History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 27

[Sidenote: The "mice of Autun."]

The unexpected deliverance is said to have been due to the remonstrance of a friend, M. d'Allens. D'Allens had adroitly reminded the president of an amusing incident by means of which Cha.s.sanee had himself ill.u.s.trated the ample protection against oppression afforded by the law, in the hands of a sagacious advocate and a righteous judge; and he had earnestly entreated his friend not to show himself less equitable in the matter of the defenceless inhabitants of Merindol than he had been in that of the "mice of Autun."[471]

[Sidenote: Francis I. instructs Du Bellay to investigate.]

The delay thus gained permitted a reference of the affair to the king.

It is said that Guillaume du Bellay is ent.i.tled to the honor of having informed Francis of the oppression of his poor subjects of Provence, and invoked the royal interposition.[472] However this may be, it is certain that Francis instructed Du Bellay to set on foot a thorough investigation into the history and character of the inhabitants of Merindol, and report the results to himself. The selection could not have been more felicitous. Du Bellay was Viceroy of Piedmont, a province thrown into the hands of Francis by the fortunes of war. A man of calm and impartial spirit, his liberal principles had been fostered by intimate a.s.sociation with the Protestants of Germany. Only a few months earlier, in 1539, he had, in his capacity of governor, made energetic remonstrances to the Constable de Montmorency touching the wrongs sustained by the Waldenses of the valleys of Piedmont at the hands of a Count de Montmian, the constable's kinsman. He had even resorted to threats, and declared "that it appeared to him wicked and villanous, if, as was reported, the count had invaded these valleys and plundered a peaceful and unoffending race of men." Montmian had retorted by accusing Du Bellay of falsehood, and maintaining that the Waldenses had suffered no more than they deserved, on account of their rebellion against G.o.d and the king. The unexpected death of Montmian prevented the two n.o.blemen from meeting in single combat, but a bitter enmity between the constable and Du Bellay had been the result.[473]

[Sidenote: Du Bellay's favorable report.]

The viceroy, in obedience to his instructions, despatched two agents from Turin to inquire upon the ground into the character and antecedents of the people of Merindol. Their report, which has fortunately come down to us, const.i.tutes a brilliant testimonial from unbia.s.sed witnesses to the virtues of this simple peasantry. They set forth in simple terms the affecting story of the cruelty and merciless exactions to which the villagers had for long years been subjected. They collected the concurrent opinions of all the Roman Catholics of the vicinity respecting their industry. In two hundred years they had transformed an uncultivated and barren waste into a fertile and productive tract, to the no small profit of the n.o.blemen whose tenants they were. They were a people distinguished for their love of peace and quiet, with firmly established customs and principles, and warmly commended for their strict adherence to truth in their words and engagements. Averse alike to debt and to litigation, they were bound to their neighbors by a tie of singular good-will and respect. Their kindness to the unfortunate and their humanity to travellers knew no bounds. One could readily distinguish them from others by their abstinence from unnecessary oaths, and their avoidance even of the very name of the devil. They never indulged in lascivious discourse themselves, and if others introduced it in their presence, they instantly withdrew from the company. It was true that they rarely entered the churches, when pleasure or business took them to the city or the fair; and, if found within the sacred enclosure, they were seen praying with faces averted from the paintings of the saints. They offered no candles, avoided the sacred relics, and paid no reverence to the crosses on the roadside. The priests testified that they were never known to purchase ma.s.ses either for the living or for the dead, nor to sprinkle themselves with holy water. They neither went on pilgrimages, nor invoked the intercession of the host of heaven, nor expended the smallest sum in securing indulgences. In a thunderstorm they knelt down and prayed, instead of crossing themselves. Finally, they contributed nothing to the support of religious fraternities or to the rebuilding of churches, reserving their means for the relief of tho poor and afflicted.[474]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF THE VAUDOIS VILLAGES IN PROVENCE.

_To face p. 240._]

[Sidenote: Francis signs a letter of pardon.]

Although the enemies of the Waldenses were not silenced, and wild stories of their rebellious acts still found willing listeners at court,[475] it was impossible to resist the favorable impression made by the viceroy's letter. Consequently, on the eighth of February, 1541, Francis signed a letter granting pardon not only to the persons who by their failure to appear before the Parliament of Aix had furnished the pretext for the proscriptive decree, but to all others, meantime commanding them to abjure their errors within the s.p.a.ce of three months.

At the same time the over-zealous judges were directed henceforth to use less severity against these subjects of his Majesty.[476]

[Sidenote: Parliament issues a new summons.]

[Sidenote: The Vaudois publish a confession.]

[Sidenote: Bishop Sadolet's kindness.]

