USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Historical collections: containing I. The Reformation in France; the rise, progress and destruction of the Huguenot Church. Vol I > Part 6
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It gave the Protestants liberty of conscience and free exer- cise of their religion ; free access to all places of honor and dignity ; liberal sums of money to pay off their troops; an hundred places as pledges for their future security ; and certain funds to maintain their ministers and garrisons. This edict was declared perpetual and irrevocable .*
The religious wars that had desolated France with but little intermission for a period of over thirty years, beginning in 1562, were, by the firmness and wisdom of Henry IV, at last closed. His attention was now directed to the advancement of the foreign and domestic affairs of his kingdom, and all branches of industry, science, literature, and art, received lib- eral encouragement.
In 1599 he procured a divorce from his wife, Margaret, and married Mary de Medici, niece of the Grand Duke of Tus- cany. This marriage secured to his kingdom several provinces on his eastern frontier, and the influence of the Italian princes. France greatly prospered under his enlightened and liberal statesmanship.
Henry IV planted the first French colonies in America, that at Port Royal, now Annapolis, in Nova Scotia, in 1605, and that of Quebec, on the St. Lawrence, in 1608-both established by eminent Huguenots. The Reformed churches now enjoyed peace, and greatly prospered. Their universities flourished, and education, the foundation of the Protestant religion, was now largely advanced. The provincial and national synods of the Huguenots were regularly convened, and were mul- tiplied, and his subjects were generally happy under a well- regulated and impartial government.
* See Weiss' History of French Protestant Refugees, vol. II, p. 335.
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This impartiality was not satisfactory to a selfish priesthood ; any privileges granted the Protestants were odious to them, and all such acts were treated by the Romanists as heresy against their church.
Stimulated by jealousy and bigotry, they sought for and took his life by assassination, May 14, 1610. The party who perpetrated this act was named Francis Ravaillac, supposed to have been the instrument of the Jesuits. It was but another instance of the barbarity of the times.
The position of Henry IV was peculiarly embarrassing ; opposed in some respects by all parties, and not unfrequently by the Protestants, who had received especial favor at his hands. They conceived the idea that their rights were not sufficiently respected ; while the Papists complained of his tolerance of heresy.
His private life was, in many respects, censurable ; but his public acts in managing the affairs of his government were firm and decisive; he tempered them with justice and wis- dom.
However heavy the calamity of this king's death was upon the nation at large, it fell with peculiar force upon the Hugue- nots. While he abjured their faith, he protected it for them.
Sully, the chief minister and counselor of Henry IV, has described his character in the following glowing language :
" He was candid, sincere, grateful, compassioned, generous, wise, penetrating, and loved by his subjects as a father."
His firmness in maintaining the Edict of Nantes, called the " Edict of Peace," is exhibited in his demeanor to his parlia- ment in the following language, which amply shows that he was determined that established laws should be respected :
" You see me here in my cabinet, not as the kings, my predecessors, nor as a prince who gives audience to ambassadors-but dressed in my ordinary garb as a father of a family, who would converse with his
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children. I know there have been parties in the parliament, and that seditious preachers have been excited. I will put good order into these people. I will shorten by the head all such as venture to foment fac- tion. I have leaped over the walls of cities, and I shall not be terrified by barricades. I have made an edict, let it be observed. My will must be executed, not interpreted."
This language may seem despotic; but it was adapted to the times and to the genius of his parliament.
With all his foibles, Henry IV was a great ruler, and did more for the prosperity of France than any monarch who had preceded him.
In this age of civil liberty, protected and regulated by known laws and an equal toleration of the most varied forms of religious faith, it is difficult to conceive of the true state of civil and religious affairs in the century following the era of the Reformation. The lower strata of the people was in a degraded state of servile ignorance, with their minds excited to extreme hatred against those who differed from them in their religious sentiments. The word of the Papist priest- hood, in matters of faith, was to be respected as divine law, without a question as to its truth or propriety.
With the princes, nobles, and priesthood, self-aggrandizement and power was the controlling element in their actions. The relics of the feudal system were clung to by many of the nobil- ity. Thus there were several distinct interests struggling for perpetuity and ascendancy; that of the nobles, to perpetuate their influence over their serfs; the priesthood, to sustain the claims of the church, which had become the means of a profli- gate support; and royalty, demanding supremacy over all.
The great mass of the people were but tools to be used as circumstances required, and their religion was the lever by which they could be most easily moved. This accounts for the tenacity with which each of these parties adhered to their religious traditions.
This was the condition of affairs, when Henry IV came to
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the throne of France. Pure religious faith, as now understood in this the nineteenth century, but rarely existed ; generally it was but a pretext to advance private interests, connected with ambitious and selfish purposes.
