Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
While La Galissonière was asking for colonists, the agents of the Crown, set on by priestly fanaticism, or designing selfishness masked with fanaticism, were pouring volleys of musketry into Huguenot congregations, imprisoning for life those innocent of all but their faith, the men in the galleys, the women in the pestiferous dungeons of Aigues Mortes, hanging their ministers, kidnapping their children, and reviving, in short, the dragonnades.
When the ancient chivalry of France descended to that level, or rather delegated their functions to mercenaries of that level when the knightly hosts who fought before Jerusalem allowed themselves to be superseded by the dragoons and dragonnades of Louis XIV. then the end of the French chivalry was at hand, and came.
The Administration are for some indulgence and forbearance to those froward children of their mother country; the Opposition are for taking vigorous, as they call them, but I call them violent measures; not less than 'les dragonnades'; and to have the tax collected by the troops we have there.
Ask you for the ultimate results of the abjuration of Henry IV., I point to the demolition of La Rochelle, under Richelieu, and the systematic humiliation of the Huguenots; I point to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., and the bitter and cruel and wholesale persecution which followed; I point to the atrocities of the dragonnades and the exile of the Huguenots to England and America and Holland; I point to the extinction of civil and religions liberty in France, to the restoration of the Jesuits, to the prevalence of religious indifference under the guise of Roman Catholicism, until at last it threw off the mask and defied all authority, both human and divine, and invoked all the maddening passions of Revolution itself.
The soldiers were directed not to kill the people with whom they lodged, but to do every thing in their power to constrain them to abjure Protestantism. Thus originated that system of dragonnades which has left an indelible stain upon the character of Louis XIV., and the recital of which has inspired every reader with horror.
Yet there was not much genius displayed in the invention of the Dragonnades. It merely consisted in this: whenever it was found that a town abounded with Huguenots, the dragoons, hussars, and troops of various kinds were poured into it, and quartered on the inhabitants. Twenty, thirty, or forty were quartered together, according to the size of the house.
With Protestants the Mass was then the symbol of persecution; it was identified with the Revocation of the Edict the dragonnades, the galleys, the prisons, the nunneries, the monkeries, and the Jesuits. The Mass was not a matter of knowledge, but of fear, of terror, and of hereditary hatred. At school, the other boys were most bitter against Court, because he was the son of a Huguenot.
The cruelties of Alva in the Netherlands, which make the pen of Motley glow as with fire as he tells them, the dragonnades which scorched over the fairest regions of France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, have a certain excuse, as being instigated by a sincere, though misguided religious zeal.
Death punished any resistance to a superior officer, and merciless flogging was inflicted on the rank and file. Boys were often reluctant to enter on such a course of training, and parents were compelled to give up their sons by means of Dragonnades soldiers quartered upon subjects who were not sufficiently patriotic to furnish recruits for the State.
I promise you to make no use of them in the future." "I thank you," said the Bishop. G resumed. "Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where were we? What were you saying to me? That '93 was inexorable?" "Inexorable; yes," said the Bishop. "What think you of Marat clapping his hands at the guillotine?" "What think you of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the dragonnades?"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking