Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter | War. He encouraged foreigners to settle in how fine a thing was the edict of revocation, the country, where he granted them lands or compared to which no king had ever done, aided them to establish themselves. On the or ever would do, aught as memorable. The 29th October, 1685, exactly one week after the chancellor, Le Tellier, after affixing the seal revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he published of state to the document, declared that he the Edict of Potsdam, by which he offered would never seal any other, and pronounced shelter and protection to the persecuted Protthose words of the canticle of Simeon which, estants. His agents at Amsterdam and Hamin the mouth of the aged Hebrew, referred to burg, and in the various German states the coming of the Lord. Bossuet, Massillon, through which they might pass on their Fléchier, the great preachers of that day, ex-fight from France, were directed to care for ulted in their pulpits, and lauded Louis to the skies. Rome was in raptures. A Te Deum was sung, and Innocent XI. sent a brief of thanks and praise to the French monarch. Medals were struck, statues raised ;* and at Versailles may still be seen a masterpiece of Lesueur's, in which hideous forms fly at sight of the chalice. The allegory represents the defeat of Protestantism by Popery.

their safety and supply them with means to travel. They acquired, by the mere act of settling in his dominions, all the civic rights of those born there, besides various privileges and immunities confined to themselves. He offered land to the agriculturist, facilities to the manufacturer, honors, rank, and military employment to nobles and men of the sword. His tempting proclamation was quickly disWest, east, and north, fled the scattered seminated in France; and although the inProtestants the bigoted south offered them tendants of the provinces used the most rigorno refuge. To Gerinany they went, to Eng-ous measures to suppress it, and affirmed it to land and America, to Switzerland and Holland, be a forgery, the Protestants read it and knew even to Scandinavia. Their proceedings in it to be true, and soon a number of French each one of these countries, the succors they colonies were formed in Brandenburg. Fredfound, and the services they rendered, their erick William's country was poor; he had influence upon arts and manufactures, their but two millions of subjects; his treasury was ultimate fate, the blending (in most instances) exhausted by a ruinous war; and he had of their descendants with the natives, are re-great difficulty in raising the funds necessary corded by Mr. Weiss in separate books. The for the establishment of the refugees, and for first of these is devoted to Brandenburg the support of those for whom employment (Prussia), a country to which, owing to its could not at once be found. He emptied his then backward state of civilization as com- privy purse. "I will sell my plate," he one pared with France, England, and Holland, the day said, "sooner than let them want.' He immigration of a large body of cultivated was repaid for his generosity and sound polFrenchmen, including military officers of rank icy. The difficulty was but temporary. The and experience, men of learning, manufac-fugitives did not all come empty-handed. He turers, artisans, and trades of every kind, was received their money in deposit, allowed them an inestimable benefit. The Elector, Frederick William, who had been brought up at the French court of the Prince of Orange, felt this, and spared no pains to attract the refugees to his dominions. He was a Protestant; his wife was a grand-daughter of Coligny; French was the language spoken at his court, where all the elevated posts were filled by men who had lived in Paris, and who habitually "The Electress, Louisa Henrietta, and the spoke and wrote in French. When he came future queen, Sophia Charlotto, desired to to the throne in 1640, he found his country have presented to them the women whom the depopulated by war, agriculture neglected, trade and manufactures destroyed. His long reign was passed in healing the wounds inflicted on Brandenburg by the Thirty Years'

interest, and applied the capital to the relief of the necessitous. Collections were made, and the French officers voluntarily abandoned a twentieth part of their pay for the relief of their suffering fellow-oxiles. To this fund the Duke of Schomberg subscribed the annual sum of 2000 livres, which was paid until his departure for England.

rigors of persecution had driven from their country. With delicate attention, the court etiquette was modified in their favor, and they were admitted in black dresses their best ornament the voluntary indigence they had preferred to apostasy.'

