CHAP. after having overcome De Ruyter. Louis pressed his XXXII. conversion. During sixty years of service,' replied given to Cæsar all that Cæsar You must allow me to give the

the veteran, 'I have
could require of me.
rest to God!"*

At last, when all the ingenuity of both chicane and cruelty was exhausted, appeared the final edict, in October 1685, formally revoking that of Nantes. The Chancellor Letellier, the enemy of Colbert and the father of Louvois, signed it on his deathbed at Chaville, exclaiming, 'Now let thy servant depart in peace!' Peace indeed, the peace of the executioner, amid the agonies and the blood of his victims. The new edict, revoking that of Nantes, forbade Protestant worship, and ordered its remaining temples to be destroyed; the religionists were forbidden to assemble; whoever opened his house to them suffered confiscation of his property; schools were to be closed; the children of Protestants to be forcibly baptized by Catholic priests; Protestant pastors were to quit the kingdom in fifteen days; Protestant emigrants were allowed to return and recover their property, they and their brethren being permitted by the eleventh article to remain and enjoy it without trouble or hindrance, provided they refrained from public worship.

By Louis's live instruments of torture the edict was received with mortification. Foucault wrote to the minister, that the last clause would suspend terror, and put a stop to all future conversions. Even the Duc de Noailles remonstrated and asked, was it possible that the king forbade to employ dragoons for the future to bend the wills of stubborn heretics? Such remonstrances were more listened to than justice. The edict was dated October 22nd. On November 8th, Louvois wrote to Foucault to torture the stubborn Protestants more

*Marshal Schomberg, to avoid similar menaces, quitted France, and

finally took service with the Prince of Orange.

fiercely than ever, by quartering soldiers upon them.
Thus, ere the writing of the promise was dry, it was re-
called, the dragonnades recommenced, and the religion-
ists had no prospect left but to try to escape with their
exiled pastors.

Then took place their great Exodus. Every Protes-
tant that had the means, employed them for that pur-
pose. The flocks followed their ministers as far as they
were able; and the Court which had issued the Revoca-
tion on the promise of the zealots, that it would accom-
plish the conversion of the remaining Huguenots, was
alarmed to learn their universal flight. Decree after
decree was issued to stop it. The certainty of being
made a galley slave, if caught, did not deter evasion.
Heavy fines and corporal punishment were imposed on
those proved to have aided the flight of others. The
inhabitants of the seashore district emigrated, almost
all, to England or to Holland, the rich abandoning
land and houses, artisans and sailors bringing away
precious experience and skill. The Protestants of the
Northern provinces contrived to get across the frontier
in large numbers. Women, even the most delicate,
started on foot, to make their way by night, and in all
disguises, out of the accursed land. Money often made
guards and troops relent; but thousands were captured,
and, after unspeakable misery, those who did not sink
under their sufferings were consigned to the galleys.
At Toulon and Marseilles, chained to the benches, with-
out roof, or bed, or even the protection of a cell,
were to be found 12,000 Huguenots, many of them of
the first rank, suffering a martyrdom worse than death,
merely because they took a different view of Christianity

* Vauban calculates the emigration of 9000 sailors and 2000 soldiers, and the capital transported abroad at 60 millions of livres.

Weiss' opinion is, that of a mil

lion of Huguenots, 300,000 escaped
in the last fifteen years of the
century. Hist. des Refugiés Pro-

testants.

CHAP.

XXXII.

XXXII.

CHAP. from a dissolute king, and from his bigot and timeserving churchmen.* The iniquity brought its own punishment, the ruin of the industry, and the subtraction of the little capital the country possessed, leaving the provinces incapable of paying their several quota of revenue. The manufacturers of silks, of stuffs, of paper, and of hats, of which in many markets the French had the monopoly, were transferred to other countries, to England or to Prussia.†

The intellectual refugees crowded to Holland, which opened a press in their own language to these formidable exiles. The minister, Claude, there published his eloquent Plaintes; Jurieu his terrible Lettres Pastorales, in which are depicted all the horrors of the French persecution, and in which Protestantism has perhaps found its most ample and conclusive defence. No where had Catholic cruelty been more fierce than in frontier towns, such as Metz‡ and Sedan. Bayle was professor in the Protestant university of the latter town, and was of course expelled. He was at the same time exasperated by the fate of his brother, a Protestant pastor, who perished of harsh treatment in the prison of Bordeaux, his only crime being his religion. Bayle did not confine his efforts, like Jurieu or Claude, to denunciation of Catholicism. He attacked religion altogether as guilty of its crimes, and on the foundation of Montaigne erected what might be called a church of doubt and infidelity, which took the place of Protestantism as the antagonist of the Papal religion, and which, after a century's combat, succeeded in laying its cruel enemy prostrate.§

