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PROTESTANT ELECTED PRESIDENT.

merchants, for the most part Protestants. As for the rich Catholics, who were especially land proprietors, they could not lose their lands, and therefore were more slow in arming. When their castles were attacked, the National Guard, composed of Protestants and Catholics, took every care to defend them; that of Montauban saved a château belonging to Cazalès the royalist. To change this state of affairs, it was necessary to awaken envy and create a spirit of rivalry. This came soon enough of itself by the force of circumstances, apart from every difference of opinion and party. Every corps that seemed select, whether aristocratical, like the volunteers of Lyon and Lille, or patriotic, like the dragoons of Montauban and Nimes, was equally detested. They excited against the latter those petty people who formed the great mass of the Catholic companies, by spreading a report among them that the others called them cébets or onion-eaters. This was a gratuitous accusation; for why should the Protestants have insulted the poor? Nobody at Nimes was poorer than the Protestant workmen. And their friends and defenders of the mountain, in the Cevennes, who often have no other food than chesnuts, led a harder, poorer, and more abstinent life than the onion-eaters at Nimes, who eat bread also and often drink wine.

On the 20th of March, they heard that the Assembly, not satisfied to have opened to Protestants the road to public employment, had raised a Protestant, Rabaut Saint-Etienne, to the highest of all, a position then higher than the throne,-to the presidency of the nation. Nothing was yet ready,-few arms, if any; nevertheless, the impression was so strong that four Protestants were assassinated by way of expiation—a fact contested, but certain.

Toulouse did penance for the sacrilege of the Assembly, made a public confession of its sins, and offered up nine days' prayers to avert the wrath of God. It was the period of an execrable festival, an annual procession made in remembrance of the massacre of the Albigenses. The brotherhoods of every denomination repair in crowds to the chapel erected on the field of slaughter; and the most furious motions are made in the churches. Machinery is set to work in every direction. They fetch from their old lumber-rooms those instruments of fanaticism which played their parts at the time of the Dragonnades and the Saint-Bartho

ARTS OF THE CLERGY.

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lomew massacre: virgins who shed tears praying for murders, and Christs to nod, &c. &c. Add, moreover, a few more recent inventions; for instance, a Dominican to go about the streets of Nimes; in his white monk-dress, begging his bread and weeping over the decrees of the Assembly; at Toulouse, a bust of the captive king, the martyr-king, placed near the preacher and covered with a black veil, to be suddenly revealed at the pathetic moment in the sermon to ask assistance of the good people of Toulouse.

All that was too clear: It meant blood! And the Protestants understood it.

Isolated amidst a vast Catholic population, they saw themselves a small flock marked for slaughter. The terrible reminiscences treasured in each family, would return to their minds at night and frighten them out of their sleep. The effects of this panic were whimsical enough; the dread of the brigands which pervaded the rural districts, was often confounded in their imaginations with that of Catholic assassins; and they hardly knew whether they were in 1790 or in 1572. At Saint-Jean-de-la-Gardonnenque, a small trading town, some couriers entered one morning, crying: "Be on your guard! here they are!" They ring the alarm-bell, run to arms, the women cling to their husbands to prevent them from going out; they shut up their houses, put themselves in a state of defence, with paving-stones at the windows. And the town was indeed invaded, but by friends, the Protestants of the country, who had arrived by forced marches. Among them was seen a beautiful girl, armed, and carrying a gun, between her two brothers. She was the heroine of the day, and was crowned with laurel; all the tradespeople recovering from their panic, clubbed among themselves for their lovely deliverer; and she returned to her mountains with her dowry in her apron.

Nothing could allay their fears but a permanent association between the communes; an armed confederation. They formed one towards the end of March in a meadow of the Gard, a sort of island between a canal and the river, sheltered from every kind of surprise. Thousands of men repaired thither, and what was more comforting, the Protestants saw a great number of Catholics mingled with them under their banner. The peaceful Roman ruins which crown the landscape filled their

362

DECLARATION OF NIMES.

minds with loftier thoughts; they seemed to have survived in order to despise and see decline those miserable quarrels of religion, and to have the promise of a more noble age.

The two parties were drawn up in array and ready to act; Nimes, Toulouse, and Montauban were watching Paris and waiting. Let us compare dates. On the 13th of April, in the bosom of the Assembly, they obtain from it a spark to kindle all the South, its refusal to declare Catholicism the predominant religion; on the 19th the clergy protest. As early as the 18th Toulouse protests with fire-arms; there they act the scene of the king's bust; the patriots shout "Long live the king and the law!" and the soldiers fire on them.