The provost and sheriffs of Paris erected, at the Hotel de Ville, a brazen statue in honor of the king who had rooted out herosy. The bas-reliefs Brandenburg received about 25,000 French showed a frightful bat, whose large wings en- refugees. Amongst these were 600 officers, veloped the works of Calvin and of Huss. On the whom the Elector admitted at once into his statue was this inscription: Ludovico Magno victori ariny, forming new companies and regiments perpetuo, ecclesiæ ac regum dignitatis assertori. This to make room for them, and with a degree statue, which replaced that of the young king of favor which can hardly have been very trampling the Fronde under foot, was melted in 1792 and cast into cannon, which thundered at pleasing to the native officers-giving them Valmy.-WEISS, i., 121, 122, all a higher grade than that they had held in

Fred

France. Thus captains became majors, colo- | George II. was wont to call " my brother the nels major-generals, &c., and so on through corporal," who passed his time in drilling his all ranks. A great number of the Huguenots troops, reconnoitring gigantic grenadiers, and enlisted as private soldiers. Men and officers in drinking and smoking, the arts and scidid good service, as soon as the opportunity ences were little encouraged at the Prussian was afforded thein. court, although Queen Sophia Dorothea did "The European war, which broke out in collect around her a number of learned and 1639, was the bloody proof that attested their accomplished emigrants, some of whom were attachment to their adopted country. Fred-intrusted with the education of her son and erick I. took part in it, as the ally of the Em- daughter. But the refugees knew how to peror, against the King of France, whom he adapt themselves to circumstances. had offended by assisting the Prince of Orange erick William gave new clothes to the whole to upset James II. The army he assembled of his army every year, and he had laid it in Westphalia was composed in great part of down as a rule to have everything necessary French regiments. In the first campaign the for their equipment manufactured in his own refugees destroyed the opinion spread against kingdom. The French refugees founded a them in Germany, that they would fight but number of cloth manufactories, whose fame feebly against their former fellow-citizens. soon spread abroad so much so, that in At the combat of Neuss the grands mousque-1733, besides home consumption, Prussia extaires* attacked the French troops with a fury ported forty-four thousand pieces of cloth of that proved a long-cherished resentment, with twenty-four ells each. To favor this manuwhich French writers have often reproached facture, which Prussia owed entirely to the them. On seeing them gallop towards the refugees, the king forbade the export of wool, enemy with the velocity of lightning, one of thus compelling his subjects to manufacture the Prussian generals exclaimed, We shall it themselves. Under Frederick the Great, have those knaves fighting against us just Prussia became more French than ever. The Count Dohna, who overheard these refugees supplied generals, privy councillors, offensive words, compelled the general to ambassadors; their language was substituted draw pistol, and washed out, in his blood, this insult to the honor of the refugees.' At the siege of Bonn the assault was given by the refugee regiments, who fought like fiends and took all the exterior works. Next morning the French garrison capitulated. In Flanders and in Italy the Franco-Prussians equally distinguished themselves, but were nearly exterminated, at the bloody battle of La Marsaille, by the bayonets of Catinat's army. Those that remained displayed their valor in the War of Succession, under the eyes of Marlborough and Eugene at Blenheim and Oudenarde, at Malplaquet and Mons. Three regiments, composed entirely of refugees, performed such brilliant exploits at Malplaquet, that, when the Prince-Royal of Prussia came to the throne, he selected from thein the principal officers with which he reörganized his army.

now.'

for Latin at the Berlin Academy, and was near becoming the national tongue. The French officers taken prisoners at the battle of Rosbach were greatly struck at meeting, in the country of their captivity, with the multitude of their countrymen, and at hearing their language almost generally used in all the provinces of the Prussian monarchy. Notwithstanding his scepticism, Frederick the Great never ceased warmly to sympathize with the religious, God-fearing French Protestants. He deemed himself happy, he said, in his old age, to have lived long enough to celebrate with them, in 1785, the jubilee_of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But the French were gradually blending with the native population and losing trace of their origin. "At the present day," Mr. Weiss informs us, "the French colony at Berlin is still about six thousand strong, and, all proportion kept, their morality is purer than that of the rest of the population. The number of suicides, illegitimate births, and crimes of all kinds, is smaller. The rigid spirit of Calvin still animates the descendants of his expatriated sectaries." The old men alone * Two companies composed of gentlemen, formed continue to speak the French tongue. Interby the advice of Marshal Schomberg, upon the model of the mousquetaires à cheval of the King of marriages and intercourse with Germans, France's guard. The elector was colonel of one have brought about its disuse amongst the company, and Count Dohna, a nobleman of Bran-younger descendants of the emigrants. Freddenburg who had lived much in France, was his erick the Great despised German literature, second in command. The other company had and a strong reaction occurred after his death. Schomberg for its colonel. In the Memoirs of The disaster of Jena, and the treaty of Tilsit, Erman and Réclam, the pith of whose lengthy made everything French unpopular in Pruswork is given by Mr. Weiss in a single chapter of Book II., is a complete list of the grands moussia even the language. Many of the refuquataires.- -Vol, ii., p. 244–260. gees had already translated their names into

