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Updated: May 1, 2025
During the twelve months that Brousson was occupied with his perilous journey through France, two more of his friends in the Cevennes suffered martyrdom La Porte on the 7th of February, 1696, and Henri Guerin on the 22nd of June following. Both were broken alive on the wheel before receiving the coup de grace.
After Quoite, M. Bonnemère, a native of the same city, was also tortured and executed in like manner on the Peyrou. All these persons were taken, executed, destroyed, or imprisoned, during the first year that Brousson commenced his perilous ministry in the Cevennes.
Cavalier relates that on one occasion, when a very little fellow, he went with her to an assembly which was conducted by Claude Brousson; and when he afterwards heard that many of the people had been apprehended for attending it, of whom some were hanged and others sent to the galleys, the account so shocked him that he felt he would then have avenged them if he had possessed the power.
Brousson was usually kept informed by his Huguenot friends of the direction taken by the dragoons in their patrols, and hasty assemblies were summoned in their absence. The meetings were held in some secret place some cavern or recess in the rocks. Often they were held at night, when a few lanterns were hung on the adjacent trees to give light.
Brousson, knowing that he might be seized and taken prisoner at any moment, had long considered whether he ought to resist the attempts made to capture him. He had at first carried a sword, but at length ceased to wear it, being resolved entirely to cast himself on Providence; and he also instructed all who resorted to his meetings to come to them unarmed.
Brousson and the French refugee ministers resident in Holland endeavoured to bring the persecutions of the French Protestants under the notice of the Conference. But Louis XIV. would not brook this interference. He proposed going on dealing with the heretics in his own way.
He had money to raise for the support of the suffering Church of France, and for the proper maintenance of the college for students, preachers, and pastors. He had to help the refugees, who still continued to leave France for Switzerland, and to write letters and rouse the Protestant kingdoms of the north, as Brousson had done before him some thirty years ago.
They first apprehended Bruman, the guide, and thought that in him they had secured the pastor. They next rummaged the house, in order to find the preacher's books. But Brousson, hearing them coming in, hid himself behind the door, which, being small, hardly concealed his person.
He accordingly proceeded to Nismes, his birthplace, where many people knew him; and where, if they betrayed him, they might easily have earned five thousand livres. But so much faith was kept by the Protestants amongst one another, that Brousson felt that his life was quite as safe amongst his townspeople as it had been during the last two years amongst the mountaineers of the Cevennes.
His friend Henry Poutant, one of those who originally accompanied him from Switzerland and had not yet been taken prisoner by the soldiers, went about holding meetings for prayer, and reading to the people the sermons prepared for them by Brousson. With this placed upon his knees, he wrote the sermons, for the most part in woods and caves.
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