His object was to restore order and respect for a govern- ment of law and the individual rights of all parties; and, in attempting this radical change he did much ; but he made an almost fatal error in the terms of the Edict of Nantes, wherein he granted to the Huguenots military and political rights, operating as a power distinct from the royal head.
It is not easy to account for this permission of power, unless it be supposed that he had doubts of his success in continu- ing the supreme head, and that this power was placed with his former friends as a resort under contingent circumstances.
The Protestants were now a formidable power in the king- dom; their organization was that of a representative republic in the midst of the royal government; their religious system was vested in consistories, conferences, provincial synods, and national synods.
Each church or consistory formed a democratic council, composed of the minister, deacons, and elders. It met every week, and deliberated upon the division of funds received from its members; it corrected offenses committed by those con- nected with the church, particularly those contrary to eccle- siastical discipline; decided whether the cases came within the rule of private exhortation or public excommunication, and in case of disobedience referred them to the conference.
The conferences assembled every three months. They were composed of two deputies from each church of a certain district. There, were decided the matters which the first council could not determine; there, were regulated the sums to be sent to Protestants persecuted for religion's sake ; there, were censured the elders, deacons, students of divinity, and ministers who had failed in their duty; and there, were
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excommunicated members of the churches deemed guilty of such punishment.
The provincial synods assembled every year. Each con- ference was represented by two deputies; they treated upon all the affairs of the province ; they examined students who wished to be promoted to the ministry. There, they con- firmed the estimates of the salaries of the pastors according to the sums received in the collections by the churches ; there, they assigned to each parish its minister, and determined upon the choice of professors of theology.
The general or national synods were convoked every three years; but political circumstances often prevented them from meeting. These' assemblies were composed of lay and eccle- siastical deputies from all the provinces of the kingdom. This assembly was organized by electing a president by a majority of votes. Their duties were to judge and determine all appeals from the provincial synods, to decide without appeal all questions of theology and discipline, and the decisions there rendered had the force of laws in all their churches.
In the first half of the seventeenth century there were in France 806 Protestant churches, divided into sixteen provinces and sixty-two conferences. The national synod, which was the general council of the Calvinistic church, met twenty-nine times in the space of 100 years. The first was held in 1559, in Paris, and the last at Loudun, in 1659.
The Edict of Nantes permitted these general assemblies, but upon the express condition that they should be authorized by the king. Without that authority they lost their legal character, and were reputed seditious.
Nine general assemblies were held after the edict was pro- mulgated up to 1629 ; but those held in the years 1617, 1618, 1619, and particularly one held at Rochelle in 1620, were illegal and revolutionary in character, and which, as will sub- . sequently be related, lost to the Huguenots all their political liberties given them by this edict.
CHAPTER II.
TH
THE foregoing has shown the progress of the Calvinistic
faith in France from its feeble beginnings and its strug- gle through persecution and civil war, until, by perseverance and the force of circumstances, it arose to a formidable power in the state, and became an extensive religious body.
The object of this chapter is to continue its history, and exhibit the causes of its degeneracy, tracing it down to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, the 18th of October, 1685.
The first step tending to the injury of the Protestant cause in France was produced by those who assumed to be their political leaders. This was the result of the error committed by Henry IV in according to them political rights and military power.
It was the abuse of these rights and powers which lost to them the respect of many as a religious body ; and, instead of drawing to their standard such as had favored their cause, and would have joined them as a strictly religious body, this inter- ference in matters of state induced such to withdraw their support. Yet their final destruction as such a body was by long and systematic persecution.
On the death of Henry IV, his son, a child only nine years of age, became king, as Louis XIII; his mother, Mary de Medici, as regent. They both, on the 22d of May, 1610, de- clared that the Edict of Nantes should be held inviolable.
Also, when Louis XIII became of lawful age, October 1, 1614, he confirmed his previous declaration in favor of this
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edict, with the additional assurance that those who infringed it should be punished as disturbers of the public peace.
In the following year, on the 12th of March, 1615, when it was proposed in the parliament to supplicate the king for the preservation of the Romish religion, by driving out from the land under his rule all heretics denounced by that church, he declared it to be his purpose to hold the edict inviolable, and added that.
" He experienced a lively sorrow on account of the contention which had arisen among the Roman Catholic deputies of the House of Peers ; that each of the deputies had declared separately, and afterwards collectively, that they desired the observance of the peace established by the edict."
He further remarked,
" That he was persuaded by the experience of the past that violence only serves to increase the number of those who secede from the church, instead of teaching the way to re-enter it."
And on the 20th of July, 1616, the substance of the fore- going was repeated.
Louis XIII was married, at the age of fourteen, to Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III, of Spain, whose mother was an Austrian princess. There is ample evidence to show that this reign was commenced and continued several years with the desire to maintain in good faith the Edict of Nantes.
