THE HUGUENOT EXILES; OR, THE TIMES OF LOUIS XIV. A historical novel.
"They have said, come and let us root them out, that they be no more a people." —Psalm lxxxiii. "The hunting tribes of air and earth, Respect the brethren of their birth. * * * * Man only mars kind nature's plan, And turns the fierce pursuit on man." ROKEBY.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1856.Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
FOR several years I have contemplated writing the following story; and in that time I have gathered the historical materials on which it is founded. It is neither the crude outpouring of an unpracticed pen, nor the result of popular prejudice against the Romish Church; on the contrary, my education had an opposite tendency; and in early youth the pomp, ceremony, and antiquity of the Papal Church strongly interested my imagination.
But I became a reader of history, and as my acquaintance with the progress of the various nations of the world extended, the firm conviction came to me, that she who claims to be the universal Mother, aims at vailing the light from her disciples, reckless of their well-being, so long as the great Deity, the Church, is sustained.
Myself a descendant of a Huguenot refugee, whose romantic adventures are interwoven in the following pages, it seems a fitting tribute to the memory of my ancestor that his descendant shall lay this offering on the shrine of historical and religious fiction.
At this particular epoch, a work covering the whole ground of the Romish persecutions which preceded the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, may be acceptable to the public. My object has been to render it page: vi-7[View Page vi-7] popular by giving to its pages all the interest of a vividly told story, while it yet possesses the merit of dealing more in fact than in fiction.
In the scenes I have presented to the reader there is no exaggeration; on the contrary, I have found it necessary to soften the actual atrocities committed, as may be easily ascertained by those who will refer to the records of that terrible period. If the perusal of these pages induces the uninformed reader to learn something of the history and tendency of the Church of Rome, my chief object will be attained. Let him test the pretensions of the infallible Mother by the standard of truth, and learn how much they are worth. Let him see honor, good faith, and humanity trampled under foot by the self-styled successors of St. Peter—a series of the most corrupt and ambitious men that ever wielded authority. No royal race, imbecile and tyrannical as they usually have been, can compare with the Popes in crime; for no one family could have produced such a series of evil men as have arrogated to themselves the authority of God on earth, and reared a vast ecclesiastical despotism which is the curse of every country in which it has rule.
Claiming the title of the only Christian Church, it openly ignores the precepts of Christ; and the Saints, headed by the Virgin Mary, are the only deities worshiped; the sole use made of the Son of God being to show his dead image as an object of reverence to the ignorant.
There is, however, some fitness in this; as the wooden image, destitute of all vitality, is a suitable emblem of the dead faith, long since buried under superstition and priestcraft.