Frederick William I., and Frederick the Great, did not show less sympathy than their father and grandfather had shown with the refugees and their descendants. Under the reign of the first-named sovereign, whom

ers

German as some of their brethren_trans- | predecessor; and when that great uncrowned lated theirs into English when the French sovereign, sturdy Oliver Cromwell, came to Revolution and subsequent war made the very power, it may well be supposed that he was name of Frenchman odious in England. The not backward to succor them. "His glorious Lacroix, Laforge, Dupré, Savage, had taken dictatorship," says Mr. Weiss," replaced the names of Kreutz, Schmidt, Wiese, Wild. England at the head of the Protestant party To English readers-perhaps to any read- in Europe." The protector had no need to -the most interesting section of Mr. draw the sword efficiently to aid his suffering Weiss' work is the third book, "The Refu- co-religionists. His name was a tower of gees in England." For more than a century strength, his word alone had everywhere previously to the revocation of the Edict of weight. Instead of allying himself with parNantes, this country had supported the cause tisans, who, like Condé, might have turned of the French Protestants, alternately by their coats and left auxiliaries in the lurch, peaceable negotiation and by force of arms. he went to the fountain-head. When the In 1562, Elizabeth signed the Treaty of Hamp- Vaudois were cruelly persecuted in 1655, he ton Court, by which she bound herself to made Cardinal Mazarin ashamed of the part furnish six thousand men to the Prince of taken by French troops in that exterminating Condé-half these troops to defend Dieppe war. The cardinal disowned the leaders of and Rouen, the other half to garrison Havre, those troops, and interceded with the Duke which was delivered over to the English. of Savoy in favor of the sufferers. His But Harry the Eighth's daughter, that stanch intercession was perhaps less potent than a and stubborn Defender of the Faith, had to do menacing letter written by Cromwell to the with a fickle ally. The defeat of Dreux and duke, who forthwith gave way and revoked the treaty of Amboise threw Condé into the his bloody edict of proscription. Cromwell ranks of the royal army, and he assisted to then sent assistance to the Vaudois, who had take Havre from the Earl of Warwick-an endured terrible calamities, and extended his act of ingratitude from which Coligny and protection even to the Protestants of Nismes Dandelot abstained, whilst some Protestant and the Cevennes. In the course of his regentlemen, preferring the voice of conscience searches Mr. Weiss has disinterred a characto that of patriotism, threw themselves into teristic postscript to a letter written by the the besieged town to aid in its defence. English ruler to the cardinal. There had Elizabeth might well have been disgusted by been disturbances at Nismes in 1657, and the Condé's conduct and her troops' ill success; Catholic party fiercely demanded the chasbut she doubtless shared the belief then enter- tisement of the Huguenots. Instead of comtained by the majority of her subjects, that plying with their request, Mazarin granted an the full of Calvinism in France would be a amnesty. prelude to that of Protestantism in England, "He had just received a despatch from and when hostilities again broke out, she Cromwell, containing the plan of the apsent money and artillery to the Huguenots. proaching campaign, and informing him of Mignet has told us, and Mr. Weiss repeats, the operations prescribed to the English fleets the tale of her grief and indignation at the in the Mediterranean and on the ocean. bloody day of St. Bartholomew. "For sev-protector added his opinion on the attacks to eral days after the massacre she refused to be directed against Austria by the armies of give audience to La Mothe Fénélon, the Sweden, Portugal and France, and concluded French ambassador. When at last she con- with the following words, negligently thrown sented to admit him to her presence, she re-out: Something has occurred in a town of ceived him in her privy chamber, which had Languedoc called Nismes. I beg of you to let the gloomy aspect of a tomb. She was sur- everything pass without effusion of blood, and rounded by the lords of her council and ladies as gently as may be.'" of her court, all attired in deep mourning. The ambassador passed through the silent throng, whilst every eye was averted from him in anger, and approached the queen, who compelled him to justify Charles IX. from that odious crime." More than this, she allowed Montgomery to fit out, upon English ground, an expedition for the relief of La Rochelle, then threatened with a siege; and subsequently, after the death of Henry III., supplied his successor with money and men in his contest with the League and the King of Spain.

