Satan’s strongholds had been attacked, and his influence over the minds of men, exerted through the Romish system, had been greatly weakened by the gospel revival of the sixteenth century which is called the Reformation. Persecution, torture and death in its most horrible forms had failed to quench the gospel flame. Other means must be found to restore, if possible, the power of the Papacy. The history of Europe for a century or more is characterized by Rome’s determined efforts to regain her power over the world. Spain and Italy were still faithful to the Pope; the gospel seed sown there had been virtually stamped out. The lost territory in Hungary, Bohemia and Poland had been regained by brute force. In Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, Britain and, in part, France, the faith had taken root and was flourishing.
A vast plan had been conceived to recover all the lost territory and bring the kingdoms of Europe back into subservience to the Roman pontiff. Torrents of blood had already flowed during the second half of the sixteenth century in pursuit of this aim. The destruction of the Armada had dealt it a terrible blow, but Rome would not admit defeat. She had at her disposal now a new force — the Jesuits, the so-called Society of Jesus founded by Ignatious Loyola in 1540. Loyola was born not long after Luther, and he seems at one time to have passed through a period of darkness and distress like the latter. The issue was utterly different. He first sought fame as a warrior, but after recovering from an almost mortal wound, the whole current of his life was changed and he became a religious fanatic. He began to see visions and conceive grandiose schemes to serve the Romish Church. He propounded and put into effect a plan to form an army of bigoted zealots of his own ilk who would recover the world for the Church of Rome. Members of the order had to undergo a most severe training and were bound by a vow of absolute obedience to carry out the will of their superiors. Their philosophy was one of pure expediency: The end justified the means, however base. Truth, honor, righteousness, and every right moral principal was subordinated to the final aim. An evil system, however, carries within it the germs of decay, and in process of time the Jesuits came into conflict with governments and even with the Papacy itself, for it became more powerful than the Pope. It permeated like a leaven throughout society, among the rich and among the poor. Its influence spread like a web all over Europe. It had its public and its secret arms. By founding schools and colleges, it influenced youth. Kings and princes were among its pupils and its devotees. “There was no disguise they [the Jesuits] could not assume, and therefore there was no place into which they could not penetrate. They could enter unheard the closet of the monarch or the cabinet of the statesmen. They could sit unseen in Convocation or General Assembly and mingle unsuspected in the deliberations and debates. There was no tongue they could not speak and no creed they could not profess, and thus there was no people among whom they might not sojourn and no Church whose membership they might not enter and whose function they might not discharge. They could execrate the Pope with the Lutheran and swear the Solemn League with the Covenanter. They had their men of learning and eloquence for the halls of nobles and the courts of kings, their men of science and letters for the education of youth, their unpolished but ready orators to harangue the crowd, and their plain, unlettered monks to visit the cottages of the peasantry and the workshops of the artisan.”
Ere the Reformation ardor had died down, they penetrated its very stronghold in Germany and succeeded in effecting in some measure a revival of popery. Thus, while their teachers were busy instilling Romanism into the minds of youth, there were others operating in the courts of the great.
The Pacification of Augsburg in 1555 was a reluctant measure of toleration to Protestants in the German Empire, and it was the intention of the popish powers to sweep it away as soon as possible. The Protestant Union was formed in 1608 to counter this threat. Rome’s answer was the formation of the Catholic League in 1609. At its head was Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, a bigoted disciple of the Jesuits. The object was to complete the restoration of popery in Germany by force of arms. The result was the Thirty Years’ War, which began in 1618 and continued till the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648. Ferdinand II, who succeeded to the German Empire in 1619, resolved to subdue the Protestant princes and extirpate the reformed religion. In the first twelve years, the armies of the popish powers spread like a flood over Germany. Fearing the effect their victory might have on his own dominions, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, invaded the country in the Protestant cause. The awful tide of war swept back and forth over the hapless land for eighteen years, armies from France and other lands also intervening. Germany was desolated, many towns and villages perished in flames, the roads were empty, the land became a desert, weeds covered the once cultivated fields, and three-quarters of the population died from war, famine and disease. Such was the awful result of Rome’s determination to regain her sway in the land of Luther.
