Dragonnades

“ From much more ancient times than the era of the dragonnades and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, English manufactures had been immensely indebted to foreign Protestant immigrants and refugees. The comparative toleration which the Huguenots reaped from the Edict of Nantes, they repaid to France by their skill, industry, and inventive powers, so that the beautiful, industrial products and manufactures of France were mainly the work of Protestant hands. These goods brought annually a great flow of money into the kingdom, especially from England. ”

“ He stooped slightly and had the air of a student rather than of a peasant or a mechanic. Gerard towered far above him.
“Papa Louis and I have nothing to lose,” said the young man. “Those from whom all has been taken have nothing to conceal. Every one knows our story.”
“Still,” said the cautious Michelle, “I would not be too free to tell it.”
“Maman has not yet lost her fear of the dragonnades,” remarked Papa Louis. “She cannot quite grasp the fact that we are utterly safe, and wakes up with a dread of having insolent soldiers quartered upon her before night.” ”

“ In 1672 he married Marie de Beringhen, and was thus brother-in-law of Le Duc de Caumont La Force. During the dragonnades, Monsieur and Madame Le Coq were arrested and were shut up in a succession of prisons. In August 1685 they were permitted to go into exile. At the same time the equally unflinching members of the family of De Beringhen were released, and retired into Holland — namely, Monsieur de Beringhen, his father and mother, and the greater part of his family. ”

“ The pleas urged in favour of it were highly characteristic of Ruvigny — “That no brave action could be performed without hazard, and the attempt would very likely be successful.” Mackay, on the other hand, urged, “We are sure to fail unless the enemy, through their own misconduct, are the victims of a surprise.” Success prevented adverse criticisms. The war had again assumed the aspect of a war of religions. The commander of the enemy was a conspicuous leader of the dragonnades against the Huguenots, Monsieur St. Ruth. ”

“ After the massacre at Vassy in 1562, Laurent Flourrois took refuge in Geneva, and two families were founded by his sons Gideon and Jean — descendants of. the offspring of both sons are believed still to exist in America. The second son of Gideon was Jacques, and the latter had four sons, one of whom, named Pierre, settled in England.
It is probable that the parents of the refugee had again settled in the land of their fathers. In the stream of French refugees from the dragonnades Peter Flournoys came to England, and he was naturalized on the 28th June 1682 (see List vi.) ”

“ The Lord Galway is gone to his Majesty for instructions about the descent, on whose return that matter depends.”
But once in the field, he remained there, and was conspicuous at the battle of Landen on the 19th July. Voltaire relates that William had only the hours of the previous night to prepare for action: “They attack him at break of day. They rind him at the head of Ruvigny’s regiment, entirely composed of French gentlemen, whom the fatal revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the dragonnades had compelled both to quit and to hate their native country. ”

“ We meet with him next at Paris, on 30th November 1782, signing the treaty with Great Britain, along with the other three commissioners, Adams, Franklin, and Jay. His son, Lieut.-Colonel John Laurens (born in 1755) . had been killed in action on 27th August 1782. He himself died in South Carolina on 1st December 1792. His daughter Martha was the wife of Dr. Ramsay, author of a “History of South Carolina,” and of “Memoirs of the Life of Martha Laurens Ramsay,” 1811.
(2.) Jay. Pierre Jay, a merchant and shipowner of La Rochelle, sent his family to England at the beginning of the dragonnades. ”

“ They worshipped water, and they worshipped shells, and so the pearl within the oyster-shell; and diving for pearls, their natural enemy was the shark, the guardian of the treasure and the only true and original dragon. But in the course of ages all this was naturally forgotten, and the dragon came to be adorned with all the terrors of all the monsters of travellers’ tales, from the python to the octopus and the lion that lives in the waste. Any terrible or impressive fact of life or nature—the existence of evil, or of hoary mountains—gave rise to a fresh dragon-tale ”

