen or twenty years before—all these were transformed into acts of (Roman) Catholicism, and if the pretended convert placed foot again within a heretic place of worship, he was dragged before the tribunals as a relapsed person.

So many abuses, and such grave troubles resulted from this, that a new declaration, published in 1664, decreed the nullity of all the procedures begun upon the subject. Yet the law was only suspended; and it was afterwards resumed with the addition of cruel aggravations.

In the month of May, 1665, an ordinance of the council authorized the curates, and all the ecclesiastics of the Romish church generally, to present themselves with a magistrate at the domicile of sick persons, to ask if they were willing to die in their heresy, or to be converted to the true religion. It is easy to imagine the double scenes of grief and scandal that would ensue, whenever the priest was a fanatic and the magistrate compliant. It was no longer possible to live or to die in peace, out of the Roman communion.

Paternal authority was also destined to be severely attacked. Without speaking of the crimes of abduction that were committed in many places, frequently with the most complete impunity, children were declared, by a decree of the 24th of October, 1665, to be capable of embracing (Roman) Catholicism; boys at fourteen years of age, girls at twelve, and parents were under the obligation of providing them with an alimentary allowance to maintain them out of their houses.

The Reformed complained bitterly of this law, and what was more strange, the bishops and commissioners-general of the clergy complained of it also. They told the chancellor that their conscience did not permit them to allow so much power to the hands of heretic fathers, and that children, being responsible for their acts before the age of fourteen or of twelve years, it ought to be permitted to receive them into the true church as soon as they desired it. The chancellor discussed the matter with them for form’s sake; and at the conclusion of the audience said to them: “The king has done his duty, you will do yours.”

The abjurations of many children were in fact received before the specified age; and when the parents had recourse to legal proceedings, the advocates-general decided that there was a great difference between exciting by “inducing” children to change religion, and receiving them with open arms, when they presented themselves by a sort of inspiration from heaven. Some years after, a new law, of which we shall speak, sanctioned these attacks against the most sacred rights of families.

The ordinances against blasphemers, and in particular against those accused of outraging the honour, the purity, and the holiness of the Virgin Mary, were confirmed. This gave rise to a host of prosecutions as extravagant as they were barbarous.

The sermons of the pastors were collected by spies in the pay of the Jesuits, and if there were found any terms, however slight, against the teachings of (Roman) Catholicism, these pastors were cited before the tribunals under the accusation of blasphemy. Many individuals were exposed to the same treatment, and (Roman) Catholics who were at law with the Reformed, were often found to tax them with some blasphemy, for the purpose of gaining an undue advantage over the adverse party.

It daily became more difficult for the Reformed to obtain admission to public offices. They had been at first kept out of high employments; access to the less important places was next closed, and by degrees they were debarred from the very smallest, unless in the towns and cantons where they still retained the majority. In many provinces, a profession of the (Roman) Catholic faith was exacted from simple artisans before they could obtain a license to pursue their calling.

Even the corporation of laundresses at Paris laid a remonstrance before the council, that their community having been instituted by Saint Louis, could not admit heretics, and this reclamation was gravely confirmed (singular monument of folly!) by a decree of the 21st of August, 1665. It was thereupon remarked that these washerwomen had in their corporation many abandoned women, of whom they did not complain, and that they disturbed themselves much more about heresy than about evil manners. The example had been set them, it is true, by the priests, by the court, and particularly by Louis XIV.

Colbert, however, persisted in employing the Reformed in financial employments. A Protestant from Germany, Bartholomew Herward, had been appointed intendant of the finances under the ministry of Mazarin, notwithstanding the opposition of the commissioners of the clergy, authentically signified to the chancellor. Herward next became comptroller-general. “He favoured those of his religion,” says Elie Benoit; “the finances became the refuge of the Reformed, to whom all other employments were refused. They entered into the farms and commissions, and made themselves so necessary in affairs of this nature, that even Fouquet and Colbert could not dispense with them, and were forced to retain them as people of proved fidelity, and of acknowledged capacity.”[86]

Colbert, in fact, relied upon their spirit of order, economy, and probity, and cared very little about their religion, provided the people in his service were but honest. Rulhières has a curious remark upon this subject in his _Eclaircissements historiques_: “The fact is, that the financiers then enjoyed general esteem for the first time; they were not attacked either by Molière, Lafontaine, or Boileau. This silence of the satirists about the financiers, during the period, in which the greatest number of these offices were filled by Protestants,” Rulhières adds, “is it not infinitely honourable to them?”[87]

Others of them being excluded from offices of state, and even of the municipal magistracy, had betaken themselves to arts and manufactures, agriculture and industry, a new title of recommendation to the protection of Colbert. But this great minister of state soon succumbed before the will of his master, for under Louis XIV. genius did not relieve any one from the duty of being a courtier.