It is impossible, indeed, not to connect the great revo

* Jurieu mentions three nobles of the rank of marquis, at the galleys-Du Bordage, Rochegude and Langé. M. de Lezan was sent there for having attended a prêche. See Hist. de l'Edit. Rulhières, &c.

† D'Avaux, Négotiations.

Persécution de l'Eglise de Metz, par Olry.

§ Weiss reminds us that Condillac and Mably were the grandsons of a gentleman of Dauphiné, converted by the soldiers of St. Rue or St. Ruth. Hist. des Refugiés Protestants.

lution of 1789, and its sweeping away of the noble and clerical castes, with the catastrophe of a hundred years previous, in which the clergy and noblesse crushed the Protestant middle class of France with far greater cruelty and equal injustice. The same laws, in fact, which had been enacted and enforced in 1685, and the following year, the law of suspects, the penalties attached to emigration, with the scaffold and spoliation which awaited those who remained, are common to both epochs. But the anterior reign of terror was the most cruel since the Jacobins at least did not employ torture. They did not break on the wheel or burn alive; nor were the gentry suspected of royalisin worse treated in 1793 than the nouveaux convertis, or the Protestants, who had submitted to forced conversion, were treated in 1690. Although these unfortunate men consented to attend the Catholic services, they avoided the communion, refused Catholic baptism, or the last rites of the dead. The attempts of the priests, whom the Duc de Noailles denotes as universally ignorant and dissolute, to enforce these rites, led to the most barbarous and revolting cruelties.* The royal officers filled the prisons with them and sent many to the galleys, the scaffold, and the stake. But still the Protestants remained a passive, united, and formidable body,† which it was found impossible to crush or to annihilate, and which, consequently, it was found necessary to conciliate. At one time their property was restored, at others, persecution recommenced. But amidst these alternations of cruelty and clemency, the religionists still abided, so as, after the lapse of now nearly two centuries, to show the same proportion in number to the Roman Catholics which they had done at the commencement of the persecution. Forming about one-twentieth of the population of France towards the end of the 17th century,

Noailles, Mémoires de Madame de Maintenon.

† Weiss. Coquerel. Eglises du Désert.

CHAP.

XXXII.

CHAP. they preserve the same proportion now.

XXXII.

Of such avail were the intolerance and cruelty of Louis the Fourteenth.*

Whilst wrung with compassion for all this misery, and with resentment against the monarch who ordered it, some compensation is found in the reflection, that Louis the Fourteenth was digging the grave of his own supremacy and glory by his extravagant bigotry. Not only was he flinging away the wealth, the industry, and resources of his kingdom, and exiling its soldiers and its sailors,† but he was compelling the Protestant Powers of the North to re-knit their league against him, his arrogance and greed forcing even Catholic courts to join in a general system of defence. The same contempt for every right, and for the most solemn engagements of his crown, which characterised his persecution of the Protestants, marked also his treatment of Foreign Powers. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the cancelling the only equitable clause of that act fifteen days after it was issued, has been told. His observance of the Treaty of Nimeguen was just the same. To prove this requires merely to adduce the king's own words. "The Peace," writes he, "was scarcely concluded at Nimeguen, when the king issued, on the 23rd of October, 1679, an arrêt of the Council of State adjoining to the Parlement of Metz, a royal chamber, called that of Réunion, for the purpose of subjecting all vassals in the newly acquired territories to the crown of France. This chamber issued a number of arrêts which extended the king's sovereignty, under pretext of dependence on the three bishoprics, over a number of towns, lordships, and fiefs in Lorraine, Luxemburg, and the neighbouring provinces of the empire. The duchies of Waldeck and the Deux Ponts were thus claimed, as

* Weiss.

† Louis sent Bonrepaux to London to obtain the extradition of

fugitive Huguenot sailors. But this not even James could grant. Memoirs of Marquis de Sourches.