feelings; I write to gain the souls of men, who are my flesh and blood. Were I influenced by a love of popularity, or of gain, I would take a different course. It cannot be agreeable to my feelings, nor to my temporal interests, to expose myself to the censure of such a portion of my countrymen. Doubtless it would be more soothing to vanity to figure at a reconciliation dinner, and by the sacrifice of truth, to gain the honour of liberality. But the day will come, my brethren, when yourselves will acknowledge, that

there was more friendship, as well as honesty, in my plain dealing, than all the deceiving complaisance of your Protestant flatterers. I love you as men: as far as in my power, I will ever rejoice to do you service, both temporally and spiritually; but on my allegiance to God, I cannot deceive you. I know assuredly, that your religion is false; and truth and duty compel me to publish my conviction. Judge me not then an enemy because I tell you the truth.

1. A History of the Huguenots. The Third Edition, continued to the present time. By W. S. BROWNING. London: Whittaker & Co. 1842. Large 8vo.

2. Histoire des Eglises du Désert chez les Protestans de France, depuis la Fin du Règne de Louis XIV. jusqu'à la Révolution Française. Par CHARLES COQUEREL. Paris, 1841. 2 tomes, 8vo.

3. Popery always the Same; exemplified in an Account of the Persecution now carrying on against the Protestants in the South of France. London: 1746. 8vo.

THE history of the Reformation in France, as in every other country of Europe, is written in characters of blood and fire. Early in the sixteenth century, during the reign of Francis I., the doctrines of the Bible, preached by Luther in Germany and by Zuingle (or Zwingli) in Switzerland, which had already been embraced by some Frenchmen, made rapid progress. In vain did the "eldest son of the" Romish "Church" endeavour to suppress the writings of the Protestants by severe edicts of censure, and by sanguinary capital punishments. Persecutions only raised up additional converts to the pure doctrines of the Gospel; and in France, as had been the case in the earliest period of Christianity, the blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the Church of Christ. The writings of Calvin, which were widely circulated, contributed not a little to advance the doctrines of the Reformation; and from him these doctrines were, in France, collec

tively termed Calvinism, and those who professed them were designated Calvinists. They were also termed Huguenots -an appellation of contempt, of uncertain origin, by which they were afterwards most commonly known. During the reign of his successor, Henry II., which lasted twelve years, the Reformation made great progress, notwithstanding the persecutions to which the Protestants were exposed. Henry II. was succeeded by Francis II. At this time two great political parties agitated France. The descendants of Hugh Capet (who became King of France in 987) were divided into two branches: that of Valois, which was in actual possession of the throne; and that of Bourbon, which was next in succession to it. The house of Guise, Dukes of Lorraine, pretended to trace their descent from Charlemagne, and sometimes were competitors for the throne with the reigning family; and at other times with the Bourbons for the heirship apparent to it. These two parties, the Bourbons and the faction of the Guises, availed themselves of the religious discussions which were carried on between the Protestants and Papists, in order to conceal their designs, and to combat each other during the reign of Francis II. The Bourbons, who were attached to the Protestants, were exposed to the incessant cabals of the Guises; who, in order that they might weaken, and if possible destroy, their adversaries, persecuted the Reformed with

unheard-of cruelty. Parliamentary tribunals were erected, fitly termed chambres ardentes, burning courts; which were specially charged to examine and punish them, and which mercilessly consigned to the flames all who were convicted of having embraced what were called the new doctrines. The goods of those who escaped the tortures to which they were destined were confiscated, and their children were abandoned to the utmost misery.

Yet, notwithstanding these persecutions, the Protestants would never had thought of appearing to be revolted subjects, had they not been encouraged to it in 1550 by the presence among them of Louis de Condé, a prince of the royal family. With him they formed a league, having previously consulted many law yers and theologians, both in Germany and Switzerland, as to the legality of such a measure. In pursuance of their plan, it was resolved that, on an appointed day, a certain number of the Reformed should appear before the king at Blois, to present a petition for the free exercise of their religion; and in the event of its being refused (as it was foreseen it would be), a chosen band of armed Protestants were to make themselves masters of the city of Blois, seize the Guises, and compel the king to appoint the prince of Condé regent of the realm. But this

scheme was betrayed, and most of those who were engaged in it were executed or imprisoned.

The contest between the two parties became yet more violent in the reign of Charles IX., who ascended the throne of France in 1560, when he was only ten years of age. During his minority, the queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis, held the reins of government. From motives of policy, she granted toleration to the Protestants; who, by an edict, issued in January, 1562, were secured in the exercise of their religion in all parts of the kingdom, except at Paris and in some other cities. This edict afforded the faction of the Guises a pretext for commencing hostilities. Instigated by his mother, the Duke of Guise went to Vassy, a small town in the province of Champagne, where some of his retinue quarrelled with

a body of Protestants who were attending divine service in a barn. In this quarrel two hundred were wounded, and sixty were left dead; the pews and the pulpit were broken, and the Bible was torn to pieces. This was the first Protestant blood shed in civil war.

It belongs to the historian of France to narrate all the transanctions which took place between the rival parties, and which desolated that unhappy country from 1562 until the end of the sixteenth century. Suffice it to state, that after much bloodshed on both sides, and the inflic tion of unheard-of cruelties upon the Protestants, a treaty of peace was concluded in 1570, by which the free exercise of their religion was guaranteed to them every where, except in walled cities. Two cities in every province were to be assigned them; and they were to be admitted into all communities, schools, and public offices. Further, a marriage was proposed between Henry of Navarre and the sister of Charles IX.

These articles were accepted-the sword was sheathed; and the Queen of Navarre, her son Henry (who succeeded her on the throne of Navarre), the princes of the blood, and the principal Protestants, proceeded to Paris on the 18th of August, to celebrate the nuptials. This was the moment seized by the crafty Catherine de Medicis for the full estab lishment of her power, and for exterminating the Protestants. Scarcely were the rejoicings concluded, when all the leaders of the Protestants were assassinated in the dead of the night, in the too celebrated massacre of St. Bartholomew. Referring our readers to the details collected by Mr. Browning from authentic sources, relative to that most atrocious transaction, and to the affairs of the Protestants during the reign of Henry III., we remark, that, after many struggles, their civil rights were secured to them under Henry IV., by the edict issued at Nantes, in 1598, which was declared to be perpetual and irrevocable; but the perpetuity and irrevocability of which was reduced to a short existence of not quite eighty-five years. By that edict liberty of conscience and the free exercise of their religion was granted to the Protestants;

many churches was ceded to them in all parts of France; they had judges of their own persuasion, and free access to all places of honour and dignity; and great sums of money to pay off their troops. A hundred places were given to them, as pledges of their future security, besides funds for the maintenance of their ministers and of their garrisons. During the reign of Louis XIII. they were again molested; again they took up arms, but were worsted, and ultimately were compelled to surrender all their strongholds. Thenceforth they were at the mercy of the sovereign and his ministers; the free exercise of their religion, it is true, was promised to them, and neither Cardinal Richelieu, nor his successor Cardinal Mazarine, molested them. As soon, however, as Louis XIV. abandoned a life of voluptuousness and dissipation, in order to give himself up to devotion, instigated by the Jesuits and by Madame Maintenon, he renewed the persecution of his Protestant subjects; and fire and the sword were again employed to bring them back into the bosom of the Romish Church. In 1681, Louis deprived them of most of their civil rights: and after the decease of the wise Colbert, who had constantly opposed violent measures, Louis gave himself up entirely to the counsels of his minister Louvois, the Chancellor Le Tellier, and the Jesuit Lachaise. In prosecution of his long cherished design of crushing the Protestants, the king first excluded them from his household, and from all other offices of honour and profit. Next, he abolished all the courts of justice which had been created in pursuance of the edict of Nantes; then, laws were enacted, which forbade any one to abjure the Romish religion, and, under very severe penalties, prohibited the Protestants, who had been induced to embrace Popery, from returning to their former faith. Children, of seven years of age, were permitted to renounce the faith of their ancestors-colleges were suppressed and churches were shut up. Sometimes the Protestants were forbidden to print books, and sometimes they were forcibly deprived of such as they had printed. Soldiers were quartered in all the provinces almost at the same time, and