Little inclined to relinquish the pursuit, however, parliament seized upon the king's command to abjure within three months, as an excuse for issuing a new summons to the Waldenses. Two deputies from Merindol accordingly presented themselves, and offered, on the part of the inhabitants, to abandon their peculiar tenets, so soon as these should be refuted from the Holy Scriptures--the course which, as they believed, the king himself had intended that they should take. As it was no part of the plan to grant so reasonable a request, the sole reply vouchsafed was a declaration that all who recanted would receive the benefit of the king's pardon, but all others would be reputed guilty of heresy without further inquiry. Whereupon the Waldenses of Merindol, in 1542, drew up a full confession of their faith, in order that the excellence of the doctrines they held might be known to all men.[477] The important doc.u.ment was submitted not merely to parliament, but to Cardinal Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras. The prelate was a man of a kindly disposition, and did not hesitate, in reply to a pet.i.tion of the Waldenses of Cabrieres, to acknowledge the falsity of the accusations laid to their charge.[478] Not long after, he successfully exerted his influence with the vice-legate to induce him to abandon an expedition he had organized against the last-mentioned village; while, in an interview which he purposely sought with the inhabitants, he a.s.sured them that he firmly intended, in a coming visit to Rome, to secure the reformation of some incontestable abuses.[479]

[Sidenote: Intercession of the Germans.]

The Merindol confession is said to have found its way even to Paris, and to have been read to the king by Chatellain, Bishop of Macon, and a favorite of the monarch. And it is added that, astonished at the purity of its doctrine, Francis asked, but in vain, that any erroneous teaching in it should be pointed out to him.[480] It is not, indeed, impossible that the king's interest in his Waldensian subjects may have been deepened by the receipt of a respectful remonstrance against the persecutions now raging in France, drawn up by Melanchthon in the name of the Protestant princes and states of Germany.[481]

[Sidenote: Death of President Cha.s.sanee, who is succeeded by Baron d'Oppede.]

[Sidenote: Military preparations stopped by a second royal order.]

The _Arret de Merindol_ yet remained unexecuted when, Cha.s.sanee having died, he was succeeded, in the office of First President of the Parliament of Provence, by Jean Meynier, Baron d'Oppede. The latter was an impetuous and unscrupulous man. Even before his elevation to his new judicial position, Meynier had looked with envious eye upon the prosperity of Cabrieres, situated but a few miles from his barony; and scarcely had he taken his place on the bench, before, at his bidding, the first notes of preparation for a great military a.s.sault upon the villages of the Durance were heard. The affrighted peasants again had recourse to the mercy of their distant sovereign. A second time Francis (on the twenty-fifth of October, 1544) interfered, evoking the case from parliament, and a.s.suming cognizance of it until such time as he might have inst.i.tuted an examination upon the spot by a "Maitre de requetes"

and a theologian sent by him.[482]

[Sidenote: Calumnious accusations.]

The interruption was little relished. A fresh investigation was likely to disclose nothing more unfavorable to the Waldenses than had been elicited by the inquiries of Du Bellay, or than the report which had led Louis the Twelfth, on an earlier occasion (1501), to exclaim with an oath: "They are better Christians than we are!"[483] and, what was worse, the poor relations, both of the prelates and of the judges, had only a sorry prospect of enriching themselves through the confiscation of the property of the lawful owners.[484] It was time to venture something for the purpose of obtaining the coveted prize. Accordingly, the Parliament of Aix, at this juncture, despatched to Paris one of its official servants, with a special message to the king. He was to beg Francis to recall his previous order. He was to tell him that Merindol and the neighboring villages had broken out into open rebellion; that fifteen thousand armed insurgents had met in a single body. They had captured towns and castles, liberated prisoners, and hindered the course of justice. They were intending to march against Ma.r.s.eilles, and when successful would establish a republic fas.h.i.+oned on the model of the Swiss cantons.[485]

[Sidenote: Francis, misinformed, revokes his last orders.]

Thus reinforced, Cardinal Tournon found no great difficulty in exciting the animosity of a king both jealous of any infringement upon his prerogative, and credulous respecting movements tending to the encouragement of rebellion. On the first of January, 1545, Francis sent a new letter to the Parliament of Aix. He revoked his last order, enjoined the execution of the former decrees of parliament, so far as they concerned those who had failed to abjure, and commanded the governor of Provence, or his lieutenant, to employ all his forces to exterminate any found guilty of the Waldensian heresy.[486]

[Sidenote: His letter construed as authorizing a new crusade.]

