ragoons was
ordered into the place. One of those to be apprehended was Claude
Brousson. Hundreds of persons knew of his abode in the city, but
notwithstanding the public proclamation (which he himself heard from
the window of the house where he was staying), and the reward offered
for his apprehension, no one attempted to betray him.

After remaining in the city for three days, he adopted a disguised
dress, passed out of the Crown Gate, and in the course of a few days
found a safe retreat in Switzerland.

Peyrol and Icard, two of the Protestant ministers whom the dragoons
were ordered to apprehend, also escaped into Switzerland, Peyrol
settling at Lausanne, and Icard becoming the minister of a Huguenot
church in Holland. But although the ministers had escaped, all the
property they had left behind them was confiscated to the Crown.
Hideous effigies of them were prepared and hung on gibbets in the
market-place of Nismes by the public executioner, the magistrates and
dragoons attending the sham proceeding with the usual ceremony.

At Lausanne, where Claude Brousson settled for a time, he first
attempted to occupy himself as a lawyer; but this he shortly gave up
to devote himself to the help of the persecuted Huguenots. Like Jurieu
and others in Holland, who flooded Europe with accounts of the hideous
cruelties of Louis XIV. and his myrmidons the clergy and dragoons, he
composed and published a work, addressed to the Roman Catholic party
as well as to the Protestants of all countries, entitled, "The State
of the Reformed Church of France." He afterwards composed a series of
letters specially addressed to the Roman Catholic clergy of France.

But expostulation was of no use. With each succeeding year the
persecution became more bitter, until at length, in 1685, the Edict
was revoked. In September of that year Brousson learnt that the
Protestant church of his native city had been suppressed, and their
temple given over to a society of female converters; that the wives
and daughters of the Protestants who refused to abjure their faith had
been seized and imprisoned in nunneries and religious seminaries; and
that three hundred of their husbands and fathers were chained together
and sent off in one day for confinement in the galleys at Marseilles.

The number of Huguenots resorting to Switzerland being so great,[26]
and they often came so destitute, that a committee was formed at
Lausanne to assist the emigrants, and facil