66

great black eyes of a sweet expression, and level with the head. "My sister,” said he, “blessed be God, who has permitted me to see and hear you, that I may be strengthened in the faith, and receive the consolations of His persecuted children." "Be welcome,” she replied: "this evening I shall preach to some of our brethren assembled in the mountain." She went out about dusk, accompanied by two young girls and twenty peasants, who followed with the advocate of Grenoble. She walked very fast, although the road was rough and the night dark. A numerous assembly waited her. "Of myself," she said, “I am unable to speak; but," continued she, falling on her knees, "do thou, O God, loosen my tongue, if it be thy good pleasure, that I may be able to proclaim thy word, and console thine afflicted people." Forthwith,' says the narrator, 'the spirit seized her. She offered up a long prayer. I thought I heard some angel speaking. After the prayer, she made them sing a psalm, and raised it herself melodiously; then she preached from the text—“If any man shall say unto you, Lo! here is Christ, or there, believe it not." She delivered a discourse so excellent, so pathetic, with such holy boldness and such zeal, that one was almost compelled to believe that she had something in her above human. She uttered great lamentations for the wretched condition of the Protestants of France, who were in the dungeons, in the galleys, in the convents, and in exile. She promised, in the name of God, forgiveness, peace, blessing, and eternal joy to those who did not reject the fatherly solicitations of His goodness; she promised also, with precision and earnestness, the re-establishment of true religion in the kingdom.' 'Isabella,' adds M. Peyrat, 'could not read, and therefore quoted Scripture from memory. She preached in French. Her language was wonderfully pure, well connected, pathetic, and adorned with biblical images. Her inspiration came with such abundance and fury, that the words, like a stream long dammed up, escaped impetuously from her lips, flowed for some time with astonishing volubility, then slackened, and even towards the conclusion became embarrassed.

'At last the intendant Bouchu, who tracked out everywhere the prophets of Dauphiné, caused the young prophetess of Saou to be arrested. "Here I am, sir," said she to him; "you can put me to death. God will raise up others, who will say finer things than I." She was confined in the prisons of the general hospital of Grenoble.'*

The other prophet of Dauphiné before mentioned was Gabriel Astier, a labourer, about twenty-two years of age. Altogether of a more sombre and melancholic genius than the prophetess Isabella, his preaching was attended with greater excitement and disturbance of the peace. Various bloody engagements took place between his

* Histoire des Pasteurs du Désert, by M. Peyrat.

followers and the troops sent into the Vivarais by Bâville and Broglie. Many of the insurgents were taken alive and hanged. Gabriel, however, contrived for a whole year to elude pursuit. At last, in the spring of 1690, he was recognised in the town of Montpellier, taken, and broken on the wheel.

Scarcely was the insurrection in the Vivarais suppressed, when the Cevennes caught the blaze. It will be remembered that, in the year 1686, Bâville entered into an agreement with a number of itinerant preachers, at the head of whom was François Vivens, promising them free exit from France. Owing to Bâville's treachery, Vivens and a body of his companions were conducted into Spain, from which they escaped with difficulty to Holland. Suddenly, in the beginning of 1689, Vivens reappeared in the Cevennes. He was about twenty-six years of age, of small stature, and lame, but robust and energetic. The Cévenols gathered round him, and the fieldmeetings, which, since 1686, had been almost discontinued, again became common.

