My
Great-Great-Grandmother’s
Letter
|
It is strange that men of
intellectual eminence concern themselves not with saving civilization
or reforming the abuses of the administration, but with preaching the
merit of virginity and the damnation of unbaptized
infants.
|
Bertrand Russell
|
A brief
Report of my Escape from France
(translation)
“It happened
in the year of the Lord 1687 at La Rochelle de Saint
Denis, where there is a harbor. I am the oldest among my brothers and
sisters,
and during the absence of my parents was charged with the care for my
siblings:
the youngest brother was five and the youngest sister only two years of
age. My
dear parents had impressed on me not to miss any opportunity to escape
from the
kingdom if not with all, then at least with some of the children.
“On April 24, of the
same year there came into our house a good and dear friend who asked me
never
to mention his name because of the harsh penalties and awful
consequences this
may cause him to suffer. He informed me of a small vessel bound to
England,
whose skipper he had implored to take on board four or five of us. He
also said
that there was no more space on this ship than to accommodate just five
people.
In order to hide us between the cargo of
sea-salt the
skipper would have to toss a barrel of wine into the ocean, and since
he ran
the danger of being discovered and lose everything, he demanded a great
sum of
money for taking this risk. All this seemed not unreasonable for our
plan and
we agreed.
“I
asked our friend that he may bring the
ship’s captain to our house, not later than 3.45 a.m., so that none of
the
neighbors would grow suspicious, while I could employ our friend’s
services in
this agreement as a witness and translator. We came to an accord, I
promised
the skipper 200 Louis d'ors per head of
the five
people he would provide with passage; this was 1,000 Louis d'ors
in French currency. One half he was to receive before we set out, and
the rest
when safely landing us in Chichester (a
city in
England), to where he promised to bring us. After in the presence of
our
witness I’d made the accord, we then decided, that the time to go
aboard should
be on the 27th of April at 8.00 o’clock in the evening. – The day
arrived
and I, with two of my brothers and two of my sisters dressed up as
clean and
fastidious as possible, keeping on us everything that we were allowed
to carry;
the situation did not allow us to handle it any other way. I also
ordered the
governess to go with us, because she knew of the secret.
“We
pretended to take a turn on the palace promenade, where
people of consequence used to gather every evening. About ten, the
public began
to disperse and we absented ourselves from our acquaintances; but left
on a
different route from the usual way home, according to my instructions,
namely
to the pickup point not far from the city’s pond. In the building next
to it we
found a door ajar, holding our breath slipped in, climbed up the unlit
stairs
and remained in there in utmost silence
until well
after midnight, when our friend and the captain entered the house. I
said to
the captain that nothing caused me greater pains than to leave behind
my
smallest sister; especially since she is my
goddaughter, and that I felt even more obliged to rescue her
from the idolaters than the others.
“This
I said with great many tears and sorrow: I promised the
captain everything, whatever he desired and the heaven’s blessing, if
he could
find it in his heart to do us this kindness. I could see on his face
that my
words and my tears had moved him and he was willing to let her go with
us, if
only I could promise him that she wouldn’t scream and make noises
should the
coast guards inspect his vessel, something which at two or three
occasions
might not go without the guards poking their rapiers into suspicious
nooks and
crannies. I promised it, putting all my faith in the grace of God.
Immediately
my friend and the governess rushed back to fetch my sister from where
we’d left
her.
“Lifting
the child from the bed, the governess wrapped her
with her dresses into a blanket and carried her hidden in her apron; it
was
God’s will that nobody should notice the least of it. The little one
was
particularly attached to me and very glad to see me again. She
promised, to be
obedient and quiet, and only to do what I would tell her. I dressed her
and
swaddled her in the remaining clothes.
“Later
that night, at about two a.m., four members of the
crew came from the harbor and carried all of us on their shoulders on
board of
the ship – me while holding my little sister in my arms –
and directed us to the prepared place in the cargo hull: the entrance
to our
hiding spot was so small, that the captain’s cabin boy needed to crawl
in first
and drag us after him. Squeezed in tight between the salt barrels we
were unable
to move about. The boy left and the opening was sealed, making it look
as
before, so that nobody would suspect anything. The rafters of the deck
above
were so low that we hit our heads; yet we all endeavored to keep the
faces high
and towards the back, so that the coast guard’s rapiers couldn’t reach
us.
“As
soon as we had boarded, the vessel hoisted sail; the
king’s guards came to stop and inspect it no less than three times on
our way,
but we had the good fortune to remain undiscovered. The wind was
favorable and
by noon it carried us away from all the enemies of the truth.”
*****
Here the torn fragment ends.
Together with the letter there has been handed down a tradition that it
was
written by my great-great-grandmother when she was seventeen and that
it had
been mailed from Amsterdam, not Chichester,
the
original destination. Why and how is unknown; we also know that
Marian
married an other Huguenot living in Scotland, a Monsieur Coliere,
my father’s ancestor on his mother’s side. The “idolaters” mentioned in the
letter are the Roman Catholics.
1687 was the year when the catholic
King James II of England signed the Declaration of Indulgence, which
suspended
the laws against Catholics and nonconformists while his colleague in
France,
Les Roi Soleil, Louis XIV, began
prosecuting a
thrifty minority of the middle-class.
Louis had seen it all. As a ten year
old he had become the helpless object of hostile curiosity when an
angry mob
invaded the royal bedchamber and stared at him in silence.
A foretaste
of the French Revolution in 1789! For twelve more years Louis was made
to look on when an utterly corrupt cabal of self-serving courtiers and
grandees sidelined the young prince as a mere nuisance obstructing
their own schemes and ambitions. It was a lesson he would not forget.
When at last he was able to formally take the reins, his surrounding
was in for a surprise. A cabinet of able advisors of his own choosing
reformed the currency
and
introduced profitable industries. Virtually from scratch Louis put a
French navy
on the waters, and after losing several battles against the French the
English Admiralty issued orders to the captains to refuse giving battle
and hide their
ships in the rivers. Trafalgar was still a long way off. Then, in 1685,
Louis XIV
married his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigne,
Marquise de Maintenon. She was a Catholic convert from a Calvinist
family. The liaison sounded the death knell for the Protestants in
France. People of her former faith
accused Madame
de Maintenon to be the mastermind behind the king’s decision to repeal
the
religious
freedoms granted in 1598 in the Edict of Nantes. The Protestants were
subjected to forced billeting, their schools were closed, the
children
taken from the parents and forcibly baptized into Catholicism, the
places
of worship confiscated and turned into stables. In 1685, on the cynical
pretext
that
the near-extinction of Protestantism and Protestants in France had made
any
grant of privileges redundant, the Edict of Fontainebleau graciously
granted
"liberty to persons of the Pretended
Reformed Religion on condition of not engaging in the exercise of their
religion, or of meeting under pretext of prayers or religious services."
Amazing what a jurist can take in his mouth without barfing all over
the place.
The Huguenots, however, were skilled in
crafts
and commerce, so the very same bill that prosecuted their faith also
prohibited
them from leaving the country. This failed completely.
200,000 Huguenots slipped through
the border controls, carrying their trade to countries only too happy
to
receive
them with open arms. As is evident from the letter, not every refugee
was a
fully educated adult. Nevertheless, the French economy began to falter
while
the fortunes of war were beginning to take a turn to the worse. The
English dared to fly their colors again.
©
– 3/27/2009 – by michael sympson 1,550
words, all rights reserved