“ A low muttering, mingled with snorts, now made itself heard; rising to a bellowing roar that seemed to fill the plain. Then a cloud of smoke obscured the mouth of the cave, and out of the midst of it the dragon himself, shining, sea-blue, magnificent, pranced splendidly forth; and everybody said, "Oo oo-oo!" as if he had been a mighty rocket! His scales were glittering, his long spiky tail lashed his sides, his claws tore up the turf and sent it flying high over his back, and smoke and fire incessantly jetted from his angry nostrils. "Oh, well done, dragon!" cried the Boy, excitedly. ”

“ So you see, Perry, lots of things are possible that one would never expect.”
“But a dragon, Father! It’s such a made-up sort of beast—wings, teeth, snake’s tail and all that sort of thing!”
“Don’t trouble yourself about that,” his father answered, “there are plenty of dragons with wings, teeth and a snake’s tail, and, what’s more, Science calls them dragons. Draco volans, the flying dragon, that’s their real name, my boy. But they are all small, none of them more than ten inches in length, including the tail.” ”

“ And what could be more natural than that a dragon should take up its abode in or near Glastonbury, this region of hills and swamps? For it is universally admitted that dragons are to be found on the tops of mountains or in the depths of marshes, and it is a generally accepted test of evidence that what has been believed by all men everywhere in [19] every age is true—absurd, perhaps, but not more absurd than the modern opinion that what one man has once believed is true. ”

“ There, drawn with childish detail, was a picture of a dragon such as men in the Middle Ages believed that creature really to be, with two legs armed with claws, spiked wings, a long powerful tail, scales, and a ferocious-looking head with jaws wide open, disclosing pointed teeth, while from the throat, flames and smoke were pouring in volumes. ”

“ The similarity of the Northern and Oriental snake myths seems to point to some common origin in an antiquity too remote to be explored. Whatever be the origin of the Northern dragon, the myths, when they first become articulate for us, show him to be in all essentials the same as that of the South and East. He is a power of evil, guardian of hoards, the greedy withholder of good things from men; and the slaying of a dragon is the crowning achievement of heroes—of Siegmund, of Beowulf, of Sigurd, of Arthur, of Tristram—even of Lancelot, the beau idéal of medieval chivalry. ”

“ The dragon of popular mythology is nothing else than the thunderstorm, rising at the horizon, rushing with expanded, winnowing, black pennons across the sky, darting out its forked fiery tongue, and belching fire. In a Slovakian legend, the dragon sleeps in a mountain cave through the winter months, but, at the equinox, bursts forth—"In a moment the heaven was darkened and became black as pitch, only illumined by the fire which flashed from dragon's jaws and eyes. ”

“ While the dragon was coming down from the hills, to make his evening meal of a pretty girl, or to swish her off to his cave, he was careful to sniff the air on every side, lest some brave men in hiding should rush out at him, and put his eye out with an arrow, or push a spear down his throat, or throw fire or poison into his mouth. The dragon could easily swallow up a man, but he feared missiles shot or slung at him, whether arrows, sling stones or catapult balls. ”

“ The sandy, burning, treeless, waterless tongue of land, with its scanty footholds for the English and its sheltered pits for the enemy that from over their heads in the heights poured fire and death on them, to him seemed like some hideous dragon—a dragon fifty-seven miles long, carrying on back and in belly every weapon of destruction known to man and nature. ”

“ Of dragons there are many kinds, but the most respectable of them all is, as in China, the yellow one, which is as represented on the Chinese flags. Next to the yellow one in popularity comes the green one. In shape, as the natives picture it, the dragon is not unlike a huge lizard, with long-nailed claws, and a flat long head like the elongated head of a neighing horse, possessed, however, of horns, and a long mane of fire, or lightning. ”

“ The dragon has the wings and hind part of an eagle, while his fore-legs and head are those of a lion; between the wings upon his back stands a nude goddess brandishing lightning in either hand. The dragon is harnessed to a four-wheeled chariot, the front part of which is higher than the back, while a god of disproportionate size is driving the chariot and flourishing a whip in his left hand. The lion-headed dragon is apparently vomiting, and his action recalls that of one of the expiring lions on the bas-reliefs of Ashur-bani-pal. ”