The Stuarts continued the support afforded to the French Protestants by their illustrious

The

Such being the habitual policy of the English sovereigns in the seventeenth century, it is not surprising that England was a favorite refuge with the persecuted amongst the foreign Protestants. Previously to this, so early as the second half of the sixteenth century, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the Duke of Alva's cruelties, had driven thousands of French and Flemings to Britain's hospitable shores. Their advent and residence were encouraged in the well-founded expectation that their skill and industry would benefit their adopted country. Numerous churches were founded in London and the provinces. Their first place of worship was

assigned to them by Edward VI., in 1550. It sovereign recalled the Jesuits, received the is now the Dutch church in Austin Friars, in nuncio, and emancipated the Catholics. Louis the city of London. A few months later they derived unbounded confidence from the apparobtained from the Chapter of Windsor the ent progress of Popery in England; James grant of the chapel of St. Anthony, in Thread- was confirmed in his fatal course by his conneedle Street. Driven thence by Bloody viction of the complete victory of Catholicism Mary, they resumed occupation on Elizabeth's in France. But the crowds of fugitives that accession. During the whole of her long poured into this country, and their report of reign, that great queen lavished upon them their sufferings, so excited the English public marks of her favor. When, in consequence that the Catholics themselves were alarmed, of the persecutions in France under Charles and James and the nuncio requested the IX., their numbers so increased that the more French ambassador and the Marquis of Bonaffluent amongst them were unable to supply repaus, who had just arrived in London on a the wants of the necessitous, she recom- special mission, to calm the fermentation by mended them to the Archbishop of Canter-disavowing the persecution attributed, only bury, who assisted them. Subsequently, on too truly, to their magnificent and merciless two occasions, she protected them from the animosity of the London 'prentices, shopkeepers, and artisans, who, jealous of their foreign rivals, loudly demanded their expulsion from England.

66

master a strange and not very dignified exculpation of the most puissant of European monarchs, which the French envoys were fain to make to James' favorite councillors, Lords Castlemaine, Dover, and Tyrconnel.

James

The papist Stuart, James II., dared not de- The English king, daily more impressed viate from his predecessors' policy with re- with the not unfounded belief that the French gard to the Protestant refugees. Perhaps, refugees were his secret enemies, and the indeed, he had no desire to do so; for, with future allies of William of Orange, still was all his attachment to Rome, it is but just to compelled to protect and aid them. The admit that he was not a persecuting monarch, richer portion of the fugitives had generally His offence was the favor he showed the sought asylum in Holland- most of those Catholics, not oppression of the reformed who came to England were poor. "The church. Mr. Weiss, in some very interest- London Mint received, it is true, during the ing pages, exhibits him in great perplexity first four months following the revocation, and conflict with himself. His religious con- fifty thousand pistoles in specie to convert victions pulled him one way, public opinion into English money; and the French ambasand political necessity impelled him in an sador wrote to Louis XIV., in 1687, that opposite direction, and obliged him, upon the 960,000 louis-d'ors had already been melted revocation of the Edict of Nantes, to publish down in England. But these considerable an edict favorable to the French refugees. sums were the property of a small number of Whilst admitting the impossibility of an ex-great families. Most of the fugitives landed act estimate, Mr. Weiss states at 80,000 the in a state of extreme destitution. number of those who established themselves II. authorized collections for their benefit." in England during the ten years preceding and following the revocation. During the years 1686, 1687, and 1688, the Consistory of the French church in London, which held its meetings at least once a week, was occupied almost exclusively in receiving the marks of repentance of those who, after abjuring their faith to save their lives, resumed, in a more tolerant country, the religion they preferred to their native land. The ministers examined their testimony, heard their narratives of their sufferings, and received them back into the communion of their brethren." The old church in Threadneedle Street, and those in the Savoy, Marylebone, and Castle Street, were all insufficient to contain the increasing throng of the faithful. On the prayer of the Consistory, James II. gave license for the erection of a fifth temple in Spitalfields. But although he could not refuse such facilities, in other respects he acted in complete concert with Louis XIV. Whilst the French king converted his Protestant subjects at the sabre's edge, the English 293,

£200,000 (an imense sum in those days) were thus obtained, and employed to alleviate the misery of the exiles, with whom sympathy was general and immense. In the course of one year (1687), 15,500 French Protestants were succored by British generosity: 13,000 of these were settled in London, and 2000 in the different seaport towns where they had