Together with the violence of the council and of the tribunals, the Reformed had to endure those puerile vexations and petty annoyances from which intolerance can never free itself. They were prohibited, among other things, from singing psalms either on land or water, in their workshops or at their house-doors. If a procession happened to pass while they were singing in their places of worship, they had to stop. Their burials could take place only at break of day, or at nightfall, and not more than ten persons were permitted to participate in the funeral, except at Castres, Montauban, Nismes, and in towns of the same order, where the presence of thirty persons was authorized. It was not lawful for the Reformed to marry unless at the times fixed by the canons of the (Roman) Catholic church; and the nuptial procession might not exceed, parents included, the number of twelve persons.

The rich churches were interdicted from contributing to the support of ministers for the poor churches. It was considered a crime in the consistories to pronounce censures against those, who placed their children in the colleges of the Jesuits. The pastors lost the right of taking the title of doctors of theology, and the king forbade them, under penalty of a fine of three hundred livres, to wear the cassock and long robe elsewhere than in their places of worship. They might speak and pray in the hospitals only in whispers, lest they should offend the ears of the (Roman) Catholics.

Notwithstanding all this, the bishop of Uzès, the orator of the general assembly of the clergy, declared to the king, in 1665, that “it behoved him to labour with greater ardour _for the entire extirpation_ (such were his words) _of the redoubtable monster of heresy_.” He asked, besides, that liberty of conscience should be taken away from the (Roman) Catholics, that is to say, that it should be no longer permissible for them to leave the Roman church, adding that twenty-two dioceses of Languedoc had demanded this from the provincial estates, and that all the dioceses of the kingdom were ready to seal that declaration with their blood.

The council could not yet proceed to extremities, [and] refused [to do so]. But in the following year it passed a most comprehensive act, by sanctioning, under the form of a general law, all the decrees that had been made upon particular cases by the courts of justice. The preamble stated that this law had been accorded on the demand of the assembly of the clergy. It comprised fifty-nine articles, which all tended to restrict the liberties that the Edict of Nantes had declared perpetual and irrevocable.

The first emigration dates from this epoch. The Reformed hoped no longer to meet with either justice or repose in their native land, and preferred the sufferings of exile to those of persecution.

The Protestant powers of Europe began to be moved. The elector of Brandenburg, one of the most faithful and useful allies of Louis XIV., wrote to him in favour of the Reformed. The king replied that he permitted them to live on an equality with his other subjects. “I am bound to do so,” said he, “by my royal word, and by the gratitude I feel for the proofs they have given of their fidelity during the late disturbances (of the Fronde), in which they bore arms in my service.”

These were but diplomatic phrases, that deceived no one. England and Sweden, whose neutrality was necessary to Louis XIV. after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, expressed also their solicitude for the fate of the Reformed of France. Emigration continued; and all these circumstances induced the council to publish, in 1669, a kind of retractation of the preceding decrees. Nine articles of the declaration of 1666 were suppressed and twenty-one softened. Although this was but half-justice, the poor oppressed people esteemed themselves fortunate [in obtaining it].

Shortly afterwards the celebrated edict was published, which prohibited the king’s subjects, under pain of confiscation of liberty and property, from going to establish themselves in foreign countries without express permission, and particularly from taking service in the quality of ship-builders or sailors. This law struck all Frenchmen in their ancient liberties; but it was enforced only against those who emigrated on account of their religion.

The Marshal de Turenne had just abjured (1669). This conversion had all the importance of a general act. Turenne had resisted the invitations of Mazarin and Louis XIV., and had not even been dazzled by the offer of the constable’s sword. He changed all at once, when no one any longer expected it, and why, has never been made known.

Some (Roman) Catholic writers say that he had become enlightened by Bossuet’s _Exposition of the Doctrines of the Catholic Church_,—a book, indeed, well arranged, soberly penned, and of wonderful skill, in which the author hides the greatest errors of doctrine and practice of (Roman) Catholicism under the artifices of deeply-studied diction. It is possible that the old soldier did not investigate very narrowly, and that his limited information upon controversial questions might have failed to protect him against the subtilties of the theologian.

The Reformed historians explain the matter otherwise. They relate that Turenne, who was at all times lax in his religion, had only been retained in it by his wife and his sisters, Mesdames de Duras and de la Trémoille, both very zealous for the Reformed belief. When he was left alone, and had surrendered himself to gallantries little compatible with the faith, he accepted the reasoning of Bossuet.

This is the place to observe that the greater part of the court nobility,—the families of Bouillon, Châtillon, Rohan, Sully, La Trémoille,—regulating themselves by the will of the monarch, had one by one re-entered the (Roman) Catholic church. Their licentious manners had also prepared them for abjuration; these were not less inordinate than those of the rest of the courtiers, according to the testimony of Tallemant des Réaux, who was himself a Calvinist by birth.

