Chapter VII The Glorious Return: An Episode in the History of the Italian Vaudois
What is known as The Glorious Return, or re-entry of the exiled Vaudois in 1689 to resume possession of the valleys from which they had been banished, will always stand out as one of the most remarkable events in history.
If ever a people fairly established their right to live in their own country, and to worship God after their own methods, the Vaudois had surely done so. They had held conscientiously and consistently to their religion for nearly five hundred years, during which they laboured under many disabilities and suffered much persecution. But the successive Dukes of Savoy were no better satisfied with them as subjects than before. They could not brook that any part of their people should be of a different form of religion from that professed by themselves; and they continued, at the instance of successive popes, to let slip the dogs of war upon the valleys, in the hopes of eventually compelling the Vaudois to “come in” and make their peace with the Church.
The result of these invasions was almost uniform. At the first sudden inroad of the troops, the people, taken by surprise, usually took to flight; on which their dwellings were burnt and their fields laid waste. But when they had time to rally and collect their forces, the almost invariable result was that the Piedmontese were driven out of the valleys again with ignominy and loss. The Duke’s invasion of 1655 was, however, attended with greater success than usual. His armies occupied the greater part of the valleys, though the Vaudois still held out, and made occasional successful sallies from their mountain fastnesses. At length, the Protestants of the Swiss Confederation, taking compassion on their co-religionists in Piedmont, sent ambassadors to the Duke of Savoy at Turin to intercede for their relief; and the result was the amnesty granted to them in that year under the title of the “Patents of Grace.” The terms were very hard, but they were agreed to. The Vaudois were to be permitted to re-occupy their valleys, conditional on their rebuilding all the Catholic churches which had been destroyed, paying to the Duke an indemnity of fifty thousand francs, and ceding to him the richest lands in the valley of Luzerna—the last relics of their fortunes being thus taken from them to remunerate the barbarity of their persecutors.
It was also stipulated by this treaty, that the pastors of the Vaudois churches were to be natives of the district only, and that they were to be at liberty to administer religious instruction in their own manner in all the Vaudois parishes, excepting that of St. John, near La Tour, where their worship was interdicted. The only persons excepted from the terms of the amnesty were Javanel, the heroic old captain, and Jean Leger, the pastor-historian, the most prominent leaders of the Vaudois in the recent war, both of whom were declared to be banished the ducal dominions.
Under this treaty the Vaudois enjoyed peace for about thirty years, during which they restored the cultivation of the valleys, rebuilt the villages, and were acknowledged to be among the most loyal, peaceable, and industrious of the subjects of Savoy.
There were, however, certain parts of the valleys to which the amnesty granted by the Duke did not apply. Thus, it did not apply to the valleys of Pérouse and Pragela, which did not then form part of the dominions of Savoy, but were included within the French frontier. It was out of this circumstance that a difficulty arose with the French monarch, which issued in the revival of the persecution in the valleys, the banishment of the Vaudois into Switzerland, and their eventual “Glorious Return” in the manner we are about briefly to narrate.
When Louis XIV. of France revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and interdicted all Protestant worship throughout his dominions, the law of course applied to the valleys of Pérouse and Pragela as to the other parts of France. The Vaudois pastors were banished, and the people were forbidden to profess any other religion than that prescribed by the King, under penalty of confiscation of their goods, imprisonment, or banishment. The Vaudois who desired to avoid these penalties while they still remained staunch to their faith, did what so many Frenchmen then did—they fled across the frontier and took refuge in foreign lands. Some of the inhabitants of the French valleys went northward into Switzerland, while others passed across the mountains towards the south, and took refuge in the valley of the Pelice, where the Vaudois religion continued to be tolerated under the terms of the amnesty above referred to, which had been granted by the Duke of Savoy.
The French king, when he found his Huguenot subjects flying in all directions rather than remain in France and be “converted” to Roman Catholicism, next tried to block up the various avenues of escape, and to prevent the rulers of the adjoining countries from giving the fugitives asylum. Great was his displeasure when he heard of the flight of the Vaudois of Pérouse and Pragela into the adjoining valleys. He directed the French ambassador at Turin to call upon the Duke of Savoy, and require him to prevent their settlement within his dominions. At the same time, he called upon the Duke to take steps to compel the conversion of his people from the pretended reformed faith, and offered the aid of his troops to enforce their submission, “at whatever cost.”
The Duke was irritated at the manner in which he was approached. Louis XIV. was treating him as a vassal of France rather than as an independent sovereign. But he felt himself to be weak, and comparatively powerless to resent the insult. So he first temporised, then vacillated, and being again pressed by the French king, he eventually yielded. The amnesty was declared to be at an end, and the Vaudois were ordered forthwith to become members of the Church of Rome. An edict was issued on the 31st of January, 1686, forbidding the exercise by the Vaudois of their religion, abolishing their ancient privileges, and ordering the demolition of all their places of worship. Pastors and schoolmasters who refused to be converted were ordered to quit the country within fifteen days, on pain of death and confiscation of their goods. All refugee Protestants from France were ordered to leave under the same penalty. All children born of Protestant parents were to be compulsorily educated as Roman Catholics. This barbarous measure was merely a repetition by the Duke of Savoy in Piedmont of what his master Louis XIV. had already done in France.
The Vaudois expostulated with their sovereign, but in vain. They petitioned, but there was no reply. They requested the interposition of the Swiss Government as before, but the Duke took no notice of their memorial. The question of resistance was then discussed; but the people were without leaders. Javanel was living in banishment at Geneva—old and worn out, and unable to lead them. Besides, the Vaudois, before taking up arms, wished to exhaust every means of conciliation. Ambassadors next came from Switzerland, who urged them to submit to the clemency of the Duke, and suggested that they should petition him for permission to leave the country! The Vaudois were stupefied by the proposal. They were thus asked, without a contest, to submit to all the ignominy and punishment of defeat, and to terminate their very existence as a people! The ambassadors represented that resistance to the combined armies of Savoy, France, and Spain, without leaders, and with less than three thousand combatants, was little short of madness.
Nevertheless, a number of the Vaudois determined not to leave their valleys without an attempt to hold them, as they had so often successfully done before. The united armies of France and Savoy then advanced upon the valleys, and arrangements were made for a general attack upon the Vaudois position on Easter Monday, 1686, at break of day,—the Duke of Savoy assailing the valley of Luzerna, while Catinat, commander of the French troops, advanced on St. Martin. Catinat made the first attack on the village of St. Germain, and was beaten back with heavy loss after six hours’ fighting. Henry Arnaud, the Huguenot pastor from Die in Dauphiny, of which he was a native, particularly distinguished himself by his bravery in this affair, and from that time began to be regarded as one of the most promising of the Vaudois leaders.
Catinat renewed the attack on the following day with the assistance of fresh troops; and he eventually succeeded in overcoming the resistance of the handful of men who opposed him, and sweeping the valley of St. Martin. Men, women, and children were indiscriminately put to the sword. In some of the parishes no resistance was offered, the inhabitants submitting to the Duke’s proclamation; but whether they submitted or not, made no difference in their treatment, which was barbarous in all cases.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Savoy’s army advanced from the vale of Luzerna upon the celebrated heights of Angrogna, and assailed the Vaudois assembled there at all points. The resistance lasted for an entire day, and when night fell, both forces slept on the ground upon which they had fought, kindling their bivouac fires on both sides. On the following day the attack was renewed, and again the battle raged until night. Then Don Gabriel of Savoy, who was in command, resolved to employ the means which Catinat had found so successful: he sent forward messengers to inform the Vaudois that their brethren of the Val St. Martin had laid down their arms and been pardoned, inviting them to follow their example. The result of further parley was, that on the express promise of his Royal Highness that they should receive pardon, and that neither their persons nor those of their wives or children should be touched, the credulous Vaudois, still hoping for fair treatment, laid down their arms, and permitted the ducal troops to take possession of their entrenchments!
The same treacherous strategy proved equally successful against the defenders of the Pra du Tour. After beating back their assailants and firmly holding their ground for an entire day, they were told of the surrender of their compatriots, promised a full pardon, and assured of life and liberty, on condition of immediately ceasing further hostilities. They accordingly consented to lay down their arms, and the impregnable fastness of the Pra du Tour, which had never been taken by force, thus fell before falsehood and perfidy. “The defenders of this ancient sanctuary of the Church,” says Dr. Huston, “were loaded with irons; their children were carried off and scattered through the Roman Catholic districts; their wives and daughters were violated, massacred, or made captives. As for those that still remained, all whom the enemy could seize became a prey devoted to carnage, spoliation, fire, excesses which cannot be told, and outrages which it would be impossible to describe.”108
“All the valleys are now exterminated,” wrote a French officer to his friends; “the people are all killed, hanged, or massacred.” The Duke, Victor Amadeus, issued a decree, declaring the Vaudois to be guilty of high treason, and confiscating all their property. Arnaud says as many as eleven thousand persons were killed, or perished in prison, or died of want, in consequence of this horrible Easter festival of blood. Six thousand were taken prisoners, and the greater number of these died in gaol of hunger and disease. When the prisons were opened, and the wretched survivors were ordered to quit the country, forbidden to return to it on pain of death, only about two thousand six hundred contrived to struggle across the frontier into Switzerland.
And thus at last the Vaudois Church seemed utterly uprooted and destroyed. What the Dukes of Savoy had so often attempted in vain was now accomplished. A second St. Bartholomew had been achieved, and Rome rang with Te Deums in praise of the final dispersion of the Vaudois. The Pope sent to Victor Amadeus II. a special brief, congratulating him on the extirpation of heresy in his dominions; and Piedmontese and Savoyards, good Catholics, were presented with the lands from which the Vaudois had been driven. Those of them who remained in the country “unconverted” were as so many scattered fugitives in the mountains—sheep wandering about without a shepherd. Some of the Vaudois, for the sake of their families and homes, pretended conversion; but these are admitted to have been comparatively few in number. In short, the “Israel of the Alps” seemed to be no more, and its people utterly and for ever dispersed. Pierre Allix, the Huguenot refugee pastor in England, in his “History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont,” dedicated to William III., regarded the Vaudois Church as obliterated—“their present desolation seeming so universal, that the world looks upon them no otherwise than as irrecoverably lost, and finally destroyed.”
