Edict of Nantes

“ All that has been related hitherto were only infringements on their established charter, the edict of Nantes. At length the diabolical revocation of that edict passed on the 18th of October, 1685, and was registered the 22d in the vacation, contrary to all form of law. Instantly the dragoons were quartered upon the protestants throughout the realm, and filled all France with the like news, that the king would no longer suffer any Huguenots in his kingdom, and therefore they must resolve to change their religion. ”

“ Amante infortunée, il n'est pour elle aucun instant sans alarmes. Quel malheur affreux que celui d'être privé d'un Prince que l'on aime, d'un Prince plus amant qu'époux."
It was in this castle that Henry IV. signed his celebrated Edict of Nantes, so fatally revoked by Louis XIV.
The Duc de Mercœur, when governor of Brittany, made Nantes a regular fortified town. Having married Marie de Luxembourg, heiress of the house of Penthièvre, he sought to secure to himself the duchy of Brittany, while his brother, the Duke de Guise, aimed at the crown of France. ”

“ The character of its lone occupant protected this lowly abode far better than the armies of France, the chivalry of Spain, or the Choctaw's ceaseless vigilance could possibly have done. He came there it was said, some fifteen years before, a Huguenot exile, seemingly a man of education and birth. He built his castle of refuge on a knoll overlooking the sheltered bay, hoping there to find the toleration denied him in his native land. The edict of Nantes had been revoked by King Louis, and thousands of exiled Frenchmen of high and low degree sought new fortunes in newer lands. ”

“ When the Loire glistens under the caressing rays of the setting sun, and the roof-tops of the town are all of a reddened gold, Nantes might indeed be even now the mediæval capital that it was before the age of steam and electricity, which sound the only modern notes to be heard here. At night the spectacle is far more dramatic, with the streets and quays lit by countless lamps; the subdued murmur of the workaday world, now all but gone to rest; for an occasional shriek from a locomotive or a wail from the siren of some great steamer dropping down-river with the tide is all that one hears. ”

“ It is rather a matter of surprise that an enlightened people should have submitted to tyranny so long.”
Nantes is the Paris of the Loire. Its streets, boulevards, public squares, the forest of masts in the river, and the trees that line its banks, all seem a copy of the bright and gay French capital. Its old cathedral is a queer-looking building, with towers scarcely higher than its roof; but it contains a most beautiful tomb which was erected in memory of Francis II. last Duke of Bretagne. It is adorned with figures of angels, the twelve Apostles, St. Louis, and Charlemagne. ”

“ Nantes itself now is akin to a desert—a desert wherein the air is filled with weird sounds of cries and of moans, of furtive footsteps scurrying away into dark and secluded byways, of musketry and confused noises, of sorrow and of lamentations.
Nantes is a city of the dead—a city of sleepers. Only Carrier is awake—thinking and devising and planning shorter ways and swifter, for the extermination of traitors. ”

“ Nantes was turned into a city of wailing; peasant-women—mothers, sisters, daughters, wives of the condemned, trooped from their villages into the city, loudly calling on M. le duc for mercy, besieging the improvised court-house, the prison gates, the town residence of M. le duc, the palace of the bishop: they pushed their way into the courtyards and the very corridors of those buildings—flunkeys could not cope with them—they fought with fists and elbows for the right to make a direct appeal to the liege-lord who had power of life and death over their men. ”

“ There are a hundred possibilities of poverty and wealth, and they make the most unexpected combinations.
The great treasure of Nantes is the two noble se- pulchral monuments which occupy either transept, and one of which has (in its nobleness) the rare distinction of being a production of our own time. On the south side stands the tomb of Francis II., the last of the Dukes of Brittany, and of his second wife, Margaret of Foix, erected in 1507 by their daughter Anne, whom we have encountered already at the Chateau de Nantes, where she was born; at Langeais, where she married her first husband ”

“ Houses were then built outside the old city walls, docks and quays sprang up along the river, and at last a cathedral appeared high on the hill which dominates the city.
The location of Nantes, only fifty-five kilometers from the sea, and at the junction of the railroad lines from Bordeaux, Brest, St. Nazaire and Paris, with direct communication with Brest by canal, made it an advantageous freight port, and great quantities of food and ammunition passed through it before and after the armistice. ”

“ In population (town, 118,244; commune, 133,247, in 1906) Nantes is the first city of Brittany. The Loire here divides into several branches forming islands over portions of which the city has spread. It receives on the left hand the Sèvre Nantaise, and on the right the Erdre, which forms the outlet of the canal between Nantes and Brest. The maritime port of Nantes is reached by way of the Loire and the ship canal between the island of Carnet and La Martinière (91/2 m.) ”

“ This is not bad for a climate which on the Loire approaches almost Mediterranean mildness. It is a pity that cold and austere England does not rise a little earlier in the morning. London, it is true, sits up late enough, but she makes up for it by dawdling away all the morning up to half-past ten or eleven.
In spite of all its loveliness and gaiety, Nantes is a city more ancient than modern,—this antique Namnêtes, the capital, by preference, of the Dukes of Brittany, and the political rival of Rennes. ”

“ The citizens of Nantes were never tired of gaping at the carriage—a huge C-springed barouche—at the coachman's fine caped coat of bottle-green cloth and at the horses with their handsome harness set off with heavy brass bosses: they never tired of bandying words with the successive coachmen as they mounted their box and gathered up the reins, or with the postilions who loved to crack their whips and to appear smart and well-groomed, in the midst of the squalor which reigned in the terror-stricken city. ”

“ Is there a thing I can mention in this filthy city of yours that is not wrong? Everything is wrong! You have failed in your duty to provide adequately for the army of Vendee. Angers has fallen, and now the brigands are threatening Nantes itself. There is abject want in the city, disease is rampant; people are dying of hunger in the streets and of typhus in the prisons. ”