Among the people of importance, who had remained faithful to the Reformation, we may cite the Count de Schomberg, who had been commander-in-chief of the armies; the Duke de la Force and his house; a younger branch of the family of La Rochefoucault; several descendants of Duplessis-Mornay; the Marquises de Ruvigny, of whom one was minister-plenipotentiary at London, and the other deputy-general of the churches. The lesser nobility in the provinces had been more firm than the great noblemen. Languedoc, Guienne, Quercy, Saintonge, Poitou, Normandy, still reckoned thousands of gentlemen devoted to the faith of their fathers, and who, in return for the good services they rendered to the king in his armies and his fleets, asked only for a little justice and protection.

XIII.

The abjuration of Turenne renewed the projects of reunion, which had never been entirely abandoned since the attempt of Cardinal de Richelieu. The Prince de Conti, governor of Bas-Languedoc, desirous of making himself agreeable to Louis XIV., had already renewed the endeavour in 1661. The provincial synod of Nismes answered him, in the rude language of the period, by the mouth of their moderator Claude, that the Reformed would be guilty of unpardonable cowardice if they consented to “_unite light with darkness, Christ with Belial_.”

The project assumed a more serious turn from 1670 to 1673. The Marshal de Turenne took it up with the approbation of the king, and tried to obtain the adhesion of the pastors. An agent of the court visited one after another those who were dependent upon the national synod of Charenton; and partly by threats of the king’s displeasure, and partly by the promise of accomplishing the reunion upon an equitable basis, this emissary succeeded in extorting from several ministers the verbal or written promise of supporting the plan in the next synodal assembly.

It was stated that the king was disposed to extirpate the abuses in the Romish church, which most shocked the Reformed; that the worship of images, purgatory, prayers for the dead, the invocation of saints, would be either suppressed or at least sensibly corrected; that theologians freely chosen from both sides, would have the mission of contriving a mutual understanding upon the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper; that the use of the cup would be restored to the laity, and the religious service would be celebrated in the vernacular; finally, that if the pope sought to oppose these changes, the king would go further, having the word of forty-two bishops upon these articles, and knowing the means of bringing the others to the same opinion.

This was evidently a falsehood. Louis XIV. could not execute what the subaltern agents promised in his name; and if the bishops had refused to make this concession at the colloquy of Poissy, when the Reformation was widely extended throughout the whole kingdom, how could one among them have made such concessions to a small minority, shut up in its places of worship, without political authority, shorn of all power of religious expansion, and well-nigh extirpated?

Nor did the wisest of the Reformed fall into the snare; for they knew that Rome uses two very different languages: the first, when she wishes to gain over heretics; the second, when she has them under her hoof. They knew, moreover, that the accord would, in the end, be limited to an entire submission on their part, followed by a merciful pardon on the other. For this reason, the provincial synod convoked at Charenton, in the month of May, 1673, opposed the new project of reunion with an energetic refusal, and the five pastors, who had promised to support it, solemnly declared their determination against it.

The same attempts produced the like results in Saintonge, Languedoc, and the Vivarais. The court and the clergy at length recognised that there was no rational hope of reducing the Reformed in this direction, and were driven to seek other means for the extermination of heresy.

Two methods, very different in their principle and line of action, were indicated by the adversaries of the Huguenots. The Jansenists, and the most enlightened and most pious of the (Roman) Catholics generally, proposed to convert them by persuasion, fair treatment, and good examples, thinking that it was better to leave the erring without the pale of the Church than to force hypocrites to enter it. The Jesuits and their friends said, on the contrary, that it was incumbent to use both the authority of the king and the Parliaments without reserve, to exact acts of Catholicity at any price, and then to retain folks by the fear of executions, upon the fundamental maxim, that if the new (Roman) Catholics had little faith, their children would have more, and their grandchildren still more. The court balanced a long time between these two systems, which serves to explain its alternatives of mildness and rigour. But in the end, the advice of the Jesuits prevailed.

Ordinances, declarations, decrees, and other acts of the council followed, striking the heretics blow upon blow. Their number was so great that it is impossible to indicate even the substance of them. The Reformed were successively forbidden to raise supplies for the maintenance of their ministers, and the expense of sending them to the synods; to except against suspected judges, although this right was preserved to other Frenchmen; to print religious books without the authorization of the magistrates of the Romish communion; to suborn and corrupt, that is to say, to seek to convert (Roman) Catholics, under pain of a fine of a thousand livres; to celebrate their worship in the places and on the days when the bishops made their tours; to have more than one school and one master in each of the districts where they exercised their religion; to teach by this master anything else than writing, reading, and the elements of arithmetic; and so on. The Reformed were oppressed in their religious faith, their civil person, their political rights, their domestic condition, the education of their children, and each iniquity necessarily produced others. Thus evil ever begets evil.

Some pastors, having held unlawful meetings upon the ruins of their places of worship, which had been unjustly pulled down, were condemned to do penance with a rope round their neck, and were then banished the kingdom. The demolitions spread, and were multiplied for the most trivial motives, upon the denunciations of a bishop, or of some other member of the clergy, upon the quibbles of a (Roman) Catholic commissioner, or simply, as the faithful of Saint Hippolyte experienced, upon the accusation of having manifested disrespect for a curate bearing the holy sacrament along the street.

