I.

CHAP. of intellectual power. The greatest of modern French authors, Chateaubriand, has admitted, that if we would find the classical era of French literature, we must look for it in the age of Louis XIV. In proportion as the fervour of revolutionary passion, the barbarism of revolutionary taste, are swept away, or yield to the returning sense of mankind, these ancient luminaries shine from afar in unapproachable splendour, as the heavenly bodies re1 Chateau- appear in their pristine lustre when the clouds and vapours which for a time obscure them from the view are dispelled. Christian Perhaps they are never again destined to be equalled in French history; and future ages will be obliged to confess, French Re- that France affords another to the proofs of Montesquieu's observation, that no nation ever yet attained to durable greatness but by institutions in harmony with its spirit.'

briand,

Génie du

isme, ii. 170, 222. Smyth's

volution, i.

40.

It would have been well for France if the characteristics of the government of Louis XIV. had terminated here, and to the historian had only fallen, in tracing the annals of his reign, the pleasing task of recounting the triumphs of art encouraged and science enlarged-of genius transcendant and eloquence unequalled. But his measures went a great deal further; and his policy, outstripping the sagacity of Richelieu, conferred on the French government not merely the firmness of a compact, but the debasing influence of an absolute monarchy. His favourite maxim, "L'état-c'est moi," expressed the whole ideas of government by which he was regulated. He not only brought the nobility to Paris, but he nullified them when there : he not only excluded the people from all share in the administration of affairs, but he rendered them insensible to that exclusion. His great qualities, and he had many, contributed to this result, and were in the end more pernicious to France than meaner dispositions might have been ; for they dazzled the eyes of the people, and, by furnishing abundant gratification to the ruling national passion for glory, blinded them to the strength of the fetters by which they were held in subjection. Such was the lustre of

I.

Versailles under his magnificent and splendid government, CHAP. that he had no need of any acts of severity towards the nobles to enforce his authority, or deeds of cruelty among the people to ensure obedience. The mere exclusion from court, banishment from his presence, were sufficient to humble the proudest of the aristocratic order, and not a thought existed among the Tiers Etat of resistance to his commands. During the long continuance of a reign founded on such a basis, the whole administration of affairs in every department became centred in the court the antechambers of Versailles were daily besieged by crowds of titled yet needy suppliants, who eagerly sought employment, favour, or distinction from the King's ministers or 1 Sismondi. his mistresses; and mandates issuing from them were 40, 41. obeyed without a murmur from Calais to the Pyrenees.1

Smyth, i.

64.

France.

VIII. The REFORMATION, so important in its consequences in other states, failed of producing any material Failure of effects in France, from the scanty numbers of the class the Reformwho were fitted to receive its doctrines. In the maritime and commercial cities on the west coast it struck its roots; but the peasantry of the country were too ignorant, the nobles of the metropolis too profligate, to embrace its precepts. The contest between the contending parties was disgraced by the most inhuman atrocities; the massacre of St Bartholomew was unparalleled in horror till the Revolution arose, and forty thousand persons were murdered in different parts of France, in pursuance of the perfidious orders of the court. Nor were the proceedings of the Huguenots more distinguished by moderation or forbearance their early insurrections were attended by a general destruction of houses, property, and human life; and the hideous features of a servile war disgraced the first efforts of religious freedom. But it was in vain that the talents of Coligni, the generosity of Henry, the wisdom of Sully, supported their cause; the party which they formed in the nation was too small, their influence on the public mind too inconsiderable, to furnish the means of

CHAP. lasting success; and the monarch who had reached the I. throne by the efforts of the Protestants, was obliged to

consolidate his power by embracing the faith of his adversaries. France was not enslaved because she remained Catholic; but she remained Catholic because she was enslaved the seeds of religious freedom were sown with no sparing hand, and profusely watered by the blood of martyrs; but the soil was not fitted for their reception, and the shoots, though fair at first, were soon withered by the blasts of despotism. The history of her Reformation, like the annals of its suppression in Spain, exhibits the fruitless struggles of partial freedom with general servitude, -of local intelligence with public ignorance, of the energy of advanced civilisation with the force of long-established despotism. The contest arose too soon for the interests of freedom, and too late for the reformation of power; the last spark of liberty expired in France with the capture of res de Reli- Rochelle; and two centuries of unrelenting oppression gion, ii. 50, were required to awaken the people generally to a sense 3602Sully, of the value of those blessings which their ancestors had forcibly torn from their Huguenot brethren.1

1 Lac. Guer..

200, 359,

v. 123.

65.

IX. The long enjoyment of this absolute power, Revocation coupled with the bigoted principles in religion which so of Nantes. often, in Roman Catholic countries, accompany individual

of the Edict

indulgence and sensual excess, led Louis XIV. at length into a hideous act of despotism, which at once doubled the strength of his external enemies, paralysed his internal resources, tarnished the glories of his reign, induced unheard-of disasters upon the country, and revealed the real decrepitude and internal weakness of the monarchy. The Romish hierarchy had long regarded with jealous eye the privileges conceded to the Protestants by the generous toleration of Henry IV.; and the Edict of Nantes, by which his wisdom had settled the religious disputes of the sixteenth century, was to them in an especial manner the object of disquietude. The old Chancellor Tellier, at the age of eighty-three, requested

1685.

