The mountainous district of the Cevennes is the most rugged, broken, and elevated region in the South of France. It fills the department of Lozere, as well as the greater part of Gard and Herault. The princ.i.p.al mountain-chain, about a hundred leagues in length, runs from north-east to south-west, and may almost be said to unite the Alps with the Pyrenees. From the centre of France the surface rises with a gradual slope, forming an inclined plane, which reaches its greatest height in the Cevennic chain, several of the summits of which are about five thousand five hundred feet above the sea level. Its connection with the Alpine range is, however, broken abruptly by the deep valley of the Rhone, running nearly due north and south.
The whole of this mountain district maybe regarded as a triangular plateau rising gradually from the northwest, and tilted up at its south-eastern angle. It is composed for the most part of granite, overlapped by strata belonging to the Jura.s.sic-system; and in many places, especially in Auvergne, the granitic rocks have been burst through by volcanoes, long since extinct, which rise like enormous protuberances from the higher parts of the platform. Towards the southern border of the district, the limestone strata overlapping the granite a.s.sume a remarkable development, exhibiting a series of flat-topped hills bounded by perpendicular cliffs some six or eight hundred feet high.
"These plateaux," says Mr. Scrope, in his interesting account of the geology of Central France, "are called "causses" in the provincial dialect, and they have a singularly dreary and desert aspect from the monotony of their form and their barren and rocky character. The valleys which separate them are rarely of considerable width. Winding, narrow, and all but impa.s.sable cliff-like glens predominate, giving to the Cevennes that peculiarly intricate character which enabled its Protestant inhabitants, in the beginning of the last century, to offer so stubborn and gallant a resistance to the atrocious persecutions of Louis XIV."
Such being the character of this mountain district--rocky, elevated, and sterile--the people inhabiting it, though exceedingly industrious, are for the most very poor. Sheep-farming is the princ.i.p.al occupation of the people of the hill country; and in the summer season, when the lower districts are parched with drought, tens of thousands of sheep may be seen covering the roads leading to the Upper Cevennes, whither they are driven for pasture. There is a comparatively small breadth of arable land in the district. The mountains in many places contain only soil enough to grow juniper-bushes. There is very little verdure to relieve the eye--few turf-clad slopes or earth-covered ledges to repay the tillage of the farmer. Even the mountains of lower elevation are for the most part stony deserts. Chestnut-trees, it is true, grow luxuriantly in the sheltered places, and occasionally scanty crops of rye on the lower mountain-sides. Mulberry-trees also thrive in the valleys, their leaves being used for the feeding of silkworms, the rearing of which forms one of the princ.i.p.al industries of the district.
Even in the immediate neighbourhood of Nismes--a rich and beautiful town, abounding in Roman remains, which exhibit ample evidences of its ancient grandeur--the country is arid, stony, and barren-looking, though here the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree, wherever there is soil enough, grow luxuriantly in the open air. Indeed, the country very much resembles in its character the land of Judea, being rocky, parched, and in many places waste, though in others abounding in corn and wine and oil. In the interior parts of the district the scenery is wild and grand, especially in the valleys lying under the lofty mountain of Lozere. But the rocks and stones are everywhere in the ascendant.
A few years ago we visited the district; and while proceeding in the old-fashioned diligence which runs between Alais and Florac--for the district is altogether beyond the reach of railways--a French contractor, accompanying a band of Italian miners, whom he was taking into the mountains to search for minerals, pointing to the sterile rocks, exclaimed to us, "Messieurs, behold the very poorest district in France! It contains nothing but juniper-bushes! As for its agriculture, it produces nothing; manufactures, nothing; commerce, nothing! _Rien, rien, rien!_"
The observation of this French _entrepreneur_ reminds us of an anecdote that Telford, the Scotch engineer, used to relate of a countryman with reference to his appreciation of Scotch mountain beauty. An English artist, enraptured by the scenery of Ben MacDhui, was expatiating on its magnificence, and appealed to the native guide for confirmation of his news. "I dinna ken aboot the scenery," replied the man, "but there"s plenty o" big rocks and stanes; an" the kintra"s awfu" puir." The same observation might doubtless apply to the Cevennes. Yet, though the people may be poor, they are not miserable or dest.i.tute, for they are all well-clad and respectable-looking peasants, and there is not a beggar to be seen in the district.
But the one country, as the other, grows strong and brave men. These barren mountain districts of the Cevennes have bred a race of heroes; and the men are as simple and kind as they are brave. Hospitality is a characteristic of the people, which never fails to strike the visitor accustomed to the exactions which are so common along the hackneyed tourist routes.
