De Noailles, the governor, when referring in one of his dispatches to the heroism displayed by the tortured prisoners, said: "These wretches go to the wheel with the firm assurance of dying martyrs, and ask no other favour than that of dying quickly. They request pardon of the soldiers, but there is not one of them that will ask pardon of the King."
To return to Claude Brousson. After his eloquent defence of the Huguenots of Montauban—the result of which, of course, was that the church was ordered to be demolished—and the institution of processes for the demolition of fourteen more Protestant temples, Brousson at last became aware that the fury of the Catholics and the King was not to be satisfied until they had utterly crushed the religion which he served.
Brousson was repeatedly offered the office of counsellor of Parliament, equivalent to the office of judge, if he would prove an apostate; but the conscience of Brousson was not one that could be bought. He also found that his office of defender of the doomed Huguenots could not be maintained without personal danger, whilst (as events proved) his defence was of no avail to them; and he resolved, with much regret, to give up his profession for a time, and retire for safety and rest to his native town of Nismes.
He resided there, however, only about four months. Saint-Ruth and De Noailles were now overawing Upper Languedoc with their troops. The Protestants of Nismes had taken no part in "The Project;" their remaining temple was still open. But they got up a respectful petition to the King, imploring his consideration of their case. Roman Catholics and Protestants, they said, had so many interests in common, that the ruin of the one must have the effect of ruining the other—the flourishing manufactures of the province, which were mostly followed by the Protestants, being now rapidly proceeding to ruin. They, therefore, implored his Majesty to grant them permission to prosecute their employments unmolested on account of their religious profession; and lastly, they conjured the King, by his piety, by his paternal clemency, and by every law of equity, to grant them freedom of religious worship.
It was of no use. The hearts of the King, his clergy, and his ministers, were all hardened against them. A copy of the above petition was presented by two ministers of Nismes and several influential gentlemen of Lower Languedoc to the Duke de Noailles, the governor of the province. He treated the deputation with contempt, and their petition with scorn. Writing to Louvois, the King's prime minister, De Noailles said: "Astonished at the effrontery of these wretched persons, I did not hesitate to send them all prisoners to the Citadel of St. Esprit (in the Cevennes), telling them that if there had been petites maisons[25] enough in Languedoc I should not have sent them there."
Nismes was now placed under the same ban as Vivarais, and denounced as "insurrectionary." To quell the pretended revolt, as well as to capture certain persons who were supposed to have been accessory to the framing of the petition, a detachment of four hundred dragoons was ordered into the place. One of those to be apprehended was Claude Brousson. Hundreds of persons knew of his abode in the city, but notwithstanding the public proclamation (which he himself heard from the window of the house where he was staying), and the reward offered for his apprehension, no one attempted to betray him.
After remaining in the city for three days, he adopted a disguised dress, passed out of the Crown Gate, and in the course of a few days found a safe retreat in Switzerland.
Peyrol and Icard, two of the Protestant ministers whom the dragoons were ordered to apprehend, also escaped into Switzerland, Peyrol settling at Lausanne, and Icard becoming the minister of a Huguenot church in Holland. But although the ministers had escaped, all the property they had left behind them was confiscated to the Crown. Hideous effigies of them were prepared and hung on gibbets in the market-place of Nismes by the public executioner, the magistrates and dragoons attending the sham proceeding with the usual ceremony.
At Lausanne, where Claude Brousson settled for a time, he first attempted to occupy himself as a lawyer; but this he shortly gave up to devote himself to the help of the persecuted Huguenots. Like Jurieu and others in Holland, who flooded Europe with accounts of the hideous cruelties of Louis XIV. and his myrmidons the clergy and dragoons, he composed and published a work, addressed to the Roman Catholic party as well as to the Protestants of all countries, entitled, "The State of the Reformed Church of France." He afterwards composed a series of letters specially addressed to the Roman Catholic clergy of France.
But expostulation was of no use. With each succeeding year the persecution became more bitter, until at length, in 1685, the Edict was revoked. In September of that year Brousson learnt that the Protestant church of his native city had been suppressed, and their temple given over to a society of female converters; that the wives and daughters of the Protestants who refused to abjure their faith had been seized and imprisoned in nunneries and religious seminaries; and that three hundred of their husbands and fathers were chained together and sent off in one day for confinement in the galleys at Marseilles.
The number of Huguenots resorting to Switzerland being so great,[26] and they often came so destitute, that a committee was formed at Lausanne to assist the emigrants, and facilitate their settlement in the canton, or enable them to proceed elsewhere. Brousson was from the first an energetic member of this committee. Part of their work was to visit the Protestant states of the north, and find out places to which the emigrants might be forwarded, as well as to collect subscriptions for their conveyance.
In November 1685, a month after the Revocation, Brousson and La Porte set out for Berlin with this object. La Porte was one of the ministers of the Cevennes, who had fled before a sentence of death pronounced against him for having been concerned in "The Project." At Berlin they were received very cordially by the Elector of Brandenburg, who had already given great assistance to the Huguenot emigrants, and expressed himself as willing to do all that he could for their protection. Brousson and La Porte here met the Rev. David Ancillon, who had been for thirty-three years pastor at Metz,[27] and was now pastor of the Elector at Berlin; Gaultier, banished from Montpellier; and Abbadie, banished from Saumur—all ministers of the Huguenot Church there; with a large number of banished ministers and emigrant Protestants from all the provinces of France.
The Elector suggested to Brousson that while at Berlin he should compose a summary account of the condition of the French Protestants, such as should excite the interest and evoke the help of the Protestant rulers and people of the northern States. This was done by Brousson, and the volume was published, entitled "Letters of the Protestants of France who have abandoned all for the cause of the Gospel, to other Protestants; with a particular Letter addressed to Protestant Kings, Electors, Rulers, and Magistrates." The Elector circulated this volume, accompanying it with a letter written in his name, to all the princes of the Continent professing the Augsburg Confession; and it was thus mainly owing to the Elector's intercession that the Huguenots obtained the privilege of establishing congregations in several of the states of Germany, as well as in Sweden and Denmark.
Brousson remained nearly five months at Berlin, after which he departed for Holland to note the progress of the emigration in that country, and there he met a large number of his countrymen. Nearly two hundred and fifty Huguenot ministers had taken refuge in Holland; there were many merchants and manufacturers who had set up their branches of industry in the country; and there were many soldiers who had entered the service of William of Orange. While in Holland, Brousson resided principally with his brother, a banished Huguenot, who had settled at Amsterdam as a merchant.
Having accomplished all that he could for his Huguenot brethren