Chapter 1 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
“NOT many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called,” and he, of whom we would now write, was truly one of those whom the wise of this world would despise for any great work that was in question. And yet Jacques Roger, the uneducated son of a humble artizan, was, in the purposes of God, to do great service for Him in an evil day, and eventually to have the honor of sealing with his blood many years of testimony to the preciousness of Christ.
In the year 1675, in the little village of Boissières, on the outskirts of the town of Nimes, in the South of France, Jacques first saw the cloy. Of his parents but little is known, beyond the fact that they obtained a modest living by manufacturing stockings, and that they brought up their son to the same lowly trade. However, though poor in this world, ‘they were rich in faith, and while unable to give their child much education, they gave him that which the Holy Ghost entitles “the beginning of wisdom,” bringing him up in the fear of the Lord. Under the roof of his godly parents, the young Jacques learned his first lessons in unflinching uprightness, in stern self-denial, and in the steadfast courage for God, which characterized him throughout his devoted life.
The lad had but attained his tenth year when, at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the storm of persecution, that had been so long threatening God’s people in France, burst in its full fury. For a whole century it had been partially restrained by the celebrated edict, granted by Henri IV., the once Protestant king of France.
If never a decided Christian, Henri was at any rate a decided Protestant at his accession, as his noble answer to his Roman Catholic lords fully proves, on their declaration that they would not own their allegiance to him until he had professed their creed. With his brilliant crown thus in jeopardy, he boldly replied, “From whom could you expect such a change of faith but from him who has none? Would it be more agreeable to you to have a godless king? Could you trust in the good faith of an atheist? And, in the day of battle, could you follow confidently the banner of a perjured man and an apostate?” Yet, but four short years later, to keep his earthly crown, he sacrificed a heavenly one, and openly apostatized from the simple faith of his childhood. In spite of this sinful act, he seems to have remained, in some measure, in heart a Protestant; for, after having done violence to his own conscience, he granted to his former co-religionists, in this Edict, full liberty to worship God according to theirs, and thus became an instrument for good, in the hands of the Lord for His sorely tried saints.
This Magna Charta of Protestantism in France, which took its name from the town of Nantes, where it was signed in 1598, was styled “perpetual and irrevocable”―alas! for the fallibility of all human institutions! By this edict, the king allowed the public exercise of the reformed faith in his kingdom, granting the Protestants similar religious and secular privileges to those enjoyed by his Roman Catholic subjects. The Huguenot noblemen were permitted to have worship performed in their own castles, and gentlemen of a lesser rank to admit thirty persons to their family worship. Protestant pastors were by its provision paid by the Government, a sum of 495,000 francs being appropriated to that purpose. Their poor were allowed to share in the public alms; their children had admission to the schools, and their sick to the hospitals; their literature was admitted in certain towns. Four Protestant colleges were established, and a church synod was allowed to be held once in three years.
To protect Protestant interests, courts were instituted, composed of an equal number of Protestants and Roman Catholics; all offices of State, even seats in Parliament, were opened to the Reformed; two hundred towns were given to them as a surety of the king’s good faith, some of which proved places of refuge in the terribly troublous times that, but too soon, manifested how little weight the magnanimous charter of Henri IV. had with his successors.
Through God’s mercy, twelve years of tranquility followed the promulgation of this edict—a blessed lull in the terrible storm of persecution, that for long had raged so fiercely. It brought peace at length between the two contending parties, gave Henri IV. undisturbed possession of his throne, and a time of prosperity to France, such as she had not known for very long.
But “another king arose, who knew not Joseph.” The assassin’s knife cut prematurely short the brilliant reign of Henri IV., and his son, still a little child, ascended the throne. Louis XIII., under the influence of his wicked mother, Marie de Medici, niece to the pope, was not likely to grow up to be anything but an enemy of the people of God. Thus did Henri, by his ungodly marriage, open again the flood-gates of persecution upon those whom he had made some effort to protect by his laws, after he had deserted them in his person.
The edict of Nantes was still supposed to be law, but a stealthy, underhand system of oppression became the order of the day. Though the word “revocation” was not yet pronounced, the liberal clauses were one by one annulled; each right was in turn contested, and then taken away, till but the skeleton of the charter, that had once given such joy to the hearts of the Huguenots, remained. Driven to despair, the Protestants seized their swords, and civil and religious warfare desolated France for the rest of the reign of Louis XIII., until death carried him off in mid-career.
