PROTESTANTISM IN FRANCE FROM DEATH OF HENRY IV. (1610) TO THE REVOLUTION (1789).

CHAPTER 1.

LOUIS XIII. AND THE WARS OF RELIGION.

Henry IV — Dies in the Midst of his Great Schemes — Louis XIII — Maria de Medici Regent — Alarm of the Protestants — Character of Maria de Medici — Astrology — Governs her Son — Protestants hold a Political Convocation — Henri de Rohan — Degeneracy of the Huguenots — Synods of the French Protestant Church — New Policy of Louis XIII — The Jesuits — Toleration — Invasion of Bearn — Its Protestantism Suppressed — Jesuit Logic — Shall the Sword be Drawn? — War — Saumur — Death of Duplessis-Mornay — Siege of Montauban — of St. Jean d’Angely — A Scotch Pastor on the Ramparts — Peace — Question of the Distinct Autonomy of the Huguenots.

PICTURE: View of the Tomb of St. Sebald: Nuremberg PICTURE: View in La Rochelle: the Street of the Bishopric and St.

Bartholomew Belfry WE resume our history of Protestantism in France at the death-bed of Henry IV. The dagger of Ravaillac arrested that monarch in the midst of his great schemes. 1 Henry had abjured his mother’s faith, in the hope of thereby purchasing from Rome the sure tenure of his crown and the peaceful possession of his kingdom. He fancied that he had got what he bargained for; and being, as he supposed, firmly seated on the throne, he was making prodigious efforts to lift France out of the abyss in which he found her. He was laboring to re-establish order, to plant confidence, and to get rid of the immense debts which prodigality and dishonesty had accumulated, and which weighed so heavily upon the kingdom. He was taking the legitimate means to quicken commerce and agriculture — in short, to efface all those frightful traces which had been left on the country by what are known in history as the “civil wars,” but which were, in fact, crusades organized by the Government on a great scale, in violation of sworn treaties and of natural rights, for the extirpation of its Protestant subjects. Henry, moreover, was meditating great schemes of foreign policy, and had already dispatched an army to Germany in order to humble the House of Austria, and reduce the Spanish influence in Europe, so menacing to ‘the liberties and peace of Christendom. It did seem as if the king would succeed; but his Austrian project too nearly touched the Papal interests. There were eyes watching Henry which he knew not of.

His heretical foreign policy excited a suspicion that, although he was outwardly a Roman Catholic, he was at heart a Huguenot. In a moment, a Hand was stretched forth from the darkness, and all was changed. The policy of Henry IV perished with him.

He was succeeded on the throne by his son, Louis XIII, a youth of eight and a half years. That same evening, an edict of the Parliament of Paris made his mother, Maria de Medici, regent. The consternation of the Huguenots was great. Their hands instinctively grasped their sword-hilts.

The court hastened to calm their fears by publishing a decree ratifying all the former edicts of toleration, and assuring the Protestants that the death of Henry IV would bring with it no change of the national policy; but with so many torn treaties and violated oaths, which they could not banish from their memory, what reliance could the Huguenots place on these assurances? Was it not but a spreading of the old snare around their feet?

In the regent and her son they saw, under a change of names, a second Catherine de Medici and Charles IX, to be followed, it might be, by a second St. Bartholomew.

The boy of eight years who wore the crown could do only what his mother, the regent, counseled, or rather commanded. Maria de Medici was the real sovereign. That ill-fated marriage with the Pope’s niece, alas! of how many wars was it destined to be the prolific source to France! Maria de Medici lacked the talent of her famous predecessor, Catherine de Medici, but she possessed all her treachery, bigotry, and baseness. She was a profound believer in witchcraft, and guided the vessel of the State by her astrological calculations. When divination failed her she had recourse to the advice of the Pope’s nuncio, of the Spanish ambassador, and of Concini, a man of obscure birth from her native city of Florence, on whom she heaped high titles, though she could not impart to him noble qualities. Under such guidance the vessel of the State was drawn farther and farther every day into the old whirlpool. When Louis XIII grew to be a few years older, he strove to break the trammels in which he was held, by banishing his mother to Blois, and instigating men to murder Concini, but he only fell under the influence of a favorite as worthless and profligate as the man he had employed assassins to rid him of. Intrigue, blood, and peculation disgraced the court. The great nobles, contemning the power of the sovereign, retired to their estates, where, at the head of their encampments, they lived like independent kings, and gave sad presage of the distractions and civil broils yet awaiting the unhappy land.

But it is the Protestant thread, now becoming somewhat obscure, that we wish to follow.

The year after the king’s accession (1611) the Protestant nobles met at Saumur, and held one of those political assemblies which they had planned for the regulation of religious interests after the abjuration of Henry IV.

The illustrious Duplessis-Mornay was elected president, and the famous Pastor Chaumier was made vice-president. The convocation consisted of seventy persons in all — noblemen, ministers, delegates from the Tiers Etat, and deputies from the town of La Rochelle: in short, a Huguenot Parliament. The Government, though reluctantly, had granted permission for their meeting; and their chief business was to elect two deputiesgeneral, to be accepted by the court as the recognized heads of the Protestant body. The assembly met. They refused simply to inscribe two names in a bulletin and break up as the court wished; they sat four months, discussed the matters affecting their interests as Protestants, and asked of the Government redress of their grievances. They renewed their oath of union, which consisted in swearing fidelity to the king, always reserving their duty to “the sovereign empire of God.” It was at this assembly that the talents of Henri de Rohan as a statesman and orator began to display themselves, and to give promise of the prominent place he was afterwards to fill in the ranks of the Reformed. He strongly urged union among themselves, he exhorted them to show concern for the welfare of the humblest as well as of the highest in their body, and to display a firm spirit in dealing with Government in the way of exacting all the rights which had been guaranteed by treaty. “We are not come,” he said, “to four cross-roads, but to a point where safety can be found in only one path. Let our object be the glory of God, and the security of the churches he has so miraculously established in this kingdom, providing eagerly for each other’s benefit by every legitimate means. Let us religiously demand only what is necessary. Let us be firm in order to get it.”

The want of union was painfully manifested at this assembly at Saumur, thanks to their enemies, who had done all in their power beforehand to sow jealousies among them. The fervent piety which characterized their fathers no longer distinguished their sons; the St. Bartholomew had inflicted worse evils than the blood it spilt, great as that was; many now cleaved to the Huguenots, whose religion was only a pretext for the advancement of their ambition; others were timid and afraid to urge even the most moderate demands lest they should be crushed outright. There was, too, a marked difference between the spirit of the Protestants in the north and in the south of France. The former were not able to shake off the terror of the turbulent and Popish capital, in the neighborhood of which they lived; the latter bore about them the free air of the mountains, and the bold spirit of the Protestant cities of the south, and when they spoke in the assembly it was with their swords half drawn from the scabbards.

