intrigues. And in the year 1719 he actually solicited the French Protestants to rise in rebellion. The British government heard an alarming report (which they too readily believed), that the Protestants were always watching to give trouble, and that they meditated a rising in the South. Mr. Craggs, the Secretary of State, despatched Colonel de la Bouchetière to Paris, with the following letter to the Earl of Stair:—[1]
“Whitehall, April 11, 1719. — His Majesty having had many accounts of the disturbance which the Protestants of France often take occasion to create, and thereby disquiet His Royal Highness the Duke of Orleans’ administration, who, notwithstanding the favourable disposition he may have towards them, yet is rendered unable to shew them any indulgence by their unseasonable and tumultuous proceedings — and these, perhaps, fomented by declared enemies to His Majesty as well as to the Regent — has commanded me to signify to your Excellency that you would assure His Royal Highness, in the most engaging terms, of His Majesty’s great desire to contribute what he can for the ease and tranquillity of His Royal Highness’s government in this and all other occasions. Wherefore the king, believing his credit among a set of people that are Protestants might be of some weight, has judged it for the Regent’s service to send to them a person in his name to let them know how much he considers it for their interest as well as their duty to behave themselves with decency and quietness. The bearer hereof, Colonel de la Bouchetière, is the person appointed by the king for that purpose, and His Majesty would have you recommend him in the best manner to His Royal Highness, so that he may receive all fitting countenance and protection.”
The bad consciences of several intolerant members of the French government[2] and magistracy had caused them to be alarmed by a small incident, and to be frantically unscrupulous in exaggerating it. To repeat their false history and foolish vaticinations was a piece of drudgery which the British government ought to have been ashamed to undertake.
M. Charles Coquerel, in his “Eglises du Désert chez les Protestants de France” (vol. i., page 91), mentions that Cardinal Alberoni, being bent upon obtaining the post of Regent of France for Philip V. of Spain, intrigued with the Protestants of the Cevennes and the Lower Languedoc, stirring them up to rise in rebellion against the Duke of Orleans, in 1719. Monsieur de la Bouchetière, colonel de cavalerie au service de la Grande Bretagne, was despatched to Poitou, his native province, to dissuade the inhabitants from encouraging the Spanish plot. He reported that the Huguenots were patriotic on principle, and would not rise at the instigation of any foreigner; that there was no danger except from driving them to desperation by fanatical and persecuting edicts; and that before his visit they had packed off the Cardinal’s emissaries.[3] [Colonel de la Bouchetière appears often in the Southampton French Register.]
Besides the officers of French regiments, there were many others enrolled in the other corps of the British army. Skelton said truly concerning the French Protestant refugees, “They have shown themselves brave and faithful in the army, just and impartial in the magistracy. For the truth of the former assertion, the noble carriage of Sir John Ligonier is a sufficient voucher; and for that of the latter the mayoralty of Alderman Porter.”
- ↑ The Stair Annals, vol. ii., p. 106.
- ↑ A Protestant, according to the laws of Louis XIV., in and after 1685, had no legal existence in France. If caught in the practice of Protestant worship, he was sent to the galleys as an apostate Romanist. Any Protestant pastor, convicted either of conducting public worship or of administering sacraments, or of solemnizing a marriage, or of officiating at a funeral, was executed. The Duke of Orleans maintained all the Edicts against Protestant worship, and did nothing to improve the condition of the French Protestants.
- ↑ Knight’s English Cyclopedia of Biography gives the credit of preserving tranquillity in the South of France to Jaques Basnage de Beauval, refugee pasteur of the Hague. The writer of the article Basnage, says:— “The Duke of Orleans, regent of the kingdom, fearing lest the new converts [i.e., the Protestants, according to their only legal designation] of Dauphiny, Poietou, and Languedoe, should be excited to insurrection by the emissaries of Cardinal Alberoni, begged Basnage, in 1719, through the Count de Morville, then ambassador in Holland, to write to those whose fidelity had been assailed, and to urge them by his exhortations to the obedience which they owed to their king. Basnage accordingly addressed to them a Pastoral Instruction, which was reprinted at Paris by order of the court, and distributed in the suspected provinces.”
