USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Historical collections, Vol. I > Part 7
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The objection was that they were Protestants, and stood firm by their faith ; this was the offense for which they were, by arbitrary edicts, to be treated as criminals.
As early as 1670 there is ample evidence to show that the design was to force the Protestants to renounce their faith, and return to the Papal church.
To effect this, rigorous means were to be urged, until this renouncement was complete, when the edict would be of no further use, and be revoked as an obsolete law.
At this time the Protestants of France were a numerous and systematical religious body ; they had not only their reli- gious organizations, but extensively organized literary and scientific institutions, not inferior to any others in the king- dom ; and these were liberally endowed with funds for their maintenance, and had at their head men of the highest literary and scientific attainments in that country.
Louis XIV* had now for ten years, from 1660 to 1670, made his will the supreme law of liis dominions, and his prime minister, Colbert, had, by his wisdom and prudence in the management of the finances of the kingdom, added greatly to its prosperity.
* Louis XIV, born, September 16, 1638, king in 1643, under the regency of his mother, Anne of Austria, declared of age 1651, and married Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV, of Spain, 1660. His minister, the successor of Richelieu, died 1661. His independent career now began. His next ten years exhibited statesmanship; but thenceforth he became a slave to intemperate zeal and injudicious advisers ; he died in 1715.
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This date may be taken as the culminating point in the reign of Louis XIV ; he was generally respected abroad as well as by his own subjects ; but the influence of Colbert, and his pru- dent measures, were no longer regarded ; there was now an ostentatious display of power. Hitherto war had been waged mainly for political ends and the redress of apparent wrongs against the state ; but now, instead of the wise counsels of Col- bert, there came prominently upon the stage, for war minister, Lonvois (Francis Michael le Tellier), who began his political life in 1667 ; and Madame de Maintenon, daughter of Con- stant d'Aubigny, and granddaughter of the celebrated Theo- dore Agrippa d'Aubigny, born, November 27, 1635; married, in 1652, at the age of seventeen, Scarron, " a paralytic eripple, who, with his deformity, was popular and witty, and drew to his house the wisest and best, as well as the profligate and lovers of pleasure."
In her carly youth she was trained a Protestant ; but, being educated in a school controlled by Papists, she was led to renounce her former faith and become a Catholic.
From the period of 1670 the policy of the government, politically and in a religions point of view, was mainly directed to the support of the Romish church and the suppression of Protestantism.
Lonvois was an aspirant for popularity with the king, and was not insensible to his weak points-his libertinism, bigotry, and fondness for pomp and show. Thus his abilities were directed to taking advantage of these characteristics for his own advancement, and being selected as chief war minister, his influence sacrificed the best interests of the kingdom, reducing its character from the high elevation it had attained by the wise counsels of Colbert to a condition of general disrespect among the other governments of Europe.
To the counsels of Louvois were added those of Madame de Maintenon and the king's confessor, Pere la Chaise; the
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former a prude and bigot, seeking the favors of Louis XIV by her formal and straight-laced manner, until she effected her aspiration of becoming Queen of France, as his wife, but in disguise ; while the latter, a loyal Jesuit, alive to the ad- vaneement of that order of the Romish church, hesitated at no means for making a sacrifice of all hereties that would not renonnee and return to the Papal fold.
Such were the counselors who directed the mind of Louis XIV, in its weakness, to make a sacrifice of his Protestant subjects. The seven provinces of the Netherlands, designated as the kingdom of Holland at this time, which had successfully withstood and maintained their liberty against all the power of Spain, were now the refuge of vast numbers of the persecuted Protestants of France, taking with them mueh capital, as well as many skilled artisans, depopulating many districts in that kingdom, and thereby greatly injuring its trade, commerce, and manufactures.
This was a source of annoyance to Louis XIV, and a good pretext with the wily Louvois for encouraging a war for their subjugation. Belgium had already been overrun, and the Palatinate had been made desolate by fire and sword.
