Massacres Of The South

A >> Alexandre Dumas, Pere >> Massacres Of The South


However, vanquished and fugitive though they were, the Calvinists did not
lose courage: in exile one day, they felt sure their luck would turn the
next; and while the Catholics were burning or hanging them in effigy for
contumacy, they were before a notary, dividing the property of their
executioners.

But it was not enough for them to buy or sell this property amongst each
other, they wanted to enter into possession; they thought of nothing
else, and in 1569--that is, in the eighteenth month of their exile--they
attained their wish in the following manner:

One day the exiles perceived a carpenter belonging to a little village
called Cauvisson approaching their place of refuge. He desired to speak
to M. Nicolas de Calviere, seigneur de St. Cosme, and brother of the
president, who was known to be a very enterprising man. To him the
carpenter, whose name was Maduron, made the following proposition:

In the moat of Nimes, close to the Gate of the Carmelites, there was a
grating through which the waters from the fountain found vent. Maduron
offered to file through the bars of this grating in such a manner that
some fine night it could be lifted out so as to allow a band of armed
Protestants to gain access to the city. Nicolas de Calviere approving of
this plan, desired that it should be carried out at once; but the
carpenter pointed out that it would be necessary to wait for stormy
weather, when the waters swollen by the rain would by their noise drown
the sound of the file. This precaution was doubly necessary as the box
of the sentry was almost exactly above the grating. M. de Calviere tried
to make Maduron give way; but the latter, who was risking more than
anyone else, was firm. So whether they liked it or not, de Calviere and
the rest had to await his good pleasure.

Some days later rainy weather set in, and as usual the fountain became
fuller; Maduron seeing that the favourable moment had arrived, glided at
night into the moat and applied his file, a friend of his who was hidden
on the ramparts above pulling a cord attached to Maduron's arm every time
the sentinel, in pacing his narrow round, approached the spot. Before
break of day the work was well begun. Maduron then obliterated all traces
of his file by daubing the bars with mud and wax, and withdrew. For
three consecutive nights he returned to his task, taking the same
precautions, and before the fourth was at an end he found that by means
of a slight effort the grating could be removed. That was all that was
needed, so he gave notice to Messire Nicolas de Calviere that the moment
had arrived.

Everything was favourable to the undertaking: as there was no moon, the
next night was chosen to carry out the plan, and as soon as it was dark
Messire Nicolas de Calviere set out with his men, who, slipping down into
the moat without noise, crossed, the water being up to their belts,
climbed up the other side, and crept along at the foot of the wall till
they reached the grating without being perceived. There Maduron was
waiting, and as soon as he caught sight of them he gave a slight blow to
the loose bars; which fell, and the whole party entered the drain, led by
de Calviere, and soon found themselves at the farther end--that is to
say, in the Place de la Fontaine. They immediately formed into companies
twenty strong, four of which hastened to the principal gates, while the
others patrolled the streets shouting, "The city taken! Down with the
Papists! A new world!" Hearing this, the Protestants in the city
recognised their co-religionists, and the Catholics their opponents: but
whereas the former had been warned and were on the alert, the latter were
taken by surprise; consequently they offered no resistance, which,
however, did not prevent bloodshed. M. de St. Andre, the governor of the
town, who during his short period of office had drawn the bitter hatred
of the Protestants on him, was shot dead in his bed, and his body being
flung out of the window, was torn in pieces by the populace. The work of
murder went on all night, and on the morrow the victors in their turn
began an organised persecution, which fell more heavily on the Catholics
than that to which they had subjected the Protestants; for, as we have
explained above, the former could only find shelter in the plain, while
the latter used the Cevennes as a stronghold.

It was about this time that the peace, which was called, as we have said,
"the insecurely seated," was concluded. Two years later this name was
justified by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

When this event took place, the South, strange as it may seem, looked on:
in Nimes both Catholics and Protestants, stained with the other's blood,
faced each other, hand on hilt, but without drawing weapon. It was as if
they were curious to see how the Parisians would get through. The
massacre had one result, however, the union of the principal cities of
the South and West: Montpellier, Uzes, Montauban, and La Rochelle, with
Nimes at their head, formed a civil and military league to last, as is
declared in the Act of Federation, until God should raise up a sovereign
to be the defender of the Protestant faith. In the year 1775 the
Protestants of the South began to turn their eyes towards Henri IV as the
coming defender.

