the commotions of the eventful time when the butcheries of the Abbe Du Chaila, Inspector of Missions in the Cevennes, provoked armed resistance.
A student, the only pastor left by persecution to the poor people (his name was Esprit), led sixty men to rescue from the cells and from the instruments of torture in the Abbé’s stronghold, some prisoners, ladies and gentlemen, who had been seized when attempting to fly to a country of refuge. This expedition was successful, and Le Chaila was killed. The authorities burnt Esprit alive. The military general, Count Broglio, made with the rest of the assailants a treaty of peace, which he broke by hanging all that he could find at the doors of their own houses. Cavalier was not of this party; he would have thankfully escaped to Geneva, but the frontier was too strictly guarded. He therefore, in self-defence, joined the insurgents, was at once made an officer, and soon had the chief command.
On Christmas day 1701, being Sunday, five hundred of the outlawed Protestants met for worship near Monteze, upon the river Gardon. They received information that six hundred men, cavalry and infantry, were on the way to attack them. The unarmed worshippers retired, and Cavalier entrenched the fighting men so well, that their enemies were decisively repulsed; he then led the pursuit, and made the rout complete, nearly a hundred of the enemy being killed. The next day Cavalier was deliberately chosen to take the command.
The following manifesto was issued:—[1]
“Matters having come to this pass, that we are permitted neither to reside quietly in the kingdom nor freely to quit it, we do no longer regard those as our governors who thus treat us as enemies; hence we resolve to resort to those means of preservation with which nature has furnished us. And hereby we invite all our neighbours to join us in endeavours to cast off the yoke of slavery under which they have so long groaned. With respect to those who refuse to join us, but who remain neutral, doing us no harm, we hereby promise not to molest them, either in their persons, or their goods, or their religion; on the contrary, to protect and defend them of whatever religion they may be. But as for those who have been, or shall be found in arms against us, as we expect no quarter from them, so we are resolved to give none, but to treat them in the same manner they have treated us, or may hereafter treat us.
Cavallier.
Roland.
Ravenal.
Constanet.
La Rose.
Catinat.”
Nearly a quarter of a century afterwards, in his peaceful retreat in Ireland, he published a book, entitled “Memoirs of the Wars in the Cevennes under Colonel Cavallier, in defence of the Protestants persecuted in that country, and of the Peace concluded between him and the Mareschal Duke of Villars. Written in French by Colonel Cavallier, and translated into English” (Dublin, 1726). Dedicated to Lord Carteret, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1727 a second edition was published. The main facts are confirmed by documentary evidence. But Huguenot antiquaries complain of many inaccuracies of detail, while they make allowances for an unpractised author writing from memory.
That his pen did not indite romances as to the feats of his sword, we have evidence in a letter from Roland, printed in Mr Hill’s Correspondence (p. 123), dated Anduze, ce 22 May 1704:
“Brother Cavalier’s battles have always been favourable to us, and it seems (what we have no doubt of) that the Lord fights for us. Brother Cavalier has fought more than thirty battles with wonderful successes. . . . His great victory near Uxes has struck terror into the enemy, who dare not march without 1500 or 1600 men as an escort. Since Marshal Villars has been here he has continually caused incursions to be made, both into Lower Languedoc and into our Cevennes without (thank God) having produced any effect, which has obliged him to send us proposals for peace, which appears to us to be suspicious.”
Of the devastations and bloodshed which marked this civil war, the persecuted and justly incensed Protestant peasantry cannot bear the chief blame. However, their co-religionists in the more tranquil provinces reproached them, and hence they were distinguished from the northern and midland Huguenots by the name of Camisards. For the etymology of that nickname there cannot be a better authority than Cavalier himself. According to him —
“Our men commonly carried but two shirts with them, the one on their back, the other in their knapsack; so that when they would pass by their friends’ houses, they would leave the
- ↑ Baynes’s “Witnesses in Sackcloth,” page 197.
