Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
He might have arrested and hanged Rabaut on the spot; but, impressed by the noble bearing of the pastor, he accepted the petition, and promised to lay it before the king. In the year 1762, the execution of an unknown Protestant at Toulouse made an extraordinary noise in Europe. Protestant pastors had so often been executed, that the punishment had ceased to be a novelty.
The hulks were still full of the audience of Paul Rabaut, and Protestant women were still languishing in the unwholesome dungeon of the Tower of Constance, when the execution of the unhappy Calas, accused of having killed his son, and the generous indignation of Voltaire cast a momentary gleam of light within the sombre region of prisons and gibbets.
The firm moderation, the courageous and simple devotion, breathed by this letter, were the distinctive traits of the career of Paul Rabaut, as well as of Antony Court; throughout a persecution which lasted nearly forty years, with alternations of severity and clemency, the chiefs of French Protestantism managed to control the often recurring desperation of their flocks.
All the faithful instinctively turned to Rabaut when assailed by fresh difficulties and persecutions, and acted on his advice. He obtained the respect even of the Catholics themselves, because it was known that he was a friend of peace, and opposed to all risings and rebellions amongst his people.
It was there that the most illustrious of the pastors of the desert, Paul Rabaut, already married and father of one child, went to seek the instruction necessary for the apostolic vocation which he was to exercise for so many years in the midst of so many and such formidable perils.
"My friends," he said, "you have Paul Rabaut with you; in a quarter of an hour I shall be here with my soldiers, accompanied by Father , who has just laid the information against you." When the soldiers arrived, headed by the commandant and the father, of course no Paul Rabaut was to be found.
Marat, founder of the organisation, had been murdered by a girl's hand; but Charon, Manuel, Osselin had gone the usual way, denounced by their colleagues, Rabaut, Custine, Bison, who in their turn were sent to the guillotine by those more powerful, perhaps more eloquent, than themselves. It was merely a case of who could shout the loudest at an assembly of the National Convention.
The pastor, who had to introduce him, thus described the interview to Paul Rabaut: "I told him that I had brought him a little fellow who had come to throw himself at his feet to thank him for having, by his intercession, delivered him from the galleys; that it was Chaumont whom I had left in his antechamber, and whom I begged him to permit me to bring in.
The Duc de Mirepoix, then governor of the province, endeavoured to turn the popular feeling to some account. But neither Fabre, nor Rabaut, nor the Huguenots generally, had any confidence in the mercy of the Catholics, and the proposal was coldly declined. Fabre was next sent to Toulon under a strong escort of cavalry.
Rabaut, treacherous like the Protestant and philosopher that he is, was not clever enough to conceal his correspondence with that courtier and traitor Montesquiou; six months ago they were working together to open Savoy and France to the Piedmontese. Servan was made general of the Pyrenean army only to give the keys of France to the Spaniards."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking