king that I was born a Calvinist and continued such until my coming to court. This compels me to approve things that are exceedingly repugnant to my feelings.” It is said that the king was startled by Ruvigny’s information. When Madame expressed some disapproval of the cruelties of the soldiery, his Majesty insinuated that in pleading for Huguenots she might be pleading for herself. She remonstrated no more. And whether she felt pity may be doubted by any one who reads her letter to her brother, telling him that the Protestants’ estates in Poitou would certainly be sold cheap, and advising him to buy largely.
One of the landed proprietors there, Charles Gourjault, Marquis de Venours, officially brought the outrages of the military before Ruvigny by letter. Primed with such facts, the writer’s son had been sent to Paris with a deputation, who instantly were ordered by the Jesuit-ridden court to go home as liars. Yet instructions had at the same time been sent to Poitou, desiring the infamous Marillac to be less impetuous. Marillac, full of insolence and resentment, immediately quartered twentyfive troopers upon the Marquis de Venours; on the day following, he sent a whole company to plunder and devastate; and then gangs of common thieves were allowed to glean. All the Protestants were similarly treated. And so old Venours wrote to the Deputy-General to intercede with the king. But the king backed his officers, and intercession failed. It may be asked why the king did not abolish the office of Deputy-General. The reason was that one refinement of Popish cruelty is so to contrive that it may seem that their victims are not sentenced without being heard in their own defence.
Many of the representations to the king were made by the young deputy-general. Some accounts speak of him as the person who told the king of Madame de Maintenon’s variations of creed. But as she says, “Ruvigny,” and not “young Ruvigny,” or “Monsieur Ruvigny le fils,” she must mean the old Marquis.
In the same eventful 1681, a special deputation to the king, including the famous Pastor Claude, were on the road to Versailles. A messenger from the palace met them, and intimated that only the deputy-general would be received. The old Marquis accordingly waited on his Majesty, and the celebrated interview took place, which has been recorded by Burnet.[1] The audience lasted several hours. He told the king how happy France had been for fifty years, as contrasted with former times, the toleration of the Protestants producing this internal tranquillity. Such relations with native Protestants prevented the Court of Rome from tyrannizing over France. The Protestants were a large part of the population, wealthy, industrious, and always ready to contribute to the revenue. His Majesty had been misinformed, if he expected them to change their religion at the royal bidding. On the contrary, multitudes would go out of the kingdom, and carry their wealth and industry to other countries. One result would be the shedding of much blood. Many would suffer, and others would be precipitated into desperate courses. Thus the most glorious of all reigns would be disfigured and defaced, and become a scene of blood and horror. The Marquis’s speech was chiefly occupied with minute statistical details, and numerous calculations and illustrations.
The king listened in silence all the time without making any remarks, or putting any questions; and then ended the audience by speaking to the following effect:— “I take your freedom in good part, as it flows from your zeal for my service. I believe all you tell me about the prejudice to my affairs that may be incurred. I think, however, that there will not be bloodshed. But I consider myself so indispensably bound to attempt the conversion of all my subjects, and the extirpation of heresy, that if the doing of it require that with one hand I must cut off the other, I shall not draw back.” Ruvigny went and told his friends they might now dread the worst; but he would not raise a civil war, which would have been a losing game, owing to the apathy of Britain and Holland. Burnet says, “He was much censured for this by some hot men among them, as having betrayed them to the court, but he was very unjustly blamed, as appeared by both his own conduct and by his son’s.”
The date of the audience is fixed by Benoist’s History. He informs us that it was the occasion when the king said that he would part with an arm for the privilege of converting all his subjects to the Romish Church — a phrase of which the clergy made good use in the Pastoral Letter, issued in the year following.[2]
That Letter was drawn up by the Romish Clergy in 1682, and it was called L’Avertissement Pastoral. The court wished to enforce the opening of the Pro-
- ↑ “Burnet’s own Time,” folio, vol. i., pp. 656, 657.
- ↑ “This most Christian King did lately in our hearing say, That he did so earnestly desire to sec all those broken and scattered parcels brought back to the Unity of the Church, that he would esteem it his glory to compass it with the shedding of his own Royal blood, and even with the loss of that invincible arm by which he has so happily made an end of so many wars.” — The Clergy’s Letter, translated by Burnet, page 8.