This war (as also that of 1667) terminated in 1674 withont effecting its objeet. Holland continued the asyluun of the oppressed through the patriotic efforts of William, Prince of Orange, sustained by the unconquerable love of liberty of its inhabitants, which, through all past ages, has characterized that people.
The wickedness of this war was only equaled by the relig- ions madness that raged throughout the kingdom.
Holland had strictly observed its obligations with Louis XIV and his subjeets ; while the Huguenots had, since the treaty of Alais, continued loyal, peaceable, and industrious inhabitants.
The determination of the king and the trio of advisers
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before referred to continued their persecutions with increased zeal. Extraordinary means were taken to induce Protestants to renounce their faith ; rewards in money, as well as places of emolnment, were freely offered ; while acts were established with severe penalties for those who had renounced, and after- wards, on mature reflection, should return to their former faith, the Reformed religion.
Those guilty of relapsing from Romanism to the Protestant faith were condemned to the galleys for life, and all Protest- ant ministers who permitted a relapsed convert to enter their temples should be condemned to banishment, and their goods confiscated.
In 1680 an edict was established, maintaining that a meet- ing-house for Protestant worship could not be permitted in the vicinity of a Romish church, without scandal to that faith ; thus all such Protestant meeting-houses were ordered to be razed to the ground, and not suffered to be rebuilt.
To show the unjust partiality of the edicts, it was declared meritorious for a Protestant to renounce ; and, furthermore, children of Protestant parents were, in 1681, permitted, at the age of seven years, to embrace the Romish faith, and even encouraged to do so, and the fathers and mothers of such children were forbid offering any interference.
The proof of desire on the part of children to embrace the Romish faith was most trivial. It was in the power of any Papist to take from a Protestant family their children under this law, by asserting that such children had manifested a desire to join with a Romish church, that they had united in prayer, or made the sign of the cross. In either case the children were taken from their parents' home, who, besides the loss of them, were compelled to pay for their support by a fixed pension in proportion to their means ; and these esti- mates of expense were arbitrarily fixed, which frequently proved the rain of their estates as well as their families.
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Their synods were prohibited from receiving either legacies or donations for the support of their institutions; and all Protestant books that impugned in any way the Romish faith, or the measures designed for the overthrow of the Reformed religion, were condemned to be burned ; and parties were commissioned by the royal government to search them out, that they might be destroyed. Finally, all theological books, papers, and other publications that favored Protestantism were ordered to be destroyed, and other like works were not per- mitted to be printed.
Their theological and literary institutions were, many of them, now closed, and the few that remained had their pro- fessorships limited, and their studies restricted within narrow range.
These rigid measures against Protestant institutions of learn- ing and their books were designed, not only to suppress their religion, but to efface among them that superiority of literary culture which they possessed, and which inspired their oppo- nents with much jealousy.
Thus oppression came in every possible way to induce the Reformed to renounce their faith. Those engaged in military affairs were refused promotion ; pensions were withdrawn ; their widows were declared deprived of all their privileges so long as they professed the Reformed religion.
Protestants were deprived of their nobility, and made liable to taxation ; notaries and attorneys were ordered to sell their licenses ; advocates were forbidden to plead, and physicians to exercise their profession; the same disability extended to midwives, and even seamstresses could not be employed who professed the Reformed faith.
Louis XIV, at this time, had lost much of his physical vigor by his ungovernable licentionsness. His confessor, Pere la Chaise, seized this opportunity to impress upon his mind the great sinfulness of his past life, and the impor-
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tance of excreising his great power and influence in favor of the Romish church, which was then set forth as the embodi- ment of all pure religion. His bigoted ideas of this faith made him an easy prey to the proselyting schemes of his Jesuit confessor and his new flame, the sanctimonious Madame de Maintenon.
The suppression of the Protestant religion within his king- dom was set forth, not only as a duty, but as the highest claim to his future salvation, tending to his peace of mind here and hereafter.
His new favorite, Madame de Maintenon, in his councils of state, secured a position with him even to the exclusion of the queen.
