United States or Jordan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Protestants of the Cevennes were required to give up their religion and to become Catholics. When they refused, soldiers were sent to compel them, and great cruelties were practised upon them. Many of them were killed, many put in prison, and many sent to work in the galleys.
"There are districts in France now," said Bossuet, "where a church is not to be seen in a day's journey, and where all the folk, from the nobles to the peasants, are of the same accursed faith. So it is in the Cevennes, where the people are as fierce and rugged as their own mountains. Heaven guard the priests who have to bring them back from their errors."
Every one of the Huguenots stabbed the poor wretch with their poniards: "That's for my father, broken on the wheel; that's for my brother, sent to the galleys; that's for my mother, who died of grief; that's for my relations in exile!" He received fifty-two wounds. Next day the Cevennes were everywhere in revolt. A prophet named Seguier was at the head of the insurrection.
After this event persecution was redoubled throughout the Cevennes. The militia ran night and day after the meetings in the Desert. All persons found attending them, who could be captured, were either killed on the spot or hanged. Two companies of militia were quartered in Pont-de-Montvert at the expense of the inhabitants; and they acted under the direction of the archpriest Du Chayla.
While Voltaire was attending the college of Louis le Grand the soldiers of the king were hunting Protestants in the mountains of Cevennes for magistrates to hang on gibbets, to put to torture, to break on the wheel or to burn at the stake.
And the gruff old captain passed on down the stairs. The Chevalier stared after him in bewilderment. Spain? . . . Weary of life? What had happened? "Monsieur du Cévennes?" cried a thin voice at his elbow. The Chevalier turned and beheld Bernouin, the cardinal's valet. "Ah!" said the Chevalier. Here was a man to explain the captain's riddle.
The young chief saw that a desperate dash to right or left was all that remained to him, and not knowing this country as well as the Cevennes, he asked a peasant the way from Soudorgues to Nages, that being the only one by which he could escape. There was no time to inquire whether the peasant was Catholic or Protestant; he could only trust to chance, and follow the road indicated.
This herd-boy and baker's apprentice of the Cevennes, after holding at bay the armies of France for nearly three years, had come to negotiate a treaty of peace with its most famous general. Leaving the greater part of his cavalry and the whole of his infantry at St. Césaire, a few miles from Nismes, Cavalier rode towards the town attended by eighteen horsemen commanded by Catinat.
High above the little village of Quissac rises the residence of beneficent owners, master and mistress, alas! long since gone to their rest. From its terrace the eye commands a vast and beautiful panorama, a richly cultivated plain dotted with villages and framed by the blue Cevennes.
A few words as to the associates of Roland, whose family and origin have already been described. André Castanet of Massavaque, in the Upper Cevennes, had been a goatherd in his youth, after which he worked at his father's trade of a wool-carder.
Word Of The Day