chiefly dragoons. Terror and dread marched before them; and all France was informed that the king would no longer suffer any Huguenots to remain in his dominions, and that they must resolve to change their religion. These booted aposles commenced their military executions in the province of Bearn; whence gradually they were dispersed throughout France, not excepting Paris itself. In the first instance, the intendants were commanded to summon the Protestant inhabitants of cities and commonalties, who were informed that it was the king's pleasure they should become Catholics; and that if they did not do so freely, they should be compelled by force. In vain did the defenceless Protestants reply, that they were ready to sacrifice their estates and lives to the king; but that, their consciences being God's, they could not thus dispose of them. The gates and avenues of the cities were immediately seized by the dragoons, who often came, sword in hand, exclaiming, "Kill! kill! or else be Catholics." They were quartered upon the reformed, with a strict charge to allow none to depart out of their houses, or to conceal any portion of their effects, under the severest penalties. The first days were spent in consuming all the provisions which the houses afforded, and in plundering the Protestants of every article of value; selling to the Papists of the place and neighbourhood whatever goods could be turned into money. Next they assailed the persons of their victims, upon whom they inflicted every refinement of cruelty, in order to compel them to abjure their religion. Men and women were hung by the feet to the roofs or ceilings of chambers, or to chimney-hooks, and were smoked with wisps of wet hay, until they were no longer able to endure the torture; and when they were taken down, they were immediately suspended again, unless they would sign their abjuration. Others were thrown upon great fires, from which they were not removed until they were half roasted. Others again had ropes tied under their arms, and were repeatedly plunged into wells, from which they were not drawn up until they promised to change their religion. Others were

bound like criminals, previously to being put to the question on the rack; and in this posture wine was poured down their throats with a funnel, until, being deprived of their reason, they consented to become Papists. Others were stripped naked, and, after enduring various indignities, pins were stuck into them from the head to the feet. They were cut with penknives: sometimes they were dragged by the nose with hot pincers around the room, until they promised to abjure, or until their piercing cries constrained their tormentors to let them go. They were beaten with staves; and, bruised as they were, they were dragged to the churches, where their forced presence was deemed to be an abjuration. Others were forcibly kept awake for seven or eight days together, and kettles were inverted over their heads, on which they made continual noise until their victims became delirious. Drums were kept beating without intermission for weeks together around the beds of those who were confined to them by fevers or other diseases, till they lost their senses. In some places, fathers and husbands were tied to bedposts, while their daughters and wives were ravished before their eyes; and in other places rapes were publicly permit ted for hours together. Of some, the feet were burnt, and the nails were plucked off the feet and hands of others; men and women were inflated with bellows till they were ready to burst.

If, after this horrid treatment, this "holy severity" of the Romish Church, "and the holy delicacy of her sentiments" (as Bossuet* audaciously terms her sanguinary intolerance), there yet were any who refused to abjure, they were imprisoned in dark and noisome dungeons, where every sort of inhumanity was inflicted upon them. In the meantime, their houses were demolished, their estates laid waste, their woods cut down, and their wives and children were seized and imprisoned in monasteries. When all the provisions in a house were consumed by the soldiers, the tenants of the owner's lands were re

Hist. des Variations. Sixième Avertissement, Euvres. tom. v. p. 155 et seq. Paris, 1740, 4to.

quired to furnish them with subsistence; and, in order to reimburse them, the estates were sold, and the farmers put in possession thereof. If any endeavoured to save themselves by flight, they were pursued and hunted in fields and woods, and shot at like wild beasts. Neither rank nor quality, neither age nor sex, was spared.

While the dragoons were thus ravaging the provinces, spreading terror and desolation everywhere, orders were sent to the frontier towns and sea-ports to guard well all the passes, and stop all who should attempt to escape; so that it was next to impossible they could save themselves by flight. No one was allowed to pass unless he produced a certificate from his bishop or curate that he was a Catholic. All foreign vessels lying in the ports were searched; the coasts, bridges, passages to rivers, ferries, and highways were strictly guarded both night and day. Attempts were also made to seize and carry away some who had made their escape into foreign countries.*

At length, on the 18th of October, 1685, Louis revoked the "irrevocable" and "perpetual" edict of Nantes, which he had solemnly confirmed when he came of age. By the edict of revocation, all the concessions which had been made to the Protestants were withdrawn; their churches were demolished, and the exercise of their religion was forbidden, even in private, on penalty of imprisonment and confiscation of property. Their ministers, who refused to embrace Popery, were banished; their schools were suppressed; and all children who should thereafter be born of Protestant parents were to be baptized and educated in the Romish faith; and no emigration or transfer of property, by lay persons, was to be made, under penalty of imprisonment in the galleys for the men, and of being confined in convents in the case of women. But, notwithstanding the frontiers were guarded, in order to prevent the victims of Popish cruelty from emigrating, both before and after the revocation of the edict

"An account of the Persecutions and Oppressions of the Protestants in France." Printed in the year 1616. 4to., pp. 19-21, 23.

of Nantes, multitudes happily succeeded in effecting their escape; and it is computed that more than half a million of French Protestants found hospitable asylums in England, Switzerland, Holland, and Germany.