On the 20th, at Nimes, is a great and solemn Catholic declaration signed by three thousand electors, and backed with the signatures of fifteen hundred distinguished persons,-a declaration forwarded to all the municipalities in the kingdom, followed and copied at Montauban, Albi, Alais, Uzès, &c. This article, planned at the White Penitents, was written by Froment's clerks, and signed in his house by the populace. It amounted to a criminal accusation against the National Assembly; and gave it notice that it had to restore power to the king, and to bestow upon the Catholic religion the monopoly of public worship.

At the same time, they were striving to form new companies in every direction. These were strangely composed, consisting of ecclesiastical agents, peasants, marquises and domestics, nobles and porters. In default of guns, they had pitch-forks and scythes; they were also secretly fabricating a terrible murderous weapon,-pitchforks with edges like a saw.

The municipalities, created by the Catholics, pretended not to see all this; they seemed to be very busily engaged in strengthening the strong, and weakening the weak. At Montauban, the Protestants, six times less numerous than their adversaries, wanted to accede to the federative covenant which the Protestants of the rural districts had just formed; but the municipality would not allow it. They next attempted to disarm their animosity by withdrawing from the public employments to which they had been raised, and causing Catholics to be appointed in their stead. This was taken for weakness; and the religious crusade was not the less preached in the

TERROR OF THE PROTESTANTS.

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churches. The vicars-general excited the minds of the people still more by causing prayers of forty hours to be said for the safety of the religion in peril.

The municipality of Montauban at length threw off the mask by an affair that could not fail to bring about an explosion. For the execution of the decree of the Assembly ordering an inventory to be made in the religious communities, it chose precisely Rogation-Day, the 10th of May. It was also during a Spring festival that the Sicilian Vespers took place. The season added much to the general excitement. This festival of Rogation is the moment when the whole population is out of doors, and full of emotions aroused by worship and the season, feels that intoxicating influence of Spring, so powerful in the South. Though occasionally retarded by the hail-storms of the Pyrenees, it burst out only with greater vigour. Everything seems then to be emerging and springing forth at once-man from his house, and the grass from the earth; and every creature leaps with joy; it is like a coup d'état of Providence -a revolution in nature.

And well did they know that the women who go whining about the streets their lachrymose canticles Te rogamus, audi nos-well did they know that they would urge their husbands to the fight, and cause them to be killed, rather than allow the magistrates to enter the convents.

The latter begin their march, but, as they might have foreseen, are stopped short by the impenetrable masses of the people, and by women sitting and lying before the sacred thresholds. It would be necessary to walk over them. They therefore withdraw, and the crowd becomes aggressive; it even threatens to burn down the house of the military commandant, a Catholic, but a patriot. It marches towards the Hôtel-de-Ville, in order to force the arsenal. If it succeeded in doing so; if, in that state of fury, it seized upon arms, the massacre of the Protestants and patriots in general must have begun.

The municipality had the power of calling out the regiment of Languedoc; but it declined doing so. The national guards march of their own accord and occupy the military post that covers the Hôtel-de-Ville, where they are soon besieged. Far from succouring them, assistance is sent to the furious populace,

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364

MASSACRE AT MONTAUBAN.

whom they cause to be supported by the persons employed in the excise. Five or six hundred shots are fired against the windows. The unfortunate guards pierced with bullets, several being killed, a great number wounded, and being without ammunition, show a white handkerchief and ask them to spare their lives. The firing continues all the same, and the wall, their only defence, is demolished. Then the culpable municipality decides, in extremis, to do what it ought to have done before-to call out the regiment of Languedoc, which, for a long time, had desired to advance.

During this butchery, a noble lady had caused masses to be said.

Those who have not been killed are therefore at length able to go forth. But the fury of the populace was not exhausted. Their dress, the national uniform, is torn from them, as is also the cockade, which is trampled under foot. Bare-headed, holding tapers in their hands, and stripped to their shirts, they are then dragged along the streets, stained with their blood, as far as the cathedral, where they are made to kneel on the steps to do penance. In front march the mayor, bearing a white

flag.

For less cause, France had caused the insurrection of the 6th of October; for a less outrage offered to the tri-coloured cockade, she had overthrown a monarchy.

We tremble for Montauban when we perceive the terrible exasperation, that such an event would excite, and the strong fellowship which, even at that time, bound together the whole nation from north to south. If there had been nobody in the south to avenge such an affront, all the centre and the north, the whole of France would have marched. The outrage was felt even in the most inconsiderable villages. I have now before me the threatening addresses of the populations of Marne and Seine-et-Marne on those indignities of the south.* The north was able to remain quiet. The south was quite sufficient. Bordeaux was the first to march; then. Toulouse,

* I believe I have read everything relating far or near to these riots of Montauban, Nimes, &c., and have stated nothing till I had compared and weighed the testimony, and formed my conviction with the attention of a juryman. This once for all. I quote but little, in order not to interrupt the unity of my narration.