M. De Félice, however, will not believe that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was popular in France. He takes a much more patriotic view of the French people. He cannot believe them to have been wilfully guilty of the barbarities which the French Government committed upon the Huguenots. It was the King, the priests, and the courtiers only! But he forgets that these upper barbarians were supported by the soldiers and the people everywhere. He adds, however, that if the Revocation _were_ popular, "it would be the most overwhelming accusation against the Church of Rome, that it had thus educated and fashioned France."[19] There is, however, no doubt whatever that the Jesuits, during the long period that they had the exclusive education of the country in their hands, _did_ thus fashion France; for, in 1793, the people educated by them treated King, Jesuits, priests, and aristocracy, in precisely the same manner that they had treated the Huguenots about a century before. [Footnote 19: De Felice's "History of the Protestants of France," book iii. sect. 17.] CHAPTER III. CLAUDE BROUSSON, THE HUGUENOT ADVOCATE. To give an account in detail of the varieties of cruelty inflicted on the Huguenots, and of the agonies to which they were subjected for many years before and after the passing of the Act of Revocation, would occupy too much space, besides being tedious through the mere repetition of like horrors. But in order to condense such an account, we think it will be more interesting if we endeavour to give a brief history of the state of France at that time, in connection with the biography of one of the most celebrated Huguenots of his period, both in his life, his piety, his trials, and his endurance--that of Claude Brousson, the advocate, the pastor, and the martyr of Languedoc. Claude Brousson was born at Nismes in 1647. He was designed by his parents for the profession of the law, and prosecuted his studies at the college of his native town, where he graduated as Doctor of Laws. He commenced his professional career about the time when Louis XIV. began to issue his oppressive edicts against the Huguenots. Protestant advocates were not yet forbidden to practise, but they already laboured under many disabilities. He continued, however, for some time to exercise his profession, with much ability, at Castres, Castelnaudry, and Toulouse. He was frequently employed in defending Protestant pastors, and in contesting the measures for suppressing their congregations and levelling their churches under existing edicts, some time before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had been finally resolved upon.