But the rocks and stones are everywhere in the ascendant.
A few years ago we visited the district; and while proceeding in the old-fashioned diligence which runs between Alais and Florac—for the district is altogether beyond the reach of railways—a French contractor, accompanying a band of Italian miners, whom he was taking into the mountains to search for minerals, pointing to the sterile rocks, exclaimed to us, "Messieurs, behold the very poorest district in France! It contains nothing but juniper-bushes! As for its agriculture, it produces nothing; manufactures, nothing; commerce, nothing! Rien, rien, rien!"
The observation of this French entrepreneur reminds us of an anecdote that Telford, the Scotch engineer, used to relate of a countryman with reference to his appreciation of Scotch mountain beauty. An English artist, enraptured by the scenery of Ben MacDhui, was expatiating on its magnificence, and appealed to the native guide for confirmation of his news. "I dinna ken aboot the scenery," replied the man, "but there's plenty o' big rocks and stanes; an' the kintra's awfu' puir." The same observation might doubtless apply to the Cevennes. Yet, though the people may be poor, they are not miserable or destitute, for they are all well-clad and respectable-looking peasants, and there is not a beggar to be seen in the district.
But the one country, as the other, grows strong and brave men. These barren mountain districts of the Cevennes have bred a race of heroes; and the men are as simple and kind as they are brave. Hospitality is a characteristic of the people, which never fails to strike the visitor accustomed to the exactions which are so common along the hackneyed tourist routes.
As in other parts of France, the peasantry here are laborious almost to excess. Robust and hardy, they are distinguished for their perseverance against the obstacles which nature constantly opposes to them. Out-door industry being suspended in winter, during which they are shut up in their cabins for nearly six months by the ice and snow, they occupy themselves in preparing their wool for manufacture into cloth. The women card, the children spin, the men weave; and each cottage is a little manufactory of drugget and serge, which is taken to market in spring, and sold in the low-country towns. Such was the industry of the Cevennes nearly two hundred years since, and such it remains to the present day.
The people are of a contented nature, and bear their poverty with cheerfulness and even dignity. While they partake of the ardour and strong temper which characterize the inhabitants of the South of France, they are probably, on the whole, more grave and staid than Frenchmen generally, and are thought to be more urbane and intelligent; and though they are unmanageable by force, they are remarkably accessible to kindness and moral suasion.
Such, in a few words, are the more prominent characteristics of the country and people of the Cevennes.
When the popular worship of the mountain district of Languedoc—in which the Protestants constituted the majority of the population—was suppressed, great dismay fell upon the people; but they made no signs of resistance to the royal authority. For a time they remained comparatively passive, and it was at first thought they were indifferent. Their astonished enemies derisively spoke of them as displaying "the patience of a Huguenot,"—the words having passed into a proverb.
But their persecutors did not know the stuff of which these mountaineers were made. They had seen their temples demolished one after another, and their pastors banished, leaving them "like poor starved sheep looking for the pasture of life." Next they heard that such of their pastors as had been apprehended for venturing to minister to them in "the Desert" had been taken to Nismes and Montpellier and hanged. Then they began to feel excited and indignant. For they could not shake off their own belief and embrace another man's, even though that man was their king. If Louis XIV. had ordered them to believe that two and two make six, they could not possibly believe, though they might pretend to do so, that it made any other number than four. And so it was with the King's order to them to profess a faith which they could not bring their minds to believe in.
These poor people entertained the conviction that they possessed certain paramount rights as men. Of these they held the right of conscience to be one of the principal. They were willing to give unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's; but they could not give him those which belonged unto God. And if they were forced to make a choice, then they must rather disobey their King than the King of kings.
Though deprived of their leaders and pastors, the dispossessed Huguenots emerged by degrees from their obscurity, and began to recognise each other openly. If their temples were destroyed, there remained the woods and fields and mountain pastures, where they might still meet and worship God, even though it were in defiance of the law. Having taken counsel together, they resolved "not to forsake the assembling of themselves together;" and they proceeded, in all the Protestant districts in the South of France—in Viverais, Dauphiny, and the Cevennes—to hold meetings of the people, mostly by night, for worship—in woods, in caves, in rocky gorges, and in hollows of the hills. Then began those famous assemblies of "the Desert," which were the nightmare of Louvois and the horror of Louis XIV.
When it came to the knowledge of the authorities that such meetings were being held, large bodies of troops were sent into the southern provinces, with orders to disperse them and apprehend the ringleaders. These orders were carried out with much barbarity. Amongst various assemblies which were discovered and attacked in the Cevennes, were those of Auduze and Vigan, where the soldiers fell upon the defenceless people, put the greater number to the sword, and hanged upon the nearest trees those who did not succeed in making their escape.
The authorities waited to see the effect of these "vigorous measures;" but they were egregiously disappointed. The meetings in the Desert went on as before, and even increased in number. Then milder means were tried. Other meetings were attacked in like manner, and the people found attending them taken prisoners. They were then threatened with death unless they became converted, and promised to attend Mass. They declared that they preferred death. A passion for martyrdom even seemed to be spreading amongst the infatuated people!
Then the peasantry began secretly to take up arms for their defence. They had thus far been passive in their resistance, and were content to brave death provided they could but worship together. At length they felt themselves driven in their despair to resist force by force—acting, however, in the first place, entirely on the defensive—"leaving the issue," to use the words of one of their solemn declarations, "to the providence of God."
They began—these poor labourers, herdsmen, and wool-carders—by instituting a common fund for the purpose of helping their distressed brethren in surrounding districts. They then invited such as were disposed to join them to form themselves into companies, so as to be prepared to come together and give their assistance as occasion required. When meetings in the Desert were held, it became the duty of these enrolled men to post themselves as sentinels on the surrounding heights, and give notice of the approach of their enemies. They also constituted a sort of voluntary police for their respective districts, taking notice of the changes of the royal troops, and dispatching information by trusty emissaries, intimating the direction of their march.
The Intendant, Baville, wrote to Louvois, minister of Louis XIV. during the persecutions, expressing his surprise and alarm at the apparent evidences of organization amongst the peasantry. "I have just learned," said he in one letter,[33] "that last Sunday there was an assembly of nearly four hundred men, many of them armed, at the foot of the mountain of Lozère. I had thought," he added, "that the great lesson taught them at Vigan and Anduze would have restored tranquillity to the Cevennes, at least for a time. But, on the contrary, the severity of the measures heretofore adopted seems only to have had the effect of exasperating and hardening them in their iniquitous courses."
As the massacres had failed, the question next arose whether the inhabitants might not be driven into exile, and the country entirely cleared of them. "They pretend," said Louvois, "to meet in 'the Desert;' why not take them at their word, and make the Cevennes really a Desert?" But there were