Three years passed. The expelled Vaudois reached Switzerland in greatly reduced numbers, many women and children having perished on their mountain journey. The inhabitants of Geneva received them with great hospitality, clothing and feeding them until they were able to proceed on their way northward. Some went into Brandenburg, some into Holland, while others settled to various branches of industry in different parts of Switzerland. Many of them, however, experienced great difficulty in obtaining a settlement. Those who had entered the Palatinate were driven thence by war, and those who had entered Wurtemburg were expelled by the Grand Duke, who feared incurring the ire of Louis XIV. by giving them shelter and protection. Hence many little bands of the Vaudois refugees long continued to wander along the valley of the Rhine, unable to find rest for their weary feet. There were others trying to earn, a precarious living in Geneva and Lausanne, and along the shores of Lake Leman. Some of these were men who had fought under Javanel in his heroic combats with the Piedmontese; and they thought with bitter grief of the manner in which they had fallen into the trap of Catinat and the Duke of Savoy, and abandoned their country almost without a struggle.
Then it was that the thought occurred to them whether they might not yet strike a blow for the recovery of their valleys! The idea seemed chimerical in the extreme. A few hundred destitute men, however valiant, to think of recovering a country defended by the combined armies of France and Savoy! Javanel, the old Vaudois hero, disabled by age and wounds, was still alive—an exile at Geneva—and he was consulted on the subject. Javanel embraced the project with, enthusiasm; and the invasion of the valleys was resolved upon! A more daring, and apparently more desperate enterprise, was never planned.
Who was to be their leader? Javanel himself was disabled. Though his mind was clear, and his patriotic ardour unquenched, his body was weak; and all that he could do was to encourage and advise. But he found a noble substitute in Henry Arnaud, the Huguenot refugee, who had already distinguished himself in his resistance to the troops of Savoy. And Arnaud was now ready to offer up his life for the recovery of the valleys.
The enterprise was kept as secret as possible, yet not so close as to prevent the authorities of Berne obtaining some inkling of their intentions. Three confidential messengers were first dispatched to the valleys to ascertain the disposition of the population, and more particularly to examine the best route by which an invasion might be made. On their return with the necessary information, the plan was settled by Javanel, as it was to be carried out by Arnaud. In the meantime, the magistrates of Geneva, having obtained information as to the intended movement, desirous of averting the hostility of France and Savoy, required Javanel to leave their city, and he at once retired to Ouchy, a little farther up the lake.
The greatest difficulty experienced by the Vaudois in carrying out their enterprise was the want of means. They were poor, destitute refugees, without arms, ammunition, or money to buy them. To obtain the requisite means, Arnaud made a journey into Holland, for the purpose of communicating the intended project to William of Orange. William entered cordially into the proposed plan, recommended Arnaud to several Huguenot officers, who afterwards took part in the expedition, supplied him with assistance in money, and encouraged him to carry out the design. Several private persons in Holland—amongst others the post-master-general at Leyden—also largely contributed to the enterprise.
At length all was ready. The men who intended to take part in the expedition came together from various quarters. Some came from Brandenburg, others from Bavaria and distant parts of Switzerland; and among those who joined them was a body of French Huguenots, willing to share in their dangers and their glory. One of their number, Captain Turrel, like Arnaud, a native of Die in Dauphiny, was even elected as the general of the expedition. Their rendez-vous was in the forest of Prangins, near Nyon, on the north bank of the Lake of Geneva; and there, on the night of the 16th of August, 1689, they met in the hollow recesses of the wood. Fifteen boats had been got together, and lay off the shore. After a fervent prayer by the pastor-general Arnaud, imploring a blessing upon the enterprise, as many of the men as could embark got into the boats. As the lake is there at its narrowest, they soon rowed across to the other side, near the town of Yvoire, and disembarked on the shore of Savoy. Arnaud had posted sentinels in all directions, and the little body waited the arrival of the remainder of their comrades from the opposite shore. They had all crossed the lake by two o’clock in the morning; and about eight hundred men, divided into nineteen companies,109 each provided with its captain, were now ready to march.
At the very commencement, however, they met with a misfortune. One of the pastors, having gone to seek a guide in the village near at hand, was seized as a prisoner by the local authorities, and carried off. On this, the Vaudois, seeing that they were treated as enemies, sent a party to summon Yvoire to open its gates, and it obeyed. The lord of the manor and the receiver of taxes were taken as hostages, and made to accompany the troop until they reached the next commune, when they were set at liberty, and replaced by other hostages.
When it became known that the little army of Vaudois had set out on their march, troops were dispatched from all quarters to intercept them and cut them off; and it was believed that their destruction was inevitable. “What possible chance is there,” asked the Historic Mercury of the day, “of this small body of men penetrating to their native country through the masses of French and Piedmontese troops accumulating from all sides, without being crushed and exterminated?” “It is impossible,” wrote the Leyden Gazette, “notwithstanding whatever precautions they may take, that the Vaudois can extricate themselves without certain death, and the Court of Savoy may therefore regard itself safe so far as they are concerned.”
No sooner had the boats left the shore at Nyon for the further side of the lake than the young seigneur of Prangins, who had been watching their movements, rode off at full speed to inform the French resident at Geneva of the departure of the Vaudois; and orders were at once dispatched to Lyons for a strong body of cavalry to march immediately towards Savoy to cut them off. But the Vaudois had well matured their plans, and took care to keep out of reach of the advancing enemy. Their route at first lay up the valleys towards the mountains, whose crests they followed, from glacier to glacier, in places almost inaccessible to regular troops, and thus they eluded the combined forces of France and Savoy, which, vainly endeavoured to bar their passage.
The first day’s march led them into the valley of the Arve, by the Col de Voirons, from which they took their last view of the peaceful Lake of Geneva; thence they proceeded by the pyramidal mountain called the Mole to the little town of Viu, where they rested for two hours, starting again by moonlight, and passing through St. Joire, where the magistrates brought out a great cask of wine, and placed it in the middle of the street for their refreshment. The little army, however, did not halt there, but marched on to the bare hill of Carman, where, after solemn prayer, they encamped about midnight, sleeping on the bare ground. Next day found them in front of the small walled town of Cluse, in the rocky gorge of the Arve. The authorities shut the gates, on which the Vaudois threatened to storm the place, when the gates were opened, and they marched through the town, the inhabitants standing under arms along both sides of the street. Here the Vaudois purchased a store of food and wine, which they duly paid for.
They then proceeded on to Sallanches, where resistance was threatened. They found a body of men posted on the wooden bridge which there separated the village of St. Martin from Sallanches; but rushing forward, the defenders of the bridge fled, and the little army passed over and proceeded to range themselves in order of battle over against the town, which was defended by six hundred troops. The Vaudois having threatened to burn the town, and kill the hostages whom they had taken on the slightest show of resistance, the threat had its effect, and they were permitted to pass without further opposition, encamping for the night at a little village about a league further on. And thus closed the second day’s march.
The third day they passed over the mountains of Lez Pras and Haute Luce, seven thousand feet above the sea-level, a long and fatiguing march. At one place the guide lost his way, and rain fell heavily, soaking the men to the skin. They spent a wretched night in some empty stables at the hamlet of St. Nicholas de Verose; and started earlier than usual on the following morning, addressing themselves to the formidable work of climbing the Col Bonhomme, which they passed with the snow up to their knees. They were now upon the crest of the Alps, looking down upon the valley of the Isère, into which they next descended. They traversed the valley without resistance, passing through St. Germain and Scez, turning aside at the last-mentioned place up the valley of Tignes, thereby avoiding the French troops lying in wait for them in the neighbourhood of Moutiers, lower down the valley of the Isère. Later in the evening they reached Laval, at the foot of Mont Iseran; and here Arnaud, for the first time during eight days, snatched a few hours’ sleep on a bed in the village.
The sixth day saw the little army climbing the steep slopes of Mont Iseran, where the shepherds gave them milk and wished them God-speed; but they warned them that a body of troops lay in their way at Mont Cenis. On they went—over the mountain, and along the crest of the chain, until they saw Bonneval in the valley beneath them, and there they descended, passing on to Bessant in the valley of the Arc, where they encamped for the night.
Next day they marched on Mont Cenis, which they ascended. As they were crossing the mountain a strange incident occurred. The Vaudois saw before them a large convoy of mules loaded with baggage. And shortly after there came up the carriage and equipage of some grand personage. It proved to be Cardinal Ranuzzi, on his way to Rome to take part in the election of Pope Alexander VIII. The Vaudois seized the mules carrying the baggage, which contained important documents compromising Louis XIV. with Victor Amadeus; and it is said that in consequence of their loss, the Cardinal, who himself aspired to the tiara, afterwards died of chagrin, crying in his last moments, “My papers! oh, my papers!”
The passage of the Great and Little Cenis was effected with great difficulty. The snow lay thick on the ground, though it was the month of August, and the travellers descended the mountain of Tourliers by a precipice rather than a road. When night fell, they were still scattered on the mountain, and lay down to snatch a brief sleep, overcome with hunger and fatigue. Next morning they gathered together again, and descended into the sterile valley of the Gaillon, and shortly after proceeded to ascend the mountain opposite.
They were now close upon the large towns. Susa lay a little to the east, and Exilles was directly in their way. The garrison of the latter place came out to meet them, and from the crest of the mountain rolled large stones and flung grenades down upon the invaders. Here the Vaudois lost some men and prisoners, and finding the further ascent impracticable, they retreated into the valley from which they had come, and again ascended the steep slope of Tourliers in order to turn the heights on which the French troops were posted. At last, after great fatigue and peril, unable to proceed further, they gained the crest of the mountain, and sounded their clarions to summon the scattered body.
After a halt of two hours they proceeded along the ridge, and perceived through the mist a body of soldiers marching along with drums beating; it was the garrison of Exilles. The Vaudois were recognised and followed by the soldiers at a distance. Proceeding a little further, they came in sight of the long valley of the Doire, and looking down into it, not far from the bridge of Salabertrans, they discerned some thirty-six bivouac fires burning on the plain, indicating the presence of a large force. These were their enemies—a well-appointed army of some two thousand five hundred men—whom they were at last to meet in battle. Nothing discouraged, they descended into the valley, and the advanced guard shortly came in contact with the enemy’s outposts. Firing between them went on for an hour and a half, and then night fell.