As in other parts of France, the peasantry here are laborious almost to excess. Robust and hardy, they are distinguished for their perseverance against the obstacles which nature constantly opposes to them. Out-door industry being suspended in winter, during which they are shut up in their cabins for nearly six months by the ice and snow, they occupy themselves in preparing their wool for manufacture into cloth. The women card, the children spin, the men weave; and each cottage is a little manufactory of drugget and serge, which is taken to market in spring, and sold in the low-country towns. Such was the industry of the Cevennes nearly two hundred years since, and such it remains to the present day.
The people are of a contented nature, and bear their poverty with cheerfulness and even dignity. While they partake of the ardour and strong temper which characterize the inhabitants of the South of France, they are probably, on the whole, more grave and staid than Frenchmen generally, and are thought to be more urbane and intelligent; and though they are unmanageable by force, they are remarkably accessible to kindness and moral suasion.
Such, in a few words, are the more prominent characteristics of the country and people of the Cevennes.
When the popular worship of the mountain district of Languedoc--in which the Protestants const.i.tuted the majority of the population--was suppressed, great dismay fell upon the people; but they made no signs of resistance to the royal authority. For a time they remained comparatively pa.s.sive, and it was at first thought they were indifferent. Their astonished enemies derisively spoke of them as displaying "the patience of a Huguenot,"--the words having pa.s.sed into a proverb.
But their persecutors did not know the stuff of which these mountaineers were made. They had seen their temples demolished one after another, and their pastors banished, leaving them "like poor starved sheep looking for the pasture of life." Next they heard that such of their pastors as had been apprehended for venturing to minister to them in "the Desert" had been taken to Nismes and Montpellier and hanged. Then they began to feel excited and indignant.
For they could not shake off their own belief and embrace another man"s, even though that man was their king. If Louis XIV. had ordered them to believe that two and two make six, they could not possibly believe, though they might pretend to do so, that it made any other number than four. And so it was with the King"s order to them to profess a faith which they could not bring their minds to believe in.
These poor people entertained the conviction that they possessed certain paramount rights as men. Of these they held the right of conscience to be one of the princ.i.p.al. They were willing to give unto Caesar the things that were Caesar"s; but they could not give him those which belonged unto G.o.d. And if they were forced to make a choice, then they must rather disobey their King than the King of kings.
Though deprived of their leaders and pastors, the dispossessed Huguenots emerged by degrees from their obscurity, and began to recognise each other openly. If their temples were destroyed, there remained the woods and fields and mountain pastures, where they might still meet and worship G.o.d, even though it were in defiance of the law. Having taken counsel together, they resolved "not to forsake the a.s.sembling of themselves together;" and they proceeded, in all the Protestant districts in the South of France--in Viverais, Dauphiny, and the Cevennes--to hold meetings of the people, mostly by night, for worship--in woods, in caves, in rocky gorges, and in hollows of the hills. Then began those famous a.s.semblies of "the Desert," which were the nightmare of Louvois and the horror of Louis XIV.
When it came to the knowledge of the authorities that such meetings were being held, large bodies of troops were sent into the southern provinces, with orders to disperse them and apprehend the ringleaders.
These orders were carried out with much barbarity. Amongst various a.s.semblies which were discovered and attacked in the Cevennes, were those of Auduze and Vigan, where the soldiers fell upon the defenceless people, put the greater number to the sword, and hanged upon the nearest trees those who did not succeed in making their escape.
The authorities waited to see the effect of these "vigorous measures;"
but they were egregiously disappointed. The meetings in the Desert went on as before, and even increased in number. Then milder means were tried. Other meetings were attacked in like manner, and the people found attending them taken prisoners. They were then threatened with death unless they became converted, and promised to attend Ma.s.s.
They declared that they preferred death. A pa.s.sion for martyrdom even seemed to be spreading amongst the infatuated people!
Then the peasantry began secretly to take up arms for their defence.
They had thus far been pa.s.sive in their resistance, and were content to brave death provided they could but worship together. At length they felt themselves driven in their despair to resist force by force--acting, however, in the first place, entirely on the defensive--"leaving the issue," to use the words of one of their solemn declarations, "to the providence of G.o.d."
They began--these poor labourers, herdsmen, and wool-carders--by inst.i.tuting a common fund for the purpose of helping their distressed brethren in surrounding districts. They then invited such as were disposed to join them to form themselves into companies, so as to be prepared to come together and give their a.s.sistance as occasion required. When meetings in the Desert were held, it became the duty of these enrolled men to post themselves as sentinels on the surrounding heights, and give notice of the approach of their enemies. They also const.i.tuted a sort of voluntary police for their respective districts, taking notice of the changes of the royal troops, and dispatching information by trusty emissaries, intimating the direction of their march.
