Picturesque Quebec, By James Macpherson Le Moine










































































































































 -  Madame de Maintenon, a converted Calvinist, and
who had secretly become his wife (1685) encouraged him in this design and - Page 372
Picturesque Quebec, By James Macpherson Le Moine - Page 372 of 451 - First - Home

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Madame De Maintenon, A Converted Calvinist, And Who Had Secretly Become His Wife (1685) Encouraged Him In This Design And Suggested To Him The Cruel Scheme Of Tearing Away Children From Their Parents, To Bring Them Up In The Roman Catholic Faith.

The vexatious confiscations, the galleys, the torture of the wheel, the gibbet, - all were successively but unsuccessfully resorted to as a means to convert them.

The unhappy Protestants' sole aim was to escape from the band which tortured them, in vain were they prohibited from quitting the kingdom, and those who aided them in their flight sent to the galleys - five hundred thousand escaped to Holland, to Germany, to England, and to the English colonies in America. They carried thither their wealth, their industry, and after such a separation - ill blood and thirst for revenge, which subsequently cost their native country very dear. William III, who more than once charged the French troops at the heads of French regiments, and Roman Catholic and Huguenot regiments, were seen, when recognising one another on the battle-field, to rush on one another with their bayonets, with an onslaught more ferocious than soldiers of different nationalities exhibit to one another. How advantageous would not have been an emigration, strong in numbers and composed of men, wealthy, enlightened, peaceful, laborious, such as the Huguenots were - to people the shores of the St. Lawrence, or the fertile plains of the West? At least, they would not have borne to foreign lands the secret of French manufactures, and taught other nations to produce goods which they were in the habit of going and procuring in the ports of France. A fatal policy sacrificed these advantages to the selfish views of a party - armed by the alliance of the spiritual and temporal power with an authority, which denied the breath of life to conscience as well as to intellect. 'If you and yours are not converted, before such a day, the king's authority will ensure your conversion,' thus wrote Bossuet to the dissenters. We repeat it, had this policy not been resorted to, we should not be reduced, we Canadians, to defend every foot of ground, our language, our laws, and our nationality, against an invading hostile sea. How will pardon be granted to fanaticism, for the anguish and suffering inflicted on a whole people, whose fate has been rendered so painful, so arduous - whose future has been so grievously jeopardized.

"Louis XIV, who had myriads of dragoons to butcher the Protestants, and who by his own fault was losing half a million of his subjects - the monarch who dictated to Europe, could only spare two hundred soldiers to send to Quebec, to protect a country four times larger than France, a country which embraced Hudson's Bay, Acadia, Canada, a large portion of Maine, of Vermont, New York, and the whole Mississippi valley" - Garneau's History of Canada, (Vol. I. p. 492-96 - 1st edition.)

[See page 107.]

VENERABLE MOTHER OF THE INCARNATION.

"In one of the many works which the philosopher of Chelsea has given to the world, we find the assertion of a great truth that history is but the biography of leading men.

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