At that date Nimes, setting an example to the other cities of the League,
deepened her moats, blew up her suburbs, and added to the height of her
ramparts. Night and day the work of perfecting the means of defence went
on; the guard at every gate was doubled, and knowing how often a city had
been taken by surprise, not a hole through which a Papist could creep was
left in the fortifications. In dread of what the future might bring,
Nimes even committed sacrilege against the past, and partly demolished
the Temple of Diana and mutilated the amphitheatre--of which one gigantic
stone was sufficient to form a section of the wall. During one truce the
crops were sown, during another they were garnered in, and so things went
on while the reign of the Mignons lasted. At length the prince raised up
by God, whom the Huguenots had waited for so long, appeared; Henri IV
ascended the throne.

But once seated, Henri found himself in the same difficulty as had
confronted Octavius fifteen centuries earlier, and which confronted Louis
Philippe three centuries later--that is to say, having been raised to
sovereign power by a party which was not in the majority, he soon found
himself obliged to separate from this party and to abjure his religious
beliefs, as others have abjured or will yet abjure their political
beliefs; consequently, just as Octavius had his Antony, and Louis
Philippe was to have his Lafayette, Henri IV was to have his Biron. When
monarchs are in this position they can no longer have a will of their own
or personal likes and dislikes; they submit to the force of
circumstances, and feel compelled to rely on the masses; no sooner are
they freed from the ban under which they laboured than they are obliged
to bring others under it.

However, before having recourse to extreme measures, Henri IV with
soldierly frankness gathered round him all those who had been his
comrades of old in war and in religion; he spread out before them a map
of France, and showed them that hardly a tenth of the immense number of
its inhabitants were Protestants, and that even that tenth was shut up in
the mountains; some in Dauphine, which had been won for them by their
three principal leaders, Baron des Adrets, Captain Montbrun, and
Lesdiguieres; others in the Cevennes, which had become Protestant through
their great preachers, Maurice Secenat and Guillaume Moget; and the rest
in the mountains of Navarre, whence he himself had come. He recalled to
them further that whenever they ventured out of their mountains they had
been beaten in every battle, at Jarnac, at Moncontour, and at Dreux. He
concluded by explaining how impossible it was for him, such being the
case, to entrust the guidance of the State to their party; but he offered
them instead three things, viz., his purse to supply their present needs,
the Edict of Nantes to assure their future safety, and fortresses to
defend themselves should this edict one day be revoked, for with profound
insight the grandfather divined the grandson: Henri IV feared Louis XIV.

The Protestants took what they were offered, but of course like all who
accept benefits they went away filled with discontent because they had
not been given more.

Although the Protestants ever afterwards looked on Henri IV as a
renegade, his reign nevertheless was their golden age, and while it
lasted Nines was quiet; for, strange to say, the Protestants took no
revenge for St. Bartholomew, contenting themselves with debarring the
Catholics from the open exercise of their religion, but leaving them free
to use all its rites and ceremonies in private. They even permitted the
procession of the Host through the streets in case of illness, provided
it took place at night. Of course death would not always wait for
darkness, and the Host was sometimes carried to the dying during the day,
not without danger to the priest, who, however, never let himself be
deterred thereby from the performance of his duty; indeed, it is of the
essence of religious devotion to be inflexible; and few soldiers, however
brave, have equalled the martyrs in courage.