No better times, alas! for the Huguenots dawned with the accession of his successor, Louis XIV., miscalled “the Great” by his nation, but whose actions will be judged in a very different light from the Great White Throne hereafter. In his very early childhood he came to the crown; and was from the first completely under the power of the priests, by whom he was trained to look upon the Huguenots as the enemies of both church and state. When, in mature years, he took up the reins of government, he treated them with the utmost severity, and their condition rapidly became worse and worse. Louis’ confirmed idea was that Protestantism weakened ‘his kingdom, and must at any cost be rooted out. To do this effectually, he saw that the revocation of the edict of Nantes was inevitable; towards this end he aimed throughout his long reign; and, until his plan was ripe for execution, he used every means in his power to crush the unfortunate Huguenots, his hatred to then finding abundant expression. Dragoons were sent among the most determined of them in the south of France, and pious families had the grief of having these licentious and wicket men billeted in numbers at their houses, with liberty to go to any excesses, short of killing their victims, until their so-called conversion had been obtained.
“They gave the reins to their passions,” writes an eye-witness― “devastation, pillage, torture; there was nothing they recoiled at.” The Protestants fled for safety to the woods, to the caves, and to the mountains. Many lost their reason, witnessing horrors too terrible to relate; others kissed a crucifix, and were thereon counted by Rome among the number of her converts. One hundred thousand of the flower of, French industry made their escape to other countries, whom they enriched by their talents, their native land suffering it proportion by their loss, for the Protestant of France were renowned for their superiority in all branches both of trade and agriculture. They bore the palm over every other nation in the manufacture of silks and velvets, by the originality and beauty of their designs; their paper mills were unequaled in Europe; they especially excelled in the art of bookbinding which art, by the flight of the Huguenots, war lost to France, and has never been fully regained. They worked skillfully, too, in iron; and surpassed all others both in making famous weapons of war and the more peaceful implements of husbandry. What folly, to say the least of it, to compel such a people to forsake the country which they would have enriched by their energy and talents, and ennobled by their faith and courage―courage which the persecuting monarch, who had driven them from his shores, frequently proved very formidable, when meeting in the battle field splendid regiments of French refugees formed in foreign lands!
French Roman Catholic historians admit that wounded pride in the monarch was the petty motive for the revocation, more than zeal for his own church, and that this was the most fatal act of his reign. They own that the Protestants, amounting at that time to about a million and a half in number, were a peaceable, quiet people, living in all submission to the powers that be, and distinguished in an evil generation, by the purity of their lives and their unceasing industry. They allow that Louis XIV. had ever felt hatred in his heart for these, the most docile of his subjects, as he could not brook that any should dare to differ from him on religious matters.
The revocation swept away from the unhappy Protestants the few remaining privileges of the gracious charter granted them by Henri IV. At one cruel blow they saw themselves deprived of all their rights, both as Christians and as citizens, even of the means of gaining a livelihood. All exercise of their worship became illegal, their churches were condemned to be pulled down, their schools were closed, their marriages were to be solemnized only in Roman Catholic churches, and their infants to be baptized by the priests. Stringent orders were issued that all Protestant pastors were to quit France within a fortnight, while, at the same time, emigration was strictly forbidden to their flocks, under penalty of the galleys and confiscation of their goods.
On the 22nd October, 1685, the fatal Act was registered. That very day a large Protestant church, in the neighborhood of Paris, which held fourteen thousand persons, was razed to the ground. Two Government officials struck the first blows, and then the mob rushed in, and in five days completed the work of destruction. A cross, twenty feet high, was triumphantly erected where the colossal edifice had stood. This was the signal to destroy nearly every French Protestant temple in the land, eight hundred of which were soon laid in ruins. With breaking hearts, the poor Huguenots saw all they most valued taken from them—not a right of conscience, not a safeguard left—flung beyond the pale of law, even beyond that of humanity. They were completely overwhelmed; only those who had truly living faith could still look up to God, and realize Himself their stronghold in the day of trouble.
Thus, amid scenes of horror, passed the childhood of Jacques; scenes fitted to burn into his inmost soul resistance to the false church, which exhibited such fiendish ingenuity in seeking to force back into her fold those who followed a purer faith.
The Huguenot family, gathering daily round the treasured Bible, and drinking in the solemn exhortations of the sacred volume, learned to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ; to lose their life in this world that they might find it in the world to come; to take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had in heaven a better and more endearing substance. The example of faith and courage displayed by numbers, who at this time suffered martyrdom for Christ, braced the young Christian to endure in his turn for the Lord’s sake.