The Intendant, Baville, wrote to Louvois, minister of Louis XIV.
during the persecutions, expressing his surprise and alarm at the apparent evidences of organization amongst the peasantry. "I have just learned," said he in one letter,[33] "that last Sunday there was an a.s.sembly of nearly four hundred men, many of them armed, at the foot of the mountain of Lozere. I had thought," he added, "that the great lesson taught them at Vigan and Anduze would have restored tranquillity to the Cevennes, at least for a time. But, on the contrary, the severity of the measures heretofore adopted seems only to have had the effect of exasperating and hardening them in their iniquitous courses."
[Footnote 33: October 20, 1686.]
As the ma.s.sacres had failed, the question next arose whether the inhabitants might not be driven into exile, and the country entirely cleared of them. "They pretend," said Louvois, "to meet in "the Desert;" why not take them at their word, and make the Cevennes _really_ a Desert?" But there were difficulties in the way of executing this plan. In the first place, the Protestants of Languedoc were a quarter of a million in number. And, besides, if they were driven out of it, what would become of the industry and the wealth of this great province--what of the King"s taxes?
The Duke de Noailles advised that it would be necessary to proceed with some caution in the matter. "If his Majesty," he wrote to Baville, "thinks there is no other remedy than changing the whole people of the Cevennes, it would be better to begin by expelling those who are not engaged in commerce, who inhabit inaccessible mountain districts, where the severity of the climate and the poverty of the soil render them rude and barbarous, as in the case of those people who recently met at the foot of the Lozere. Should the King consent to this course, it will be necessary to send here at least four additional battalions of foot to execute his orders."[34]
[Footnote 34: Noailles to Baville, 29th October, 1686.]
An attempt was made to carry out this measure of deportation of the people, but totally failed. With the aid of spies, stimulated by high rewards, numerous meetings in the Desert were fallen upon by the troops, and those who were not hanged were transported--some to Italy, some to Switzerland, and some to America. But transportation had no terrors for the people, and the meetings continued to be held as before.
Baville then determined to occupy the entire province with troops, and to carry out a general disarmament of the population. Eight regiments of regular infantry were sent into the Cevennes, and fifty regiments of militia were raised throughout the province, forming together an army of some forty thousand men. Strong military posts were established in the mountains, and new forts and barracks were erected at Alais, Anduze, St. Hyppolyte, and Nismes. The mountain-roads being almost impa.s.sable, many of them mere mule paths, Baville had more than a hundred new high-roads and branch-roads constructed and made practicable for the pa.s.sage of troops and transport of cannon.
By these means the whole country became strongly occupied, but still the meetings in the Desert went on. The peasantry continued to brave all risks--of exile, the galleys, the rack, and the gibbet--and persevered in their a.s.semblies, until the very ferocity of their persecutors became wearied. The people would not be converted either by the dragoons or the priests who were stationed amongst them. In the dead of the night they would sally forth to their meetings in the hills; though their mountains were not too steep, their valleys not too secluded, their denies not too impenetrable to protect them from pursuit and attack, for they were liable at any moment to be fallen upon and put to the sword.
The darkness, the dangers, the awe and mystery attending these midnight meetings invested them with an extraordinary degree of interest and even fascination. It is not surprising that under such circ.u.mstances the devotion of these poor people should have run into fanaticism and superst.i.tion. Singing the psalms of Marot by night, under the shadow of echoing rocks, they fancied they heard the sounds of heavenly voices filling the air. At other times they would meet amidst the ruins of their fallen sanctuaries, and mysterious sounds of sobbing and wailing and groaning would seem as if to rise from the tombs of their fathers.
Under these distressing circ.u.mstances--in the midst of poverty, suffering, and terror--a sort of religious hysteria suddenly developed itself amongst the people, breaking out and spreading like many other forms of disease, and displaying itself chiefly in the most persecuted quarters of Dauphiny, Viverais, and the Cevennes. The people had lost their pastors; they had not the guidance of sober and intelligent persons; and they were left merely to pray and to suffer. The terrible raid of the priests against the Protestant books had even deprived most of the Huguenots of their Bibles and psalm-books, so that they were in a great measure left to profit by their own light, such as it was.
The disease to which we refer, had often before been experienced, under different forms, amongst uneducated people when afflicted by terror and excitement; such, for instance, as the Brotherhood of the Flagellants, which followed the attack of the plague in the Middle Ages; the Dancing Mania, which followed upon the Black Death; the Child"s Pilgrimages, the Convulsionaires, the Revival epilepsies and swoons, which have so often accompanied fits of religious devotion worked up into frenzy; these diseases being merely the result of excitement of the senses, which convulse the mind and powerfully affect the whole nervous system.