“ To no word, perhaps, are attached ideas more extraordinary, and of greater antiquity, than to that of dragon. We find it consecrated by the religion of the earliest people, and become the object of their mythology. It got mixed up with fable, and poetry, and history, till it was universally believed, and was to be found everywhere but in nature. [122] In our days nothing of [Pg 93] the kind is to be seen, excepting a harmless animal hunting its insects. The light of these days has driven the fiery dragon to take refuge among nations not yet visited by the light of civilization. ”

“ The dragon legends of Naples and Mondragone are probably of this origin, and so is that of the Roman Campagna (1660) where the dragon-killer died from the effects of this poisonous breath. Sometimes the confined monster issues in a destructive lava-torrent—Bellerophon and the Chimæra. The fire-dragon. ... Or floods of water suddenly stream down from the hills and fountains are released. It is the hungry dragon, rushing from his den in search of prey; the river-dragon. . . . He rages among the mountains with such swiftness and impetuosity that wings must be his portion ”

“ It is certain that dragons laid waste the earth in ancient times and some have been seen as large as mountains. But they come no longer, and I believe that what has been taken for a dragon is not one at all, but pirates or merchants who have carried off the fair Orberosia and the best of the children of Alca in their ships. ”

“ Other writers see in the dragon only the huge serpent, the gigantic saurian, or other enormous creature such as formerly disputed with man the mastery of the world, only by degrees disappearing before him. To others again all is pure allegory. In every tale of champion and dragon they simply see “the ceaseless universal strife” between good and evil, once shown in all its intensity upon Mount Calvary, and since repeated wherever the good soldiers of the Cross have in their turn fought the same fight and won the same victory. ”

“ The twelve white dragons roar under the earth, and then emerge one by one from out of the fountain, to be torn in pieces by the hero’s twelve wild animals. The water becomes plentiful, and the hero marries the princess. But a former lover of hers poisons him. The twelve animals find his grave, and dig him up. They go in quest of the healing herb; and the hare, ‘whose eyes are always open, sees a snake with it in his mouth, robs the snake of it, and runs off, but at the snake’s request restores a portion.’ They then resuscitate their master. ”

“ And ascending them we reach another portal, smaller than the imposing Chinese structure through which we already passed, but wonderful, weird, full of dragons, dragons of a form which sculptors no longer carve, which they have even forgotten how to make, winged dragons rising from a storm-whirl of waters or thereinto descending. The dragon upon the panel of the left gate has her mouth closed; the jaws of the dragon on the panel of the right gate are open and menacing. Female and male they are, like the lions of Buddha. ”

“ But the legend of the dragon is much more ancient. The evidence has been given in full by de Visser. [160]
He tells us that the earliest reference is found in the Yih King, and shows that the dragon was "a water animal akin to the snake, which [used] to sleep in pools during winter and arises in the spring." "It is the god of thunder, who brings good crops when he appears in the rice fields (as rain) or in the sky (as dark and yellow clouds) , in other words when he makes the rain fertilize the ground" (p. 38) . ”

“ An enlargement, possibly, of prehistoric man's reminiscence of now extinct monsters, the dragon is, in its artistic development, a mythical embodiment of all the powers of moisture to bless and to harm. ”

“ Closely connected with the Greek tale is the Servian story of the dragon [133] whose “strength” (snaga) lies in a sparrow, which is inside a dove, inside a hare, inside a boar, inside a dragon (ajdaya) which is in a lake, near a royal city. The hero of the story fights the dragon of the lake, and after a long struggle, being invigorated at the critical moment by a kiss which the heroine imprints on his forehead—he flings it high in the air. When it falls to the ground it breaks in pieces, and out comes the boar. ”

“ So the dragon has grown into a subterranean monster, who peers up from his dark abode wherever he can—out of fountains or caverns whence fountains issue. It stands to reason that he is sleepless; all dragons are “sleepless”; their eyes are eternally open, for the luminous sparkle of living waters never waxes dim. And bold adventurers may well be devoured by dragons when they fall into these watery rents, never to appear again. ”