CAMISARDS, the name given to the peasantry of the Cevennes, a mountainous region in s. France, who for several years from 1702 kept up an organized military resistance to the dragonnades, or conversion by torture, death, and confiscation of prop erty, by which, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the Roman Catholic leaders endeavored to enforce their authority in all the Huguenot districts. The name is of doubtful origin; some say it was from minim, a white shirt or frock, outwardly worn by the peasants; others that it was from camisade, a night attack; and still others, from cuniis, a road runner. The C. were also called barbets (or water dogs, a term also applied to the Vaudois), vagabonds, assemblers (a name given to a meeting or convention of Huguenots), fanatics, and children of God. They belonged to the romance-speaking people of Gothic descent, who took part in the earliest movements towards religious reform. It was in Languedoc that the peace of God and the mercy of God were formed in the 11th c. against the miseries of private war. (See Gon's Titres, ante.) There were preserved the forms of municipal freedom, which nearly all Europe had lost; and there commerce flourished without spoiling the thrift, the patience, or the simplicity of the national character. Calvin was warnily welcomed when he preached at Nimes, and Montpellier became the chief center for the instruction of Huguenot youth; but it was in the triangular mountainous plateau called Cevennes (See CEVENNES, ante), among the small farmers, the cloth and silk weavers, and the vine-dressers, that Protestantism was most universal and intense. The people were, and still are, very poor; but they are intelligent and pions, and add to the deep fervor of the Provencal character a gravity that is probably the result of the trials and sufferings of their ances tors.
To understand the position of the C. in the war which began at the com mencement of the 18th c. it is necessary to glance at the preceding history of France. The system of toleration which was established by the edict of Nantes (see ante), April 13, 1598, and the edict of Grace, .July, 1629, was essentially a political compromise, and not a recognition of religious equality. The right of having a private chapel was given to certain seignieurs. New public churches were to be authorized at a Certain rate in cer tain places. On the other hand, Calvinists were admitted to all public posts and to all professions; and they could publish books in towns where they had churches. The cham ber of edict was formed in the parliament of Paris for the impartial judgment of cases brought by Huguenots; and the half-Catholic, half-Protestant constitution was adopted in the town consulates and the local parliaments of the south. After the short struggle between Louis XIII. and the due de Bohan, the Huguenots settled down into contented industry; the army and navy of France were led by two Huguenots—Turenne and Duquesne—and Cardinal Bentivoglio wrote to the pope that he no longer found in France the insane fervor for right of conscience so radical among the Huguenots. But the court in which Mme. de Maintenon had succeeded to Mme. de Montespan, where Louvois, and the Jesuit, pe)re In Chaise, were as supreme as Bossuet and Fleshier in the church, could not long be satisfied with tolerated heresy, which they chose to consider as wailed rebellion. On the death of Mazarin a commissioner had gone over the kingdom to inquire into the titles, or rather to suppress as many as possible, of the Huguenot churches, schools, and cemeteries. The extirpation of heresy had indeed been provided for by a clause in the marriage contract between Louis and Maria Theresa as long before as 1660, and in spite of the protection of Colbert, a policy was begun of gradually destroying the privileges of dissenters. They were shut out from public offices and trade corporations; they were forbidden to marry with Roman Catholics, and the conversion of their children seven years old and upward was encouraged and almost enforced. The famous edict came in Oct., 1685. It directed all dissenting churches to be destroyed, forbade their religious meetings tinder pain of imprisonment and confiscation of prop erty, ordered all pastors who would not change their faith to be banished within fifteen days and to stop preaching at once, promised exemption from taxes and increased salaries to converted ministers, suppressed Huguenot schools and directed all children to be baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, prohibited all Huguenots except ministers from going abroad, and declared the property of those who had already gone to be forfeited unless they returned within four months. These were the main points of the edict revoking the liberal edict of Nantes. In carrying it out Huguenot Bibles and books of instruction were burned, and Huguenots were forbidden to hire themselves as artisans or as domestic servants. Torture, hangings, insults worse than death to women, the galleys, and imprisonment for life were the ordinary occurrences of the next sixty years. In the twenty years preceding the revocation, it is believed that