To such a degree did this aspiring and artful woman exer- cise her influence over the king, that even his confessor, Pere la Chaise, could find access to him only through her favors.
She undertook to assist the confessor in effecting the king's conversion, and, as stated, labored with him four hours daily. She discovered his weakness, and his desire to convert his Huguenot subjects to the Romish church. Her manners peculiarly fitted her, as an instrument in the hands of the confessor, to work out the ruin of his Protestant subjeets. She now became his chief adviser in both civil and religious affairs. Her zeal daily increased her influence, and thus she was enabled to fan the flame of prejudice then raging against the Protestants.
While the labors of the confessor and De Maintenon were in progress, buying the faith of the Huguenots, and otherwise foreing them to renonnec, the minister of war, not to be out- done in promoting the desires of his king in acts for the con- version of the Reformed to Papacy, proposed the quartering of soldiers upon the families of Protestants in the districts where they most prevailed, proportioning the number according to their ability.
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The effect of this barbarous act at first caused large num- bers of the Reformed to renounce, as this course seemed to be the only means of saving themselves and families from desti- tution and poverty. Great rejoicing was created with the king, his court, and the Papists, by the power of the soldiery in producing conversions among the Protestants, when it was determined to extend this method of proselytism to all the dis- tricts in the kingdom where their religion prevailed.
The scenes of cruelty perpetrated by the soldiers in the families in which they were quartered can not adequately be described. The success of this measure finally led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which was framed, and signed by the king, at Fontainebleau, on the 18th of October, 1685.
Madame de Maintenon thus writes a few days after the edict of revocation :
"The king is very well pleased at having completed the great work of bringing the heretics back to the church. Father la Chaise has prom- ised that it shall not cost one drop of blood, and M. de Louvois says the same. I am glad those of Paris have been brought to reason."
"I think, with you, that all these conversions are not sincere, but, at least, their children will be Catholics."
Another friend of this wicked method of compelling submis- sion to Papacy, observes :
"I admire the king's plan for ruining the Huguenots (a far more appropriate term than conversion). The wars carried on formerly against them, and the St. Bartholomew Massacre, have multiplied and given vigor to this sect. His majesty has gradually undermined it, and the edict he has just given, supported by dragoons, has been the coup de grace."
The measures adopted by Louis XIV, compelling his Prot- estant subjects to renounce their faith and return to the worship of Romanism, can only be regarded as a religious mania, the result of an infatuated mind.
The effect was to drive from his kingdom large numbers of
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the purest and wisest of this class of his subjects, and to de- stroy the usefulness of those who remained at home ; because, in many instances, their property had, by this process, been exhausted, and they were without the means of escape.
Those compelled to remain his subjects became a disheart- ened people by their great sacrifice, and the severity of treat- ment they had received in many instances were destructive of their physical vigor. The effect of these measures is given by Bishop Burnet, in his history of his own time, as follows :
" And since I saw that dismal tragedy, which was at this time enacted in France, I must give some account of myself. When I resolved to go beyond sea, there was no choice to be made. So I resolved to go to France. I went to Paris. And there being many there whom I had reason to look upon as spies, I took a little house and lived by myself, as privately as I could. I continued there till the beginning of August, when I went to Italy. I found the Earl of Montague at Paris, with whom I conversed much, and got from him most of the secrets of the court.
" The King of France had been for many years weakening the whole Protestant interest there, and was then upon the last resolution of recall- ing the Edict of Nantes.
" Rouvigny, who was the deputy-general of the churches, told me that he was long deceived in his opinion of the king. He knew he was not naturally bloody. He saw his gross ignorance in those matters. Ilis bigotry could not rise from any inward principle. So for many years he flattered himself with the hopes that the design would go on so slowly that some unlooked-for accident might defeat it. But after the peace of Nimeguen in 1678, he saw such steps made, with so much precipita- tion, that he told the king that he must beg a full audience with him upon that subject. He told him what the state of France was during the wars in his father's reign; how happy France had been now for fifty years, occasioned chiefly by the quiet it was in with relation to religious matters.