The Vaudois leaders held a council to determine what they should do; and the result was, that an immediate attack was resolved upon, in three bodies. The principal attack was made on the bridge, the passage of which was defended by a strong body of French soldiers, under the command of Colonel de Larrey. On the advance of the Vaudois in the darkness, they were summoned to stand, but continued to advance, when the enemy fired a volley on them, killing three men. Then the Vaudois brigade rushed to the bridge, but seeing a strong body on the other side preparing to fire again, Arnaud called upon his men to lie down, and the volley went over their heads. Then Turrel, the Vaudois captain, calling out “Forward! the bridge is won!” the Vaudois jumped to their feet and rushed on. The two wings at the same time concentrated their fire on the defenders, who broke and retired, and the bridge was won. But at the further side, where the French were in overpowering numbers, they refused to give way, and poured down their fire on their assailants. The Vaudois boldly pressed on. They burst through the French, force, cutting it in two; and fresh men pouring over, the battle was soon won. The French, commander was especially chagrined at having been beaten by a parcel of cowherds. “Is it possible,” he exclaimed, “that I have lost both the battle and my honour?”
The rising moon showed the ground strewed with about seven hundred dead; the Vaudois having lost only twenty-two killed and eight wounded. The victors filled their pouches with ammunition picked up on the field, took possession of as many arms and as much provisions as they could carry, and placing the remainder in a heap over some barrels of powder, they affixed a lighted match and withdrew. A tremendous explosion shook the mountains, and echoed along the valley, and the remains of the French camp were blown to atoms. The Vaudois then proceeded at once to climb the mountain of Sci, which had to be crossed in order to enter the valley of Pragelas.
It was early on a Sabbath morning, the ninth day of their march, that the Vaudois reached the crest of the mountain overlooking Fenestrelles, and saw spread out before them the beloved country which they had come to win. They halted for the stragglers, and when these had come up, Arnaud made them kneel down and thank God for permitting them again to see their native land; himself offering up an eloquent prayer, which cheered and strengthened them for further effort. And then they descended into the valley of Pragelas, passing the river Clusone, and halting to rest at the little village of La Traverse. They were now close to the Vaudois strongholds, and in a country every foot of which was familiar to most of them. But their danger was by no means over; for the valleys were swarming with dragoons and foot-soldiers; and when they had shaken off those of France, they had still to encounter the troops of Savoy.
Late in the afternoon the little army again set out for the valley of St. Martin, passing the night in the mountain hamlet of Jussand, the highest on the Col du Pis. Next day they descended the Col near Seras, and first came in contact with the troops of Savoy; but these having taken to flight, no collision occurred; and on the following day the Vaudois arrived, without further molestation, at the famous Balsille.
This celebrated stronghold is situated in front of the narrow defile of Macel, which leads into the valley of St. Martin. It is a rampart of rock, standing at the entrance to the pass, and is of such natural strength, that but little art was needed to make it secure against any force that could be brought against it. There is only one approach to it from the valley of St. Martin, which is very difficult; a portion of the way being in a deep wooded gorge, where a few men could easily arrest the progress of an army. The rock itself consists of three natural stages or terraces, the highest part rising steep as a wall, being surmounted by a natural platform. The mountain was well supplied with water, which gushed forth in several places. Caverns had been hollowed out in the sides of the rocks, which served as hiding-places during the persecutions which so often ravaged the valleys; and these were now available for storehouses and barracks.
The place was, indeed, so intimately identified with the past sufferings and triumphs of the Vaudois, and it was, besides, so centrally situated, and so secure, that they came to regard its possession as essential to the success of their enterprise. The aged Javanel, who drew up the plan of the invasion before the eight hundred set out on their march, attached the greatest importance to its early occupation. “Spare no labour nor pains,” he said, in the memorandum of directions which he drew up, “in fortifying this post, which will be your most secure fortress. Do not quit it unless in the utmost extremity.... You will, of course, be told that you cannot hold it always, and that rather than not succeed in their object, all France and Italy will gather together against you.... But were it the whole world, and only yourselves against all, fear ye the Almighty alone, who is your protection.”
On the arrival of the Vaudois at the Balsille, they discerned a small body of troops advancing towards them by the Col du Pis, higher up the valley. They proved to be Piedmontese, forty-six in number, sent to occupy the pass. They were surrounded, disarmed, and put to death, and their arms were hid away amongst the rocks. No quarter was given on either side during this war; the Vaudois had no prisons in which to place their captives; and they themselves, when taken, were treated not as soldiers, but as bandits, being instantly hung on the nearest trees. The Vaudois did not, however, yet take up their permanent position at the Balsille, being desirous of rousing the valleys towards the south. The day following, accordingly, they marched to Pralis, in the valley of the Germanasca, when, for the first time since their exile, they celebrated Divine worship in one of the temples of their ancestors.
They were now on their way towards the valley of the Pelice, to reach which it was necessary that they should pass over the Col Julian. An army of three thousand Piedmontese barred their way, but nothing daunted by the great disparity of force, the Vaudois, divided into three bodies, as at Salabertrans, mounted to the assault. As they advanced, the Piedmontese cried, “Come on, ye devil’s Barbets, there are more than three thousand of us, and we occupy all the posts!” In less than half an hour the whole of the posts were carried, the pass was cleared, and the Piedmontese fled down the further side of the mountain, leaving all their stores behind them. On the following day the Vaudois reached Bobi, drove out the new settlers, and resumed possession of the lands of the commune. Thus, after the lapse of only fourteen days, this little band of heroes had marched from the shores of the Lake of Geneva, by difficult mountain-passes, through bands of hostile troops, which they had defeated in two severe fights, and at length reached the very centre of the Vaudois valleys, and entered into possession of the “Promised Land.”
They resolved to celebrate their return to the country of their fathers by an act of solemn worship on the Sabbath following. The whole body assembled on the hill of Silaoud, commanding an extensive prospect of the valley, and with their arms piled, and resting under the shade of the chestnut-trees which crown the hill, they listened to an eloquent sermon from the pastor Montoux, who preached to them standing on a platform, consisting of a door resting upon two rocks, after which they chanted the 74th Psalm, to the clash of arms. They then proceeded to enter into a solemn covenant with each other, renewing the ancient oath of union of the valleys, and swearing never to rest from their enterprise, even if they should be reduced to only three or four in number, until they had “re-established in the valleys the kingdom of the Gospel.” Shortly after, they proceeded to divide themselves into two bodies, for the purpose of occupying simultaneously, as recommended by Javanel, the two valleys of the Pelice and St. Martin.
But the trials and sufferings they had already endured were as nothing compared with those they were now about to experience. Armies concentrated on them from all points. They were pressed by the French on the north and west, and by the Piedmontese on the south and east. Encouraged by their success at Bobi, the Vaudois rashly attacked Villar, lower down the valley, and were repulsed with loss. From thence they retired up the valley of Rora, and laid it waste; the enemy, in like manner, destroying the town of Bobi and laying waste the neighbourhood.
The war now became one of reprisals and mutual devastation, the two parties seeking to deprive each other of shelter and the means of subsistence. The Vaudois could only obtain food by capturing the enemy’s convoys, levying contributions from the plains, and making incursions into Dauphiny. The enterprise on which they had entered seemed to become more hopeless from day to day. This handful of men, half famished and clothed in rags, had now arrayed against them twenty-two thousand French and Sardinians, provided with all the munitions of war. That they should have been able to stand against them for two whole months, now fighting in one place, and perhaps the next day some twenty miles across the mountains in another, with almost invariable success, seems little short of a miracle. But flesh and blood could not endure such toil and privations much longer. No wonder that the faint-hearted began to despair. Turrel, the military commander, seeing no chance of a prosperous issue, withdrew across the French frontier, followed by the greater number of the Vaudois from Dauphiny;110 and there remained only the Italian Vaudois, still unconquered in spirit, under the leadership of their pastor-general Arnaud, who never appeared greater than in times of difficulty and danger.
With his diminished forces, and the increasing numbers of the enemy, Arnaud found it impossible to hold both the valleys, as intended; besides, winter was approaching, and the men must think of shelter and provisions during that season, if resistance was to be prolonged. It was accordingly determined to concentrate their little force upon the Balsille, and all haste was made to reach that stronghold without further delay. Their knowledge of the mountain heights and passes enabled them to evade their enemies, who were watching for them along the valleys, and they passed from the heights of Rodoret to the summit of the Balsille by night, before it was known that they were in the neighbourhood. They immediately set to work to throw up entrenchments and erect barricades, so as to render the place as secure as possible. Foraging parties were sent out for provisions, to lay in for the winter, and they returned laden with corn from the valley of Pragelas. At the little hamlet of Balsille they repaired the mill, and set it a-going, the rivulet which flowed down from the mountain supplying abundance of water-power.
It was at the end of October that the little band of heroes took possession of the Balsille, and they held it firmly all through the winter. For more than six months they beat back every force that was sent against them. The first attack was made by the Marquis d’Ombrailles at the head of a French detachment; but though the enemy reached the village of Balsille, they were compelled to retire, partly by the bullets of the defenders, and partly by the snow, which was falling heavily. The Marquis de Parelles next advanced, and summoned the Vaudois to surrender; but in vain. “Our storms are still louder than your cannon,” replied Arnaud, “and yet our rocks are not shaken.” Winter having set in, the besiegers refrained for a time from further attacks, but strictly guarded all the passes leading to the fortress; while the garrison, availing themselves of their knowledge of the locality, made frequent sorties into the adjoining valleys, as well as into those of Dauphiny, for the purpose of collecting provisions, in which they were usually successful.
When the fine weather arrived, suitable for a mountain campaign, the French general, Catinat, assembled a strong force, and marched into the valley, determined to make short work of this little nest of bandits on the Balsille. On Sunday morning, the 30th of April, 1690, while Arnaud was preaching to his flock, the sentinels on the look-out discovered the enemy’s forces swarming up the valley. Soon other bodies were seen approaching by the Col du Pis and the Col du Clapier, while a French regiment, supported by the Savoyard militia, climbed Mont Guinevert, and cut off all retreat in that quarter. In short, the Balsille was completely invested.
A general assault was made on the position on the 2nd of May, under the direction of General Catinat in person. Three French regiments, supported by a regiment of dragoons, opened the attack in front; Colonel de Parat, who commanded the leading regiment, saying to his soldiers as they advanced, “My friends, we must sleep to-night in that barrack,” pointing to the rude Vaudois fort on the summit of the Balsille. They advanced with great bravery; but the barricade could not be surmounted, while they were assailed by a perfect storm of bullets from the defenders, securely posted above.
Catinat next ordered the troops stationed on the Guinevert to advance from that direction, so as to carry the position from behind. But the assailants found unexpected intrenchments in their way, from behind which the Vaudois maintained a heavy fire, that eventually drove them back, their retreat being accelerated by a shower of stones and a blinding fall of snow and hail. In the meantime, the attack on the bastion in front continued, and the Vaudois, seeing the French troops falling back in disorder, made a vigorous sortie, and destroyed the whole remaining force, excepting fifteen men, who fled, bare-headed and without arms, and carried to the camp the news of their total defeat.