The new order had been skilfully drawn. The "Arret de Merindol,"

although not alluded to by name, might naturally be understood as included under the general designation of the parliament's decrees against heretics; while the direction to employ the governor's troops against those who had not abjured could be construed as authorizing a local crusade, in which innocent and guilty were equally likely to suffer. Such were the pretexts behind which the first president and his friends prepared for a carnage which, for causelessness and atrocity, finds few parallels on the page of history.

[Sidenote: An expedition stealthily organized.]

Three months pa.s.sed, and yet no attempt was made to disturb the peaceful villages on the Durance. Then the looked-for opportunity came. Count De Grignan, Governor of Provence, was summoned by the king and sent on a diplomatic mission to Germany. The civil and military administration fell into the Baron d'Oppede's hands as lieutenant. The favorable conjuncture was instantly improved. On a single day--the twelfth of April--the royal letter, hitherto kept secret, that the intended victims might receive no intimations of the impending blow, was read and judicially confirmed, and four commissioners were appointed to superintend the execution.[487] Troops were hastily levied. All men capable of bearing arms in the cities of Aix, Arles, and Ma.r.s.eilles were commanded, under severe penalties, to join the expedition;[488] and some companies of veteran troops, which happened to be on their way from Piedmont to the scene of the English war, were impressed into the service by D'Oppede, in the king's name.[489]

[Sidenote: Villages burned and their inhabitants butchered.]

On the thirteenth of April, the commissioners, leaving Aix, proceeded to Pertuis, on the northern bank of the Durance. Thence, following the course of the river, they reached Cadenet. Here they were joined by the Baron d'Oppede, his sons-in-law, De Pouriez and De Lauris, and a considerable force of men. A deliberation having been held, on the sixteenth, Poulain, to whom the chief command had been a.s.signed by D'Oppede, directed his course northward, and burned Cabrierette, Peypin, La Motte and Saint-Martin, villages built on the lands of De Cental, a Roman Catholic n.o.bleman, at this time a minor. The wretched inhabitants, who had not until the very last moment credited the strange story of the disaster in reserve for them, hurriedly fled on the approach of the soldiery, some to the woods, others to Merindol. Unable to defend them against a force so greatly superior in number and equipment, a part of the men are said to have left their wives, old men, and children in their forest retreat, confident that if discovered, feminine weakness and the helplessness of infancy or of extreme old age would secure better terms for them than could be hoped for in case of a brave, but ineffectual defence by unarmed men.[490] It was a confidence misplaced.

Unresisting, gray-headed men were despatched with the sword, while the women were reserved for the grossest outrage, or suffered the mutilation of their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, or, if with child, were butchered with their unborn offspring. Of all the property spared them by previous oppressors, nothing was left to sustain the miserable survivors. For weeks they wandered homeless and penniless in the vicinity of their once flouris.h.i.+ng settlements; and there one might not unfrequently see the infant lying on the road-side, by the corpse of the mother dead of hunger and exposure. For even the ordinary charity of the humane had been checked by an order of D'Oppede, savagely forbidding that shelter or food be afforded to heretics, on pain of the halter.[491]

Lourmarin, Villelaure, and Treizemines were next burned on the way to Merindol. On the opposite side of the Durance, La Rocque and St. etienne de Janson suffered the same fate, at the hands of volunteers coming from Arles. Happily they were found deserted, the villagers having had timely notice of the approaching storm.

[Sidenote: The destruction of Merindol.]

Early on the eighteenth of April, D'Oppede reached Merindol, the ostensible object of the expedition. But a single person was found within its circuit, and he a young man reputed possessed of less than ordinary intellect. His captor had promised him freedom, on his pledging himself to pay two crowns for his ransom. But D'Oppede, finding no other human being upon whom to vent his rage, paid the soldier the two crowns from his own pocket, and ordered the youth to be tied to an olive-tree and shot. The touching words uttered by the simple victim, as he turned his eyes heavenward and breathed out his life, have been preserved: "Lord G.o.d, these men are s.n.a.t.c.hing from me a life full of wretchedness and misery, but Thou wilt give me eternal life through Jesus Thy Son."[492]

[Sidenote: The village razed.]

Meantime the work of persecution was thoroughly done. The houses were plundered and burned; the trees, whether intended for shade or for fruit, were cut down to the distance of two hundred paces from the place. The very site of Merindol was levelled, and crowds of laborers industriously strove to destroy every trace of human habitation. Two hundred dwellings, the former abode of thrift and contentment, had disappeared from the earth, and their occupants wandered, poverty-stricken, to other regions.[493]

[Sidenote: Treacherous capture of Cabrieres.]