Similar political assemblies were held in subsequent years at Grenoble, at Nimes, at La Rochelle, and at other towns. Meetings of their National Synod were, too, of frequent occurrence during this period, the Moderator’s chair being occupied not infrequently by men whose names were then, and are still, famous in the annals of Protestant literature — Chamier and Dumoulin. These Synods sought to rebuild the French Protestant Church, almost fallen into ruins during the wars of the foregoing era, by restoring the exercise of piety in congregations, cutting off unworthy members, and composing differences and strifes among the Protestant nobles. Gathered from the battle-fields and the deserts of France, bitter memories behind and darkening prospects before them, these men were weary in heart and broken in spirit, and were without the love and zeal which had animated their fathers who sat in the Synod of La Rochelle forty years before, when the French Protestant Church was in the prime and flower of her days.

The Huguenots were warned by many signs of the sure approach of evil times. One ominous prognostic was the reversal of the foreign policy of Henry IV. His last years were devoted to the maturing of a great scheme for humbling the Austrian and Spanish Powers; and for this end the monarch had allied himself, as we have already related, with the northern Protestant nations. Louis XIII disconnected himself from his father’s allies, and joined himself to his father’s enemies, by the project of a double marriage; for while he solicited for himself the hand of the Spanish Infanta, he offered his sister in marriage to the Prince of the Asturias. This boded the ascendency of Spain and of Rome once more in France — in other words, of persecution and war. Sinister reports were circulated through the kingdom that the price to be paid for this double alliance was the suppression of heresy. Soft words continued to come from the court, but the acts of its agents in the provinces were not in correspondence therewith. These were hard enough. The sword was not brought forth, it is true, but every other weapon of assault was vigorously plied. The priests incessantly importuned the king to forbid the Protestants from calling in question, by voice or by pen, the authority of the Church or of the Pope.

He was solicited not to let them open a school in any city, not to let any of their ministers enter a hospital, or administer religious consolation to any of their sick; not to let any one from abroad teach any faith save the Roman; not to let them perform their religious rites; in short, the monarch was to abrogate one by one all the rights secured by treaty to the Protestants, and disannul and make void by a process of evacuation the Edict of Nantes. The poor king did not need any importuning; it was not the will but the power that was wanting to him to fulfill the oath sworn at his coronation, to expel from the lands under his sway every man and woman denounced by the Church. At this time (1614) the States-General, or Supreme Parliament, of France met, the last ever convoked until that memorable meeting of 1789, the precursor of the Revolution. A deputy of the Tiers, or Commons, rose in that assembly to plead for toleration. His words sounded like blasphemy in the ears of the clergy and nobles; he was reminded of the king’s oath to exterminate heretics, and told that the treaties sworn to the Huguenots were only provisional; in other words, that it was the duty of the Government always to persecute and slay the Protestants, except in one case — namely, when it was not able to do it.

Of these destructive maxims — destructive to the Huguenots in the first instance, but still more destructive to France in the long run — two terrible exemplifications were about to be given. The territory of Lower Navarre and Bearn, in the mountains of the Pyrenees, was the hereditary kingdom of Jeanne d’Albret, and we have already spoken of her efforts to plant in it the Protestant faith. She established churches, schools, and hospitals; she endowed these from the national property, and soon her little kingdom, in point of intelligence and wealth, became one of the most flourishing spots in all Christendom. Under her son (Henry IV) this kingdom became virtually a part of the French monarchy; but now (1617) it was wished more thoroughly to incorporate it with France. Of its inhabitants, two thirds — some say nine tenths — were Protestants. This appeared no obstacle whatever to the projected incorporation. The Bearnese had no right to be of any but the king’s religion. A decree was issued, restoring the Roman Catholic faith in Bearn, and giving back to the Romish clergy the entire ecclesiastical property, which had for a half-century been in possession of the Protestants. “These estates,” so reasoned the Jesuit Arnoux, a disciple of the school of Escobar, “belong to God, who is the Proprietor of them, and may not be lawfully held by any save his priests.” 2 Consternation reigned in Bearn; all classes united in remonstrating against this tyrannical decree, which swept away at once their consciences and their property. Their remonstrance was unheeded, and the king put himself at the head of an army to compel the Bearnese to submission. The soldiers led against this heretical territory, which they burned with zeal to purge and convert, were not very scrupulous as to the means. They broke open the doors of the churches, they burned the Protestant books, compelled the citizens to kneel when the Host passed, and drove them to mass with the cudgel. They dealt the more obstinate a thrust with the saber; the women dared not show themselves :in the street, dreading worse violences. 3 In this manner was the Popish religion reestablished in Bearn. This was the first of the dragonnades. Louis XIV was afterwards to repeat on the greater theater of France the bloody tragedy now enacted on the little stage of Bearn.

This was what even now the Protestants feared. Accordingly, at a political assembly held in La Rochelle, 1621, they made preparations for the worst.

They divided Protestant France into eight departments or circles; they appointed a governor over each, with power to impose taxes, raise soldiers, and engage in battle. The supreme military power was lodged in the Duke de Bouillon, the assembly reserving to itself the power of making war or concluding peace. The question was put to the several circles, whether they should declare war, or wait the measures of the court? The majority were averse to hostilities. They felt the feeble tenure on which hung their rights, and even their lives; but they shuddered when they remembered the miseries which previous wars had brought in their train.

They counseled, therefore, that the sword should not be drawn till they were compelled to unsheathe it in sell defense. This necessity had, in fact, already arisen. The king was advancing against them at the head of his. army, his Jesuit confessor, Arnoux, having removed all moral impediments from his path. “The king’s promises,” said his confessor, “are either matters of conscience or matters of State. Those made to the Huguenots are not promises of conscience, for they are contrary to the precepts of the Church; and if they are promises of State they ought to be referred to the Privy Council, which is of opinion they ought not to be kept.” 4 The Pope and cardinals united to smooth the king’s way financially, by contributing between them 400,000 crowns, while the other clergy offered not less than a million of crowns to defray the war expenses.