" He gave him an account of their numbers, their industry and wealth, their constant readiness to advance the revenues, and that all the quiet that he had with the court of Rome was chiefly owing to them; if they were rooted out, the court of Rome would govern as absolutely in France as it did in Spain.
"Hle desired leave to undeceive him, if he was made to believe they would all change as soon as he engaged his authority in this matter; many would go ont of the kingdom, and carry their wealth and industry
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into other countries. And by a scheme of particulars he reckoned how far that would go. In fine, he said it would come to the shedding of much blood ; many would suffer, and others would be precipitated into desperate courses. So that the most glorious of all reigns would be in conclusion disfigured and defaced, and become a scene of blood and horror. He told me, as he went through these matters, the king seemed to hearken to him very attentively. But he perceived they made no impression ; for the king never asked any particulars or any explanation, but let him go on. And when he had ended, the king said he took his freedom well, since it flowed from a zeal in his service. He believed all he had told him of the prejudice it might do him in his affairs; only he thought it would not go to the shedding of blood. But he said, he con- sidered himself as so indispensably bound to endeavor the conversion of all his subjects, and the extirpation of heresy, that if the doing of it should require that with one hand he should cut off the other, he would submit to that.
" The Marquis de Louvois, seeing the king so set on the matter, pro- posed to him a method which he believed would shorten the work, and do it effectually ; which was to let loose some bodies of dragoons to live on the Protestants on discretion. They were put under no restraint, but only to avoid rapes and the killing them. This was begun in Bearn. And the people were so struek with it, that, seeing that they were to be eat up first, and, if that prevailed not, to be cast in prison when all was taken from them, till they should change; and being required only to promise to reunite themselves to the church, they, overcome with fear, and having no time to consult together, did universally comply.
" This did so animate the court, that, upon it, the same methods were taken in most places of Guyenne, Languedoc, and Dauphine, where the greatest numbers of the Protestants were.
" A dismal consternation and feebleness ran through most of them, so that great numbers yielded. Upon which the king now resolved to go through with what had been long projected, published the edict, repeal- ing the Edict of Nantes, in which (though that edict was declared to be a perpetual and irrevocable law), he set forth that it was only intended to quiet matters by it, till more effectual ways should be taken for the conversion of heretics. He also promised in it that though all the public exercises of that religion were now suppressed, yet those of that persuasion who lived quietly should not be disturbed on that account; while, at the same time, not only the dragoons, but all the clergy and bigots of France, broke out into all the instances of rage and fury against such as did not change upon their being required in the king's name to be of his religion ; for that was the style everywhere.
" Men and women of all ages who would not yield, were not only stripped of all they had, but kept long from sleep, driven about from
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place to place, and hunted out of their retirements. The women were carried into nunneries, in many of which they were almost starved, whipped, and barbarously treated.
" Some few of the bishops and of the secular clergy, to make the matter easier, drew formularios importing that they were resolved to unite them- selves to the Catholic church, and that they renounced the errors of Inther and Calvin. People in such extremities are casy to put a stretched sense on any words that may give them present relief. So it was said, what harm was it to promise to be united to the Catholic church? and the renouncing of men's errors did not renounce their good and sound doctrine. But it was very visible with what intent those subscriptions or promises were asked of them ; so their compliance in that matter was a plain equivocation.
"But how weak and faulty soever they might be in this, it must be acknowledged here was one of the most violent persecutions that is to be found in history. In many respects it exceeded them all, both in the several inventions of cruelty and in its long continuance.
"I went over the greatest part of France, while it was in its hottest rage, from Marseilles to Montpelier, and from thence to Lyons, and so to Geneva. I saw and knew so many instances of their injustice and violence that it exceeded even what could have been well imagined ; for all men set their thoughts at work to invent new methods of cruelty. In all the towns which I passed I heard the most dismal account of things possible, but chiefly at Valence, where one Derapine seemed to exceed even the furies of inquisitors.
