dies of their brethren hung on the nearest trees, and the heads of
their pastors rolling on the scaffold, did not deter them from
continuing to hold religious meetings in solitary places, more
especially in Languedoc, Viverais, and the provinces in the south-east
of France.

Between the year 1686, when Fulcran Rey was hanged at Beaucaire, and
the year 1698, when Claude Brousson was hanged at Montpellier, not
fewer than seventeen pastors were publicly executed; namely, three at
Nismes, two at St. Hippolyte and Marsillargues in the Cevennes, and
twelve on the Peyrou at Montpellier--the public place on which
Protestant Christians in the South of France were then principally
executed.

There has been some discussion lately as to the massacre of the
Huguenots about a century before this period. It has been held that
the St. Bartholomew Massacre was only a political squabble, begun by
the Huguenots, in which they got the worst of it. The number of
persons killed on the occasion has been reduced to a very small
number. It has been doubted whether the Pope had anything to do with
the medal struck at Rome, bearing the motto _Ugonottorum Strages_
("Massacre of the Huguenots"), with the Pope's head on one side, and
an angel on the other pursuing and slaying a band of flying heretics.

Whatever may be said of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, there can be
no mistake about the persecutions which preceded and followed the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were continued for more than
half a century, and had the effect of driving from France about a
million of the best, most vigorous, and industrious of Frenchmen. In
the single province of Languedoc, not less than a hundred thousand
persons (according to Boulainvilliers) were destroyed by premature
death, one-tenth of whom perished by fire, strangulation, or the
wheel.

It could not be said that Louis XIV. and the priests were destroying
France and tearing its flesh, and that Frenchmen did not know it. The
proclamations, edicts and laws published against the Huguenots were
known to all Frenchmen. Benoit[17] gives a list of three hundred and
thirty-three issued by Louis XIV. during the ten years subsequent to
the Revocation, and they were continued, as we shall find, during the
succeeding reign.

[Footnote 17: "Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes," par Elie
Benoit.]

"We have," says M. Charles Coquerel, "a horror of St. Bartholomew!
Will foreigners believe it,