A Savoyard officer thus briefly described the issue of the disastrous affair in a letter to a friend: “I have only time to tell you that the French have failed in their attack on the Balsille, and they have been obliged to retire after having lost one hundred and fifty soldiers, three captains, besides subalterns and wounded, including a colonel and a lieutenant-colonel who have been made prisoners, with the two sergeants who remained behind to help them. The lieutenant-colonel was surprised at finding in the fort some nineteen or twenty officers in gold and silver lace, who treated him as a prisoner of war and very humanely, even allowing him to go in search of the surgeon-major of his regiment for the purpose of bringing him into the place, and doing all that was necessary.”
Catinat did not choose again to renew the attack in person, or to endanger his reputation by a further defeat at the hands of men whom he had described as a nest of paltry bandits, but entrusted the direction of further operations to the Marquis de Féuquières, who had his laurels still to win, while Catinat had his to lose. The Balsille was again completely invested by the 12th of May, according to the scheme of operations prepared by Catinat, and the Marquis received by anticipation the title of “Conqueror of the Barbets.” The entire mountain was surrounded, all the passes were strongly guarded, guns were planted in positions which commanded the Vaudois fort, more particularly on the Guinevert; and the capture or extermination of the Vaudois was now regarded as a matter of certainty. The attacking army was divided into five corps. Each soldier was accompanied by a pioneer carrying a fascine, in order to form a cover against the Vaudois bullets as they advanced.
Several days elapsed before all the preliminaries for the grand attack were completed, and then the Marquis ordered a white flag to be hoisted, and a messenger was sent forward, inviting a parley with the defenders of the Balsille. The envoy was asked what he wanted. “Your immediate surrender!” was the reply. “You shall each of you receive five hundred louis d’or, and good passports for your retirement to a foreign country; but if you resist, you will be infallibly destroyed.” “That is as the Lord shall will,” replied the Vaudois messenger.
The defenders refused to capitulate on any terms. The Marquis himself then wrote to the Vaudois, offering them terms on the above basis, but threatening, in case of refusal, that every man of them would be hung. Arnaud’s reply was heroic. “We are not subjects,” he said, “of the King of France; and that monarch not being master of this country, we can enter into no treaty with his servants. We are in the heritage which our fathers have left to us, and we hope, with the help of the God of armies, to live and die in it, even though there may remain only ten of us to defend it.” That same night the Vaudois made a vigorous sortie, and killed a number of the besiegers: this was their final answer to the summons to surrender.
On the 14th of May the battery on Mont Guinevert was opened, and the enemy’s cannon began to play upon the little fort and bastions, which, being only of dry stones, were soon dismantled. The assault was then made simultaneously on three sides; and after a stout resistance, the Vaudois retired from their lower intrenchments, and retreated to those on the higher ledges of the mountain. They continued their resistance until night, and then, taking counsel together, and feeling that the place was no longer defensible in the face of so overpowering a force, commanded, as it was, at the same time by the cannon on the adjoining heights, they determined to evacuate the Balsille, after holding it for a period of nearly seven months.
A thick mist having risen up from the valley, the Vaudois set out, late at night, under the guidance of Captain Poulat, a native of the district, who well knew the paths in the mountains. They climbed up on to the heights above, over icy slopes, passing across gaping crevices and along almost perpendicular rocks, admitting of their passage only in single file, sometimes dragging themselves along on their bellies, clinging to the rocks or to the tufts of grass, occasionally resting and praying, but never despairing. At length they succeeded, after a long détour of the mountain crests, in gaining the northern slope of Guinevert. Here they came upon and surprised the enemy’s outpost, which fled towards the main body; and the Vaudois passed on, panting and half dead with fatigue. When the morning broke, and the French proceeded to penetrate the last redoubt on the Balsille, lo, it was empty! The defenders had abandoned it, and they could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the dangerous mountain escarpment by which they had escaped in the night. Looking across the valley, far off, they saw the fugitives, thrown into relief by the snow amidst which they marched, like a line of ants, apparently making for the mass of the central Alps.
For three days they wandered from place to place, gradually moving southwards, their object now being to take up their position at the Pra du Tour, the ancient fortress of the Barbas in the valley of Angrogna. Before, however, they could reach this stronghold, and while they were still at Pramol in the valley of Perosa, news of the most unexpected kind reached them, which opened up the prospect of their deliverance. The news was no other than this—Savoy had declared war against France!
A rupture between the two powers had for some time been imminent. Louis XIV. had become more and more exacting in his demands on the Duke of Savoy, until the latter felt himself in a position of oppressive vassalage. Louis had even intimated his intention of occupying Verrua and the citadel of Turin; and the Duke, having previously ascertained through his cousin, Prince Eugène, the willingness of the Emperor of Austria, pressed by William of Orange, to assist him in opposing the pretensions of France, he at length took up his stand and declared war against Louis.
The Vaudois were now a power in the state, and both parties alike appealed to them for help, promising them great favours. But the Vaudois, notwithstanding the treachery and cruelty of successive Dukes of Savoy, were true to their native prince. They pledged themselves to hold the valleys and defend the mountain passes against France.
In the first engagements which took place between the French and the Piedmontese, the latter were overpowered, and the Duke became a fugitive. Where did he find refuge? In the valleys of the Vaudois, in a secluded spot in the village of Rora, behind the Pelice, he found a safe asylum amidst the people whose fathers he had hunted, proscribed, and condemned to death.
But the tide of war turned, and the French were eventually driven out of Piedmont. Many of the Vaudois, who had settled in Brandenburg, Holland, and Switzerland, returned and settled in the valleys; and though the Dukes of Savoy, with their accustomed treachery, more than once allowed persecution to recommence, their descendants continue to enjoy the land, and to worship after the manner of their fathers down to the present day.
The Vaudois long laboured under disabilities, and continued to be deprived of many social and civil rights. But they patiently bided their time; and the time at length arrived. In 1848 their emancipation was one of the great questions of North Italy. It was taken up and advocated by the most advanced minds of Piedmont. The petition to Charles Albert in their favour was in a few days covered with the names of its greatest patriots, including those of Balbo, Cavour, and D’Azeglio. Their emancipation was at length granted, and the Vaudois now enjoy the same rights and liberties as the other subjects of Victor Emanuel.
Nor is the Vaudois Church any longer confined to the valleys, but it has become extended of late years all over Italy—to Milan, Florence, Brescia, Verona, Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Palermo, Cataneo, Venice, and even to Rome itself. In most of these places there are day-schools and Sunday-schools, besides churches. The new church at Venice, held in the Cavagnis palace, seems to have proved especially successful, the Sunday services being regularly attended by from three to four hundred persons; while the day-schools in connection with the churches at Turin, Leghorn, Naples, and Cataneo have proved very successful.
Thus, in the course of a few years, thirty-three Vaudois churches and stations, with about an equal number of schools, have been established in various parts of Italy. The missionaries report that the greatest difficulties they have to encounter arise from the incredulity and indifference which are the natural heritage of the Romish Church; but that, nevertheless, the work makes satisfactory progress—the good seed is being planted, and will yet bring forth its increase in God’s due time.
Finally, it cannot but be acknowledged that the people of the valleys, in so tenaciously and conscientiously adhering to their faith, through good and through evil, during so many hundred years, have set a glorious example to Piedmont, and have possibly been in no small degree instrumental in establishing the reign of right and of liberty in Italy.
INDEX.