There were in Béarn ninety-six places of worship, and forty-six churches of residence. A lawsuit, which lasted seven years, reduced the number of places of worship to twenty, and fettered these in every possible way. It was nearly the same in all the provinces of the kingdom. If the council sometimes used precaution, and imposed upon the intendants some reserve, the pastor Claude presumes, in his _Plaintes des Protestants de France_, that it was to induce the belief that justice was regarded, and that the condemned churches had not good titles.

The mind feels some relief, amidst these persecutions, in dwelling upon the paper wars which were fought at the same epoch between the most eminent pastors of the two religions. Here at least material violence did not intervene; here the contest was equal; and when men of great powers attacked the Reformation, it did not want solid and skilful champions for its defence.

The Jansenists were so accustomed to the strife, that they could not desist from it; and peace having been concluded between them and the Jesuits, through the intermission of Clement IX., they turned their arms against the Huguenots. They imported into the conflict all the greater zeal, that they were themselves taxed with being no more than disguised Calvinists.

Arnault and Nicole therefore published their famous _Perpétuité de la Foi sur l’Eucharistie_ (1664-1676), in which they endeavoured to establish, from the text of the Fathers of the Church, and by certificates brought from the East, that the dogma of the real presence has been at all times admitted in Christianity. Claude replied that they had wrongly interpreted the sense of the Fathers, and certificates procured from poor Greek popes by the ambassador of France, who was their protector against the Turks, were but of little value. His answer had extraordinary success; and the Jesuits themselves did their best to disseminate it, as Arnault complains in one of his letters, because they were quite as much interested in humiliating the Jansenists as in destroying the Reformed.

Nicole re-entered the lists with his _Préjugés légitimes contre les Calvinistes_. His argumentation was sadly wanting in caution. He maintained that before quitting the Church of Rome, the meanest artisan is bound to assure himself of the authenticity of the holy writings, to compare the translations with the original, to examine all the various readings, to weigh all the interpretations of the texts, to compare them with the decisions of the councils, to perform in a word an immense labour that the most erudite dare hardly undertake. These arguments, every one knows, have been turned by Rousseau against (Roman) Catholicism and even against the Gospel. Claude, Jurieu, and Pajon answered Nicole.

Arnault came to the succour of his friend in a book upon the _Renversement de la Morale de Jesus Christ par les Erreurs des Calvinistes_. It astonished every one that a doctor who agreed with Calvin upon the dogma of predestination, had constructed all the scaffolding of his polemics upon this consequence, that _grace cannot be lost_; and this was judiciously objected to him, not only by Bruguier, pastor of Nismes, but by theologians of his own communion.

Bossuet’s _Exposition_ also provoked numerous replies. La Bastide, a member of the consistory of Charenton, and David Noguier, a pastor of Languedoc, proved that this work was wanting in truth, and that the author has constructed an ideal Catholicism totally unlike the real. Pierre Jurieu proved it better than any one in his _Preservatif contre le Changement de Religion_, and resumed the same question in his _Politique du Clergé de France_. “Here is a man,” he says, “who transports us into another country. There is no worship of images, no invocation of saints in this new religion; they are only implored just as we beg the faithful on earth to pray to God for us. Until now, I had thought that the devotions to the Virgin and to the other saints was an important thing; I see that the majority of devotees think them of great consequence; and these people say they are nothing, they may be dispensed with, and that it is sufficient to invoke God and Jesus Christ!”

Claude had a celebrated conference with Bossuet in 1678, upon the invitation of Mademoiselle de Duras. The two adversaries have published the report of their debate. Bossuet had pledged himself to make Claude avow that it may happen that a simple individual, however ignorant he may be, understands the Scriptures better than all the councils and all the rest of the Church together—a proposition which he styled as absurd. Claude answered that the question was not so simple, and that before asking if an artisan may be right in spite of all the councils and the Church, it should be shown that there is a single article, upon which the Church and all the councils have constantly agreed.

Ten years afterwards, the bishop of Meaux (Bossuet) re-entered the arena with his _Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes_. His attacks were made upon the absentees and the proscribed, whose books of refutation were not permitted to pass from Holland into France.

To speak alone was a privilege a man like Bossuet ought to have repudiated.

XIV.

The jubilee of the year 1676 brought about what certain historians call the _conversion_ of Louis XIV. This prince experienced deep remorse that he had caused so much scandal at court and in his kingdom by his public adulteries. He resolved, so he promised his spiritual directors, not to revisit Mademoiselle de Montespan. But he had not the firmness to keep his word. His conscience became thereupon disturbed, and he had troubles of mind and of heart, which were skilfully turned against the heretics by Father La Chaise, who had been promoted about a year before to the office of the king’s confessor. The Reformed were made to atone for the faults of the monarch, and to reconcile him with his offended God by their abjuration, or their ruin.