The "prophetic malady," as we may call it, which suddenly broke out amongst the poor Huguenots, began with epileptic convulsions. They fell to the ground senseless, foamed at the mouth, sobbed, and eventually revived so far as to be able to speak and "prophesy," like a mesmerised person in a state of _clairvoyance_. The disease spread rapidly by the influence of morbid sympathy, which, under the peculiar circ.u.mstances we have described, exercises an amazing power over human minds. Those who spoke with power were considered "inspired." They prayed and preached ecstatically, the most inspired of the whole being women, boys, and even children.
One of the first "prophets" who appeared was Isabel Vincent, a young shepherdess of Crest, in Dauphiny, who could neither read nor write.
Her usual speech was the patois of her country, but when she became inspired she spoke perfectly, and, according to Michelet, with great eloquence. "She chanted," he says, "at first the Commandments, then a psalm, in a low and fascinating voice. She meditated a moment, then began the lamentation of the Church, tortured, exiled, at the galleys, in the dungeons: for all those evils she blamed our sins only, and called all to penitence. Then, starting anew, she spoke angelically of the Divine goodness."
Boucher, the intendant of the province, had her apprehended and examined. She would not renounce. "You may take my life," she said, "but G.o.d will raise up others to speak better things than I have done." She was at last imprisoned at Gren.o.ble, and afterwards in the Tower of Constance.
As Isabel Vincent had predicted, many prophets followed in her steps, but they did not prophesy as divinely as she. They denounced "Woe, woe" upon their persecutors. They reviled Babylon as the oppressor of the House of Israel. They preached the most violent declamations against Rome, drawn from the most lugubrious of the prophets, and stirred the minds of their hearers into the most furious indignation.
The rapidity with which the contagion of convulsive prophesying spread was extraordinary. The adherents were all of the poorer cla.s.ses, who read nothing but the Bible, and had it nearly by heart. It spread from Dauphiny to Viverais, and from thence into the Cevennes. "I have seen," said Marshal Villars, "things that I could never have believed if they had not pa.s.sed under my own eyes--an entire city, in which all the women and girls, without exception, appeared possessed by the devil; they quaked and prophesied publicly in the streets."[35]
[Footnote 35: "Vie du Marechal de Villars," i. 125.]
Flottard says there were eight thousand persons in one province who had inspiration. All were not, however, equally inspired. There were four degrees of ecstasy: first, the being called; next, the inspiration; then, the prophesy; and, lastly, the gift, which was the inspiration in the highest degree.
All this may appear ludicrous to some. And yet the school of credulity is a very wide one. Even in these enlightened times in which we live, we hear of tables turning, spelling out words, and "prophesying" in their own way. There are even philosophers, men of science, and literati who believe in spiritualists that rise on sofas and float about in the air, who project themselves suddenly out of one window and enter by another, and do many other remarkable things. And though our spiritual table-rapping and floating about may seem to be of no possible use, the "prophesying" of the Camisards was all but essential to the existence of the movement in which they were engaged.
The population became intensely excited by the prevalence of this enthusiasm or fanaticism. "When a Huguenot a.s.sembly," says Brueys, "was appointed, even before daybreak, from all the hamlets round, the men, women, boys, girls, and even infants, came in crowds, hurrying from their huts, pierced through the woods, leapt over the rocks, and flew to the place of appointment."[36]
[Footnote 36: Brueys, "Histoire du Fanaticisme de Notre Temps."]
Mere force was of no avail against people who supposed themselves to be under supernatural influences. The meetings in the Desert, accordingly, were attended with increased and increasing fascination, and Baville, who had reported to the King the entire pacification and conversion of Languedoc, to his dismay found the whole province bursting with excitement, which a spark at any moment might fire into frenzy. And that spark was shortly afterwards supplied by the archpriest Chayla, director of missions at Pont-de-Montvert.
Although it was known that many of the peasantry attended the meetings armed, there had as yet been no open outbreak against the royal authority in the Cevennes. At Cheilaret, in the Vivarais, there had been an encounter between the troops and the peasantry; but the people were speedily dispersed, leaving three hundred dead and fifty wounded on the field.
The Intendant Baville, after thus pacifying the Vivarais, was proceeding on his way back to Montpellier, escorted by some companies of dragoons and militia, pa.s.sing through the Cevennes by one of the new roads he had caused to be constructed along the valley of the Tarn, by Pont-de-Montvert to Florac. What was his surprise, on pa.s.sing through the village of Pont-de-Montvert, to hear the roll of a drum, and shortly after to perceive a column of rustics, some three or four hundred in number, advancing as if to give him battle. Baville at once drew up his troops and charged the column, which broke and fled into an adjoining wood. Some were killed and others taken prisoners, who were hanged next day at St. Jean-du-Gard. A reward of five hundred louis d"or was advertised for the leader, who was shortly after tracked to his hiding-place in a cavern situated between Anduze and Alais, and was there shot, but not until after he had killed three soldiers with his fusil.