United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In point of commerce, at one period antecedent to the Revolution, Nantes was the most considerable sea-port in France: since the loss of its West India trade, especially with Saint Domingo, it has been greatly reduced. The rich plains which surround it on three sides, in the form of an amphitheatre, and the river covered with vessels and boats, give it a most lively appearance.

After having demanded their names, professions and wealth they were sent down to a cart standing at the door of the Palais de Justice; the judges then stepped out on the balcony and pronounced the death-sentence." The same proceedings took place at Cambrai, Arras, Nantes, Le Mans, Bordeaux, Nimes, Lyons, Strasbourg, and elsewhere.

A month before the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Vervins with Philip II., Henry IV. had signed and published at Paris on the 13th of April, 1598, the edict of Nantes, his treaty of peace with the Protestant malcontents.

Thirty years after the St Bartholomew, the malady existed still; and cost France ten times the quantity of noble blood that remained to be spilt on the 26th August 1572. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in honour of which medals were struck, cost more blood, more tears, and more treasure, and has been more injurious to France, than twenty St Bartholomews.

An imbittered, broken old man, shorn of his omnipotence, who had outlived his fame and his worshippers, was dying in his great palace at Versailles; his only solace the austere woman who had inspired the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who upon the death of his unhappy queen he had privately made his wife.

Under this grim discouragement Protestantism seemed dying out of France, and at last, in 1685, Louis, encouraged by success, took the final step and revoked the Edict of Nantes, commanding all his subjects to accept Catholicism, while at the same time forbidding any to leave the country. Huguenots who attempted flight were seized; many were slain.

Then we raised the Fiji Islands, where savages slaughtered sailors from the Union, as well as Captain Bureau, commander of the Darling Josephine out of Nantes, France. Extending over an expanse of 100 leagues north to south, and over 90 leagues east to west, this island group lies between latitude 2 degrees and 6 degrees south, and between longitude 174 degrees and 179 degrees west.

Such audacity, and the need for its repression, rankled deep in the King's heart; and I believe he is quite disposed to pass measures of such extreme severity as will soon deprive the Protestants and Lutherans of any privileges derived from the Edict of Nantes.

It appeared that his host in passing thought he heard Audubon call to him to ask for something: "I told him I prayed aloud every night, as had been my habit from a child at my mother's knees in Nantes. He said nothing for a moment, then again wished me good night and was gone."

Bartholomew, whose dramatic horror has made its historic importance to be vastly exaggerated, the Protestant cause remained full of vitality, and the number of its adherents went on increasing until the Edict of Nantes.