The royal army crossed the Loire and opened the campaign, which they prosecuted with various but, on the whole, successful fortune. Some places surrendered, others were taken by siege, and the inhabitants, men and women, were often put to the sword. The Castle of Saumur, of which Duplessis-Mornay was governor, and which he held as one of the cautionary fortresses granted by the edicts, was taken by perfidy. The king pledged his word that, if Mornay would admit the royal troops, the immunities of the place should be maintained. No sooner had the king entered than he declared that he took definite possession of the castle. To give this act of ill-faith the semblance of an amicable arrangement, the king offered Mornay, in addition to the arrears of his salary, 100,000 crowns and a marshal’s baton. “I cannot,” replied the patriot, “in conscience or in honor sell the liberty and security of others;” adding that, “as to dignities, he had ever been more desirous to render himself worthy of them, than to obtain them.” This great man died two years afterwards. His end was like his life. “We saw him,” says Jean Daille, his private chaplain, “in the midst of death firmly laying hold on life, and enjoying full satisfaction where men are generally terrified.” He was the last representative of that noble generation which had been molded by the instructions of Calvin and the example of Beza.

The next exploit of the king’s arms was the taking of St. Jean d’Angely.

The besiegers were in great force around the walls, their shot was falling in an incessant shower upon the city, and the inhabitants, when not on duty on the ramparts, were forced to seek refuge in the cellars of their houses.

Provisions were beginning to fail, and the citizens were now worn out by the fatigue of fighting night and day on the walls. In these circumstances, they sent a deputation to Mr. John Welsh, a Scottish minister, who had been exiled from his native land, and was now acting as pastor of the Protestant congregation in St. Jean d’Angely. They told him that one in particular of the enemy’s guns, which was of great size, and moreover was very advantageously placed, being mounted on a rising ground, was sweeping that entire portion of the walls which was most essential to the defense, and had silenced their guns. What were they to do? they asked.

Welsh exhorted them to defend the city to the last, and to encourage them he accompanied them through the streets, “in which the bullets were falling as plentifully as hail,” 5 and mounted the ramparts. Going up to one of the silent guns, he bade the cannonier resume firing; but the man had no powder. Welsh, seizing a ladle, hastened to the magazine and filled it with powder. As he was returning, a shot tore it out of his hand. ‘Using his hat instead of a ladle, he filled it with powder, and going up to the gunner, made him load his piece. “Level well,” said Welsh, “and God will direct the shot.” The man fired, and the first shot dismounted the gun which had inflicted so much damage upon the defenders. The incident re-rived the courage of the citizens, and they resumed the defense, and continued it till they had extorted from their besiegers favorable terms of capitulation. Montauban withstood the royal arms, despite the prophecy of a Carmelite monk, who had come from Bohemia, with the reputation of working miracles, and who assured the king that the city would, without doubt, fall on the firing of the four-hundredth gun. The mystic :number had long since been completed, but Montauban still stood, and at the end of two months and a half, the king, with tears in his eyes, retired from before its walls. It is related that the besieged were apprised of the approaching departure of the army by a soldier of the Reformed religion, who, on the evening before the siege was raised, was playing on his flute the beginning of the sixtyeighth Psalm, “Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered, and let them also that hate him flee before him,” etc. 7 The king had better success at Montpellier, on the taking of which he judged it prudent to close the campaign by signing terms of peace on the 19th October, 1622. The peace indicated a loss of position on the part of the Protestants. The Edict of Nantes was confirmed, but of the cautionary towns which that edict had put into the hands of the Protestants, only two were now left them — Montauban and La Rochelle.

The French Protestants at this stage of their history are seen withdrawing to a certain extent from the rest of the nation, constituting themselves into a distinct civil community, and taking independent political and military action. This was a strong step, but the attitude of the Government, and its whole procedure towards them for a century previous, may perhaps be held as justifying it. It appeared to them the only means left them of defending their natural rights. We are disposed to think, however, that it would have been well had the French Protestants drawn more strongly the line which separated their action as citizens from their action as church members — in other words, given more prominence to their church organization. The theory which they had received from Calvin, and on which they professed to act, was that while society is one, it is divided into the two great spheres of Church and State; that as members of the first — that is, of the Church — they formed an organization distinct from that of the State; that this organization was constituted upon a distinct basis, that of Revelation; that it was placed under a distinct Head, namely, Christ; that it had distinct rights and laws given it by God; and that in the exercise of these rights and laws, for its own proper ends, it was not dependence upon, or accountable to, the State. This view of the Church’s origin and constitution makes her claims and jurisdiction perfectly intelligible; and gives, as the French style it, her raison d’etre. It may not be assented to by all, but even where it is not admitted it can be understood, and the independent jurisdiction of the Church, whether right or wrong in fact, on which we are here pronouncing no opinion, will be seen to be in logical consistency with at least this theory of her constitution. This theory was embraced in Scotland as well as in France, but in the former country it was more consistently carried out than in the latter. While the French Protestants were” the Religion,” the Scots were “the Church ;” while the former demanded “freedom of worship,” the latter claimed “liberty to administer their ecclesiastical constitution.” The weakness of the French Protestants was that they failed to put prominently before the nation their rights as a divinely chartered society, and in their action largely blended things civil and things ecclesiastical. The idea of “Headship,” which is but a summary phrase for their whole conception of a Church, enabled the Scots to keep the two more completely separate than perhaps anywhere else in Christendom. In Germany the magistrate has continued to be the chief bishop; in Geneva the Church tended towards being the supreme magistrate; the Scots have aimed at keeping in the middle path between Erastianism and a theocracy.

Yet, as a proof that the higher law will always rule, while nowhere has the action of the Church been so little directly political as in Scotland, nowhere has the Church so deeply molded the genius of the people, or so strongly influenced the action of the State.

CHAPTER 2.

FALL OF LA ROCHELLE, AND END OF THE WARS OF RELIGION.

Cardinal Richelieu — His Genius — His Schemes — Resolves to Crush the Huguenots — Siege of La Rochelle — Importance of the Town — English Fleet Sent to Succor it — Treachery of Charles I — The Fleet Returns — A Second and Third Fleet — Famine in La Rochelle — Fall of the City — End of the Religious Wars — Despotism Established in France — Fruitless Efforts of Rohan to Rouse the Huguenots — Policy of Richelieu — His Death — Louis XIII Dies.