“ My idea is to collect together all the most disreputable and notorious evil-doers of this city ... there are plenty in the entrepôt at the present moment, and there are plenty more still at large in the streets of Nantes—thieves, malefactors, forgers of State bonds, assassins and women of evil fame ... and to send them in a batch to Paris to appear before the Committee of Public Safety, whilst I will send to my colleagues there a letter couched in terms of gentle reproach: 'See!' I shall say, 'what I have to contend with in Nantes. See! the moral pestilence that infests the city. ”

“ The stage for the actors formed the centre of the alcove, but was brought to the front to enable the populace to see it, and was decorated with red velvet bearing the coat of arms of the city of Nantes.
As the hour for the spectacle approaches, the crowd gathers in the place, and soon it is a mass of people, bourgeoisie and peasantry, most of them wearing the peculiar costumes of the country.
A street in Nantes—Ancient houses.
The archbishop with his suite could reach his balcony by a private way. The Baron de Retz occupied his hotel called Maison de la Suze in the Rue Notre Dame. ”

“ Yet some busybodies up in Paris, some fools, seem to think that we are going too fast in Nantes. They have become weaklings over there since Marat has gone. It seems that they have heard rumours of our flat-bottomed barges and of our fine Republican marriages: apparently they disapprove of both. They don't realise that we have to purge an entire city of every kind of rabble—traitors as well as criminals. ”

“ The whole population of Nantes was in commotion, and it was said that the investigation would be fictitious, that the duke would screen his kinsman, and that the object of general execration would escape with the surrender of some of his lands.
And such would probably have been the event of the trial, had not the Bishop of Nantes and the grand-seneschal taken a very decided course in the matter. They gave the duke no peace till he had yielded to their demand for a thorough investigation and a public trial. ”

“ Upon arriving at Nantes I learned that a body of ten thousand troops, commanded by Monsieur De Forbin, had just entered Brittany in order to crush the rebellious parliamentarians—were they bourgeois or peasants. On the following day the town of Nantes was occupied by two regiments of infantry, supported by artillery and cavalry. The executions commenced. On the first day forty-seven leading bourgeois were hanged, and eleven men of the common people, who were marked as seditious, broken alive on the wheel."
"My God!" cried Mademoiselle Plouernel horrified. "How much blood! How much blood!" ”

“ Three nights after that on which we have seen the regent, first at Chelles and then at Meudon, a scene passed in the environs of Nantes which cannot be omitted in this history; we will therefore exercise our privilege of transporting the reader to that place.
On the road to Clisson, two or three miles from Nantes—near the convent known as the residence of Abelard—was a large dark house, surrounded by thick stunted trees; hedges everywhere surrounded the inclosure outside the walls, hedges impervious to the sight, and only interrupted by a wicket gate. ”

“ Nantes (116) , capital of the department of Loire-Inférieure, North-West France, on the Loire, 35 m. from the sea; its fine streets, handsome buildings, and historical associations make it one of the most interesting cities in France; the cathedral and the ducal castle date from the 15th century; shipbuilding, sugar-refining, and hardware are the staple industries, while an active shipping trade is kept up with the colonies. ”

“ These features exist in still better form at Bordeaux; but, putting Bordeaux aside, Nantes is quite architectural. The view up and down the quays has the cool, neutral tone of colour that one finds so often in French water-side places—the bright greyness which is the tone of French landscape art. The whole city has rather a grand, or at least an eminently well-established, air. ”

“ Within this château, M. La Tour tells us, an important treaty was signed by François II of Brittany and Louis XI.
As we drew near Nantes the strong salt air blowing in our faces made us realize that we were near the sea. Nantes and St. Nazaire, which is a little north and west of Nantes, are among the great sea ports of the world. And here we find ourselves again in the Dumas [344] country, for it was along the part of the Loire that we have seen to-day that Fouquet fled pursued relentlessly by Colbert. If only Fouquet could have reached Nantes and his own Belle Ile, out beyond St. ”

“ The circumstances of the ballad strongly recall those of the poem in which the Welsh bard Taliesin recounts his magical experiences, his metamorphoses, his knowledge of the darker mysteries of nature.
253 Nantes of the Magicians
The poet is in accord with probability in making the magical exploits of Abélard and Héloïse take place at Nantes—a circumstance not indicated in the translation owing to metrical exigencies. Nantes was, indeed, a classic neighbourhood of sorcery. ”

“ By night in Nantes the Rain-bow shall appear,
Sea Rain-bows shall cause Rain;
The Arabian Gulf shall drownd a great Fleet,
A Monster shall be in Saxony from a Bear and a Sow. ANNOT. Nantes is a City in France, Iris is the Rainbow, Saxony is a Province in Germany; the rest is plain.
XLV.
French. ”

“ At last it became apparent that these ravages were confined to a given district, a circle of country approximately bounded by the present cities of Vannes, Rennes, Angers, La Rochelle, and so opening to the ocean. Of this circle,71 Nantes was approximately the centre. This condition continued, growing more acute year by year. Each year new families were stricken, and the terror became more widely spread.
A man of the character and ambitions of Gilles de Retz would naturally have about him a corps of men to assist in carrying out his nefarious courses. ”

“ The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is interesting. Here is a reminiscence of old stage-coaching days, when the post took four days to make the journey from Paris:
“The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether the Hôtel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe.” (It must have disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in any one of the three leading hotels.) ”

“ Citizen Lamberty has his lodgings on the other side and he does nothing but complain of the brawls that go on there o' nights. Sure it is that while a stone of the Rat Mort remains standing all the night-hawks of Nantes will congregate around it and brew mischief there which is no good to me and no good to the Republic. ”