The religion of Louis XIV. was of this kind. If he had not sufficient piety to conquer his passions, he had enough bigotry to imagine that he could expiate his errors by the reduction of heretics to the Roman unity. Louis XIV. received his first religious ideas from a Spanish mother, who, very ignorant herself, had impressed his mind with many petty scruples, and but little enlightenment on faith and Christian morality. The Jesuits had continued her work, by inspiring their pupil with sentiments, which might subserve for the accomplishment of their designs.

Having understood at a later period how badly he had been educated, he remodelled his education as to those matters which most interested the dignity and authority of his crown. Unhappily, he remained just where he was in respect of religious matters, and his habits were no better than his spiritual convictions. “He never had a proper idea of his duties,” says M. de Sismondi. It was not only his amours which deserve censure, although the scandal of their publicity, the dignities to which he raised the children of his adultery, and the constant humiliation to which he subjected his wife, add greatly to his offence against public morality. He made himself besides deeply guilty by the merciless cruelty with which he shed blood, at one time by such executions as those he inflicted upon the Bretons to punish them for having defended their privileges, at another by the ruin of entire populations. No respect for engagements, no notion of right or wrong, regulated either his public or his private conduct. He violated treaties just as he violated his domestic engagements; he seized the property of his subjects, as well as that of his cousin, Mademoiselle de Montpensier. He acknowledged in his judgments, and in his rigour towards his people, no rule but his own will. At the very moment that his subjects were dying of famine, he retrenched nothing from his prodigalities. Those, who boasted of having converted him, had never represented to him more than two duties, that of renouncing his incontinence, and that of extirpating heresy in his dominions.[88]

Rulhières confesses these errors of mind and conduct, while he strives to elevate the character of Louis XIV. in a memoir, which was intended for the perusal of Louis XVI.: “During these alternatives of dissoluteness and scruples,” says he, “while he passed from error to remorse, and from remorse to error, he hoped to redeem his transgressions and merit more decisive grace from heaven, by labouring with greater fervour for these conversions.”[89]

One of the means that Louis XIV. employed with this view, was the purchase of consciences for money; a fresh proof of the detestable religious education he had received from his mother and the Jesuits.

He consecrated to this vile traffic the third of the _économats_ or benefices, which fell to the crown during vacancy. The amount was not large; but it was increased afterwards by leaving benefices vacant expressly to pay for the abjurations of the heretics.

Pellisson had the administration of this fund. Although born in the Reformed communion, he had embraced (Roman) Catholicism very opportunely for his fortune, and from a convert had become a converter. Doubly an object of suspicion to the king from his Huguenot origin, and his connection with the superintendent Fouquet, he perceived that he must do much to gain the favour of Louis. Nor did he spare his efforts.

The establishment opened by Pellisson was a bank, or commercial house, organized according to the rules of [establishments of] the kind, with its correspondents, who were generally priests or bishops, its tariff, its letters of change, its provincial agents, and its regular balance-sheets of expenditure; and it was made necessary to send certificates of abjuration duly signed, and acquittances in proper form, indicating the sum disbursed for each person, or for each family of proselytes.

The object of this bank was naturally to procure conversions at the lowest figure: they cost from five to six livres, sometimes one or two pistoles, and, in extraordinary cases, from eighty to one hundred francs. There is a curious letter on this subject from Pellisson extant, which is the circular of a consummate merchant. “Although you may go to the extent of a hundred francs,” [he writes,] “you are not thereby to understand that this sum is to be always given, since it is requisite that the utmost economy should be observed; first, in order that this beneficent dew may be dispersed over the greatest number of persons; and secondly, because, if a hundred francs is given to persons of low rank without any family following them, those who have ever so little position, or draw after them a number of children, will demand much larger sums. This will not, however, prevent, where important strokes may be effected, on my being first advised thereof, larger remittances to be furnished, accordingly as his majesty shall, on representation made to him, think proper.” (June 12th, 1677.)

Pellisson regularly presented lists of six and eight hundred converts with the certificates to the king, and caused his miracles to be inserted in the _Gazette_. He took care, however, not to publish that they were nearly all folks belonging to the dregs of the people, or rogues who made a trade of their consciences, or wretches who took the money that they might have the wherewithal to buy a piece of bread, without any intention of renouncing their religion. The king was greatly astonished at his conquests; the prelates applauded; the Jesuits triumphed; but sensible people put no faith in them.

In effect, frauds multiplied to such an extent, that it could no longer be concealed from the king. Instead, however, of giving up this unworthy traffic, he published, through his council, in the month of March, 1679, a law of greater severity against those who relapsed. “We have been informed,” he says in the preamble, “that in several provinces of our kingdom, there are many persons, who, after having abjured the pretended Reformed religion, in the hope of participating in the sums that we have caused to be distributed to the new converts, return to it again.” And the law pronounced against them, besides the former penalty of banishment for life, was that of public recantation and forfeiture of property.

