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CHAPTER VIII.

RENEWED FLIGHT OF THE HUGUENOTS.

GREAT was the rejoicing of the Jesuits on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Rome sprang up with a shout of joy to celebrate the event. Te Deums were sung, processions went from shrine to shrine, and the Pope sent a brief to Louis conveying to him the congratulations and praises of the Romish Church. Public thanksgivings were held at Paris, in which the people eagerly took part, thus making themselves accomplices in the proscription by the king of their fellowsubjects. The provost and sheriffs had a statue of Louis erected at the Hotel de Ville, bearing the inscription-Luduvico Magno, victori perpetuo, ecclesia ac regum, dignitatis assertori.* Leseur was employed to paint the subject for the gallery at Versailles, and medals were struck to commemorate the extinction of Protestantism in France.

The Roman Catholic clergy were almost beside themselves with joy. The eloquent Bossuet was especially fervent in his praises of the monarch :-"Touched by so many marvels," said he (15th January 1686), "let us expand our hearts in praise of the piety of the

*The statue was pulled down in 1792, and cast into cannon which thundered at Valmy.

Great Louis. Let our acclamations ascend to heaven, and let us say to this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, what the six hundred and thirty fathers said in the Council of Chalcédon, You have strengthened the faith, you have exterminated the heretics: King of Heaven, preserve the king of earth.'" Massillon also indulged in a like strain of exultation:-" The profane temples," said he, " are destroyed, the pulpits of seduction are cast down, the prophets of falsehood are torn from their flocks. At the first blow dealt to it by Louis, heresy falls, disappears, and is reduced either to hide itself in the obscurity whence it issued, or to cross the seas, and to bear with it into foreign lands its false gods, its bitterness, and its rage.

Let us now see what the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes involved. The demolition of all the remaining Protestant temples throughout France, and the entire proscription of the Protestant religion; the prohibition of even private worship under penalty of confiscation of body and property; the banishment of all Protestant pastors from France within fifteen days; the closing of all Protestant schools; the prohibition of parents to instruct their children in the Protestant faith; the injunction upon them, under a penalty of five hundred livres in each case, to have their children baptized by the parish priest, and brought up in the Roman Catholic religion; the confiscation of the property and goods of all Protestant refugees who failed to return to France within four months; the penalty of the galleys for life to all men, and of imprisonment for

life to all women, detected in the act of attempting to escape from France.

Such were a few of the cruel, dastardly, and inhuman provisions of the Edict of Revocation. Such were the marvels of the piety of the Great Louis, which were so eloquently eulogised by Bossuet and Massillon. The Edict of Revocation was a proclamation of war by the armed against the unarmed a war against peaceable men, women, and children-a war against property, against family, against society, against public morality, and, more than all, against the rights of conscience.

The military jacquerie at once began. The very day on which the Edict of Revocation was registered, steps were taken to destroy the great Protestant church at Charenton, near Paris. It had been the work of the celebrated architect Debrosses, and was capable of containing 14,000 persons. In five days it was levelled with the ground. The great temple of Quevilly, near Rouen, of nearly equal size, in which the celebrated minister Jacques Basnage preached, was in like manner demolished. At Tours, at Nismes, at Montauban, and all over France, the same scenes were enacted, the mob eagerly joining in the work of demolition with levers and pickaxes. Eight hundred Protestant churches were thus thrown down in a few weeks.

The provisions of the Edict of Revocation were rigorously put in force; and they were succeeded by numerous others of like spirit. Thus Protestants were commanded to employ only Roman Catholic servants,

under penalty of a fine of 1000 livres, while Protestant servants were forbidden to serve either Protestant or Roman Catholic employers. If any menservants were detected violating this law, they were to be sent to the galleys; whereas women-servants were to be flogged and branded with a fleur-de-lis— the emblazonment of the "Most Christian King." Protestant pastors found lurking in France after the expiry of the fifteen days were to be condemned to death; and any of the king's subjects found giving harbour to the pastors were to be condemned-the men to be galley-slaves, the women to imprisonment for life. The reward of 5500 livres was offered for the apprehension of any Protestant pastor.

The Huguenots were not even permitted to die in peace, but were pursued to death's door and into the grave itself. They were forbidden to solicit the offices of those of their own faith, and were required to confess and receive unction from the priests, on penalty of having their bodies when dead removed from their dwelling by the common hangman and flung into the public sewer.* In the event of the sick Protestant

The body of the distinguished M. de Chenevix was subjected to this brutal indignity. He was a gentleman illustrious for his learning and piety, and had been councillor to the king in the court of Metz. In 1686 he fell dangerously ill, when the curate of the parish, forcing himself into his presence, importuned him to confess, when he replied that he declined to confess to any but God, who alone

could forgive his sins. The archbishop next visited him, urging him to communicate before he died, at the same time informing him of the penalties decreed by the king against such as died without receiving the sacrament. He refused, declaring that he would never communicate after the popish manner. At his death, shortly after, orders were given that his body should be removed by

recovering, after having rejected the viaticum, he was to be condemned to perpetual confinement at the galleys, or imprisonment for life, with confiscation of all his property. Such were the measures by which the great Louis sought to win back erring souls to Rome.

Crushed, tormented, and persecuted by these terrible enactments, the Huguenots felt that life in France had become almost intolerable. It is true there was one alternative-conversion. But Louis XIV., with all his power, could not prevail against the impenetrable rampart of conscience; and a large proportion of the Huguenots persistently refused to be converted. They would not act the terrible lie to God, and seek their personal safety at the price of hypocrisy. They would not become Roman Catholics; they would rather die. There was only one other means of relief-flight from France. Yet it was a frightful alternative, to tear themselves from the country they loved, from friends and relatives, from the homes of their youth and the

the executioner; and his corpse was accordingly taken, dragged away on a hurdle, and cast upon a dunghill. About four hundred of his friends, of whom the greater number were women, proceeded thither by night to fetch the body away. They wrapped it in linen; four men bore it aloft on their shoulders, and they buried it in a garden. While the corpse was being let down into the grave, the mourning assembly sang the 79th psalm, beginning, "Save me, O God, for the waters are come into my soul." The brother of M. de Chenevix was a Protestant pastor, who was forced to fly at the

Revocation, and took refuge in England. His son was a distinguished officer in the British army, and his grandson was made bishop of Killaloe in 1745, and afterwards of Waterford and Lismore. The present Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Chenevix Trench, is his great grandson by the mother's side, being also descended, by the father's side, from another Huguenot family, the Trenches or De la Tranches, of whom the Earl of Clancarty is the head, who emigrated from France and settled in England shortly after the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

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