“The prophetic eye of Luther saw the approach of terrible evils to Germany, should the gospel preached not be held fast by her sons. His warning had been despised, and a night blacker than any he had foreseen descended on the fatherland.”
The attempt to restore popery failed, but in the struggle Christianity itself lay prostrate. The state of the country after the Thirty Years’ War was pitiable indeed. Here and there the torch of truth was kept burning, but spiritual death and worldliness covered the land. The nobility followed, for the most part, the example of the profligate French Court.
In France the fervent piety of the Huguenots had, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, sadly declined. Their synods met in an endeavor to revive the failing faith of their people. As in other countries, politics had mingled with the profession of Christianity, and the sword was drawn in its defense. In the little kingdom of Navarre, where the people were predominantly Protestant, they were ordered to return to the old religion. Soldiers were employed to force Romish practices on the population. People were driven to mass with cudgels, they were compelled to kneel when the Host passed, Protestant books were destroyed, and Protestant churches were damaged. The Huguenots took up arms and obtained some alleviation of their condition by a peace signed in 1622. They now became a sort of nation within the nation. Their faith and its exercise were linked with their civil rights. This admixture of politics and Christianity was a source of weakness. About this time Cardinal Richelieu appeared on the scene. He determined to crush the Huguenots politically. In spite of help from the English Puritans, he took the Huguenots’ stronghold of Rochelle in 1628, and the Huguenots’ power in France was crushed. What little liberty they had was by the grace of the sovereign. The same Richelieu who had broken the Protestants in France took part in the Thirty Years’ War on the Protestant side to weaken and humiliate the House of Austria and the Catholic League. Thus, as in olden time, “kingdom was broken against kingdom.”
Deprived of political power, the Huguenots prospered materially. The parts of France which they cultivated yielded the richest harvests. Their diligence and honesty made them prosperous in trade and industry. In the learned professions, too, they made their mark. The Protestant and Roman Churches subsisted side by side.
With the advent of that despot Louis XIV, things changed for the worse. He set himself to extinguish Protestantism. They were oppressed and harassed in every conceivable way. Even bribery was attempted to cause them to return to popery. Many fled the country. When other means proved inadequate, a truly horrible plan was devised. Soldiers were billeted on Huguenot families and encouraged to ill treat them. They were told they might do with them as they pleased, short of killing them.
“‘They gave rein to their passions,’ says Migault, describing the horrors of which he was eyewitness; ‘devastation, pillage, torture—there was nothing they recoiled at.’ The details must be suppressed; they are too horrible to be read. The poor people knew not what to do; they fled to the woods; they hid themselves in the caves of the mountains; many went mad; others, scarce knowing what they did, kissed a crucifix and had their names enrolled among the converts. The emigration was resumed on a great scale. Thousands rose to flee from a land where nothing awaited them but misery. The court attempted to arrest the fugitives by threatening them with the galleys for life. The exodus continued despite this terrible law. The refugees were joyfully welcomed in England and other Protestant lands to which, with their persons, they transferred their industry, their knowledge of art and letters, and their piety.”
This diabolical form of persecution, known in history as the “Dragonnades,” was carried out all over southern France. The Huguenots endeavored to find refuge in the forests, in the deserts of the Cevennes, or in the mountains of the Pyrenees. Even there they were pursued and hunted like animals, and if they failed to abjure, they were destroyed without mercy.
The crowning act of base tyranny then fell like a thunderbolt. The Edict of Nantes was repealed. The reformed worship was thereby outlawed, the churches of the Huguenots were destroyed, their pastors were banished, and their schools were closed. Henceforward all children were to be baptized in the Romish Church and brought up in the Romish religion. To this end, the children were taken from their parents and put in popish schools and institutions. Rome and her partisans hailed these tyrannical measures with delight and heaped encomiums on the King; medals were struck to celebrate the victory.
It is sickening to read the long tale of woe which was the lot of the hapless Huguenots. Like the suffering saints of old, those who wished to worship God according to their consciences could only do so in dens and caves or on mountaintops. Those who clung to the faith of the gospel were never free from persecution till the time of the French Revolution, for their sufferings continued into the eighteenth century.