What a mass of injustice and contradictions! In buying souls it could not but be supposed that they believed in nothing, and after having bought them, they were punished for changing anew,—as if they had believed in anything. What should so degraded a devotion inspire in the minds of all respectable people? Is it pity or contempt? It is both the one and the other.

The peace of Nimeguen, concluded with all the powers of Europe in 1679, was the apogee of the fortunes of Louis XIV. He [then] received the surname of “the Great.” Courtiers and men of letters were profuse in [offering] the most humble adulations, and treated him as a demigod. This incense completed his intoxication—he regarded himself really as the sole and rightful owner of all the territory of his kingdom, the sole legislator and supreme judge, the living impersonation of the whole state! He ended by thinking that the minds of his subjects were as much his slaves as their bodies, and considered every conscientious opposition to his sovereign will to be a crime of high treason. Unfortunate prince! He never so debased himself as when he carried the excess of his pretensions so high.

Madame de Maintenon [now] began to assume a stronger dominion over him. The grand-daughter of Agrippa d’Aubigné, one of the firmest defenders of the Calvinist faith, and herself deeply devoted to her religion in childhood, she had abandoned it in 1651, when sixteen years of age. When the Reformed saw her growing in the confidence and intimacy of Louis XIV., they imagined that she would remember the communion of her grandfather, and use her influence to protect it. But having been “_born ambitious_,” as she confesses in one of her letters, she felt, even more than Pellisson, the necessity of causing her heretic origin to be forgotten, and hoped to retain the king’s heart by fostering in him a strict devotion.

Gifted with much cleverness and still more tact, she had easily discovered Louis XIV.’s profound repugnance for the heretics, and tried to conform herself to it. It appears, nevertheless, that she had some compunctions of pity for the oppressed. We read in the _Memorial of Saint Cyr_, that the king said to her one day: “I fear, madam, that the moderation you would have me display for the heretics arises from some remains of affection for your old religion.” And she writes elsewhere: “Ruvigny is intractable; he has told the king that I was born a Calvinist, and that I was one until my coming to court. This compels me to approve of things quite opposite to my sentiments.”

This avowal is the clue to her conduct. Madame de Maintenon, if left to herself, would have employed only mildness and charity, as she recommended to her brother; but being desirous above all things of pleasing Louis XIV., she joined with Father La Chaise in devising every means for the ruin of heresy.

The plan of destruction became systematic and invariable after the peace of Nimeguen. Governors, commandants, intendants, soldiers, lawyers, finding that Louis had finally decided upon the extirpation of the Huguenots, became animated with a great desire for proselytism, and undertook in their turn to become missionaries and converters. Their chief care was to despatch long lists of abjurations to the court, or at least reports of worship interdicted, of places of worship razed, and of flocks dispersed. The privy council was sometimes alarmed at so much zeal; notwithstanding which it dared not arrest it, lest the victims might be encouraged in their resistance; and soon, itself drawn along by the force of circumstances, it transformed into a general declaration what it had blamed at first.

Whenever a councillor or a magistrate more humane than the others, deplored these extreme measures, the only answer was, “God uses all means for His ends.”

The populace, as might have been expected, acted its part in these persecutions. In the towns of Blois, Alençon, and in other places, bands of wretches invaded the places of worship, tore the holy books, broke the pulpits and the benches, and set fire to the buildings: the authorities, instead of suppressing these riots, sanctioned them by the interdiction of worship and the exile of the pastors.

Louis XIV. persisted, nevertheless, in talking to the Protestant powers of Europe of his respect for the Edict of Nantes. We read in a declaration so late even as 1682, that he was resolved upon doing nothing contrary to the edicts, by virtue of which the pretended Reformed religion was tolerated in his kingdom! Under the Valois, persecution was cruel, but freely avowed; under Louis XIV. it cloaked itself for a long time in hypocrisy: the Jesuits were the moving power.

XV.

As we gradually approach [the period of] the revocation, the ordinances already so numerous, as we have seen, multiplied with striking features of aggravation. We will class the most important under distinct heads.

_Public Offices._—The exclusions were extended by degrees to all employments without exception. The Reformed were disabled from being councillors, judges, assessors, treasurers, clerks in the financial departments, consuls, municipal magistrates, advocates, notaries, procurators, serjeants, ushers, physicians, apothecaries, librarians, printers, _employés_ in the post [offices], and public conveyances, members of corporations, &c. &c. Even midwives of the religion were no longer permitted, “because they did not believe,” said the ordinance of 1680, “baptism to be necessary, and could not christen children on emergency.”

In certain cantons it was physically impossible to execute these edicts; for how could the Reformed be excluded from all employments and every office in those places where they formed nearly the whole of the population? It was necessary to select consuls and municipal councillors from adventurers living in the suburbs, and from people of no character, which caused inexpressible disorder.