It is also quite clear that the great mass of the French people desired to continue the peace which was the result of the observance of the peace edict. But the political leaders among the Huguenots were professors of that faith, generally, for the advantages to be derived from the spoils of office, and made it their business to excite the masses for selfish objects ; while the ultra Romish priesthood acted from similar motives.
The division of the kingdom into provincial synods by the Protestants, originally designed to facilitate the management of their religious affairs, and for dividing their church offices,
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and selecting them from different sections of the country for the purpose of harmonizing their proceedings, was perverted into a political combination co-extensive with the realm.
Each of these divisions, which were denominated provinces (there being fifteen in number), was entitled to send members to the general synod for deliberation ; but, by the terms of the edict, these general synods could be convened only by the sanction of the king, and if otherwise held, they were deemed illegal and seditious.
One of these assemblies, held at Saumur, in May, 1611, was a formidable political body-a legislative assembly of seventy deputies, divided in position as follows : thirty nobles, twenty ministers, sixteen elders, and four delegates of the city of Rochelle. In addition to the aforesaid parties, there were many other persons of distinction, who were present by invi- tation. All these members held their seats by election from the people of the district to which they belonged. They composed a representative republic within the limits of the kingdom, and had their army, navy, and fortified places, with garrisons.
As they increased in power they asserted rights not sanc- tioned by the edict by which they claimed to exist.
With a formidable organization like this, and with the reli- gious jealousies existing between the Papists and Protestants, it was not easy to prevent collisions and riotous assemblies to disturb the peace of the kingdom.
The result was such an encroachment upon the royal govern- ment, that it compelled the king to summon to his aid the military power, in 1620, to restore order. This was the inau- guration again of civil war.
Besides the illegal assemblies that the Protestants frequently held, and in face of express injunctions from the king against them, they extended their power by forming alliances with foreign governments.
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It can not be denied that the Huguenots greatly injured their condition by assuming illegal powers, and by a factious interference with the royal authority, until they made them- selves obnoxious to just principles of government. Such was the condition of affairs when Cardinal Richelieu was installed the first minister of the crown in 1623.
The first object of this able minister was to suppress the civil war, and to take measures for depriving the Huguenots of all political rights claimed under the Edict of Nantes; to suppress their garrisons, naval and military power, and to place the entire political, naval, and military strength of the kingdom in the crown.
The signal ability of Richelieu was manifested by the firm and decisive measures he now adopted and carried to comple- tion.
In his religious faith he was a Romanist; but he rose above religious prejudice ; his object was not to war against the Reformed religion, nor to deprive the Huguenots of protection for their faith and worship, permitted by the provisions of this eclict.
The Reformed, who were styled Huguenots, he believed, had justly forfeited their political rights, under the edict, by hold- ing irregular assemblies and by a factious interference with the royal government.
The stronghold of the Huguenots was now the city of Rochelle, which, at this time, contained a population of about 30,000 souls, supported by a powerful army and navy, aided by a numerous flect, furnished by Charles I, of England, who had married Henrietta, sister of Louis XIII, then on the throne of France.
Richelieu, by his military operations, had reduced the armies of the Huguenots in the provinces, and had confined them to the fortified city of Rochelle, to which he laid siege with his army and navy in 1627. They were supported by many Ger-
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man recruits, as well as the English fleet, then under the command of the Duke of Buckingham.
This siege continued with great vigor through a period of about fifteen months, when the population of that city was reduced to about 5,000 inhabitants, then in a state of great destitution, at which time liberal terms were proposed by the cardinal for their surrender, which having been accepted, the gates of Rochelle were thrown open, and possession taken by the royal troops, on the 30th of October, 1628.
The remaining Huguenot forces soon after yielded to the necessities of their condition, and a general treaty of peace was concluded at Alais on the 27th of June, 1629, closing the last of the series of civil wars between Papists and Calvinists which commenced under the reign of Charles IX in 1562.
The city of Rochelle, from 1568 to this time, had sustained a government independent of the crown, but was now deprived of all its separate political rights, and made entirely subject to royal authority .*
From this time the Huguenots ceased to exist as a political body in the kingdom, but retained the right of exercise of their religion as established by the Edict of Nantes. Having now no occasion for political leaders, who had constantly brought them into collision with the royal government, they were relieved from that embarrassment which, during this reign, had injured their cause, and lessened the respect which the community at large had entertained for their faith, and were left to direct their attention wholly to their religious affairs and their industrial pursuits ; when at the close of the reign of Louis XIII, March 14, 1643, they were among the most enterprising, orderly, and wealthy inhabitants of France.
They were respected at home for the austerity of their morals, their industry, and their irreproachable loyalty ; while they
* See Weiss' History of French Protestants, vol. I, chap. 1; 'also Browning's History of the Huguenots, chap. 57.
