When the last 200 of them were shut up within palisades in a high gorge of the Pyrenees and burnt to death in a holocaust, it was the end of all that their preachings and their modes of life could do for France. Could these influences have survived, in all probability the aspirations afterward represented by the Huguenots would have so far prevailed that the moral tone of the whole nation. in the seventeenth century would have been far higher than it was, the absolutism reached under Louis XIV. might have been avoided and the awful retribution of 1793 might have been escaped.

Defeat of
Coligny's
a Huguenot

schemes for

colony in

America.

Every one will remember how in 1555 the great Coligny entertained the idea, which afterward passed from him to Sir Walter Raleigh, of founding a Protestant state in America. His two attempts, in Brazil and in Florida, both ended in grim disaster. In 1603 a scheme not wholly dissimilar was put into operation by Henry IV., when he made a grant of Acadia to Pierre du Gua, the Sieur du Monts, a sagacious and valiant Huguenot knight, of Saintonge. To him was entrusted the enterprise of founding a colony where liberty of conscience was to be respected. Under his auspices the first attempts were made in Acadia and Samuel de Champlain founded a trading-post at Quebec; but the enterprise did not flourish. In 1610 the murder of the great king deprived the Huguenots of their best friend; and in the course of the next year the Sieur du Monts sold out his rights in New France to Madame de Guercheville, by whom

the work of colonization in the New World was handed over to the Jesuits. Thus all hopes of a colony where Huguenots might live peaceably were at an end.

After Henry's death the Protestants in France saw more and more reason for anxiety lest the privileges which he had extended to them in the Edict of Nantes should be curtailed. The brief war which ended with the loss of Rochelle in 1628 was a heavy blow to them. The same reign witnessed the cessation of the meetings of the national legislature, and pre

First arri

vals of Huguenots in New

Netherland.

sently with the failure of the Fronde rebellion the absolute despotism of Louis XIV. was riveted upon unhappy France. At this time many Huguenots fled to Holland, whence some of them made their way to New Netherland. The Bayards, one of whom was the wife of Peter Stuyvesant, were a prominent Huguenot family, and from this time more or less migration from France to the Hudson River was kept up.

In April, 1655, occurred the awful massacre of Waldenses in Piedmont which called forth from John Milton that solemn denunciation, like the message of a Hebrew prophet:

66

'Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold," etc. The Elector Palatine, who was one of the leading Protestant powers of Germany, offered a refuge to the persecuted Waldenses, and many made their way through Switzerland to the Palatinate, where some stayed while others kept on to Holland and so to America.

Arrivals of Waldenses and Walloons,

A

colony of these interesting primitive Protestants was formed upon Staten Island in 1662. Many Huguenots also found a refuge in the Palatinate, as well as Walloons, who were beginning to suffer fresh molestation in the Flemish Netherlands. party of such Walloons, led by Louis du Bois, made up their minds in 1660 to remove from the banks of the Rhine to those of the Hudson. They settled in Esopus, in what is now Ulster county, and there made the beginnings of the towns of Kingston and New Paltz, the name of which commemorates their brief sojourn on the Rhine.

against

In 1661, at the age of eighteen, Louis XIV. took the government of France into his own hands, and in the same year entered upon a Decrees of series of measures designed to undermine Louis XIV. and neutralize the Edict of Nantes. It Huguenots. was decreed that Protestant boys might lawfully abjure the faith of their parents at fourteen years and girls at twelve years. This rule was soon made to justify the most shameless kidnapping. Any child who could be coaxed or bribed with trinkets to enter a church while mass was going on, or even to repeat a verse of Ave Maria in the street, was liable to be forthwith claimed as a Catholic and dragged off to some convent, and the courts paid no heed to the protests and entreaties of the outraged parents. Protestant schools were shut up by sovereign decree. Sometimes the buildings which they had erected for the purpose were confiscated and handed over to Jesuits. The dull egotist at Versailles had but to say what should be done, and it was done. Thus the five great Pro

testant colleges, including that one at Saumur where William Penn had studied, were broken up. Protestant churches were shut up either on slight pretexts or without a word, or were now and then burned by a mob with the connivance of the magistrates. Huguenots, moreover, were excluded from many public offices, and were forbidden to practice law or medicine, or to print or sell books. Huguenot women were not allowed to be milliners or laundresses.

The dragonnades.

Finally in 1681 began the infamous dragonnades. All over the kingdom troops were quartered upon Huguenot households, as if in an enemy's country, with liberty to commit any outrage short of murder. Upon this device the king especially plumed himself. At the same time he issued a decree lowering the age at which children might abjure Protestantism to seven years. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes followed in 1685, but the great Huguenot exodus began in 1681. Immediately England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and the Protestant states of Germany offered especial inducements to these people. They were at once to be naturalized, with all the rights and privileges of born subjects; in England sums of money were subscribed toward the expenses of their journey thither, and all their goods were admitted free of custom-house charges; in Holland they were exempted from all taxes for twelve years. Thus there came about such a migration as the civilized world has rarely seen; within twenty years something like a million Huguenots fled from their country, or at

The Hugue

not exodus.

least seven per cent. of the entire population. As soon as the king discovered that such an exodus was beginning, he issued decrees forbidding Protestants to leaye the kingdom under heavy penalties, and guards were stationed on the frontiers to intercept them, while cruisers patrolled the coasts. But these measures were ineffective, for popular sentiment was very far from keeping pace with the tyrant's besotted zeal, and many fugitives were helped on their way by compassionate Catholics. Drink-money, too, played exactly the same part as now and always. Guards for a small tip, instead of detaining refugees, would pass them on or even furnish them with guides; and captains of ships. were equally obliging. Where such methods were unavailable, people travelled on foot by night or disguised as peasants, driving a cow, or carrying a hod, or trundling a wheelbarrow; wealthy men and women, clothed in rags, begged from door to door; and so in one way or another the exodus was accomplished.

Concerning the damage which this wholesale emigration inflicted upon France, little need be said, for the tale has often been told. It cannot be expressed in statistics. This seven per cent. of the total French population included a far higher proportion of skilled craftsmen, prosperous merchants, professional men and scholars. So Terrible loss largely was the marine represented that to France. the French navy has never recovered from the loss. And then there was the weeding out of a certain earnest Puritan type of character which no nation can afford to weaken. Altogether this emigration was in many respects a skimming of cream.