PICTURE: Cardinal Richelieu PICTURE: View of La Rochelle: the Lantern Tower and Harbour Entrance, from the Mail Gardens THERE was now about to appear on the scene a man who was destined to act a great part in the affairs of Europe. The Bishop of Lucon was a member of the States-General which, as we have already said, assembled in 1614; and there he first showed that aptitude for business which gave him such unrivalled influence and unbounded fame as Cardinal Richelieu. He was a man of profound penetration, of versatile genius, and of unconquerable activity. The queen-mother introduced him to the counciltable of her son Louis XIII, and there the force of his character soon raised him to the first place. He put down every rival, became the master of his sovereign, and governed France as he pleased. It vas about this time (1624) that his power blossomed. He was continually revolving great schemes, but, great as they were, his genius and activity were equal to the execution of them. Although a churchman, the aim of his ambition was rather to aggrandize France than to serve Rome. The Roman purple was to him a garment, and nothing more; or, if he valued it in any degree, it was because of the aid it brought him in the accomplishment of his political projects.

Once and again in the pursuit of these projects he crossed the Pope’s path, without paying much regard to the anger or alarm his policy might awaken in the Vatican. His projects were mainly three. He found the throne weak — in fact contemned — and he wished to raise it up, and make it a power in France. he found the nobles turbulent, and all but ungovernable, and he wished to break their power and curb their pride. In the third place, he revived the policy of Henry IV, which sought to reduce the power of Austria, in both the Imperial and Spanish branches, and with this view the cardinal courted alliances with England and the German States. So far well, as regarded the great cause of Protestantism; but, unfortunately, Richelieu accounted it a necessary step toward the accomplishment of these three leading objects of his ambition, that he should first subdue the Huguenots.

They had come to be a powerful’ political body in the State, with a government of their own, thus dividing the kingdom, and weakening the throne, which it was one of his main objects to strengthen. The Protestants, on the other hand, regarded their political organization as their only safeguard — the bulwark behind which they fought for their religious liberties. How feeble a defense were royal promises and oaths, was a matter on which they had but too ample an experience; and, provided their political combinations were broken up, and their cautionary towns wrested from them, they would be entirely, they felt, at the mercy of their enemies. But this was what the powerful cardinal had resolved upon. The political rights of the Huguenots were an obstacle in his path, which, postponing every other project, he now turned the whole resources of the crown, and the whole might of his genius, to sweep away.

About this time all incident happened at court which is worth recording.

One day Father Arnoux, the king’s confessor, was preaching before his Majesty and courtiers. The Jesuit pronounced a strong condemnation on regicide, and affirmed solemnly that the Order of Jesus allowed no such practice, but, on the contrary, repudiated it. Louis XIII, in whose memory the murder of his father was still fresh, felt this doctrine to be reassuring, and expressed his satisfaction with it. A Scottish minister of the name of Primrose chanced on that day to be among the auditors of Father Arnoux, and easily saw through the sophism with which he was befooling the king.

Primrose made the Jesuit be asked if Jacques Clement had killed his king, or even a king, when he stabbed a prince excommunicated by the Pope? and further, in the event of the Pope excommunicating Louis XIII, would the Jesuits then acknowledge him as tacit king, or even as a king? and, finally, were they disposed to condemn their disciple Ravaillac as guilty of high treason? These were embarrassing questions, and the only response which they drew forth from Arnoux was an order of banishment against the man who had put them. The Huguenot body at this period had, to use the old classic figure, but one neck — that neck was their stronghold of La Rochelle, and the cardinal resolved to strike it through at a blow. La Rochelle was perhaps, after Paris, the most famous of the cities of France. It enjoyed a charter of civic independence, which dated from the twelfth century. It was governed by a mayor and council of 100. Its citizens amounted at this time to 30,000.

They were industrious, rich, intelligent, and strongly attached to the Protestant faith, which they had early embraced. Not once throughout the long struggle had La Rochelle succumbed to the royal arms, though often besieged. 2 This virgin fortress was the strongest rampart of the Huguenots.

The great chiefs — Conde, Coligny, Henry of Navarre — had often :made it their head-quarters. Within its gates had assembled the famous Synod of 1571, which comprised so much that was illustrious in rank, profound in erudition, and venerable in piety, and which marks the culminating epoch of the French Reformed Church. La Rochelle was the basis of the Huguenots; it was the symbol of their power, and while it stood their political and religious existence could not be crushed. On that very account Richelieu, who had resolved to erect a monarchical despotism in France, was all the more determined to overthrow it.

The first attempt of the cardinal against this redoubtable city was made in 1625. Arising under the Dukes of Rohan and Soubise, the two military leaders of the Protestants, disconcerted the plans which Richelieu was carrying out against Austria. He instantly dropped his schemes abroad to strike a blow at home. Sending the French fleet to La Rochelle, a great naval battle, in which Richelieu was completely victorious, was fought off the coast. La Rochelle seemed at the mercy of the victor; but the discovery of a plot against his life called the cardinal suddenly to court, and the doomed city escaped. Richelieu crushed his enemies at Paris, grasped power more firmly than ever, and again turned his thoughts to the reduction of the stronghold of the Protestants. The taking of La Rochelle was the key of his whole policy, home and foreign, and he made prodigious efforts to bring the enterprise to a successful issue. He raised vast land and naval armaments, and opened the siege in October, 1627.

The eyes of all Europe were fixed on the city, now enclosed both by sea and land, by the French armies. All felt how momentous was the issue of the conflict about to open. The, spirit of the Rochellois was worthy of the brave men from whom they were sprung, and of the place their city held in the great cause in which it had embarked. The mayor, Guiton, to an earnest Protestantism added all iron will and a dauntless courage. With nothing around them but armed enemies, the ships of the foe covering the sea, and the lines of his infantry occupying the land, the citizens were of one mind, to resist to the last. The attitude of the brave city, and the greatness of the issue that hung upon its standing or falling, as regarded the Protestant cause, awakened the sympathies of the Puritans of England. They raised a powerful army for the relief of their brethren of La Rochelle; but their efforts were frustrated by the treachery of the court. Charles I, influenced by his wife, Henrietta of France, wrote to Pennington, the commander of the fleet, “to dispose of those ships as he should be directed by the French king, and to sink or fire such as should refuse to obey these orders.” When the sailors discovered that they were to act not for, but against the Rochellois, they returned to England, declaring that they “would rather be hanged at home for disobedience, than either desert their ships, or give themselves up to the French like slaves, to fight against their own religion.”