Aiguesmortes, Huguenot prison at, 193, 273, 300
Albigenses, 75
Anabaptists of Munster, 282-3
Anduze, visit to, 125
Angrogna, valley of, 481;
fighting in, 481-86, 498
Arnaud, Henry, 215, 512;
leads back the Vaudois, 503-15;
defends the Balsille, 515-19
Athlone, siege of, 349-50, 355-8
Balsille, the, 510;
defence of, 515-19;
given up, 519
Baridon, Etienne, 442-3
Barillon, M. de, 323, 330-1
Baville on the Protestants of Languedoc, 77, 86;
occupies the Cevennes, 87;
at Pont-de-Montvert, 92
Beauval, Basnage de, 364
Beauvau, Prince de, 273-4
Beckwith, General, 478
Berwick, Duke of, 310-11, 333, 351
Bibles, destruction and scarcity of, 215-16
Boileau, General, 351-2
Bonnafoux repulsed by Camisards, 142
Book-burning, 215, 235-6
Bordeille, Raphaël, 318
Bourg d’Oisans, 409-10
Boyne, battle of the, 341-7
Briançon, 414-16
Briset, Lieut., death of, 335
Broglie, Count, 143-4, 148;
superseded, 149
Brousson, Claude, 30;
advocate for Protestant church at Nismes, 31;
meeting in house of, 34;
petition by, 35;
escape from Nismes, 42;
at Lausanne, 43, 46;
at Berlin, 44; in the Cevennes, 50-2, 54;
reward offered for, 56;
at Nismes, 57;
preaching of, 58-9;
to Lausanne, England, and Holland, 61-2;
at Sedan, 64;
through France, 66-7;
portraiture of, 68 (note);
to Nismes again, 69;
taken, tried, and executed, 70-3
Browne, Col. Lyde, 380
Brueys on fanaticism in Languedoc, 91
Bull of Clement XI. against Camisards, 160
Caillemotte, Col., 339;
death of, 345, 348
Calas, Jean, 257;
executed, 258;
case taken up by Voltaire, 259-62;
reversal of judgment on, 262-3
Calvinism and race, 100 (note)
Calvinists, French and Scotch, compared, 100
Cambon, Col., 357
Camisards, the origin of name, 107;
led by Laporte, 109;
organization of, 112-13;
encounter troops, 113-14, 117;
war-song of, 115;
organized by Roland, 123-4;
successes of, 134-40, 142, 146-50;
spread of insurrection of, 138-9;
measures against, 139, 146-7;
defeat of, at Vagnas, 150;
defeat of, near Pompignan, 152;
success of, at Martinargues, 162-4;
bull against, 160;
success at Salindres, 164-5;
defeated near Nismes, 168-9;
reverses of, 170-1;
success at Font-morte, 176-7;
defeated at Pont-de-Montvert, and end of insurrection, 187-9
Camisards, White, 160-1
Carrickfergus, siege of, 335
Castanet, André, 111, 113, 118, 123, 189
Cavalier, John, joins insurgents, 108, 111;
family of, 121;
to Geneva, 121;
to the Cevennes, 122;
portrait of, 124;
in Lower Languedoc, 133;
defeats Royalists, 134-5;
takes Château Servas, 136-7;
repulses Bonnafoux, 142;
at Nismes, 144-5;
successes of, 148;
winter campaign, 148-9;
at Vagnas, 150-1, 153;
betrayed at Tower of Belliot, 156-8;
at Martinargues, 162-4;
at Rosni, 169;
his cave magazines, 170-1;
his interview with Lalande, 173-6;
attempts peace, 177;
his interviews with Villars, 177-83;
deserted by followers, 183-5;
to England, and subsequent career, 186
Caves in the Cevennes, 125, 127-9;
at La Tour, 477
Cazenove, Raoul de, 321, 367
Cevennes, the, persecutions in, 39, 52-3, 85;
secret meetings in, 54, 84-8;
executions in, 59, 67-8;
description of, 79-82;
arming of the people, 85-6;
occupied by troops, 88;
prophetic mania in, 88;
encounter at Pont-de-Montvert, 92;
outbreak against Du Chayla, 96-7;
map of, 98;
Protestants of, compared with Covenanters, 100-1;
organization in, 123-5;
caves in, 125, 127-9;
visit to, 125-9;
present inhabitants of, 129, 131-2;
devastation of, 154-5
Champ Domergue, battle at, 114
Charlemont, capture of, 339
Château Queyras, 467
Chaumont, 271
Chayla, Du, 93-4, 97
Chenevix, 15 (note)
Choiseul, Duc de, 268
Claris, 237
Colognac, execution of, 59
Comiers, 407
Conderc, Salomon, 119, 123
“Conversions,” rapid, 289
Converts, 19-23, 38-9
Cook, Captain, last voyage round the world, 371;
cruel death, 371
Court profligacy, 275 (note)
Court, Antoine, 206-17;
organizes school for preachers, 224;
marriage of, 231;
retires to Switzerland, 232;
results of his work, 233-4;
in Languedoc, 239
Covenanters compared with Protestants of the Cevennes, 100-2
Cromwell, 391-2, 476
D’Aguesseau’s opinion of Protestants of Languedoc, 76-7
Dauphiny, map of, 382;
aspect of, 383-4
Delada, Mdlle. de, 295
Denbeck, Abbé of, 322-3
Denèse, Rotolf de la, 364
Desert, assemblies in the, 83-8, 218-23
Desparvés, M., 297
Dormilhouse, 438, 443-54
Dortial, 238
Douglas, Lieut.-General, 349-51, 355
Dragonnades, 36-7, 42, 54-5, 288;
horrors of, 291
Drogheda, surrender of, 349
Dumas, death of, 52
Dundalk, Schomberg’s army at, 337-8
Durand, Pierre, 236
Easter massacre of the Vaudois, 390-92
England attempts to assist the Camisards, 166-7
Enniskilleners, the, 336
Evertzen, Vice-Admiral, 325
Execution of Pastors, 27
Fabre, Jean, 265;
sent to galleys, 266-9;
obtains leave of absence, 269;
exonerated, 270;
life dramatized, and result, 270
Fermaud, Pastor, 407
Freemantle, Rev. Mr., visits of, to the Vaudois, 395, 450, 462
French labouring classes, present condition of, 397-400
Freney, gorge of, 411
Fusiliers, missionary, 293
Galley, description of, 197-8;
use in war, 200-4
Galley-slaves, treatment of, 194-204;
liberation of Protestants, 204, 264 (note), 271-3
Galway, Earl of, 360
Gilly, Dr., visit to the Vaudois, 393-4, 468, 477
Ginckel, Lieut.-General, 347, 354 et seq.
Glorious Return of the Vaudois, 493-5
Grace, Col. Richard, 351
Guarrison, Mdlle. de, 294
Guerin, death of, 67
Guignon betrays Cavalier, 156; executed, 159
Guil, valley of the, 466
Guillestre, 456-66
Guion executed, 57
Herbert, Admiral, 325
Homel, tortures and death of, 40
Hood, Lord, 376
Huguenots, the (see Camisards); emigrations of, 43, 76-8, 83, 287, 316;
persecution of, after Camisard insurrection, 190-204;
as galley-slaves, 194-204;
brought together by Court, 210-17;
reorganization of, 218-228;
outrages on, 228;
great assemblies of, 239-40;
last of the executions, 258;
last of the galley-slaves, 265-273;
character of, 274-5;
later history of, 276-283;
decrees against, 286-6;
in England, 309;
foreign services of, 316-17
Ireland and James II., 331 et seq.
Irish Brigade, 140-2, 359
Iron Boot, the, 102
James II., flight of, 309, 329;
lands with an army in Ireland, 309, 332;
campaign against William III., 309 et seq., 333 et seq.;
deserted, 328;
taken prisoner, 329;
his last proclamation, 330;
at the French court, 331;
cowardice, 337, 347-8;
Catholic estimate of his character, 348
Joany, Nicholas, insurgent leader, 120, 123, 151
Johannot, 269
Julien, Brigadier, 147, 150-1
Lagier, Jean, 452, 453 (note)
Lajonquière defeated at Martinargues, 162-4
Lalande, his interview with Cavalier, 173-6
Languedoc (see Cevennes), early liberty in, 75;
Albigenses in, 75;
Protestants of, 76-7;
industry of, 76;
emigration from, after Revocation, 78, 289;
arming of people of, 85-6;
outbreak of fanaticism in, 88-92;
present inhabitants of, 280-3
Laporte, leader of Camisards, 109-10;
organizes insurgents, 112;
at Collet, 113;
at Champ Domergue, 114;
killed at Molezon, 117
La Salette, 404;
miracle of, 405-6
La Tour, 476-80
Laugier at Guillestre, 463;
at Château Queyras, 464
Lausanne, school for preachers at, 224;
Society of Help at, 224-5
Lauteret, Col de, 413
Lauzun, Count, 339, 358
Lesdiguières, Duc de, 402-3, 455
Limerick, siege of, 351-4, 359
Lintarde, Marie, imprisonment of, 54
Locke, John, on Protestants of Nismes, 31 (note)
Londonderry, siege of, 333
Louis XIV., 2, 10, 146, 205
Louis XV., 275
Louis XVI., 276;
maxim of, 285;
his decrees against Protestants, 285-6;
his mode of stopping the emigration of Huguenots, 287-8;
expulsion of Protestants, 316;
assists James II., 332
Luttrell, Capt., brilliant naval achievement of, 372
Mackay, Major-General, 355, 357
Marillac, Michel de, inventor of the dragonnades, 288
Marion on influence of Camisard prophets, 119
Marlborough, Earl of, 354
Marteilhe, autobiography of, 195, 201-4
Martinargues, battle at, 162-4
Massillon on Louis XIV., 10
Mazel, Abraham, 120, 123
Mialet, visit to, 127-8
Milsom, Edward, 395, 451, 490-92
Missionaries, booted, 288
Montandre, Marquis de, 314
Montauban, persecutions at, 289-90
Montpellier, Protestant Church at, 32-3;
the Peyron at, 72;
execution of Brousson at, 73, 300
Montrevel, Marshal, in Languedoc, 149;
at Pompignan, 152;
adopts extermination, 153;
at Tower of Belliot, 156-8;
character of, 159;
recalled, 167;
defeats Cavalier, 168-9
Nantes, Revocation of Edict of, and its results, 1-19, 24, 44-5, 78;
contemporary opinion upon, 1-10;
enactments of Edict of Revocation, 12-15, 285-6
Neff, Felix, 427-32;
life of, 394, 404;
his account of winter at Dormilhouse, 447;
his charge, 469
Nelson, Lord, eulogium on Capt. Riou, 368;
at the battle of Copenhagen, 378-9
Ners, visit to, 131
Newton Butler, engagement at, 333
Nismes, Protestant Church at, 31;
petition from, 41;
Brousson at, 57, 69;
Guion at, 57;
country about, 81, 130-2;
success of Camisards near, 143;
Cavalier at, 144-5, 177-83;
treaty of, 179-80;
Huguenot meetings at, 265
Ormond, Duke of, 349
Palons, 433-6
Paulet, Mdlle., forgeries in name of, 32-4
Pechell, Augustus, 315
Pechell, Capt. William Cecil, 315
Pechell, Col. Jacob, 313
Pechell, Paul, 314
Pechell, Samuel, extraordinary probity of, 314
Pechell, Sir G. R. Brooke, 315
Pechell, Sir Thomas, 315
Péchels de la Boissonade, Samuel de, narrative of his persecutions, 291 et seq.;
imprisonment, 296, 299-301;
meeting with his wife, 297;
condemned to banishment, 299;
embarkation, 302;
sails for America, 303;
sufferings, 304-5;
reaches the West Indies, 305;
illness and arrival in London, 307;
accepts a commission in the English army, 309;
campaign in Ireland, 310;
return to London, 311;
removal with his wife and son to Dublin, 312;
death of, 312;
his descendants, 313
Péchels, family of, 290
Péchels, Madame de, inhumanity towards, 294-5;
touching interview with her husband, 297;
further trials, 297;
escape to Geneva, 298;
in London, 308;
reunited to her husband, 311
Pelice, Valley of the, 472
Pélisson, 323
Pont-de-Montvert, outbreak at, 92-7;
description of, 93-4;
end of Camisard insurrection at, 187-9
Portland, Earl of, 361, 363
Portland Vase, 363
Poul, Captain, in Upper Cevennes, 108;
at Champ Domergue, 114-16;
takes Laporte at Molezon, 117;
defeated and killed near Nismes, 143-4
Pra du Tour, 486-90, 499
Preachers, education of, 221-4;
hardships of, 225-9, 236-8
Project, the, 34
“Protestant wind,” the, 325
Protestantism in France, present chances of, 417
Quoite, execution of, 53
Rapin, Capt. Paul, birth and education, 321-2;
emigrates to England, 322;
embarks for Holland, 323;
a cadet in the Dutch army, 324;
sails for England, 325;
encounters a storm, 326;
with the army of William III., 335 et seq.;
aide-de-camp, 350;
wounded and promoted, 354;
conciliatory spirit, 358-9;
at Kinsale, 359;
tutor to Lord Woodstock, 360;
presented to the King, 371;
makes the “grand tour” with his pupil, 362-3;
secures the Portland Vase, 363;
marriage, 363;
at the Hague and Wesel, 364;
his “Dissertation on the Origin and Nature of the English Constitution,” 364;
“History of England,” 364-7;
death of, 366
Rapin, Daniel de, 324
Rapin family, 317-21, 367
Rapin, Solomon, 354, 360
Ravanel, insurgent leader, defeats Royalists near Nismes, 143;
near Bouquet, 145;
supplants Cavalier, 182-5;
death of, 189
Redothière, Isabeau, 53
Rességuerie, M. de la, 297
Rey, Fulcran, his preaching and death, 25-7
Riou, Capt., R.N., Lord Nelson’s opinion of, 368;
ancestry, 368-70;
birth and education, 370;
becomes a midshipman, 370;
accompanies Capt. Cook in his last voyage, 371;
witnesses the murder of the captain, 371;
return to England and appointed lieutenant, 372;
a sharer in the glory of Capt. Luttrell’s brilliant achievement, 372;
appointed to the command of the Guardian, 373;
letters to his mother, 373, 377;
his ship strikes upon an iceberg, 374;
remains with the vessel, 375;
letter to the Admiralty, 375;
extract from his log, 376;
rescued by Dutch whalers, and return to England, 376;
receives the special thanks of the Admiralty, 377;
commander of the royal yacht Princess Augusta, 378;
at the battle of Copenhagen, 378-9;
death of, 379;
his character, 379-80;
monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral, 380
Rochemalan, Vaudois struggles at, 482-6
Roger, Jacques, 213
Roland, nephew of Laporte, 111;
insurgent leader, 113;
succeeds Laporte, 118;
in Lower Cevennes, 122;
organizes Camisards, 123-5;
takes Sauvé, 137;
at Pompignan, 152;
at Salindres, 164-5;
at Font-Morte, 176-7;
at Pont-de-Montvert, 187;
death of, 188
Romanche, Valley of the, 401, 408
Rosen, Count, 332;
indignation against King James, 337
Rostan, Alpine missionary, 460 (note)
Rou, Jean, 363-4
Roussel, Alexandre, 232
Ruvigny, Major-General, 357
St. Bartholomew, doubt thrown upon massacre of, 27
Saint-Etienne, Rabout, 276-7
St. Hypolite, meeting at, 35
Saint-Ruth, Marshal, 38;
in Ireland, 38 (note), 354 et seq.