_Civil Rights._—There were no longer any guarantees in the courts of justice. The chambers of the Edict, at Paris and Rouen, had been abolished in 1669. The mixed chambers of the Parliaments of Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux were abolished in 1679; “seeing,” said the preamble, “that all animosity was extinct!” Derision was added to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes!

It was not an unfrequent occurrence to hear the (Roman) Catholic party invoke this argument, in affairs purely civil: “I plead against a heretic;” and when a member of the Reformed faith complained of an unjust sentence, he was coolly answered: “You have your remedy in your hands; why do you not become a Catholic?”

_Marriage and Paternal Authority._—Alliances were no longer permitted between the Reformed and (Roman) Catholics, even in the case of former relations that marriage had legitimized. The Reformed were not allowed to have (Roman) Catholic valets, for fear the latter should be seduced; and soon, by an inverse excess, they were prohibited from having any other than (Roman) Catholics, because such could be employed as spies. The nearest relations were prohibited from being guardians or curators. Fathers and mothers were forbidden to send their children into foreign countries before the age of sixteen. It was ordered that all illegitimate children, of every age and condition, should be held as (Roman) Catholics, and educated in that religion: and as this ordinance was made to act retrospectively, results flowed from it as ridiculous as they were odious. Persons of sixty and eighty years of age were summoned to enter the church of Rome, because their illegitimate condition had legally rendered them (Roman) Catholics.

Matters even went further than this. An edict of the 17th of June, 1681, declared that the children of the Reformed might abjure at the age of _seven_. “We will, and it pleaseth us,” said the ordinance, “that our said subjects of the pretended Reformed religion, as well male as female, having attained the age of seven years, may, and it shall be lawful for them to, embrace the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, and, for this end, that they be received to make abjuration, without their fathers and mothers and other relatives offering _the least impediment_, under any pretext whatsoever!” These children were free to withdraw themselves whenever they liked, and the parents were bound to provide them with a pension for their maintenance.

Fearful consequences attended [the passing of] this law. Every family was disturbed. Friends, (Roman) Catholic neighbours, servants, the slightest mark of kindness to their children on the part of a stranger, were mistrusted. A priest, an envious acquaintance, an enemy, a discontented talebearer, might declare before a justice that such and such a child had made the sign of the cross, or kissed an image of the Virgin, or desired to enter a (Roman) Catholic church; and this was often sufficient to justify their abduction, particularly of those who were rich enough to pay an allowance, and to shut them up in some convent under the direction of monks, nuns, and the [secular] clergy.

Even Madame Maintenon made use of this abominable law. Having vainly endeavoured to convert her relation, the Marquis de Villette, who had replied to her: “It would take me a hundred years to believe in infallibility, twenty years to believe in the real presence,” and so on, she deprived him of his children; among others of a little girl, who afterwards became the Marchioness de Caylus. We read in the Memoirs of this lady: “I cried a great deal, but I found next day the royal mass so beautiful that I consented to be a (Roman) Catholic, on condition that I should hear it every day, and that I should be insured from all whipping. This was all the controversy employed, and the only abjuration I made.”

_Contracts and Imposts._—The newly-converted were permitted to delay the payment of their debts for the space of three years, which attracted all involved or dishonest debtors to (Roman) Catholicism. These same converts were also exempt for two years from imposts and military quarterings; while a double imposition of billets, taxes, or arbitrary contributions, called _office taxes_, were inflicted upon the refractory, so that the treasury might not suffer by its liberality. Colbert complained in vain of the disorder and confusion which this caused; religion, however, took the precedence of financial regularity.

_Attacks upon Property._—All the funds, rents, and other property of every kind which belonged to the condemned churches, were confiscated in favour of the (Roman) Catholic hospitals: so likewise were all those destined to the poor of the religion, even in the places where its exercise had not been interdicted; and testamentary dispositions containing charitable legacies for the consistories were annulled. We shall see, as we proceed, to what point the attack upon private property was (also) carried.

_Liberty of Conscience and of Worship._—Physicians, surgeons, and others, who should assist the sick of the Reformed religion, were commanded to give notice thereof to the magistrates of the locality, under penalty of a fine of five hundred livres; and the latter—consuls, judges, or magistrates—were required to visit the sick, willingly or by force, with or without a priest, to ask them if they would abjure.

The pastors were forbidden to speak of the _misfortune of the times_ in their sermons, to attack the Romish church directly or indirectly, to reside at a distance of less than six leagues from the places of interdicted worship, and of less than three leagues from the places of contested worship. The people were forbidden to assemble in their places of worship under pretence of prayer and singing psalms, except at the usual hours. The conferences were definitively interdicted; and the consistories were obliged to admit a (Roman) Catholic commissioner. It was prohibited to contribute alms for the maintenance of the sick of the Reformed religion, or to take care of them in private houses; the order was to transfer them to the hospitals, where they fell under the action of Roman proselytism.