400,000 Protestants fled from France, and that 600,000 escaped in the twenty years that followed. But in the Cevennes the people were too poor to escape, and all over Lan guedoc began the secret meetings of the church of the desert. At last Louvois, the sanguinary war minister of Louis XIV., proposed that this district should be made an actual desert. An army of 40,000 was raised, and forts were erected at Nimes, St. Hippol•te, Alais, and Anduze. The abbe du Chaila, a Roman Catholic missionary from Siam, had been appointed inspector of missions in the Cevennes. He introduced the " squeezers " (an instrument of torture which resembled the Scotch " boot "), and his cruelty at last broke the patience of the victims. His assassination, .July 23, 1702, was the first blow in the war. There was to have been a general massacre of Roman Catholic priests, but the plan failed, and the originator, Esprit Seguier, soon fell. Ile was succeeded by La Porte, an old soldier, who, as his forces increased, assumed the title of "colonel of the children of God," and named his country the " camp of the eternal." His captains were selected from those on whom time prophetic. influence had fallen, such as the forest-ranger, Castanet; the wool-carders, Conderc and hazel; and the soldiers, Catinat, Jenny, and Ravenel; but the most famous were Roland and Jeau Cavalier, the baker's boy (see CAVALIER, JEAN). For three years the C. held out. Then there was sent against them an army of 60,000, among them an English brigade which had just returned from the persecution of the Vaudois. A pol icy of extermination was commenced, and in the upper Cevennes alone 466 villages were burned, and nearly the entire population put to the sword. In this bloody work the pope, Clement XI., assisted by issuing a bull against the "execrable race of the ancient Albigenses," promising remission of sins to the holy militia which was now formed among the Roman Catholic population under the name of cadets of the cross. The formidable force brought against them induced Cavalier to listen to proposals, and he finally assented to a surrender on being guaranteed liberty of conscience, the right of assembly outside of walled towns, the liberation of all his people then in durance, and the restitution to emigrants of their civil rights and property. Still, the greater part of the army. under Roland, Ravenel, and Joany, iefused, and insisted upon the complete restoration of the edict of Nantes. They continued the war until the beginning of 1705, by which time their leaders were killed or dispersed and they became disorganized. In 1711 all outward signs of the reformed religion had disappeared, and Mar. 8, 1715, a few months before his death, Louis XIV., by a special medal and by proclamation announced the entire extinction of heresy. Fourteen years afterward, in spite of the strictest surveillance aided by military occupation, there had been organized in Langue doc 120 churches, which were attended by 200,000 Protestants. Persecution could not secure suppression, but it was not until 1775 that the last galley slave from Languedoc was liberated, and not till 1789 that the national assembly repealed all the penal laws against Protestan ism.
There was a singular psychologic or spiritual phase in the history of the C. that must be noticed. It was a sort of inspiration or ecstasy. The subject, who had endured long fasting, became pale, and fell insensible to the ground. Then came violent agita tions of the limbs and the head; and finally the patient, who might be a little child, a woman, or a half-witted person, began to speak in good French of the Huguenot Bible, warning the people to repentance, prophesying the immediate coming of the Lord In judgment, and claiming that these exhortations came directly from the Holy Ghost. After a long discourse the patient returned to his native patois with no recollection of what he had been doing or saying. All kinds of miracles, so they believed, attended upon the Camisards. Strange lights guided them to places of safety, unknown voices spoke encouragement, and wounds were often harmless. Those who were in the ecstasy of trance fell from trees without sustaining hurt; they shed tears of blood, and they sub sisted without food for nine days. The supernatural was a part of their life. Many judgments have been passed upon these phenomena. Flechier and Brueys, Roman Catholics, consider them the product of fasting and vanity, nourished by apoca lyptic literature. Bertrand and Calmeil, physicians speak of magnetism, hysteria, and epilepsy, and a prophetic mania based on belief in divine possession. Most Protestants are content with the epithet "ecstasy," while semi-radical Roman Catholics consider the whole business the work of the devil.