Saint-Simon on the treatment of converts, 23
Sands, Captain, 357
San Veran, 468
Sarsfield, General, 351-3, 356
Savoy and France, war declared, 520
Savoy, Duke of, takes refuge with the Vaudois, 520
Schomberg, Marshal, 309 et seq., 317, 344 et seq.;
death of, 345
Schomberg, Count, 348
Sedan, prosperity of, before Revocation, 64-5;
Brousson at, 65-6
Seguier, Pierre, insurgent leader, 96, 103;
at Frugères, 104;
at Font-Morte, 106;
taken, tried, and executed, 106-7
Sirven, 263;
case of, taken up by Voltaire, 264
Society of Friends in Languedoc, 281-2
Souverain executed, 52
Squeezers, the, 101 (note)
Synod of French Protestant Church, 283
Talmash, Major-General, 357
Telford, anecdote of, 82
Testart, Marie Anne, 363
Tetleau, Major-General, 357
Toleration, Edict of, 276
“Troopers’ Lane,” 310
Tyrconnel, Earl of, 331-2
Tyrconnel, Lady, retort to King James, 348
Val Fressinières, 423-5, 432-43
Val Louise, 420;
massacre at, 422
Vaudois, the country of, 385;
early Christianity of, 386-6;
early persecutions of, 388;
Easter massacre of, 390-1;
visits of Dr. Gilly to, 393-4, 468, 477;
passiveness of, 420-1;
massacre of, at Val Louise, 422;
persecutions of, 424-6, 455, 481, 495-500, 513-20;
refuges of, 459, 467, 475, 477, 481;
struggles of, at Rochemalan, 482-6;
flight at the Revocation, 495;
apparently exterminated, 500;
in Switzerland, 501;
prepare to return, 502;
Arnaud appointed leader, 502;
assisted by William of Orange, 503;
The Glorious Return of, 504-13;
struggles of, at the Balsille, 515;
assist Duke of Savoy, 520;
emancipation of, 521-2
Venours, Marquis de, death of, 335
Vesson, 212, 214
Vidal, Isaac, preacher, 48
Villars, Marshal, on prophetic mania in Languedoc, 90;
appointed to command in Languedoc, 167;
at Nismes, 169;
clemency of, 172-86;
treats with Cavalier, 177, 185;
suppresses insurrection of Camisards, 188
Vincent, Isabel, prophetess, 89, 90
Vivens, death of, 56
Voltaire, takes up case of Calas, 259-63;
takes up case of Sirven, 264;
case of Chaumont, 271
Waldenses, the, 384
Walker, Dr. George, death of, 348
Waller, Sir James, 359
Wheel, punishment of the, 258 (note)
William of Orange lands in England, 308;
proclaimed King, 309;
campaign against James II., 309 et seq., 340 et seq.;
his fleet, 325-7;
wounded, 342;
death of, 364
Woodstock, Lord, 360-3
Wurtemberg, Duke of, 340, 357
Footnote 46: In the Viverais and elsewhere they sang the song of the persecuted Church:—
“Nos filles dans les monastères,
Nos prisonniers dans les cachots.
Nos martyrs dont le sang se répand à grands flots,
Nos confesseurs sur les galères,
Nos malades persécutés,
Nos mourants exposés à plus d’une furie,
Nos morts traînés à la voierie,
Te disent (ô Dieu!) nos calamités.”[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 52: Amongst the many satires and epigrams with which Louis XIV. was pursued to the grave, the following epitaph may be given:—
“Ci gist le mari de Thérèse
De la Montespan le Mignon,
L’esclave de la Maintenon,
Le valet du père La Chaise.”
At the death of Louis XIV., Voltaire, an élève of the Jesuits, was appropriately coming into notice. At the age of about twenty he was thrown into the Bastille; for having written a satire on Louis XIV., of which the following is an extract:—
“J’ai vu sous l’habit d’une femme
Un démon nous donner la loi;
Elle sacrifia son Dieu, sa foi, son âme,
Pour séduire l’esprit d’un trop crédule roi.
J’ai vu l’hypocrite honoré:
J’ai vu, c’est dire tout, le jésuite adoré:
J’ai vu ces maux sous le règne funeste
D’un prince que jadis la colère céleste
Accorda, par vengeance, à nos désirs ardens:
J’ai vu ces maux, et je n’ai pas vingt ans.”
Voltaire denied having written this satire.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 97: It was at this time that Milton wrote his noble sonnet, beginning—
“Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughter’d saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,” &c.[Back to Main Text]
Notes
1 M. Simiot’s speech before the National Assembly, 16th March, 1873.
2 Bossuet, “Oraison Funèbre du Chancelier Letellier.”
3 Bourdaloue had just been sent from the Jesuit Church of St. Louis at Paris, to Montpellier, to aid the dragoons in converting the Protestants, and bringing them back to the Church.
4 Sir John Reresby’s Travels and Memoirs.
5 Pope Innocent XI.’s Letter of November 13th, 1685.
6 “Louvois et les Protestants,” par Adolphe Michel, p. 286.
7 Quarterly Review.
8 “Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon,” translated by Bayle St. John, vol. III. p 250.
9 Funeral Oration on Louis XIV.
10 Such was, in fact, the end of a man so distinguished as M. Paul Chenevix, Councillor of the Court of Metz, who died in 1686, the year after the Revocation. Although of the age of eighty, and so illustrious for his learning, his dead body was dragged along the streets on a hurdle and thrown upon a dunghill. See “Huguenot Refugees and their Descendants,” under the name Chenevix. The present Archbishop of Dublin is descended from his brother Philip Chenevix, who settled in England shortly after the Revocation.
11 It is believed that 400,000 emigrants left France through religious persecution during the twenty years previous to the Revocation, and that 600,000 escaped during the twenty years after that event. M. Charles Coquerel estimates the number of Protestants in France at that time to have been two millions of men (“Églises du Désert,” i. 497) The number of Protestant pastors was about one thousand—of whom six hundred went into exile, one hundred were executed or sent to the galleys, and the rest are supposed to have accepted pensions as “new converts.”
12 We refer to “The Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland,” where a great many incidents are given relative to the escape of refugees by land and sea, which need not here be repeated.
13 Letter to the President de Moulceau, November 24th, 1685.
14 Thumbscrews were used in the reign of James II. Louis and James borrowed from each other the means of converting heretics; but whether the origin of the thumbscrew be French or Scotch is not known.
15 “Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon,” Bayle St. John’s Translation, iii. 259.
16 See “The Huguenots: their Settlements, &c., in England and Ireland,” chap. xvi.
17 “Histoire de l’Édit de Nantes,” par Elie Bénoît.
18 “Histoire des Églises du Désert,” par Charles Coquerel, i. 498.
19 De Felice’s “History of the Protestants of France,” book iii. sect. 17.
20 John Locke passed through Nismes about this time. “The Protestants at Nismes,” he said, “have now but one temple, the other being pulled down by the King’s order about four years since. The Protestants had built themselves an hospital for the sick, but that is taken from them; a chamber in it is left for the sick, but never used, because the priests trouble them when there. Notwithstanding these discouragements [this was in 1676, before the Revocation], I do not find many go over; one of them told me, when I asked them the question, that the Papists did nothing but by force or by money.”—King’s Life of Locke, i. 100.
21 When released from prison, Gaultier escaped to Berlin and became minister of a large Protestant congregation there. Isaac Dubourdieu escaped to England, and was appointed one of the ministers of the Savoy Church in London.
22 Claude Brousson, “Apologie du Projet des Réformés.”
23 The grandfather of this Chamier drew up for Henry IV. the celebrated Edict of Nantes. The greater number of the Chamiers left France. Several were ministers in London and Maryland, U.S. Captain Chamier is descended from the family.
