A Reign of Terror

One of those arrested was a poor man who had often called the believers to their secret gatherings. Under the threat of immediate death at the stake, he was commanded to take the papal emissary to the home of every Protestant in the city. Fear of the flames overcame him, and he agreed to betray his brethren. Morin, the royal detective, along with the traitor, slowly and silently passed through the streets of the city. When they arrived at the house of a Lutheran, the betrayer made a sign but spoke no word. The procession stopped, soldiers entered the house, dragged the family out and chained them, and the terrible company went forward in search of fresh victims. “Morin made the whole city tremble.... It was a reign of terror.”^{10J. H. Merle D'Aubigné, History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, book 4, chapter 10.}LF 95.2

The victims were put to death with cruel torture, on orders that the fire be lowered in order to prolong their agony. But they died as conquerors, their commitment unshaken, their peace unclouded. Their persecutors felt themselves defeated. “All Paris was able to see what kind of people the new opinions could produce. There was no pulpit like the martyr's pile. The serene joy that lighted up the faces of these Christians as they went along ... to the place of execution ... pleaded with irresistible eloquence on behalf of the gospel.”^{11James A. Wylie, History of Protestantism, book 13, chapter 20.}LF 95.3

Protestants were charged with plotting to massacre the Catholics, to overthrow the government, and to murder the king. The accusers could produce not a hint of evidence to support their allegations. Yet the cruelties done to the innocent Protestants accumulated like a huge weight of punishment that was due, and in later centuries brought about the very doom the accusers had predicted for the king, his government, and his subjects. But the ones doing it were infidels and the pope's advocates themselves. The suppression of Protestantism was to bring these terrible disasters on France.LF 95.4

Suspicion, distrust, and terror now extended to all classes of society. Hundreds fled from Paris, exiling themselves from their native land. In many cases their departure was the first indication that they favored the reformed faith. The officials who supported the pope looked around them in amazement at the thought of the unsuspected “heretics” that had been tolerated among them.LF 95.5