Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/821

Rh CAMISARDS was the name given to the peasantry of the OeVennes who, from 170:2 to 1705 and for some years afterwards, carried ou an organized military resistance to the dragonnadcs, or conversion by torture, death, and con fiscation of property, by which, in the Huguenot districts of France, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was attempted to be enforced. Court de G6belin derives the word from cam/ sade, a night attack (Hist, des troubles des Cevennes, 3 vols. 1760). Louvreleuil, in his Le Fanatisme Ecnouvele, 1704, suggests its connection with the camise, or linen shirt, at one time worn by the insurgents as a uniform, and with camis, a road-runner. The Camisards were also called Barbels (or water-dogs, a term also applied to the Vaudois), Vagabonds, Assemblers (assemblee was the name given to the meeting or conventicle of Huguenots), Fanatics, and the Children of God. They belonged to that romance-speaking people of Gothic descent who took part in the earliest movements towards religious reform. It was in Languedoc that the Peace of God and the Truce of God were formed in the 1 1th century against the miseries of private war (Rudolph Glaber, iv. 5). There were preserved the forms of municipal freedom which nearly all Europe had lost ; and there commerce flourished without spoiling the thrift, the patience, the simplicity of the national character Not even the voluptuous court of Aries, with its trouveres, its courts of love, and its extravagant applications of the rules of chivalry, could corrupt the free and honest intelligence of these southern communities. Before the tragedy of the Albigenses began, it was a proverb in Languedoc against the stupid and sensual priesthood, &quot; J aimerais mieux etre pretre que d avoir fait une telle chose.&quot; Although the rage of the Crusaders and the cold hate of the Dominicans were successful in blasting the commercial development of the district, they could not wholly eradicate those ideas which, whether called Paulician, Catharist, Bulgarian, Hussite, or Protestant, really represent religious sincerity and mental freedom. Calvin was warmly welcomed when he preached at Nimes, Montpellier became the chief centre for the instruction of the Huguenot youth. But it was in the great triangular plateau of mountain called the C6vennes that, among the small farmers, the cloth and silk weavers, and vine dressers, Protestantism was most intense and universal. These people were and still are very poor, but they are intelligent and pious, and they add to the deep fervour of the Provenal character a gravity which is probably the result of their recorded history. From the lists of Huguenots sent from Languedoc to the galleys (1684 to 1762), we gather that the common type of physique is &quot; belle taille, cheveux bruns, visage ovale.&quot; The diocese of Meude consists of 173 parishes, and contains the Bas Ge&quot;vaudan and the Haut Gdvaudan. The Haul Ge&quot;vaudan consists of the Mountains la Marguerite and Aulrac ; the Bas Ge&quot;vaudan embraces the Hautes Cdvennes and the Lozere. In the midst of these mountains are three great plains or plateaux, called respectively L Hopital, L Hos- pitalet, and La Cause, and a forest named Le Faux des Armes. Barley and chestnuts are the chief products of G6vauclan. The Basses Cevennes are in the richer diocese of Alais, which has 93 parishes. The chief mountains are Aigoal and Esperon, the latter enclosing a beautiful plateau named Hort-Dieu (God s Garden). The Vivarais lies in the diocese of Viviers, which has 314 parishes and 3 can tons ; Boutieres, Montagne, and Bas-Vivarais. Farther south are the well-cultivated dioceses of Uzes, Nimes (called Little Canaan), and Montpellier, the last of which is con nected with La Serrane, the southern branch of the Cevennes. The whole district of the war is thus contained in the modern departments of Lozere, Aveyron, Drom a , Ardechc, Gard, and He rault. To understand the war of these Camisards requires a glance at the preceding history of France. The system of toleration which was established under the Edict of Nantes, 13th April 1598, and the Edict of Grace (Nimes), July 1629, was essentially a political compromise, and not a recognition of the principle of religious equality. The right of having a private chapel was given to all seiyncurs de fief haut just-icier, but in the case of a seigneur sans haute justice only thirty persons might attend the service. New public churches were to be authorized at a certain rate in certain places. On the other hand, Calvinists were admitted to all public posts and to ail professions ; they could publish books in towns where they had churches. The Chamber of the Edict was formed in the parliament of Paris for the impartial judgment of cases brought by Huguenots ; and the &quot; mi-partie,&quot; half-Catholic half-Protes : tant constitution, was adopted in the town-consulates and the local parliaments of the south. After the short-lived struggle between Louis XIII. and the Due de Rohan, the Huguenots settled down into contented industry ; the army and navy of France were led by two Huguenots, Turenne and Duquesne, and Cardinal Bentivoglio wrote to Pope Paul IV. that he no longer found in France &quot; quell insano fervor di coscienza si radicato primo negli ugonotti.&quot; But the court in which Mme. de Maintenon had succeeded to Mme. de Montespan, where Louvois and the Jesuit Pere la Chaise were as supreme as Bossuet and F16chier in the church, could not long be satisfied with tolerated heresy, which they chose to consider as veiled rebellion. On the death of Mazarin a commissioner had perambu lated the kingdom to inquire into the titles, or rather to suppress as many as possible, of the Huguenot churches, schools, and cemeteries. The extirpation of heresy had, in fact, been provided for by a clause in the marriage-contract between Louis and Maria Theresa (1660), and in spite of the protection of Colbert, a policy was begun of destroying piece-meal the privileges of the dissenters. The chancellor Le Tellier, by a series of arbitrary council edicts, shut against them the public offices and the trade corporations, forbade them to marry with Catholics, and encouraged, almost enforced, the conversion of children who had reached the age of seven. The wholesale briberies of Pelisson, the destruction of churches by Foucault in Montauban, Beam, and Poitiers, the billeting of soldiers on the unconverted in Languedoc by the intendant Baville, led up the Edict of Revocation (18th October 1685). This edict directed all the churches to be destroyed, forbade religious meetings under pain of imprisonment and confiscation of goods, ordered all ministers or pastors (who would not change their faith) to be banished within fifteen days, and to stop preaching at once under pain of the galleys, promised several exemptions from taxes and increased salaries to converted ministers, sup pressed all Huguenot schools, and directed all children to be baptized and brought up in the Catholic faith, pro hibited all Huguenots, except ministers, from going abroad, and declared the property of those who had already gone to be forfeited unless they returned within four months. Such was the formal scheme. In carrying it into effect, Huguenot Bibles, Testaments, Psalters, and books of religious instruction were burned, and Huguenots were forbidden to hire themselves as artisans or as domestic servants. Torture, hanging, insults worse than death to women, the galleys for life, imprisonment for life in the Tour de la Constance, near Aiguesmortes, were the ordinary occurrences of the next sixty years. Many escaped to Geneva, Lausanne, Amsterdam, and London. It is calculated that 600,000 French Protestants left their country in the twenty years following the revocation, and 400,000 in the twenty years preceding it (Smiles, T/it Huguenots in France, p. 17). Many suffered a shameful 