Leaving the desolate spot, D'Oppede next presented himself, on the nineteenth of April, before the town of Cabrieres. Behind some weak entrenchments a small body of brave men had posted themselves, determined to defend the lives and honor of their wives and children to their last drop of blood. D'Oppede hesitated to order an a.s.sault until a breach had first been made by cannon. Then the Waldenses were plied with solicitations to spare needless effusion of blood by voluntary surrender. They were offered immunity of life and property, and a judicial trial. When by these promises the a.s.sailants had, on the morrow, gained the interior of the works, they found them guarded by etienne de Marroul and an insignificant force of sixty men, supported by a courageous band of about forty women. The remainder of the population, overcome by natural terror at the strange sight of war, had taken refuge--the men in the cellars of the castle, the women and children in the church.

[Sidenote: Men butchered and women burned.]

The slender garrison left their entrenchments without arms, trusting in the good faith of their enemies. It was a vain and delusive reliance.

They had to do with men who held, and carried into practice, the doctrine that no faith is to be observed with heretics. Scarcely had the Waldenses placed themselves in their power, when twenty-five or more of their number were seized, and, being dragged to a meadow near by, were butchered in cold blood, in the presence of the Baron d'Oppede. The rest were taken to Aix and Ma.r.s.eilles. The women were treated with even greater cruelty. Having been thrust into a barn, they were there burned alive. When a soldier, more compa.s.sionate than his comrades, opened to them a way of escape, D'Oppede ordered them to be driven back at the point of the pike. Nor were those taken within the town more fortunate.

The men, drawn from their subterranean retreats, were either killed on the spot, or bound in couples and hurried to the castle hall, where two captains stood ready to kill them as they successively arrived. It was, however, for the sacred precincts of the church that the crowning orgies of these b.l.o.o.d.y revels were reserved. The fitting actors were a motley rabble from the neighboring city of Avignon, who converted the place consecrated to the wors.h.i.+p of the Almighty into a charnel-house, in which eight hundred bodies lay slain, without respect of age or s.e.x.[494]

In the blood of a thousand human beings D'Oppede had washed out a fancied affront received at the hands of the inhabitants of Cabrieres.

The private rancor of a relative induced him to visit a similar revenge on La Coste, where a fresh field was opened for the perfidy, l.u.s.t, and greed of the soldiery. The peasants were promised by their feudal lord perfect security, on condition that they brought their arms into the castle and broke down four portions of their wall. Too implicit reliance was placed in a n.o.bleman's word, and the terms were accepted. But when D'Oppede arrived, a murderous work began. The suburbs were burned, the town was taken, the citizens for the most part were butchered, the married women and girls were alike surrendered to the brutality of the soldiers.[495]

[Sidenote: The results.]

For more than seven weeks the pillage continued.[496] Twenty-two towns and villages were utterly destroyed. The soldiers, glutted with blood and rapine, were withdrawn from the scene of their infamous excesses.

Most of the Waldenses who had escaped sword, famine, and exposure, gradually returned to the familiar sites, and established themselves anew, maintaining their ancient faith.[497] But mult.i.tudes had perished of hunger,[498] while others, rejoicing that they had found abroad a toleration denied them at home, renounced their native land, and settled upon the territory generously conceded to them in Switzerland.[499] In one way or another, France had become poorer by the loss of several thousands persons of its most industrious cla.s.s.[500]

[Sidenote: The king led to give his approval.]

The very agents in the ma.s.sacre were appalled at the havoc they had made. Fearing, with reason, the punishment of their crime, if viewed in its proper light,[501] they endeavored to veil it with the forms of a judicial proceeding. A commission was appointed to try the heretics whom the sword had spared. A part were sentenced to the galleys, others to heavy fines. A few of the tenants of M. de Cental are said to have purchased reconciliation by abjuring their faith.[502] But, to conceal the truth still more effectually, President De la Fond was sent to Paris. He a.s.sured Francis that the sufferers had been guilty of the basest crimes, that they had been judicially tried and found guilty, and that their punishment was really below the desert of their offences.[503] Upon these representations, the king was induced--it was supposed by the solicitation of Cardinal Tournon--to grant letters (at Arques, on the eighteenth of August, 1545) approving the execution of the Waldenses, but recommending to mercy all that repented and abjured.[504]

[Sidenote: An investigation subsequently ordered.]

Thus did the authors of so much human suffering escape merited retribution at the hands of earthly justice during the brief remainder of the reign of Francis the First. If, as some historians have a.s.serted, that monarch's eyes were at last opened to the enormities committed in Provence, it was too late for him to do more than enjoin on his son and successor a careful review of the entire proceedings.[505] After the death of Francis an opportunity for obtaining redress seemed to offer.

Cardinal Tournon and Count De Grignan were in disgrace, and their places in the royal favor were held by men who hated them heartily. The new favorites used their influence to secure the Waldenses a hearing.