Vivens was soon joined by a coadjutor illustrious in the history of the Camisards. This was Claude Brousson, a man of good family, who had practised as an advocate at Nîmes, had gone into exile in Lausanne in 1683, and had since that time been actively engaged in the communications which the persecuted Protestants of his native country were holding with William of Orange; but who now, moved by a sudden impulse of self-devotion and enthusiasm, returned to France to lead the life of a prophet of the desert, leaving his wife and child in Switzerland. After being ordained by Vivens and Gabriel, he commenced his labours. Already forty-three years of age, he abandoned a life of ease and security for one of toil, danger, and suffering. 'To be almost always alone; to travel in the night through wind, rain, and snow; to pass through the midst of soldiers or robbers; to sleep in woods on the bare ground, on a couch of grass, or of dried leaves; to dwell in caves, in barns, in shepherds' huts; to glide furtively into a town or village, and when received into a pious house, not even to be able to caress at the fireside the little ones of his generous host, lest their innocent prattle should betray him to the neighbours; to be discovered in his retreat, and surrounded by soldiers; to hide in lofts, in wells, or to cheat the troops by going boldly up to them, and sending them after some officious friend, who exposed himself to afford his pastor time to escape; to walk about in disguise; to pass sentinels, imitating the extravagances of a madman or the tricks of a mountebank; to endure fatigue, cold, heat, hunger, pain, abandonment, solitude, and finally the scaffold-such was the ordinary life of a pastor of the desert. Brousson,' continues M. Peyrat, 'preached regularly three or four times a week, sometimes every day, and even several times in one day; besides which there were baptisms, marriages, and funerals to be celebrated; models of prayer and rules of piety to be dictated to

66

the little churches, that, after his departure, they might be able to continue their religious services without a pastor. This man, sweet and affectionate by disposition, never addressed his rustic auditories except by the appellation of sheep and doves. He afterwards published, under the title of Mystic Manna of the Desert, some of his sermons preached in France, in deserts and caves, during the years 1690, 1691, 1692, and 1693.” They are homilies, adapted to the wandering flocks to whom they were addressed: their style, simple, negligent, plain, but impregnated with sentiments of infinite sweetness and gentleness, is like a vessel of common clay-ware filled with milk and honey?

Bâville's utmost activity was exerted to suppress this new outbreak of Protestantism in the Cevennes, and especially to secure the apprehension of the prophets Vivens and Brousson. The movement was indeed becoming formidable. The energetic Vivens had entered into a correspondence with the Duke of Schomberg, inviting him to make a descent upon Languedoc with ten thousand men. The plan was discovered by means of a billet which Vivens had written to Schomberg, and which fell into Bâville's hands. This redoubled the exertions of the intendant to get possession of the person of the insurrectionary prophet. He was at length tracked to a cavern situated in a valley between Anduze and Alais. At the mouth of this cavern, Vivens himself was shot; and two companions who were with him, Carrière and Capieu, died on the scaffold. Brousson now remained almost the last prophet of the Cevennes. At length; hunted from place to place, weakened in body, and requiring rest, Brousson left the Cevennes for a time, to revisit his family at Lausanne. Again, in the year 1695, he returned to France, and employed himself in preaching secretly to the Protestants of different provinces ; and again he was obliged to quit it.

Meanwhile, France was in the most wretched condition imaginable. Persecution, war, and exorbitant taxation were producing their effects. In Languedoc especially were these calamities felt. Forty thousand natives had emigrated, and large tracts of country were left desert and uncultivated. The hopes, too, which the French Protestants had entertained of a melioration of their condition, through the instrumentality of William III. of England, were extinguished by the peace of Ryswick, concluded in 1697. The prophecies of Jurieu were falsified; and Louis XIV. still sat on his throne, the enemy of Protestantism.

Moved by the accounts which reached him of the sufferings of his Protestant countrymen, Brousson returned to France for the third time in 1697. He spent some time in Dauphiné and Languedoc. In the spring of 1698, he wrote to his wife: The persecution is renewed. It is as violent as at first. The soldiers are ravaging the houses, carrying off the furniture, the corn, and the cattle. They tell the masters of the houses they are ruining them to make them

go to mass.' Bâville, hearing of Brousson's return, increased the reward for his apprehension to 600 louis-d'ors. Escaping from Languedoc, the preacher made his way to Pau in Béarn. Here a letter of introduction, which he had to a faithful Protestant, was delivered by mistake to a Catholic of the same name. The authorities were informed; Brousson was seized, and sent back to Montpellier. At his trial, on the 4th of November,' says M. Peyrat, 'the hall was crowded with churchmen, military officers, and lawyers, anxious to see the once celebrated jurisconsult, now a poor pastor of the desert, about to die. Brousson disdained to employ in his defence the least oratorical artifice. He spoke for about a quarter of an hour with calmness and simplicity, confining himself to saying that he was an honest man, fearing God-a minister of the gospel, who had entered France to comfort his unfortunate brethren.' He denied having been concerned in the conspiracy with the Duke of Schomberg. He was broken on the wheel that same day, having been previously strangled by a merciful order of Bâville. His name was long cherished by the Protestants of Languedoc; and an account of his death was published under the title of The Martyrdom of M. de Brousson.

