A Reign of Terror

A poor adherent of the reformed faith who had been accustomed to summon the believers to their secret assemblies was seized. With the threat of instant death at the stake, he was commanded to conduct the papal emissary to the home of every Protestant in the city. Fear of the flames prevailed, and he consented to betray his brethren. Morin, the royal detective, with the traitor, slowly and silently passed through the streets of the city. On arriving opposite the house of a Lutheran, the betrayer made a sign, but no word was uttered. The procession halted, the house was entered, the family were dragged forth and chained, and the terrible company went forward in search of fresh victims. “Morin made all the city quake. ... It was a reign of terror.”^{10Ibid., bk. 4. ch. 10.}HF 141.1

The victims were put to death with cruel torture, it being specially ordered that the fire should be lowered in order to prolong their agony. But they died as conquerors, their constancy unshaken, their peace unclouded. Their persecutors felt themselves defeated. “All Paris was enabled to see what kind of men the new opinions could produce. There was no pulpit like the martyr's pile. The serene joy that lighted up the faces of these men as they passed along ... to the place of execution ... pleaded with resistless eloquence in behalf of the gospel.”^{11Wylie, bk. 13, ch. 20.}HF 141.2

Protestants were charged with plotting to massacre the Catholics, to overthrow the government, and to murder the king. Not a shadow of evidence could be produced in support of the allegations. Yet the cruelties inflicted upon the innocent Protestants accumulated in a weight of retribution, and in after-centuries wrought the very doom they had predicted upon the king, his government, and his subjects. But it was brought about by infidels and by the papists themselves. The suppression of Protestantism was to bring upon France these dire calamities.HF 141.3

Suspicion, distrust, and terror now pervaded all classes of society. Hundreds fled from Paris, self-constituted exiles from their native land, in many cases thus giving the first intimation that they favored the reformed faith. The papists looked about them in amazement at thought of the unsuspected “heretics” that had been tolerated among them.HF 142.1