"One in the streets could have known the new converts as they were passing by them, by a cloudy dejection that appeared in their looks and deportment. Such as endeavored to make their escape, and were seized (for guards and secret agents were spread along the whole roads and frontiers of France), were, if men, condemned to the galleys; and, if women, to monasterics.
"To complete this cruelty orders were given that such of the new converts as did not at their death receive the sacrament, should be denied burial, and their bodies should be left where other dead carcasses were east out, to be devoured by wolves and dogs. This was executed in several places with the utmost barbarity, and it gave all people so much horror that, finding the ill effect of it, it was let fall. This hurt none, but struck all who saw it even with more horror than those things that were more felt.
" The fury that appeared on this occasion did spread itself with a sort of contagion ; for the intendants and other officers that had been mild and gentle in the former parts of their life, seemed now to have laid aside the compassion of Christians, the breeding of gentlemen, and the com. mon impressions of humanity. The greatest part of the clergy, the
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regulars especially, were so transported with the zeal that their king showed on this occasion, that their sermons were full of the most inflamed eloquence that they could invent, magnifying their king in strains too indecent and blasphemous to be mentioned by me."*
Those extraordinary efforts made by Louis XIV to compel whole communities of his subjects to renounce their religious faith by inflicting upon them a series of cruelties which, for their severity, are scarcely equaled in the history of any age, have been related by so many able writers, it is not necessary here to repeat them, but to close this sketch of history by some additional quotations, emanating from other well-known writers.
Saurin, a son of one of the Protestant refugees, and a eele- brated preacher at the Hague, gives a further illustration of those acts of violence :
" A thousand dreadful blows, " said the preacher, " were struck at our afflicted churches before that which destroyed them; for our enemies, if 1 may use the expression, not content with seeing our ruin, endeavored to taste it.
"One while ediets were published against those who, foreseeing the calamities that threatened our churches, and not having power to pre- vent them, desired only the sad consolation of not being spectators of their ruin. Another while, August, 1669, against those who, through their weakness, had denied their religion, and who, not being able to bear the remorse of their conscience, desired to return to their first pro- fession.
"One while, May, 1679, our pastors were forbidden to exercise their discipline on those of their flocks who had abjured the truth. Again, June, 1680, children of seven years of age were allowed to embrace doc- trines which the Church of Rome allows are not level to the capacities of adults. Sometimes we were forbidden to convert infidels, and some- times to confirm those in the truth whom we had instructed from their infancy. In July, 1685, the printing of our books were prohibited, and those which we had printed were taken away.
" In September, 1685, we were not suffered to preach in a church, and we were punished for preaching even on the ruins of a church ; and at length we were forbidden to worship God in public at all. Again, in
* See Bishop Burnett's history of his own time, new edition; published in London, A. D., 1850, pp. 419, 421-422.
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October, 1685, we were banished; then, in 1689, we were forbidden to quit the kingdom on pain of death.
" Here, we saw the glorious rewards of some who betrayed their religion ; and there, we beheld others, who had the courage to confess it, a hailing to a dungeon, a scaffold, or a galley. Here, we saw our per- secutors drawing on a sledge the dead bodies of those who had expired on the rack. There, we beheld a false friar tormenting a dying man, who was territied, on the one hand, with the fear of hell, if he should aposta- tize: and, on the other, with the fear of leaving his children without bread, if he should continue in the faith; yonder, they were tearing children from their parents; while the tender parents were shedding more tears for the loss of their souls than for that of their bodies or lives .*
In referring to these tragic acts, Mr. Bancroft remarks :
" The extremity of danger inspired even the wavering with courage. What though they were exposed without defense to the fury of an unbri- ded solfiery, whom hatred of hereties had steeled against humanity ? Property was exposed to plunder; religious books were burned; chil- dren torn from their parents; faithful ministers, who would not aban- don their flocks, broken on the wheel. Men were dragged to the altars to be tortured into a denial of the faith of their fathers, and a relapse was punished with extreme rigor.
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