Next year, after the Duke of Soubise, who commanded in La Rochelle, had visited England, the king was prevailed upon again to declare himself the protector of the Rochellois, and an army of about 7,000 marines was raised for that service. The English squadron set sail under the command of Buckingham, an incompetent and unprincipled man. Its appearance off La Rochelle, 100 sail strong, gladdened the eyes of the Rochellois; but it was only for a moment. There now commenced on the part of Buckingham a series of blunders and disasters, which, whether owing to incompetency or perfidy, tarnished the naval glory of England, and bitterly mocked the hopes of those to whom it had held out the delusive prospect of deliverance. Better, in truth, it had never come, for its appearance suggested to Richelieu the expedient which led inevitably to the fall of the city. La Rochelle might be victualled by sea, and so long as it was so, its reduction, the cardinal felt, was impracticable. To prevent this, Richelieu bethought him of the same expedient by which a conqueror of early times had laid a yet prouder city, Tyre, level with the waters. The cardinal raised a dyke or mole across the channel of about a mile’s breadth, by which La Rochelle is approached, and so closed the gates of the sea against its succor. The English fleet assailed this dyke in vain. Baffled in all their attempts, they returned to their own shores, and left the beleaguered city to its fate. Famine now set in, and soon became sore in the city; but it ‘would be too harrowing to dwell on its horrors. The deaths were daily. The most revolting garbage was cooked and eaten. Specters, rather than men, clad in armor, moved through the streets. The houses were full of dead, which the living had not strength to bury. Crowds of old women and children went out at the gate, at times, in the hope that the sight of their great misery might move their enemies to pity, or that they might :find something by the way to assuage their hunger; but they were dealt with as the caprice or cruelty of the besiegers prompted. Sometimes they were strangled on gibbets, and sometimes they were stripped naked and scourged back into the city. Still no thought of a surrender was entertained.

For more than a year had the Rochellois waited, if haply from any quarter — the Protestants of other countries, or their brethren in the provinces — deliverance might arise. In no quarter could they descry sign or token of help; not a voice was raised to cheer, not a hand was stretched out to aid.

Fifteen terrible months had passed over them. Two-thirds of the population were dead. Of the fighting men not more than 150 remained.

Around their walls was assembled the whole power of France. There seemed no alternative, and on October 28th, 1628, La Rochelle surrendered at discretion. So fell the Huguenots as a political power in France. The chief obstacle in the path of Richelieu was now out of his way. The despotism which he strove to rear went on growing apace. The throne became stronger every year, gradually drawing to itself all rights, and stretching its absolute sway over all classes, the nobles as well as the peasants, till at last Louis XIV could say, “The State, it is I.” And so continued matters till the Revolution of 1789 came to cast down this overgrown autocracy.

But one is curious to know how it came to pass that the great body of the Protestants in the south of France looked quietly on, while their brethren and their own political rights were so perilously endangered in the fall of La Rochelle. While the siege was in progress, the Duke of Rohan, the last great military chief of the Protestants, traversed the whole of the Cevennes, where the Huguenots were numerous, appealing to their patriotism, to the memory of their fathers, to their own political and religious privileges — all suspended upon the issue at La Rochelle — in the hope of rousing them to succor their brethren. But his words fell on cold hearts. The ancient spirit was dead.

All the ancient privileges of La Rochelle were annulled, and the Roman Catholic religion was re-established in that city. The first mass was sung by Cardinal Richelieu himself. One cannot but admire the versatility of his genius. During the siege he had shown himself the ablest and most resolute soldier in the whole camp. All the operations of the siege were of his planning; the construction of the mole, the lines of circumvallation, all were prepared by his instructions, and executed under his superintendence; and now, the bloody work at an end, he put off his coat of mail, washed his hands, and appearing before the altar in his priestly robes, he inaugurated the Roman worship in La Rochelle by celebrating the most solemn service of his Church. A Te Deum, by Pope Urban VIII, for the fall of the stronghold of the Huguenots, showed how the matter was viewed at Rome.

After this the Protestants could offer no organized resistance, and the king, by way of setting up a monument to commemorate his triumph, placed the Huguenots under an edict of grace. This was a virtual revocation of the Edict of Nantes; the father, however, left it to the son, Louis XIV., to complete formally what he had begun; but henceforward the French Protestants held their lives, and what of their political and religious rights was left them, of grace and not of fight. Had the nation of France rest now that the wars of religion were ended? No; the wars of prerogative immediately opened. The Roman Catholic nobles had assisted Richelieu to put down the Huguenots, and now they found that they had cleared the way for the tempest to reach themselves. They were humbled in their turn, and the throne rose above all classes and interests of the State. The cardinal next gave his genius and energy to affairs abroad. He took part, as we have seen, in the Thirty Years’ War, uniting his arms with those of the heroic Gustavus Adolphus, not because he wished to lift up the Protestants, but because he sought to humble the House of Austria and the Catholic League. Personal enemies the cardinal readily forgave, for, said he, it is a duty to pardon and forget offenses; but the enemies of his policy, whom he styled the enemies of Church and State, he did not pardon, “for,” said he, “to forget these offenses is not to forgive them, it is to repeat them.”

It was the design of God to humble one class of his enemies by the instrumentality of another, and so Richelieu prospered in all he undertook, lie weakened the emperor; he mightily raised the prestige of the French arms, and he made the throne the one power in the kingdom. But these brilliant successes added little to the personal happiness of either the king or his minister. Louis XIII was of gloomy temper, of feeble intellect, of no capacity for business; and his energetic minister, who did all himself, permitted his sovereign little or no share in the management of affairs.

Louis lived apart, submitting painfully to the control of the man who governed both the king and the kingdom. As regards the cardinal, while passing from one victory to another he was constantly followed by a menacing shadow. Ever and anon conspiracies were formed to take away his life. He triumphed over them all, and held power to the last, but neither he nor the king lived to enjoy what it took such a vast amount of toil and talent and blood to achieve. The cardinal first, and six months after, the king, were both stricken, in the mid-time of their days and in the height of their career. They returned to their dust, and that day their thoughts perished.

CHAPTER 3.

INDUSTRIAL AND LITERARY EHINENCE OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS.

Liberty Falls with the Huguenots — Louis XIV — Mazarin at the Helm — His Character — The Nobles and the Mob — The Protestants — They Excel in Agriculture — Their Eminence in Trade and Manufactures — Their Superior Probity — Foreign Commerce in their Hands — Their Professional and Literary Eminence — Pulpit Eloquence — French Synods — Mere Shadows of Former Assemblies — French Protestant Seminaries — Montauban — Saumur — Sedan — Nimes — Eminent Protestant Pastors — Chamier — Dumoulin — Petit — Rivet — Basnage — Blondel — Bochart — Drelincourt.

PICTURE: Huguenot Medals or Communion “Tokens” PICTURE: Cardinal Mazarin.