THE ECSTATICS OF THE CEVENNES-OUTBREAK OF THE

GREAT INSURRECTION.

The century was now drawing to a close. Fifteen years had elapsed since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the condition of France during that period had been as we have described it.

Hundreds of thousands of its Protestant citizens had abandoned it, to seek the liberty which it denied them in foreign lands; and those who remained were subjected to the most galling persecution, forced outwardly to conform to the Catholic worship, and enjoying only secretly, at great risks, and at rare intervals, the privilege of hearing the gospel preached by a Protestant minister. A few local insurrections, as we have seen, had broken out, but had been suppressed by the activity of the governors of the provinces. In the year 1700 all seemed over; and, turning his attention from France, Louis was engaged in making preparations for the new European war in which he was involved, for the purpose of establishing the right of his grandson, the Duke of Anjou, to succeed to the crown of Spain. This war continued till 1713; but scarcely had it begun, when the spirit of insurrection broke out in the Cevennes more fiercely than ever. Of this new struggle, to which more particularly the name of the War of the Camisards is applied, we now proceed to give an account.

We have already mentioned the appearance of the spirit or disease (whichever we choose to call it) of ecstasy which broke out in Dauphiné and Languedoc about the year 1689. After disappearing

for a while, this spirit or disease broke out again in the year 1701. We will extract our account of these singular phenomena from M. Peyrat. 'The spirit,' he says, 'descended rarely on old persons, and never on those who were rich and well educated. It visited youth and indigence, misfortune, simple hearts, shepherds, labourers, grown-up girls, and even children. "The youngest child I ever saw speak in a state of ecstasy," says Durand Fage of Aubais, "was a little girl of five years of age, at the village of Saint Maurice, near Euzet; but it is known in the country that the spirit has often been poured out on little children, of whom some were even yet at the breast, and who could not speak at an age so tender, except when it pleased God to announce his marvels by the mouth of such innocents." "I have seen," adds Jacques Dubois of Montpellier-"I have seen, among others, a child of five months, in its mother's arms at Quissac, that spoke, with agitation and sobbings, distinctly, and with a loud voice, but yet with interruptions, which made it necessary to listen attentively to hear certain words.”

66

'The Cévenols reckoned four degrees of ecstasy. The first was called Pavertissement (warning); the second, le souffle (breath); the third, la prophétie (prophecy); and the fourth and highest, le don (the gift). They remarked, however, in general, of an inspired person, He has received excellent gifts." One of the most extraordinary gifts was assuredly that of preaching. M. de Caladon of Aulas, a man of cultivated mind, speaks thus of one of the preachers, a female servant named Jeanne. She was," he says, "a poor, silly peasant, aged about forty years, assuredly the most simple and ignorant creature known in our mountains. When I heard that she was preaching, and preaching wonderfully, I could not believe a word of it; it never entered into my conception that she could join four words of French together, or that she could have the boldness to speak in a company. Yet I have several times witnessed her acquit herself miraculously. When the heavenly intelligence made her speak, this she-ass of Balaam had truly a mouth of gold. Never did orator make himself heard as she did; and never was auditor more attentive or more affected than those who listened to her. It was a torrent of eloquence; it was a prodigy; and-what I say is no exaggeration-she became all at once a totally new creature, and was transformed into a great preacher."

'The number of prophets increased so rapidly, that eight thousand were counted in Languedoc the first year. Not a town, hamlet, village, or house, but had its inspired orator. All of them assembled their congregations, and that every day; so that every day eight thousand assemblies, large or small, were held between the Lozère

In receiving these statements, and some which follow, our readers must exercise their own discretion. It is absolutely necessary to make such quotations as those in the text, in order to give a true idea of the strange state of feeling among the Cévenols during the insurrection, when the belief in the miraculous nature of the occurrences was universal.