The crowning measure of oppression was the prohibition to receive any new converts in the places of worship, under pain of banishment and forfeiture of property, as regarded the pastors, and of privation of religious exercises, as regarded the flocks. At this last blow the Reformed were ready to abandon themselves to despair. Many deliberated whether they ought not to renounce all public service, and confine themselves to the adoration of God within their own houses. What refinement of barbarity! To force them themselves to watch the door of their places of worship, and to drive away the brethren, who had doubtless quitted them, but who returned perhaps with tears of repentance! Besides, by what signs was a new convert distinguished? How was it possible to know all those who had abjured? Might not one traitor procure the condemnation of an entire church? The places of worship at Bergerac, Montpellier, Saint Quentin, and Montauban, were demolished in this way: the same fate threatened all the others.

It appeared as if the condition of the Reformed could not become worse. It did so, however, by the intervention of the Marquis de Louvois, who wanted, according to the expression of Madame de Caylus, to mix up the soldiery with the affair. He was annoyed that he was, after the peace of Nimeguen, no longer necessary to his master, and saw with displeasure devotion replacing gallantry in the heart of Louis. He tried long and fruitlessly to bring the king back to Madame de Montespan; but when he was convinced that his intrigues were useless, and that the sole means of pleasing Louis was to second his efforts for the conversion of the Huguenots, he entered into them with all the violence of his character, being only too happy to play the first part with the help of the troops at his disposal. What miseries, what shameful calculations in that court, so renowned, and all under the mask of Catholic piety!

Louvois wrote to Marillac, intendant at Poitou, in the month of March, 1681, that he was about to send a regiment of horse into that province. “His majesty,” he said, “has heard with much joy of the great number of persons, who continue to be converted in your department. He wishes you to persist in your endeavours, and desires that the greater number of horsemen and officers should be billeted upon the Protestants. If, according to a just distribution, ten would be quartered upon the members of the Reformed religion, you may order them to accommodate twenty.” Louvois also enjoined that the communication of his orders should be made to the mayors and authorities, not by writing, but by word of mouth, so that it might not be said that the king used violence towards the Huguenots.

Such was the origin of those _dragonnades_, which have left an indelible stain of disgrace upon the reign of Louis XIV., and of horror in the mind of the inhabitants. The march of Marillac’s troops was ordered, as if they were in an enemy’s country, exacting arrears of taxes, exempting those who became converts, and throwing all the burden upon the obstinate. From four to ten dragoons were billeted in the houses, with directions not to kill the inhabitants, but with authority to do anything short of that, in order to extort an abjuration. Curates followed the soldiers in the towns and villages, shouting: “Courage, gentlemen, it is the will of the king.”

Without a check upon their passions, the military committed horrible excesses: a horde of brigands had penetrated into the heart of the kingdom. The _Journal of Jean Migault_, published in these later times, will give an idea of their barbarities. Devastations, pillages, tortures, cruelties [prevailed; in fact,] they hesitated at nothing.

Elie Bénoit has filled page after page of his _History of the Edict of Nantes_ [with a narrative of these cruelties]; we will only extract one or two passages: “The horsemen,” he writes, “fastened crosses to the mouth of their musquetoons to compel the people to kiss them by force, and when they met with any resistance, they thrust their crosses into the face and stomach of their unhappy victims. They spared children as little as persons of more advanced age, and without the slightest regard for their years; they loaded them with blows with the flat of their swords, or with the butt-end of their musquetoons; such was their violence that in many instances many were crippled for life. These infamous wretches took a pleasure in maltreating women. They beat them with whips; they struck them in the face with canes in order to disfigure them; they dragged them by their hair in the mud and over the stones. Sometimes the soldiers, meeting labourers on the road, or with their carts, drove them to the (Roman) Catholic churches, pricking them like cattle with their own spurs, to hasten their unwilling march....”[90]

Crowds of unfortunates fled to the woods; others hid themselves in the houses of their friends; many determined to fly the kingdom at all hazards; and there might be seen men, women, and children, half-dead, stretched upon the stones or rugged rocks. Many at length consented to abjure under the sabre of the soldier; but what an abjuration! Numbers went mad, or died of grief, or put an end to their days in paroxysms of remorse and despair. There were some who, flinging themselves upon the road, beat their breasts and filled the air with wailings. “When any two of these unfortunate converts met,” still further relates Bénoit, “when one beheld the other at the foot of an image, or in any other act of Catholic devotion, their cries redoubled, and their grief burst out anew. The labourer, abandoned to his reflections during his work, felt the sharp stimulus of remorse, and quitting his waggon in the midst of his fields, threw himself upon his knees, and while prostrate on the earth, sought for pardon, and took all nature to witness that it was violence alone that he had obeyed.”[91]

Madame de Maintenon wrote to her brother, who was about to receive a gratuity of eight hundred thousand francs: “I beg of you carefully to use the money you are about to receive. Estates in Poitou may be got for nothing; the desolation of the Huguenots will drive them to sell more. You may easily acquire extensive possessions in Poitou.” (September 2nd, 1681.)