During this time, taking advantage of the truce to hostilities and the
impartial protection meted out to all without distinction by the
Constable Damville, the Carmelites and Capuchins, the Jesuits and monks
of all orders and colours, began by degrees to return to Nines; without
any display, it is true, rather in a surreptitious manner, preferring
darkness to daylight; but however this may be, in the course of three or
four years they had all regained foothold in the town; only now they were
in the position in which the Protestants had been formerly, they were
without churches, as their enemies were in possession of all the places
of worship. It also happened that a Jesuit high in authority, named Pere
Coston, preached with such success that the Protestants, not wishing to
be beaten, but desirous of giving word for word, summoned to their aid
the Rev. Jeremie Ferrier, of Alais, who at the moment was regarded as the
most eloquent preacher they had. Needless to say, Alais was situated in
the mountains, that inexhaustible source of Huguenot eloquence. At once
the controversial spirit was aroused; it did not as yet amount to war,
but still less could it be called peace: people were no longer
assassinated, but they were anathematised; the body was safe, but the
soul was consigned to damnation: the days as they passed were used by
both sides to keep their hand in, in readiness for the moment when the
massacres should again begin.




CHAPTER II

The death of Henri IV led to new conflicts, in which although at first
success was on the side of the Protestants it by degrees went over to the
Catholics; for with the accession of Louis XIII Richelieu had taken
possession of the throne: beside the king sat the cardinal; under the
purple mantle gleamed the red robe. It was at this crisis that Henri de
Rohan rose to eminence in the South. He was one of the most illustrious
representatives of that great race which, allied as it was to the royal
houses of Scotland, France, Savoy, and Lorraine; had taken as their
device, "Be king I cannot, prince I will not, Rohan I am."

Henri de Rohan was at this time about forty years of age, in the prime of
life. In his youth, in order to perfect his education, he had visited
England, Scotland, and Italy. In England Elizabeth had called him her
knight; in Scotland James VI had asked him to stand godfather to his son,
afterwards Charles I; in Italy he had been so deep in the confidence of
the leaders of men, and so thoroughly initiated into the politics of the
principal cities, that it was commonly said that, after Machiavel, he was
the greatest authority in these matters. He had returned to France in
the lifetime of Henry IV, and had married the daughter of Sully, and
after Henri's death had commanded the Swiss and the Grison regiments--at
the siege of Juliers. This was the man whom the king was so imprudent as
to offend by refusing him the reversion of the office of governor of
Poitou, which was then held by Sully, his father-in-law. In order to
revenge himself for the neglect he met with at court, as he states in his
Memoires with military ingenuousness, he espoused the cause of Conde with
all his heart, being also drawn in this direction by his liking for
Conde's brother and his consequent desire to help those of Conde's
religion.

From this day on street disturbances and angry disputes assumed another
aspect: they took in a larger area and were not so readily appeased. It
was no longer an isolated band of insurgents which roused a city, but
rather a conflagration which spread over the whole South, and a general
uprising which was almost a civil war.

This state of things lasted for seven or eight years, and during this
time Rohan, abandoned by Chatillon and La Force, who received as the
reward of their defection the field marshal's baton, pressed by Conde,
his old friend, and by Montmorency, his consistent rival, performed
prodigies of courage and miracles of strategy. At last, without
soldiers, without ammunition, without money, he still appeared to
Richelieu to be so redoubtable that all the conditions of surrender he
demanded were granted. The maintenance of the Edict of Nantes was
guaranteed, all the places of worship were to be restored to the
Reformers, and a general amnesty granted to himself and his partisans.
Furthermore, he obtained what was an unheard-of thing until then, an
indemnity of 300,000 livres for his expenses during the rebellion; of
which sum he allotted 240,000 livres to his co-religionists--that is to
say, more than three-quarters of the entire amount--and kept, for the
purpose of restoring his various chateaux and setting his domestic
establishment, which had been destroyed during the war, again on foot,
only 60,000 livres. This treaty was signed on July 27th, 1629.

The Duc de Richelieu, to whom no sacrifice was too great in order to
attain his ends, had at last reached the goal, but the peace cost him
nearly 40,000,000 livres; on the other hand, Saintonge, Poitou, and
Languedoc had submitted, and the chiefs of the houses of La Tremouille,
Conde, Bouillon, Rohan, and Soubise had came to terms with him; organised
armed opposition had disappeared, and the lofty manner of viewing matters
natural to the cardinal duke prevented him from noticing private enmity.
He therefore left Nimes free to manage her local affairs as she pleased,
and very soon the old order, or rather disorder, reigned once more within
her walls. At last Richelieu died, and Louis XIII soon followed him, and
the long minority of his successor, with its embarrassments, left to
Catholics and Protestants in the South more complete liberty than ever to
carry on the great duel which down to our own days has never ceased.