Bonrepaus was sent by Louis XIV. to England and to Holland, to persuade the refugees to return to France. He was a skilful agent, and James II. seconded him to the utmost of his power; but his success was not great, although he did contrive to persuade a few hundred emigrants them, and shipped them off to Dunkirk, where of the French king's kind intentions towards they were received by Chateauneuf, who supplied them with money to reach their native provinces. The Revolution of 1788 put an end to this. On William III.'s accession, Châteauneuf sent in his accounts to Versailles, saying that, although the wind was favorable, there were no arrivals from the other side of the straits, and that it was not likely there would be any more.→→ Weiss, i., 289

landed. Amongst them were 140 persons of three regiments of infantry, and one squadron quality, and numerous members of the learned of cavalry, composed entirely of refugees. professions. Many of their sons obtained Each regiment numbered 750 fighting men. employment in the first mercantile houses. Moreover, seven hundred and thirty-six French About 150 entered the army, and we shall officers, for the most part veterans, accusprosently see what brilliant services some of tomed to victory under Turenne and Condé, them rendered. The clergy and the infirm were dispersed through the battalions of the were pensioned from the fund collected; prince's army. A great number of these had most of the workmen and artisans were em- found themselves compelled, in 1685, to beployed in English manufactories. 600 of the come nominally Catholics, in order to avoid latter, for whom employment could not be the shame of being declared unworthy to obtained in England, were sent to America serve under the flag of France, in whose by the French committee appointed to the shadow they had so long fought. Reconciled management of the fund, who also supplied with the Protestant religion in the French money to build fifteen churches three in churches in Holland, they burned for revenge London, and twelve in provincial towns where upon their persecutors. William of Orange refugees had settled. had no partisans more resolute and devoted. He had placed fifty-four in his regiment of horse-guards, and thirty-four in his bodyguard. Marshal Schomberg was second in command; and such was the confidence inspired by that skilful commander, that the Princess of Orange gave him secret instructions to assert her rights, and continue the enterprise, should her husband fall. Two other refugee officers were bearers of similar instructions to direct the expedition, in case of the death of both the prince and the marshal."

Protestant England, already indignant at the false and hypocritical exculpation of the French king concocted between his ambassadors, James II., and the Pope's nuncio, was doubly incensed, a few months later, by the well-known incident of the burning of Claude's book. Claude, formerly minister of the great temple at Charenton, had taken refuge in Holland, where he published a book, entitled, The Complaints of the Protestants cruelly persecuted in the kingdom of France. It was translated into English, and made a great sensation in London. The French ambas- As a great captain, Schomberg stood, in the sador urged James to testify his disapproval public opinion of that century, immediately of it. The king convoked his council, after Condé and Turenne. He was as wise a and insisted that the book should be burned counsellor as he was a valiant and skilful by the hangman's hand. There was opposi- leader. "When William would have sailed tion in the council, but James carried his straight up the Thames to London, in hopes point, and the book was burned accordingly, that his presence would suffice at once to cast in presence of the sheriff, and of an exas- down the banner of the Stuarts, and rouse the perated mob. The impression produced country to revolution, Schomberg made him throughout England by this concession to understand that the liberator of England Louis XIV. was such, that Barillon, the ought not to present himself as a conqueror, French ambassador, was alarmed, and wrote and enter the capital of his future kingdom at to his master that nothing, since the begin- the head of an army of Dutch and French; ning of James' reign, had taken a more vio- that it was better to temporize a little, show lent effect on the public mind. About this his partisans the forces that were ready to time the English king forbade the officers of second them, and so inspire them with courhis guards to enlist foreigners; and so strong age to take resolution." It was in pursuwas his desire to see the refugees quit Eng-ance of this sensible advice that William land, that he favored, to the utmost of his power, a wild project conceived by the Marquis de Miremont, who proposed to lead his fellow-exiles to Hungary, to fight against the Turks under the banners of the Empire. James' manœuvres and intrigues were put an end to only by his deposition.

"The most important service rendered to England by the refugees," says Mr. Weiss, at the commencement of the extremely interesting second chapter of his Third Book, "was the energetic support they gave to William of Orange against James II. When the prince embarked at the port of Naerden, and sailed to dethrone his father-in-law, his little army consisted of but 11,000 infantry and 4000 horse. But these troops comprised a chosen body of

steered for Torbay. Schomberg's anticipation was fulfilled. The sight of his valiant men-at-arms gave confidence to the country; the troops sent against him joined him; James fled. The Dutch prince triumphed, almost without drawing a sword. By one of those odd caprices of fate frequent in political catastrophes, the Sieur de l'Estang, a French refugee, and lieutenant in William's guards, was selected by the conqueror to enjoin the King of France's ambassador to quit London within four-and-twenty hours; and another refugee, Saint Leger, a gentleman of Boitou, received orders to accompany him to Dover, and to protect him, if necessary, against the animosity of the English." This last precaution seems to have been hardly necessary,