24 Saint-Ruth was afterwards, in 1691, sent to Ireland to take the command of the army fighting for James II. against William III. There, Saint-Ruth had soldiers, many of them Huguenots banished from France, to contend with; and he was accordingly somewhat less successful than in Viverais, where his opponents were mostly peasants and workmen, armed (where armed at all) with stones picked from the roads. Saint-Ruth and his garrison were driven from Athlone, where a Huguenot soldier was the first to mount the breach. The army of William III., though eight thousand fewer in number, followed Saint-Ruth and his Irish army to the field of Aughrim. His host was there drawn up in an almost impregnable position—along the heights of Kilcommeden, with the Castle of Aughrim on his left wing, a deep bog on his right, and another bog of about two miles extending along the front, and apparently completely protecting the Irish encampment. Nevertheless, the English and Huguenot army under Ginckle, bravely attacked it, forced the pass to the camp, and routed the army of Saint-Ruth, who himself was killed by a cannon-ball. The principal share of this victory was attributed to the gallant conduct of the three regiments of Huguenot horse, under the command of the Marquess de Ruvigny (himself a banished Huguenot nobleman) who, in consequence of his services, was raised to the Irish peerage, under the title of Earl of Galway.
25 The prisons of Languedoc were already crowded with Protestants, and hundreds had been sent to the galleys at Marseilles.
26 Within about three weeks no fewer than seventeen thousand five hundred French emigrants passed into Lausanne. Two hundred Protestant ministers fled to Switzerland, the greater number of whom settled in Lausanne, until they could journey elsewhere.
27 Ancillon was an eminently learned man. His library was one of the choicest that had ever been collected, and on his expulsion from Metz it was pillaged by the Jesuits. Metz, now part of German Lorraine, was probably not so ferociously dragooned as other places. Yet the inhabitants were under the apprehension that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was about to be repeated upon them on Christmas Day, 1685, the soldiers of the garrison having been kept under arms all night. The Protestant churches were all pulled down, the ministers were expelled, and many of their people followed them into Germany. There were numerous Protestant soldiers in the Metz garrison, and the order of the King was that, like the rest of his subjects, they should become converted. Many of the officers resigned and entered the service of William of Orange, and many of the soldiers deserted. The bribe offered for the conversion of privates was as follows: Common soldiers and dragoons, two pistoles per head; troopers, three pistoles per head. The Protestants of Alsace were differently treated. They constituted a majority of the population; Alsace and Strasbourg having only recently been seized by Louis XIV. It was therefore necessary to be cautious in that quarter; for violence would speedily have raised a revolution in the province which would have driven them over to Germany, whose language they spoke. Louvois could therefore only proceed by bribing; and he was successful in buying over some of the most popular and influential men.
28 Many of these extraordinary escapes are given in the author’s “Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries, in England and Ireland.”
29 There were from eighty to ninety establishments for the manufacture of broadcloth in Sedan, giving employment to more than two thousand persons. These, together with the iron and steel manufactures, were entirely ruined at the Revocation, when the whole of the Protestant mechanics went into exile, and settled for the most part in Holland and England.
30 The following was the portraiture of Brousson, issued to the spies and police: “Brousson is of middle stature, and rather spare, aged forty to forty-two, nose large, complexion dark, hair black, hands well formed.”
31 The only favour which Brousson’s judges showed him at death was as regarded the manner of carrying his sentence into execution. He was condemned to be broken alive on the wheel, and then strangled; whereas by special favour the sentence was commuted into strangulation first and the breaking of his bones afterwards. So that while Brousson’s impassive body remained with his persecutors to be broken, his pure unconquered spirit mounted in triumph towards heaven.
32 There are still Gaussens at St. Mamert, in the department of Gard; and some of the Bosanquet family must have remained on their estates or returned to Protestantism, as we find a Bosanquet of Caila broken alive at Nismes, because of his religion, on the 7th September, 1702, after which his corpse was publicly exposed on the Montpellier high road.
33 October 20, 1686.
34 Noailles to Baville, 29th October, 1686.
35 “Vie du Maréchal de Villars,” i. 125.
36 Brueys, “Histoire du Fanaticisme de Notre Temps.”
37 Whether it be that Calvinism is eclectic as regards races and individuals, or that it has (as is most probably the case) a powerful formative influence upon individual character, certain it is that the Calvinists of all countries have presented the strongest possible resemblance to each other—the Calvinists of Geneva and Holland, the Huguenots of France, the Covenanters of Scotland, and the Puritans of Old and New England, seeming, as it were, to be but members of the same family. It is curious to speculate on the influence which the religion of Calvin—himself a Frenchman—might have exercised on the history of France, as well as on the individual character of Frenchmen, had the balance of forces carried the nation bodily over to Protestantism (as was very nearly the case) towards the end of the sixteenth century. Heinrich Heine has expressed the opinion that the western races contain a large proportion of men for whom the moral principle of Judaism has a strong elective affinity; and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Old Testament certainly seems to have exercised a much more powerful influence on the minds of religious reformers than the New. “The Jews,” says Heine, “were the Germans of the East, and nowadays the Protestants in German countries (England, Scotland, America, Germany, Holland) are nothing more nor less than ancient Oriental Jews.”
38 The instrument is thus described by Cavalier, in his “Memoirs of the Wars of the Cevennes,” London, 1726: “This inhuman man had invented a rack (more cruel, if it be possible, than that usually made use of) to torment these poor unfortunate gentlemen and ladies; which was a beam he caused to be split in two, with vices at each end. Every morning he would send for these poor people, in order to examine them, and if they refused to confess what he desired, he caused their legs to be put in the slit of the beam, and there squeezed them till the bones cracked,” &c., &c. (p. 35).
39 Brueys, “Histoire de Fanatisme;” Peyrat, “Histoire des Pasteurs du Désert.”
40 The “Barbets” (or “Water-dogs”) was the nickname by which the Vaudois were called, against whom Poul had formerly been employed in the Italian valleys.
41 “Memoirs of the Wars of the Cevennes,” p. 74.
42 O’Callaghan’s “History of the Irish Brigades in the service of France,” p. 29.
43 Ibid., p. 180.
44 Cavalier’s “Memoirs of the Wars of the Cevennes,” pp. 111-114.
45 The Nismes Theatre now occupies part of the Jardin des Récollets.
47 “Autobiography of a French Protestant condemned to the Galleys because of his Religion.” Rotterdam, 1757. (Since reprinted by the Religious Tract Society.)
48 Le comite ou chef de chiourme, aidé de deux sous-comites, allait et venait sans cesse sur le coursier, frappant les forçats à coup de nerfs de bœuf, comme un cocher ses chevaux. Pour rendre les coups plus sensible et pour économiser les vêtements, les galériens étaient nus quand ils ramaient.—Athanase Coquerel fils. Les Forçats pour la Foi, 64.
49 “The Autobiography of a French Protestant,” 68.
50 “Autobiography of a French Protestant,” 112-21.
51 Saint-Simon and Dangeau.
53 Edmund Hughes says the preachers were probably Rouviere (or Crotte), Jean Huc, Jean Vesson, Etienne Arnaud, and Durand.
54 C. Coquerel, “Église du Désert,” i. 105.
55 It has since been published in the “Bulletin de la Société du Protestantisme Français.”
56 Edmund Hughes, “Histoire de la Restauration du Protestantisme en France,” ii. 94.
57 Bénoît, “Edit de Nantes,” v. 987.
58 In 1726, a deputation from Guyenne, Royergue, and Poitou, appeared before the Languedoc synod, requesting preachers and pastors to be sent to them. The synod agreed to send Maroger as preacher. Bètrine (the first of the Lausanne students) and Grail were afterwards sent to join him. Protestantism was also reawakening in Saintonge and Picardy, and pastors from Languedoc journeyed there to administer the sacrament. Preachers were afterwards sent to join them, to awaken the people, and reorganize the congregations.
59 E. Hughes, “Histoire de la Restauration, du Protestantisme en France,” ii. 96.
60 E. Hughes, ii. 99. Coquerel, “L’Église dans le Désert,” i. 258.
61 Although marriages by the pastors had long been declared illegal, they nevertheless married and baptized in the Desert. After 1730, the number of Protestant marriages greatly multiplied, though it was known that the issue of such marriages were declared, by the laws of France to be illegal. Many of the Protestants of Dauphiny went across the frontier into Switzerland, principally to Geneva, and were there married.
62 Of the preachers about this time (1740-4) the best known were Morel, Foriel, Mauvillon, Voulaud, Corteiz, Peyrot, Roux, Gauch, Coste, Dugnière, Blachon, Gabriac, Déjours, Rabaut, Gibert, Mignault, Désubas, Dubesset, Pradel, Morin, Defferre, Loire, Pradon,—with many more. Defferre restored Protestantism in Berne. Loire (a native of St. Omer, and formerly a Catholic), Viala, Préneuf, and Prudon, were the apostles of Normandy, Rouergue, Guyenne, and Poitou.
63 E. Hughes, “Histoire de la Restauration,” &c., ii. 202.
64 On the 1st of November, 1746, the ministers of Languedoc met in haste, and wrote to the Intendant, Le Nain: “Monseigneur, nous n’avons aucune connaissance de ces gens qu’on appelle émissaires, et qu’on dit être envoyés des pays étrangers pour solliciter les Protestants à la révolte. Nous avons exhorté, et nous nous proposons d’exhorter encore dans toutes les occasions, nos troupeaux à la soumission au souverain et à la patience dans les afflictions, et de nous écarter jamais de la pratique de ce précepte: Craignez Dieu et honorez le roi.”
65 Près de Saint-Ambroix (Cevennes) se tint un jour une assemblée. Survint un détachement. Les femmes et les filles furent dépouillées, violées, et quelques hommes furent blessés.—E. Hughes, Histoire de la Restauration, &c., ii. 212.
66 Antoine Court, “Mémoire Historique,” 140.
67 See “Memorial of General Assembly of Clergy to the King,” in Collection des procès-verbaux, 345.
68 The King granted 480 livres of reward to the spy who detected Benezet and procured his apprehension by the soldiers.
69 Ripert de Monclar, procureur-général, writing in 1755, says: “According to the jurisprudence of this kingdom, there are no French Protestants, and yet, according to the truth of facts, there are three millions. These imaginary beings fill the towns, provinces, and rural districts, and the capital alone contains sixty thousand of them.”
70 Athanase Coquerel, “Les Forçats pour la Foi,” 91.
71 “Madame de Pompadour découvrit que Louis XV. pourrait lui-même s’amuser à faire l’éducation de ces jeunes malheureuses. De petites filles de neuf à douze ans, lorsqu’elles avaient attiré les regards de la police par leur beauté, étaient enlevées à leurs mères par plusieurs artifices, conduites à Versailles, et retenues dans les parties les plus élevées et les plus inaccessibles des petits appartements du roi.... Le nombre des malheureuses qui passèrent successivement à Parc-aux-Cerfs est immense; à leur sortie elles étaient mariées à des hommes vils ou crédules auxquels elles apportaient une bonne dot. Quelques unes conservaient un traitement fort considerable.” “Les dépenses du Parc-aux-Cerfs, dit Lacratelle, se payaient avec des acquits du comptant. Il est difficile de les évaluer; mais il ne peut y avoir aucune exagération à affirmer qu’elles coûtèrent plus de 100 millions à l’État. Dans quelques libelles on les porte jusqu’à un milliard.”—Sismondi, Histoire de Française, Brussels, 1844, xx. 153-4. The account given by Sismondi of the debauches of this persecutor of the Huguenots is very full. It is not given in the “Old Court Life of France,” recently written by a lady.