But from this period, each flux and reflux bears more and more the
peculiar character of the party which for the moment is triumphant; when
the Protestants get the upper hand, their vengeance is marked by
brutality and rage; when the Catholics are victorious, the retaliation is
full of hypocrisy and greed. The Protestants pull down churches and
monasteries, expel the monks, burn the crucifixes, take the body of some
criminal from the gallows, nail it on a cross, pierce its side, put a
crown of thorns round its temples and set it up in the market-place--an
effigy of Jesus on Calvary. The Catholics levy contributions, take back
what they had been deprived of, exact indemnities, and although ruined by
each reverse, are richer than ever after each victory. The Protestants
act in the light of day, melting down the church bells to make cannon to
the sound of the drum, violate agreements, warm themselves with wood
taken from the houses of the cathedral clergy, affix their theses to the
cathedral doors, beat the priests who carry the Holy Sacrament to the
dying, and, to crown all other insults, turn churches into
slaughter-houses and sewers.

The Catholics, on the contrary, march at night, and, slipping in at the
gates which have been left ajar for them, make their bishop president of
the Council, put Jesuits at the head of the college, buy converts with
money from the treasury, and as they always have influence at court,
begin by excluding the Calvinists from favour, hoping soon to deprive
them of justice.

At last, on the 31st of December, 1657, a final struggle took place, in
which the Protestants were overcome, and were only saved from destruction
because from the other side of the Channel, Cromwell exerted himself in
their favour, writing with his own hand at the end of a despatch relative
to the affairs of Austria, "I Learn that there have been popular
disturbances in a town of Languedoc called Nimes, and I beg that order
may be restored with as much mildness as possible, and without shedding
of blood." As, fortunately for the Protestants, Mazarin had need of
Cromwell at that moment, torture was forbidden, and nothing allowed but
annoyances of all kinds. These henceforward were not only innumerable,
but went on without a pause: the Catholics, faithful to their system of
constant encroachment, kept up an incessant persecution, in which they
were soon encouraged by the numerous ordinances issued by Louis XIV. The
grandson of Henri IV could not so far forget all ordinary respect as to
destroy at once the Edict of Nantes, but he tore off clause after clause.

In 1630--that is, a year after the peace with Rohan had been signed in
the preceding reign--Chalons-sur-Saone had resolved that no Protestant
should be allowed to take any part in the manufactures of the town.

In 1643, six months after the accession of Louis XIV, the laundresses of
Paris made a rule that the wives and daughters of Protestants were
unworthy to be admitted to the freedom of their respectable guild.

In 1654, just one year after he had attained his majority, Louis XIV
consented to the imposition of a tax on the town of Nimes of 4000 francs
towards the support of the Catholic and the Protestant hospitals; and
instead of allowing each party to contribute to the support of its own
hospital, the money was raised in one sum, so that, of the money paid by
the Protestants, who were twice as numerous as the Catholics, two-sixths
went to their enemies. On August 9th of the same year a decree of the
Council ordered that all the artisan consuls should be Catholics; on the
16th September another decree forbade Protestants to send deputations to
the king; lastly, on the 20th of December, a further decree declared that
all hospitals should be administered by Catholic consuls alone.

In 1662 Protestants were commanded to bury their dead either at dawn or
after dusk, and a special clause of the decree fixed the number of
persons who might attend a funeral at ten only.

In 1663 the Council of State issued decrees prohibiting the practice of
their religion by the Reformers in one hundred and forty-two communes in
the dioceses of Nimes, Uzes, and Mendes; and ordering the demolition of
their meetinghouses.

In 1664 this regulation was extended to the meeting-houses of Alencon and
Montauban, as Well as their small place of worship in Nimes. On the 17th
July of the same year the Parliament of Rouen forbade the master-mercers
to engage any more Protestant workmen or apprentices when the number
already employed had reached the proportion of one Protestant, to fifteen
Catholics; on the 24th of the same month the Council of State declared
all certificates of mastership held by a Protestant invalid from whatever
source derived; and in October reduced to two the number of Protestants
who might be employed at the mint.