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maintained great probity of character in their commercial re- lations abroad.
The tendency of their religious faith led to the promotion of education as a principle; thus they became superior in sci- ence, literature, and the arts, which caused them to be watched with a jealous eye by their Romanist opponents.
Such was the state of political and religious affairs in France when Louis XIV, a child of five years of age, became king in 1643. His mother, Anne of Austria, became regent, and the death of Cardinal Richelieu taking place, December 4, 1642, his assistant minister, Cardinal Mazarin, succeeded to his high position.
After the treaty at Alais in 1629, through the remaining premiership of Cardinal Richelieu, and to the death of Cardi- nal Mazarin in 1661, the toleration of the Calvinistic faith was all that could reasonably be expected from the manner they conducted themselves towards the Papists.
In the provinces, where either party had any considerable ascendency over the other in character and numbers, there were frequent collisions that at times required the interposi- tion of the civil government, and sometimes military power, to maintain peace and order.
But so far as loyalty to the government was concerned, the words of Cardinal Mazarin give ample evidence in their favor in that respect. It has been said that during the civil war in that kingdom, extending from 1648 to 1653 (called the " War of the Fronde"), " had it not been for the loyalty of the Hugue- nots and their support of the crown,* there would have been danger of a disruption of the royal government." It appears the Protestants were amply protected by Mazarin; but yet it is evident that they did not increase in numbers during this period of uninterrupted protection and peace, from 1629 to
* See Burnet's history of his own times, alluding to Cromwell's sending an agent (Stroupe) to ascertain the loyalty of the Huguenots, book I, edition 1850, pp. 47-50.
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1660, when Louis XIV took the reins of government into his own hands.
This state of their condition as to increase of numbers is explained by the fact that nearly all the nobility and politi- cians, who had united with them while they maintained their political rights, now renounced Calvinism and united their fortunes with the Romish church to reap the advantages of royal patronage, as such favors were rarely granted to Protestants.
Thus, when Louis XIV made his will the law of France, there had been a period of over thirty years, ending in 1660, when the Protestants shared protection by the royal govern- ment the same as the Papists, if they did not receive equal favors.
But, from this time, their condition changed, and it soon be- came evident that the king had come to the determination that all his subjects should bow as imperatively to one faith and one church as they now did to one head in civil law. In other words, the Romish church should rule in all matters of faith as his will ruled in civil affairs.
Louis XIV's ideas in this respect are indicated in his re- marks to his son in 1670 :
" I believe, my son, that the best method of reducing the Huguenots of my kingdom is by moderation. In the first place not to harass them in the smallest degree by any new enactments against them, to observe strictly all privileges obtained by them from my predecessors, but to grant them no more, and of these to restrict the execution within the narrowest limits prescribed by justice and comity.
" But, as regards graces, depending on myself alone, I resolved, and that resolution I have punctually observed, to grant them none whatever; and this from a spirit of amity rather than rigor, so as to compel them, without any violence, to consider within themselves whether it is for any good reason that they voluntarily deprive themselves of advantages which was in their power to share with the remainder of my subjects.
" I also resolved to bring over, even by means of recompenses, such as should show themselves docile; and to awaken as far as possible the zeal of the bishops, that they should labor to give them instruction and to remove the scandals which at times divide and repel them from us.
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The foregoing scheme for proselytism shows the anxiety of the king's mind regarding the faith of the Huguenots. While the royal goverment was restricting their privileges to the narrowest limits, the priesthood were excited to exercise the extent of their ability in that direction.
In order to secure converts against any relapse into their former faith, an edict was passed establishing severe penalties to be inflicted upon such as had renounced Protestantism and again returned to that heresy, as it was called; one of these penalties was perpetual banishment from the kingdom.
The Protestant ministers were forbidden to expostulate with or exhort their converted brethren upon the maintenance of their faith, and the presence of such as had been converted to Romanism at their meetings was sufficient cause for closing their house of worship and dispersing their congregation.
This edict opened the way for great injury to the Protestant churches, as any designing Papist could, by pretense, appear in a Protestant congregation with a view to its dispersion ; thus the number of their churches rapidly decreased, and their meeting-houses were razed to the ground.
All former decisions of courts that infringed upon the relig- ious privileges of the Huguenots were revived and formed into a special code of law. These accumulated movements gave great alarm to this people. They began to apprehend from the edicts of 1666 a determination of the king for their entire ruin as a religious body.
This feeling induced many of their ministers, whose congre- gations had been thus dispersed, to abandon their country with many of their religious friends of this class ; some found homes in the Netherlands, others in England, and many sought peace within the jurisdiction of the rising English colonies in America.
When it was perceived by the king and court that these oppressive acts were depopulating many provinces of the
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