72 Sismondi, xx. 157.
73 Sismondi, xx. 328.
74 To be broken alive on the wheel was one of the most horrible of tortures, a bequest from ages of violence and barbarism. It was preserved in France mainly for the punishment of Protestants. The prisoner was extended on a St. Andrew’s cross, with eight notches cut on it—one below each arm between the elbow and wrist, another between each elbow and the shoulders, one under each thigh, and one under each leg. The executioner, armed with a heavy triangular bar of iron, gave a heavy blow on each of these eight places, and broke the bone. Another blow was given in the pit of the stomach. The mangled victim was lifted from the cross and stretched on a small wheel placed vertically at one of the ends of the cross, his back on the upper part of the wheel, his head and feet hanging down. There the tortured creature hung until he died. Some lingered five or six hours, others much longer. This horrible method of torture was only abolished at the French Revolution in 1790.
75 While Voltaire lived at Lausanne, one of the baillies (the chief magistrates of the city) said to him: “Monsieur de Voltaire, they say that you have written against the good God: it is very wrong, but I hope He will pardon you.... But, Monsieur de Voltaire, take very good care not to write against their excellencies of Berne, our sovereign lords, for be assured that they will never forgive you.”
76 It may be added that, after the reversal of the sentence, David, the judge who had first condemned Calas, went insane, and died in a madhouse.
77 The Huguenots sometimes owed their release from the galleys to money payments made by Protestants (but this was done secretly), the price of a galley-slave being about a thousand crowns; sometimes they owed it to the influence of Protestant princes; but never to the voluntary mercy of the Catholics. In 1742, while France was at war with England, and Prussia was quietly looking on, Antoine Court made an appeal to Frederick the Great, and at his intervention with Louis XV. thirty galley-slaves were liberated. The Margrave of Bayreuth, Culmbach and his wife, the sister of the Great Frederick, afterwards visited the galleys at Toulon, and succeeded in obtaining the liberation of several galley-slaves.
78 This secret meeting-place of the Huguenots is well known from the engraved picture of Boze.
79 Letter of Jean Fabre, in Athanase Coquerel’s “Forçats pour la Foi,” 201-3.
80 “Voltaire et les Genevois,” par J. Gaberel, 74-5.
81 “Lettres inédites des Voltaire,” publiées par Athanase Coquerel fils, 247.
82 Froissard, “Nismes et ses Environs,” ii. 217.
83 Such was the dissoluteness of the manners of the court, that no less than 500,000,000 francs of the public debt, or £20,000,000 sterling, had been incurred for expenses too ignominious to bear the light, or even to be named in the public accounts. It appears from an authentic document, quoted in Soulavie’s history, that in the sixteen months immediately preceding the death of Louis XV., Madame du Barry (originally a courtesan,) had drawn from the royal treasury no less than 2,450,000 francs, or equal to about £200,000 of our present money. [“Histoire de la Décadence de la Monarchie Française,” par Soulavie l’Aîné, iii. 330.] “La corruption,” says Lacretelle, “entrait dans les plus paisibles ménages, dans les familles les plus obscures. Elle [Madame du Barri] était savamment et longtemps combinée par ceux qui servaient les débauches de Louis. Des émissaires étaient employées à séduire des filles qui n’étaient point encore nubiles, à combattre dans de jeunes femmes des principes de pudeur et de fidélité. Amant de grade, il livrait à la prostitution publique celles de ses sujettes qu’il avait prématurement corrompues. Il souffrait que les enfans de ses infâmes plaisirs partageassent la destinée obscure et dangereuse de ceux qu’un père n’avoue point.” Lacretelle, Histoire de France pendant le xviii Siècle, iii. 171-173.
84 “History of the Protestants of France,” by G. de Félice, book v. sect. i.
85 See the Rev. Mark Wilks’s “History of the Persecutions endured by the Protestants of the South of France, 1814, 1815, 1816.” Longmans, 1821.
86 “Life of Stephen Grellet,” third edition. London, 1870.
87 Michel, “Les Anabaptistes des Vosges.” Paris, 1862.
88 The best account of the proceedings at this synod is given in Blackwood’s Magazine for January, 1873.
89 The French livre was worth three francs, or about two shillings and sixpence English money.
90 In “The Huguenots in England and Ireland,” 319, 323, last edition.
91 This china is now at Castle Goring, and, with the whole of the family documents, is in the possession of the Dowager Lady Burrell.
92 The ancient Vaudois had a saying, known in other countries—“Religion brought forth wealth, and the daughter devoured the mother;” and another of like meaning, but less known—“When the bishops’ croziers became golden, the bishops themselves became Wooden.”
93 Sismondi, “Littérature du Midi de l’Europe,” i. 159.
94 It has been surmised by some writers that the Waldenses derived their name from this martyr; but being known as “heretics” long before his time, it is more probable that they gave the name to him than that he did to them.
95 Jean Leger, “Histoire Générale des Églises Évangéliques des Vallées de Piedmont, ou Vaudoises.” Leyde, 1669. Part ii. 330.
96 Leger, ii. 8-20.
99 I find the following under the signature of “An Operative Bricklayer,” in the Times of the 30th July, 1867: “I found there were a great number of men in Paris that worked on the buildings who were not residents of the city. The bricklayers are called limousins; they come from the old province Le Limousin, where they keep their home, and many of them are landowners. They work in Paris in the summer time; they come up in large numbers, hire a place in Paris, and live together, and by so doing they live cheap. In the winter time, when they cannot work on the buildings, they go back home again and take their savings, and stop there until the spring, which is far better than it is in London; when the men cannot work they are hanging about the streets. It was with regret that I saw so many working on the Sunday desecrating the Sabbath. I inquired why they worked on Sunday; they told me it was to make up the time they lose through wet and other causes. I saw some working with only their trousers and shoes on, with a belt round their waist to keep their trousers up. Their naked back was exposed to the sun, and was as brown as if it had been dyed, and shone as if it had been varnished. I asked if they had any hard-working hearty old men. They answered me “No; the men were completely worn out by the time they reached forty years.” That was a clear proof that they work against the laws of nature. I thought to myself—Glory be to you, O Englishmen, you know the Fourth Commandment; you know the value of the seventh day, the day of rest!”
100 An authorised account was prepared by Cardinal Wiseman for English readers, entitled “Manual of the Association of our Lady of Reconciliation of La Salette,” and published as a tract by Burns, 17, Portman Street, in 1853. Since I passed through the country in 1869, the Germans have invaded France, the surrender has occurred at Sedan, the Commune has been defeated at Paris, but Our Lady of La Salette is greater than ever. A temple of enormous dimensions has risen in her honour; the pilgrims number over 100,000 yearly, and the sale of the water from the Holy Well, said to have sprung from the Virgin’s tears, realises more than £12,000. Since the success of La Salette, the Virgin has been making repeated appearances in France. Her last appearance was in a part of Alsace which is strictly Catholic. The Virgin appeared, as usual, to a boy of the mature age of six, “dressed in black, floating in the air, her hands bound with chains,”—a pretty strong religio-political hint. When a party of the 5th Bavarian Cavalry was posted in Bettweiler, the Virgin ceased to make her appearance.
101 A gap in the mountain-wall to the left, nearly over La Bessie, is still known as “La Porte de Hannibal,” through which, it is conjectured, that general led his army. But opinion, which is much divided as to the route he took, is more generally in favour of his marching up the Isère, and passing into Italy by the Little St. Bernard.
102 It has been noted that these unfortunates abound most in the villages occupied by the new settlers. Thus, of the population of the village of St. Crepin, in the valley of the Durance, not fewer than one-tenth are deaf and dumb, with a large proportion of idiots.
103 This was one of the MSS deposited by Samuel Morland (Oliver Cromwell’s ambassador to Piedmont) at Cambridge in 1658, and is quoted by Jean Leger in his History of the Vaudois Churches.
104 De Thou’s History, book xxvii.
105 Since the date of our visit, we learn that a sad accident—strikingly illustrative of the perils of village life at Dormilhouse—has befallen this young shepherd, by name Jean Joseph Lagier. One day in October, 1869, while engaged in gathering wood near the brink of the precipice overhanging Minsals, he accidently fell over and was killed on the spot, leaving behind him a widow and a large family. He was a person of such excellent character and conduct, that he had been selected as colporteur for the neighbourhood.
106 The well-known Alpine missionary, J. L. Rostan, of whom an interesting biography has recently been published by the Rev. A. J. French, for the Wesleyan Conference, was a native of Vars. He was one of the favourite pupils of Felix Neff, with whom he resided at Dormilhouse in 1825-7; Neff saying of him: “Among the best of my pupils, as regards spiritual things and secular too, is Jean Rostan, of Vars: he is probably destined for the ministry; such at least is my hope.” Neff bequeathed to him the charge of his parish during his temporary absence, but he never returned; and shortly after, Rostan left, to pursue his studies at Montauban. He joined the Methodist Church, settled and ministered for a time in La Vaunage and the Cevennes, afterwards labouring as a missionary in the High Alps, and eventually settled as minister of the church at Lisieux, Jersey, in charge of which he died, July, 1859.
107 Barba—a title of respect; in the Vaudois dialect literally signifying an uncle.
108 Huston’s “Israel of the Alps,” translated by Montgomery; Glasgow, 1857; vol. i. p. 446.
109 Of the nineteen companies three were composed of the Vaudois of Angrogna; those of Bobi and St. John furnished two each; and those of La Tour, Villar, Prarustin, Prali, Macel, St. Germain, and Pramol, furnished one each. The remaining six companies were composed of French Huguenot refugees from Dauphiny and Languedoc under their respective officers. Besides these, there were different smaller parties who constituted a volunteer company. The entire force of about eight hundred men was marshalled in three divisions—vanguard, main body, and rearguard—and this arrangement was strictly observed in the order of march.
110 The greater number of them, including Turrel, were taken prisoners and shot, or sent to the galleys, where they died. This last was the fate of Turrel.