In 1665 the regulation imposed on the mercers was extended to the
goldsmiths.

In 1666 a royal declaration, revising the decrees of Parliament, was
published, and Article 31 provided that the offices of clerk to the
consulates, or secretary to a guild of watchmakers, or porter in a
municipal building, could only be held by Catholics; while in Article 33
it was ordained that when a procession carrying the Host passed a place
of worship belonging to the so-called Reformers, the worshippers should
stop their psalm-singing till the procession had gone by; and lastly, in
Article 34 it was enacted that the houses and other buildings belonging
to those who were of the Reformed religion might, at the pleasure of the
town authorities, be draped with cloth or otherwise decorated on any
religious Catholic festival.

In 1669 the Chambers appointed by the Edict of Nantes in the Parliaments
of Rouen and Paris were suppressed, as well as the articled clerkships
connected therewith, and the clerkships in the Record Office; and in
August of the same year, when the emigration of Protestants was just
beginning, an edict was issued, of which the following is a clause:

"Whereas many of our subjects have gone to foreign countries, where they
continue to follow their various trades and occupations, even working as
shipwrights, or taking service as sailors, till at length they feel at
home and determine never to return to France, marrying abroad and
acquiring property of every description: We hereby forbid any member of
the so-called Reformed Church to leave this kingdom without our
permission, and we command those who have already left France to return
forthwith within her boundaries."

In 1670 the king excluded physicians of the Reformed faith from the
office of dean of the college of Rouen, and allowed only two Protestant
doctors within its precincts. In 1671 a decree was published commanding
the arms of France to be removed from all the places of worship belonging
to the pretended Reformers. In 1680 a proclamation from the king closed
the profession of midwife to women of the Reformed faith. In 1681 those
who renounced the Protestant religion were exempted for two years from
all contributions towards the support of soldiers sent to their town, and
were for the same period relieved from the duty of giving them board and
lodging. In the same year the college of Sedan was closed--the only
college remaining in the entire kingdom at which Calvinist children could
receive instruction. In 1682 the king commanded Protestant notaries;
procurators, ushers, and serjeants to lay down their offices, declaring
them unfit for such professions; and in September of the same year three
months only were allowed them for the sale of the reversion of the said
offices. In 1684 the Council of State extended the preceding regulations
to those Protestants holding the title of honorary secretary to the king,
and in August of the same year Protestants were declared incapable of
serving on a jury of experts.

In 1685 the provost of merchants in Paris ordered all Protestant
privileged merchants in that city to sell their privileges within a
month. And in October of the same year the long series of persecutions,
of which we have omitted many, reached its culminating point--the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Henri IV, who foresaw this result,
had hoped that it would have occurred in another manner, so that his
co-religionists would have been able to retain their fortresses; but what
was actually done was that the strong places were first taken away, and
then came the Revocation; after which the Calvinists found themselves
completely at the mercy of their mortal enemies.

From 1669, when Louis first threatened to aim a fatal blow at the civil
rights of the Huguenots, by abolishing the equal partition of the
Chambers between the two parties, several deputations had been sent to
him praying him to stop the course of his persecutions; and in order not
to give him any fresh excuse for attacking their party, these deputations
addressed him in the most submissive manner, as the following fragment
from an address will prove:

"In the name of God, sire," said the Protestants to the king, "listen to
the last breath of our dying liberty, have pity on our sufferings, have
pity on the great number of your poor subjects who daily water their
bread with their tears: they are all filled with burning zeal and
inviolable loyalty to you; their love for your august person is only
equalled by their respect; history bears witness that they contributed in
no small degree to place your great and magnanimous ancestor on his
rightful throne, and since your miraculous birth they have never done
anything worthy of blame; they might indeed use much stronger terms, but
your Majesty has spared their modesty by addressing to them on many
occasions words of praise which they would never have ventured to apply
to themselves; these your subjects place their sole trust in your sceptre
for refuge and protection on earth, and their interest as well as their
duty and conscience impels them to remain attached to the service of your
Majesty with unalterable devotion."