THE mob and the nobles took part with the French court in its efforts to extinguish Protestantism. With their help the court triumphed. The seeds of Protestantism were still in the soil of France, covered up by a million of corpses, and these the very men who, had their lives been spared, would have enriched the nation with their industry, glorified it with their genius, and defended it with their arms. We are now arrived at the end of the religious wars. What has France gained by her vast expenditure of blood and treasure? Peace? No; despotism. The close of the reign of Louis XIII shows us the nobles and the mob crushed in their turn, and the throne rising in autocratic supremacy above all rights and classes. One class, however, is exempt from the general serfdom. The Church shares the triumph of the throne. The hand of a priest has been laid upon the helm of the State, and the king and the clergy together sway the destinies of a prostrate people. This ill-omened alliance is destined to continue for, though one cardinal minister is dead, another is about to take his place — and the tyranny which has grown out of it is destined to go on, adding year by year to its own prerogatives and the people’s burdens, until its existence and exactions shall terminate together by the arrival of the Revolution, which will mingle all four the throne, the priesthood, the aristocracy, and the commonalty — in one great ruin.

Louis XIV, now king, was a child of four and a half years. His father on his death-bed had named a council of regency to assist the queen-mother in governing the kingdom during the minority of his son. The, first act of Anne of Austria was to cancel the, will of her husband, and to assume the reins of government as sole regent, calling to her aid as prime minister Cardinal Mazarin, the disciple of Richelieu. There fell to him an easier task than that which had taxed the energies and genius of his great predecessor.

Richelieu had fought the battle of the crown, and subjected to it both the nobles and the people: the work expected of Mazarin was that he should keep what Richelieu had won. This he found, however, no easy matter.

Richelieu had carefully husbanded the revenues of the State; Mazarin wasted them. Extravagance created debts; debts necessitated new taxes; the taxes were felt to be grievous burdens by the people. First murmurs were heard; then, finally, insurrection broke out. The nobles, now that Richelieu was in his grave, were attempting to throw off the yoke. An oppressed, turbulent, and insurrectionary people were parading the streets of the capital, and carrying their threats to the very gates of the palace. Both nobles and mob thought the time favorable for reducing the power of the throne, and recovering those privileges and that influence of which the great minister of Louis XIII had stripped them. They did not succeed. The yoke which themselves had so large a share in fitting upon their own necks they were compelled to wear; but the troubles in which they plunged the country were a shield for the time over the small remnant of Protestantism which had been spared in France.

That remnant began again to flourish. Shut out from the honors of the court, and the offices of the State, the great body of the Protestants transferred their talents and activity to the pursuits of agriculture, of trade, and of manufactures. In these they eminently excelled. The districts where they lived were precisely those where the richest harvests were seen to wave. The farms they owned in Bearn became proverbial for their fertility and beauty. The Protestant portions of Languedoc were known by their richer vines, and more luxuriant wheat. The mountains of the Cevennes were covered with noble forests of chestnuts, which, in harvest-time, let fall their nuts in a rain as plenteous as that of the manna of the desert, to which the inhabitants compared it. In those forests wandered numerous herds, which fed on the rich grasses that flourished underneath the great trees. Era-bosomed :in one of the mountains, the Eperon, was a plain which the traveler found green and enameled with flowers at all seasons. It abounded in springs, and when the summer had wasted the neighboring herbage, the sun touched the pastures of this plain with a brighter green, and tinted its blossoms with a livelier hue. It was not unworthy of the name given it, the Hort-Dieu, or garden of the Lord. The Vivrais produced more corn than the inhabitants could consume. The diocese of Uzes overflowed with oil and wine. The valley of the Vaunage, in the district of Nimes, became famous for the luxuriance of its fields and the riches of its gardens. The Protestants, to whose skill and industry it largely owed the exuberance that gave it renown, had more than sixty churches within its limits, and marked their appreciation of its happy conditions by calling it the “Little Canaan.” Everywhere France boasts a fertile soil and a sunny air, but wherever the Huguenot had settled, there the earth opened her bosom in a seven-fold increase, and nature seemed to smile on a faith which the Government had anathematized, and which it pursued with persecuting edicts.

The Protestants of France were marked by the same superiority in trade which distinguished them in agriculture. Here their superior intelligence and application were, perhaps, even more apparent, and were rewarded with a yet greater measure of success. The wine trade of many districts, especially that of Guienne, was almost entirely in their hands. The goods of the linen and cloth weavers of Vire, Falaise, and Argentine, in Normandy, they sold to the English and Dutch merchants, thus nourishing the home industry while they enriched the foreign market. They were the main carriers between Metz and Germany. The Mimes merchants were famous all over the south of France, and by their skill and capital they provided employment and food for innumerable families who otherwise would have been sunk in idleness and poverty. “If the Nimes merchants,” wrote Baville, the Intendant of the province, in 1699, “are still bad Catholics, at any rate they have not ceased to be very good traders.” 1 In the center of France, at Tours, on the banks of the Rhone, at Lyons, they worked in silks and velvets, and bore off the palm from every other country for the quality of their fabrics and the originality and beauty of their designs. They excelled in the manufacture of woolen cloths. In the mountainous parts of the Cevennes, families often passed their summers a-field, and their winters at the loom. They displayed not less skill in the manufacture of paper. The paper-mills of Ambert were unrivalled in Europe. They produced the paper on which the best printing of Pads, Amsterdam, and London was executed. They were workers in iron, and fabricated with skill and elegance weapons of war and implements of husbandry. In all these industries large and flourishing factories might be seen in all parts of France. If the mercantile marine flourished along the western and northern sea. board, and the towns of Bordeaux, La Rochelle, and the Norman ports rapidly grew in population and wealth, it was mainly owing to the energy and enterprise of the Huguenots. After the horrid din of battle which had so long shaken France, it was sweet to hear only the clang of the hammer; and after the fearful conflagration of burning cities which had so often lit up the midnight skies of that country, it was pleasant to see no more startling spectacle than the blaze of the forge reflected from the overhanging cloud.

The probity of the French Protestants was not less conspicuous than their intelligence. This quality could not be hidden from the quick eyes of foreign merchants, and they selected as their medium of communication with France those in whose honesty they could thoroughly confide, in preference to those whom they deemed of doubtful integrity. This tended to their further importance and wealth, by placing the foreign trade of the country in their hands. The commercial correspondents of the Dutch and English merchants were almost exclusively Huguenots. Their word was taken where the bond of a Romanist would be hesitatingly accepted or, it might be, declined. The cause of this superior integrity is to be found not only in their higher religious code, but also in the fact that, being continually and malignantly watched by their countrymen, they found their safety to lie in Unremitting circumspection and unimpeachable integrity. There was, moreover, a flexibility about their minds which was wanting in their Romanist countrymen. Their religion taught them to inquire and reason, it awoke them from the torpor and emancipated them from the stiffness that weighed upon others, and this greater versatility and Power they easily transferred to the avocations of their daily life. The young Huguenot not infrequently visited foreign countries, sometimes in the character of a traveler impelled by thirst for knowledge, and sometimes in the character of an exile whom the storms of persecution had cast on an alien shore; but in whatever capacity he mingled with foreigners, he always carried with him a mind keen to observe, and open to :receive new ideas.

