Dauphiné (France) -- Description and travel; Huguenots; Waldenses
The dead were all thrown into the sea. The men were about to throw
Marteilhe after them, but while attempting to release him from his
chain, they touched the wound upon his knee, and he groaned heavily.
They let him remain where he lay. Shortly after, he was taken down to
the bottom of the hold with the other men, where he long lay amongst
the wounded and dying. At length he recovered from his wounds, and was
again returned to his bench, to re-enter the horrible life of a
galley-slave.
There was another mean and unmanly cruelty, connected with this
galley-slave service, which was practised only upon the Huguenots. If
an assassin or other criminal received a wound in the service of the
state while engaged in battle, he was at once restored to his
liberty; but if a Huguenot was wounded, he was never released. He was
returned to his bench and chained as before; the wounds he had
received being only so many additional tortures to be borne by him in
the course of his punishment.
Marteilhe, as we have already stated, was disembarked when he had
sufficiently recovered, and marched through the entire length of
France, enchained with other malefactors. On his arrival at
Marseilles, he was placed on board the galley _Grand Réale_, where he
remained until peace was declared between England and France by the
Treaty of Utrecht.[50]
[Footnote 50: "Autobiography of a French Protestant,"
112-21.]
Queen Anne of England, at the instigation of the Marquis de Rochegade,
then made an effort to obtain the liberation of Protestants serving at
the galleys; and at length, out of seven hundred and forty-two
Huguenots who were then enslaved, a hundred and thirty-six were
liberated, of whom Marteilhe was one. He was thus enabled to get rid
of his inhuman countrymen, and to spend the remainder of his life in
Holland and England, where Protestants were free.
CHAPTER X.
ANTOINE COURT
Almost at the very time that Louis XIV. was lying on his death-bed at
Versailles, a young man conceived the idea of re-establishing
Protestantism in France! Louis XIV. had tried to enter heaven by
superstition and cruelty. On his death-bed he began to doubt whether
he "had not carried his authority too far."[51] But the Jesuits tried
to make death easy for him, covering his body with relics of the true
cross.
[Footnote 51: Saint-Simon and Dangeau.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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