"In the revocation of the edict of Nantes, Louis XIV. found the limits of his power. It was a superfluous measure, inasmuch as the persecution had preceded the enactment. It failed of converting the steadfast; and supplementary decrees were published in rapid succession, some of which contained provi

sions so monstrous as to render execution impracticable. Among others, an edict which authorized the separation of all children from Protestant parents: the space requisite for their reception, and the expense attendant on their maintenance, rendered the edict a dead letter.

"There were some very severe enactments to deter preachers from attempting to return to France. The penalty of death was awarded to any minister who should be found in the kingdom: all persons receiving or assisting them were to be sent, the men to the galleys for life, the women to be shaved and imprisoned, with confiscation of property in either case. A reward of five thousand five hundred livres was promised to any one giving information by which a minister could be arrested; and the penalty of death for any one discovered preaching or exercising other worship than the Roman Catholic. In executing this law Basville was dreadfully severe. Twenty Protestants were soon after put to death at Languedoc; and an active pursuit was set on foot for seizing the fugitive ministers, who defied the haughty monarch's edicts, and returned clandestinely among their flocks.

"The readiness with which they were everywhere received, supported, and warned of danner, added to the ingenuity of their disguises, enabled them to baffle the vigilance of the government. Sometimes they passed as pilgrims, or dealers in images and rosaries; sometimes as soldiers. In all cases they were joyfully hailed by their brethren, and crowds attended their preaching in caverns and secret places. The worship of the desert became very general, notwithstanding the dangers to which it was exposed; and when the Protestants were prevented by the presence of troops from acting as they would, they still refused to attend mass, or to send their children to the

Catholic schools, and disregarded every practice commanded by the Church of Rome.

Emigration continued, in defiance of the laws for preventing it, and in spite of the encouragement given to impede the departure of fugitives, whose clothes and other effects

were distributed among the captors. There were repeated instances of converts returning to the faith they had consented to abjure when

pressed by violence; others at the point of death would spurn the Romish sacraments. These symptoms caused much alarm among the zealots, who obtained an edict by which all those who refused the sacraments during their illness should after their death be drawn upon hurdles; and, in the event of their recovery, the men were condemned to the galleys for life, the women to confinement, with confiscation of property.

"In pursuance of this edict, the troops received orders, in some provinces, to ascertain whether the new converts were regular in their attendance at mass, and if they constantly practised the duties enjoined by the Romish Church. The king perceived that his advisers had persuaded him virtually to establish an inquisition; and the orders were revoked, although secretly, lest obstinate Protestants might infer from the circumstance a change in his own principles. He had been assured that the edict was merely a threat to complete the general conversion; but in many towns the disgusting scene of its literal execution took place. Priests, attended by magistrates, would beset a dying man; and, unless he yielded to their invitations, his remains were no sooner cold than the populace was regaled with the barbarous spectacle decreed by the edict." (Browning's History, pp. 251, 252).

Never was oppression more cruel than that endured by the Huguenots, who ventured at all hazards to remain in France. When the emissaries of Rome failed in their efforts to induce any to enter the pale of the Romish Church, the magistrates published a royal order, commanding all his subjects to embrace the Roman Catholic religion. Then the booted missionaries, the dragoons, were sent; and all who were not overcome by them, were either confined in dungeons, from which very few were liberated, or were sent to the galleys, where their companions were the most desperate villains of France, who were sent thither for their crimes. One of the most illustrious of the victims of Papal cruelty on board the galleys was M. de Marolles, the narrative of whose sufferings for his adherence to the Gospel of Christ has often been printed; and the sufferings of other Protestants who were confined on board the galleys have been graphically described by Mons.Jean Bion, a priest of the Romish Church, and chaplain of the galley La Superbe; who, having made his escape to England, abjured Popery, declaring that his opening his eyes to Gospel truth was occasioned prin