I.

the King to afford him the consolation before he died of CHAP. signing the recall of that hateful edict; and, so great was the influence of the violent Romish party, that his desire was soon accomplished. On the 2d October 1685 the 2d October fatal revocation appeared, and the whole Huguenots of the kingdom were abandoned at once to persecution, violence, and military execution. Such was the fanaticism of the age among those in high places, that the dying Chancellor, on signing the edict, repeated the beautiful song of Simeon on the advent of the gospel of peace to mankind;* and a perfidious act of despotism, which in its ultimate consequences induced the ruin of the Christian religion in France, and brought the great-grandson of the 18ism. Hist. reigning monarch to the scaffold, was celebrated by the des Franablest divines of the Romish Church as the noblest 514, 515. triumph to the true faith which had occurred since the first proclaiming of revelation to mankind.1+

çais, xxv.

66.

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes ordained the immediate destruction of the temples for the Huguenot Its extreme worship which still remained; it prohibited over the severity.

*“Le Chancelier Tellier, âgé de quatre-vingt-trois ans, malade, et qui se sentoit près de mourir, demanda au Roi de lui accorder la consolation de signer avant de mourir un édit qui porteroit révocation de l'Edit de Nantes: il le signa en effet le 2 Octobre 1685; et avec un fanatisme qui fait frémir, il récita le Cantique de Siméon, appliquant à cet acte farouche les félicitations qui, dans la bouche du vieillard Hébreux, se rapportaient au Salut du genre humain."SISMONDI, Histoire des Français, xxv. 514.

+"Dieu lui réservoit l'accomplissement du grand ouvrage de la religion, et il dit en scellant la révocation du fameux Edit de Nantes, qu'après ce triomphe de la foi, et un si beau monument de la piété du roi, il ne se souciait plus de finir ses jours. Nos pères n'avaient pas vu, comme nous, une hérésie invétérée tomber tout-à-coup; les troupeaux revenir en foule, et nos églises trop étroites pour les recevoir; leurs faux pasteurs les abandonner, sans même en attendre l'ordre, et heureux d'avoir à leur assigner leur bannissement pour excuse tout calme dans un si grand mouvement, l'univers étonné de voir dans un événement si nouveau, la marque la plus assurée, comme le plus bel usage de l'autorité, et le mérite du prince plus reconnu et plus révéré que son autorité même."-BOSSUET, Oraison Funèbre de Michel le Tellier, Jan. 25, 1686; see also FLECHIER, Oraison Funèbre de M. le Tellier, 29 Mai 1686, p. 354. Eight years after these Io Pæans were sung by the Romish hierarchy, an obscure individual was born at Chatenay, near Sceaux, who shook to its foundation the Roman Catholic faith in France, and derived his chief weapons from this atrocious act of perfidy-VOLTAIRE.

I.

CHAP. whole kingdom, a few trifling bailliages alone excepted, the exercise of the reformed faith it banished, under pain of being sent to the galleys, all unconverted ministers of the reformed faith, and gave them but fifteen days to leave the kingdom. All the reformed schools were shut up; all the children ordered to be re-baptised according to the Romish ritual. Four months only were allowed to the refugees to re-enter the kingdom, and make their abjuration; at the expiration of that period, their property of every sort was confiscated; and any attempt subsequently to leave the country, was to be punished with the galleys. The means taken to enforce this decree were, if possible, still more atrocious than the decree itself. The generals, the commanders of provinces, received orders to persecute the refractory with the last severities of military execution.* In consequence of these rigorous injunctions, troops were spread over Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, the Orleanois, Languedoc, and Provence; and the severities which they inflicted on the miserable Protestants would exceed belief, if not supported by the concurring testimony of contemporary and impartial annalists. It is affirmed, that in Languedoc alone above

* Louvois, the king's minister, sent them a circular:-"Sa majesté veut qu'on fasse sentir les dernières rigueurs à ceux qui ne voudront pas se faire Catholiques; et ceux qui auront la sotte gloire de vouloir être les derniers, doivent être poussés jusqu'à la dernière extrémité."-SISMONDI, Histoire des Français, xxvi. 519.

"By this edict," says St Simon, "without the slightest pretext, without the slightest necessity, was one-fourth of the kingdom depopulated, its trade ruined, the whole country abandoned to the avowed and public pillage of dragoons: the innocent of both sexes were devoted to punishment and torture, and that by thousands; families were stripped of their possessions, relations armed against each other, our manufactures transferred to the stranger; the world saw crowds of their fellow-creatures proscribed, naked, fugitive, guilty of no crimes and yet seeking an asylum in foreign lands, not in their own country, which was in the mean time subjecting to the lash and the galleys the noble, the affluent, the aged, the delicate, and the weak, often distinguished not less by their rank than by their piety and virtue-and all these on no other account than that of religion. Still further to increase the horror of these proceedings, every province was filled with sacrilegious or perjured men, who were either forced, or feigned to conform, and who sacrificed their consciences to their worldly interests and repose. In truth, such were the horrors produced by the combined operation of cruelty and obsequiousness, that