On his return he improved or perfected the manufactures of his own land, by grafting upon them the better methods he had seen abroad. Thus, partly by studying in foreign schools, partly by their own undoubted inventive powers, the French Protestants carried the arts and manufactures of France to a pitch of perfection which few countries have reached, perhaps none excelled, and their numbers, their wealth, and their importance increased despite all the efforts of the Government to degrade and even to exterminate them. As an additional element of their prosperity, we must add that the year of the Huguenot contained a good many more working days than that of the Romanist. The fete-days of the Church abridged the working year of the latter to 260 days; whereas that of the Protestant contained 50 days more, or 310 in all.

Agriculture, manufactures, and art did not exclusively engross the French Protestants. Not a few aspired to a higher sphere, and there their genius shed even a greater glory on their country, and diffused a brighter luster around their own names. Protestants took a foremost place among the learned physicians, the great lawyers, and the illustrious orators of France.

Their intellectual achievements largely contributed to the splendor which irradiated the era of Louis XIV. A Protestant advocate, Henry Basnage, led for fifty years the Rouen bar. 2 His friend, Lemery, father of the illustrious chemist, of whose birth within her walls Rouen is to this day proud, discharged with rare distinction, in the Parliament so hostile to the Huguenots, the duties of Procureur. 3 The glory of founding the French Academy is clue to a Protestant, Valentine Conrart, a man of fine literary genius. A little company of illustrious men, who met at Conrart’s house, first suggested the idea of the Academy to Richelieu. The statesman gave it a charter, but Conrart gave it rules, and continued to be its life and soul until the day of his death. In this list of Protestants who adorned the country that knew so in to appreciate their faith, was Guy Pantin. He was distinguished as a man of letters, and not less distinguished as a philosopher and a physician. Another great name is that of Pierre Dumoulin, who is entitled to rank with the best of the classical prose writers of France. “With more respect for the proprieties,” says Weiss, “and less harshness of character, his style reminded the reader of the great qualities of that of Calvin, whose Institutes of Christianity had supplied France with its first model of a lucid, ingenious, and vehement prose, such as the author of the Provincial Letters would not have disowned.” With the Huguenots came the era of pulpit eloquence in France. In the worship of the Church of Rome, the sermon was but the mere accessory.

In the Protestant Church the sermon became not indeed the essential, but the central part of the service. The Reformation removed the sacrifice of the mass and restored the Word of God, it banished the priest and brought back the preacher. Thus the pulpit, which had played a prominent part in the early Church, but had long been forgotten, was again set up, and men gathered round it, as being almost solely the font of Divine knowledge so long as the Bible in the vernacular was scarcely accessible. The preacher had to study that he might teach. His office was to instruct, to convince, to exhort; and the more than human grandeur of his topics, and the more than temporary issues of his preaching, tended to beget a sublimity both of thought and utterance that reached the loftiest oratory. The audiences daily grew: the preacher excelled more and more in his noble art, and the Protestant pulpit became the grand pioneer of modern eloquence.

Rome soon saw that she could not with safety to herself despise an instrumentality so powerful. Hence arose a rivalship between the two Churches, which elevated the pulpits of both, but in the end the Popish seemed to distance the Protestant pulpit. The Protestant preacher gave more attention to the truth he delivered than to the words in which he expressed it, or the gestures with which he set it forth. The preachers who filled the Roman pulpits brought to their aid the arts of a brilliant rhetoric, and the graces of an impassioned delivery, and thus it came to pass that, towards the end of the century, the Church of Rome bore off the palm of pulpit oratory in France. The Protestant preachers of that day had much to dishearten and depress them; the great orators of the Romish Church — Bossuet, Massillon, Flechier, Bourdaloue, and Fenelon — had, on the contrary, everything to awaken and reward their efforts; but it was the preachers formed in the school of Calvin that paved the way for those who so successfully and so brilliantly succeeded them. “If France had never had her Saurins,” said one of the great orators of the English pulpit, “her Claudes, her Du Plessis-Mornays, her national Church had never boasted the genius of Bossuet, and the virtues of Fenelon.” From the pulpit we turn to the Protestant Synods of France. During the wars which the ambition of Richelieu carried on in the latter end of the reign of Louis XIII, and the troubles which distracted the nation in the opening years of the reign of Louis XIV, several National Synods of the Protestant Church were held. These were but mere shadows of the numerous and majestic assemblies of the better days of the French Church, and the hearts of the members could not but be sad when they thought how glory and power had departed from them since the days of the Queen of Navarre and of Admiral Coligny, illustrious as a warrior and statesman, but not less illustrious as a Christian. The right of meeting had to be solicited from the court; it was always obtained with difficulty; and the interval between each successive Synod was longer and longer, preparatory to their final suppression. The royal commissioner brought with him from court most commonly an ungrateful message; it was delivered in an imperious tone, and was heard in obsequious silence. The members of Synod were reminded that if the throne was powerful its authority was their shield, and that it was their wisdom to uphold, as it was their duty to be thankful for, a prerogative which in its exercise was so benignant towards them. Men who, like these French pastors, met under the shadow of a tyrannical king, with the sword of persecution hanging by a single thread above their heads, could not be expected to show much life or courage, or devise large and effective measures for the building up of their ancient Church. They were entirely in the power of their enemy, and any bold step would have been eagerly laid hold of by the Government as a pretext for crushing them outright. They were spared because they were weak, but their final extinction was ever kept in view.

Still all glory had not departed from the Protestant Church of France.

Among its pastors, as we have just seen, were men of great genius, of profound erudition, and of decided piety; and these, finding all corporate action jealously denied them by the Government, turned their energies into other channels. If Protestantism was decaying and passing from view, there were individual Protestants who stood nobly out, and whose names and labors were renowned in foreign countries. French Protestant literature blossomed in the seventeenth century, which was the age of great theological writers in France, as the sixteenth had been the age of famous Synods. Of these writers not a few keep their place after the lapse of two centuries, and their works are accounted, both in our own country and in Germany, standards on the subjects of which they treat. Their writings are characterized by the same fine qualities which distinguished the great authors of their nation in other departments of literature — a penetrating judgment, an acute logic, a rich illustrative power which makes the lights and shadows of fancy to play across the page, and a brilliant diction which enriches and purifies the thought that shines through it. These men occupied the pulpits of some of the most important towns, or they filled the chairs of the seminaries or colleges which the Protestant Church was permitted to maintain, and which she richly endowed. The French Church at that time had four such academies — Montauban, Saumur, Sedan, and Nimes.

