Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/14

 Government relieved its feelings of chagrin at such concessions by inventing, as the one legal designation of French Protestantism for all time coming, the contemptuous title, “La Religion Pretendue Reformée” (the pretended reformed religion), or “La R.P.R.”

Henry III. succeeded Charles IX. in 1574, but his reign must here be passed over. When he was assassinated in the camp near Paris in 1589, the Protestants under King Henry of Navarre were in his army, taking the loyal side against the rebellious Roman Catholic League. The Papists continued the rebellion, with a view to displace Henry of Navarre from the throne of France, which was his rightful inheritance; and thus the Protestants, being evidently loyal still, require no apologist.

It is alleged, however, that by now becoming a party to a treaty with the king of the country, the Protestant Church of France assumed an imperial position which no civilised empire can tolerate, and that, therefore, the suppression of that Church by Louis XIV., though executed with indefensible cruelty, was the dictate of political necessity.

The reply to this allegation is, that this treaty was only the re-enactment and further extension of a peculiar method of tolerating Protestants, devised by the kings of France as the only plan to evade the necessity of being intolerant, which the coronation oath made them swear to be. The plea that Protestants, as religionists, were not implicitly subject to the King, but were to be negotiated with like a foreign power, was the only apology for tolerating them, consistent even with the modified oath sworn by Henry IV.—“I will endeavour, to the utmost of my power, and in good faith, to drive out of my jurisdiction and from the lands under my sway all heretics denounced by the Church” of Rome. As to this political treaty with the Huguenots in its first shape. Professor Anderson remarks, “Instead of religious toleration being secured to them by a powerfully administered law, their protection was left in their own hands, … as if there was something in their creed which must for ever render them incapable of amalgamating with other Frenchmen.”

Royalty, which planned the treaty, was at least as guilty as the Protestant Church, which entered into the plan. If persecution and extinction were the righteous wages of the transaction, the humbler accomplice was not the only party that had earned them. The only crime was consent to a royal programme, to which the successors of Henri IV. made themselves parties by deliberate and repeated declarations. The treaty to which we allude is the celebrated Edict of Nantes, dated 1598, as a pledge of the observance of which the Protestant Church received several towns, with garrisons and ammunition, to be held and defended by their own party in independent feudal style.

That this was a political eye-sore in a statesman-like view, is now acknowledged. But that it was the last chance for religious peace and tolerance in France, cannot be denied on the other hand. And to say that it was the cause of the Great Persecution would be a historical blunder.

The bigotry of the Roman Catholics was the cause. In the provinces persecution was perpetual. Illegal treatment of individuals and congregations of the Protestant party was rarely punished; while the local magistrate, instead of a protector, was often a leading persecutor. Through priestly instigation and intimidation, the atmosphere of France was heated with uncontrollable and unextinguishable malignity against the Protestants, who gained nothing by fighting with truce-breakers.

It was in the reign of Henri’s son, Louis XIII., that fighting in defence of edictal rights came to an end. The majority of the Protestants grew weary of fruitless battles and sieges, being always conscientiously loyal, they began to wish to make an ostentation of their loyalty, and to rely upon that for fair and paternal treatment from their King and his Cabinet. Undoubtedly, the King’s animus was against the feudalism as well as the Protestantism of the cautionary towns. The former was their special offensiveness to the powerful Prime Minister of France, Cardinal Richelieu. 