The first of these four seminaries, Montauban, was famous for the high tone of its orthodoxy. It was a well of Calvinism undefiled. It was not less distinguished for the eminent talents of its teachers. Among others, it boasted Daniel Chamier, a remarkable man, whose name was famous in his own day, and is not unknown in ours. Combining the sagacity of the statesman with the erudition of the theologian, he had a chief hand in the drawing up of the Edict of Nantes. He was a distinguished controversialist, and bore away the prize in a public discussion at Nimes with the confessor of Henry IV. At the request of his brethren, he undertook a refutation of Bellarmin, the ablest of the Papal champions. This work, in four volumes, has received the praise of a modern German theologian, Staudlin, for the stores of knowledge its author displays, and the searching criticism which he brings to bear upon the Popish system. The manner of his death was unusual. During the siege of Montauban (1621) he was sent to preach to the soldiers on the walls, who had not been able to attend church. As he mounted the ramparts, he was struck by a cannon-ball, and expired.

Saumur was the symbol of a declining theology. Its professors conducted their labors chiefly with an eye to smoothing the descent from Calvinism to Arminianism. They were learned men in the main, and produced works which excited a various interest. A moderate theology has ever had a tendency to stereotype men in moderate attainments: the professors of Saumur are no exception. Their names would awaken no recollections now, and it is unnecessary therefore to mention them.

Sedan had a purer fame, and a more interesting history. It is associated with the name of Andrew Melville, and of numerous other Scotsmen who here taught with distinction. Pierre Dumoulin (1658), one of the greatest Protestants of his day, filled one of its chairs. As minister of Charenton, he had been the head of the Protestants of Paris, where his talents and influence were of great service to the cause in every part of France; but becoming obnoxious to the Jesuits, he fled to Sedan, then an independent principality, though under the King of France. Here the remainder of his most laborious life was passed. No fewer than seventy three works proceeded from his pen; of these the most popular were the Buckler of the Faith, and the Anatomy of the Mass. The latter still finds numerous readers. Dumoulin was a child of four years when the St. Bartholomew Massacre took place, and would, even at that tender age, have been included among its victims but for the kindness of a servant. He lived to the age of ninety. When one told him that his dissolution was near, he thanked him for bringing him such happy tidings, and broke out into a welcome to death — “ that lovely messenger that would bring him to see his God, after whom he had so long aspired.” And so he ceased to be seen of men. It was in this university that Daniel Tilenius taught. He was the first to introduce into France those theological controversies touching Grace and Free Will, which the celebrated Arminius had, as we have seen, begun in Holland a few years before. The progress of Arminian views gradually weakened the hold of Calvinism on the French Reformed Church.

Of these four seats of Protestant learning, Nimes was the least famous. It numbered among its professors Samuel Petit (1643). This man, who was a distinguished Oriental scholar, filled the chair of Greek and Hebrew in this academy. An anecdote is told of him which attests the familiarity he had acquired with the latter language. One day he entered the synagogue of Avignon, and found the rabbi delivering a bitter vituperation in Hebrew’ upon Christianity and Christians. Petit waited till the speaker had made an end; and then, to the no small astonishment of the rabbi, he began a reply in the same tongue, in which he calmly vindicated the faith the Jew had aspersed, and exhorted its assailant to study Christianity before again attacking it. The rabbi is said to have offered an apology. A cardinal, who had so high an esteem of his learning as to court his friendship, offered to obtain for him admission into the Vatican Library at Rome, with liberty to inspect the manuscripts. The offer must have been a tempting one to an Orientalist like Petit, but for reasons which he did not think himself obliged to state to the cardinal, he courteously declined it.

Besides the men we have mentioned, the Protestant Church of France, in the seventeenth century, possessed not a few pastors eminent for their piety and labors, whose works have long preserved their names. Among these we mention Andre Rivet (1651), a distinguished commentator. He began his career as a pastor in France, and closed it as a professor of theology in Holland. The principles of criticism which he lays down in his Introduction to the Study of the Bible he exemplifies in his Commentary on the Psalms, which is one of the best expositions .of that part of Holy Writ that we possess. Aubertin (1652) was the author of a work on the Eucharist, which those of the contrary opinion found it much easier to denounce to the Privy Council than to answer. Benjamin Basnage (1652) was a man of ability; his grandson, Jacques Basnage, was still more so.

Blondel (1655) was the ecclesiastical historian of his day, and one of the first to expose the forged decretals of Rome. Bochart (1667), a mail of prodigious learning, and of equal modesty, has left behind him an imperishable name. Mestrezat (1657) wielded a logic which was the terror of the Jesuits. Drelincourt (1669) spent his days in visiting his flock, and his nights in meditation and writing. His Consolations against Death still preserves his fame, having been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe. One other name only will we here mention, that of Jean Daille (1670), who was one of Drelincourt’s colleagues in Paris. The work by which the collaborator and friend of the author of the Consolations against Death is best known is his Apology for the Reformed Churches, in which he vindicates them from the charge of schism, and establishes, on irrefragable historic proofs, their claim to apostolicity.

So many were the lights that still shone in the sky of French Protestantism. The whole power of the Government had for a century been put forth to extinguish it. War had done its worst. All the great military leaders, and the flower of the common soldiers, lay rotting on the battle-field. To war was added massacre. Again and again had the soil of France been drenched in blood. Violence had so far prevailed that the Synods of the French Church were now but a name. But the piety and learning of individual Protestants survived all these disasters; and, like stars appearing after the clouds of tempest have passed away, they lent a glory to the remnant that was spared, and proclaimed to France how inherently noble was the cause which it was striving to extinguish, and what a splendor Protestantism would shed upon the nation, had it been permitted in peace to put forth its mighty energies, and to diffuse throughout the length and breadth of France its many virtues, and ripen its precious fruits.

CHAPTER 4.

THE DRAGONNADES.

The War of the Fronde — Mazarin adopts the Foreign Policy of Richelieu — Dies at the Height of his Power — Louis XIV now Absolute — “The State, it is I” — His Error as a King — His Error as a Man — Alternate Sinning and Repenting — Extermination of the Huguenots — Confisca