Editing Camisards (section)

==History==
[[File:Protestant France.svg|300px|thumb|16th-century religious geopolitics.
{{legend|#800080|Controlled by Huguenot nobility}}
{{legend|#AA87DE|Contested between Huguenots and Catholics}}
{{legend|#B3B3B3|Controlled by Catholic nobility}}
{{legend|MediumSlateBlue|Lutheran-majority area}}]]
In April 1598, [[Henry IV of France|Henry IV]] had signed the [[Edict of Nantes]] and the religious wars that had ravaged France ended. Protestants had been given limited civic rights and the liberty to worship according to their convictions. This "fundamental and irrevocable law" was maintained by Henry's son, [[Louis XIII]]. In October 1685, Henry's grandson, [[Louis XIV]] (The Sun king), revoked the Edict of Nantes, issuing his own [[Edict of Fontainebleau]]. Louis was determined to impose a single religion on France: that of Rome. As early as 1681 he instituted the [[dragonnade]]s which were conversions enforced by [[dragoon]]s, labelled "missionaries in boots". They were [[billet]]ed in the homes of Protestants to help them decide to convert back to the official church or alternatively to emigrate. The Cévennes was a centre of resistance, and the policy did not work.{{sfn|Schlegel|2008}}

The Edict of Fontainebleau removed all rights and protections from the Huguenots. There followed about twenty years of persecutions. Reformed worship and private Bible readings were outlawed. Within weeks of the new edict over 2000 Protestant churches were burned, under the direction of [[Nicolas de Lamoignon|Nicholas Lamoignon de Basville]], the royal administrator of Languedoc, and entire villages were massacred and burnt to the ground in a series of stunning atrocities. The pastors and worshippers were captured and later exiled, sent to the galleys, tortured or killed. Seventy-five missionary priests under the command of [[François Langlade|Abbot François Langlade]] were sent to the Cévennes. Soldiers carrying crosses on their muskets forced the peasants to sign papers to say they were converting, and forced them to attend mass. The peasants continued to attend illicit meetings. Huguenots with a trade fled to neighboring countries. The King responded by closing the borders.{{sfn|Schlegel|2008}}

The Protestant peasants of the Vaunage and the Cévennes, led by a number of teachers known as "prophets", notably François Vivent and [[:fr:Claude Brousson|Claude Brousson]], resisted. Vivent encouraged his followers to arm themselves in case they were set upon by Royalist soldiers. Several leading prophets were tortured and executed, François Vivent in 1692 and Claude Brousson in 1698. Many more were exiled, leaving the abandoned congregations to the leadership of less educated and more mystically oriented preachers, such as the [[combing|wool-comber]] [[Abraham Mazel]]. The Catholic church was likened to the [[The Beast (Revelation)|Beast of the Apocalypse]] and the clandestine prophets claimed to have seen it in the prophetic dreams. Mazel, in a dream, saw black oxen in his garden and heard a voice telling him  to chase them away. From 1700 the clandestine prophets and their armed followers were hidden in houses and caves in the mountains.{{sfn|Schlegel|2008}}
<ref>Antoine Court de Gébelin (2009), ''Histoire des troubles des Cévennes ou de la guerre des camisards sous le règne de Louis le Grand'', reprint of the original text printed in 1760. Editions Lacour-Ollé, Nîmes (in French).[https://archive.org/details/histoiredestrou02courgoog]</ref>

[[File:Le Dragon missionnaire.jpg|left|thumb|250px|Protestant satirical drawing of a "dragoon missionary" converting a "heretic", 1686]]

===Abraham Mazel===
Open hostilities began on 24 July 1702, with the assassination at [[le Pont-de-Montvert]] of a local embodiment of royal oppression, [[François Langlade]], the Abbé of Chaila. Langlade had recently arrested and tortured a group of seven Protestants accused of attempting to flee France.<ref name=".net">{{cite web|last1=Rolland|first1=Pierre|title=La Guerre des Camisards|url=http://www.camisards.net/guerrecami-fr.htm|website=Camisards.net|publisher=Association d'étude et de recherche sur les camisards|access-date=30 August 2016|location=48160 St-Martin-de-Boubaux|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110141730/http://www.camisards.net/guerrecami-fr.htm|archive-date=2016-11-10|url-status=dead}}</ref> The band of Camisards were led by Abraham Mazel, who peacefully asked for the release of the prisoners, but when this was refused, they commenced the killing.<ref name=Ruff>Pierre-Jean Ruff, 2008. Le Temple du Rouve: lieu de mémoire des Camisards. Editions Lacour-Ollé, Nîmes.</ref> The abbé was quickly lionized in print by the Catholic State as a martyr of his faith.

The Camisards worked independently of each other and during the day most merged back into their village communities. They were predominantly agricultural workers or artisans and had no aristocratic leaders. They knew the paths and the sheep tracks intimately. They called themselves the Children of God – they were inspired by religion, not by patronage or politics.

===Jean Cavalier===
{{main|Jean Cavalier}}
Led by the young [[Jean Cavalier]] and [[Roland Laporte|Pierre Laporte (Rolland)]], the Camisards met the ravages of the royal army with [[irregular warfare]] methods and withstood superior forces in several pitched battles.<ref>Ana Eliza Bray (1870), ''The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes, with some account of the Huguenots in the seventeenth century''. John Murray, London.[https://books.google.com/books?id=VR5MDn0i69AC&oe=UTF-8]</ref>

Violence increased as atrocities were committed on both sides: massacres in Catholic villages such as [[Fraissinet-de-Fourques]], [[Saint-André-d'Olérargues|Valsauve]] and [[Potelières]] by camisards. Basville, a government administrator with a reputation founded on torture, deported the entire populations of [[Mialet, Gard|Mialet]] and [[Saumane, Gard|Saumane]]. Then in the autumn of 1703, with the king's consent, the systematic "Burning of the Cévennes" destroyed 466 hamlets and exiled their populations.{{sfn|Bersier|2016}}

Other Protestants, like those of [[Fraissinet-de-Lozère]], under the influence of village elites, chose a loyalist attitude and fought the Camisards. They were nevertheless equally victims, losing their homes during the "Burning of the Cévennes".<ref>Ghislain Baury, ''La dynastie Rouvière de Fraissinet-de-Lozère. Les élites villageoises dans les Cévennes protestantes d'après un fonds d'archives inédit (1403-1908)'', t. 1: ''La chronique'', t. 2: ''L'inventaire'', Sète, Les Nouvelles Presses du Languedoc, 2011, http://sites.google.com/site/dynastierouviere/</ref>

White Camisards, also known as "Cadets of the Cross" ("Cadets de la Croix", from a small white cross which they wore on their coats), were Catholics from neighboring communities such as [[Saint-Florent-sur-Auzonnet|St. Florent]], [[Senechas]] and [[Rousson, Gard|Rousson]] who, on seeing their old enemies on the run, organized into companies to loot and to hunt the rebels down.{{sfn|Bersier|2016}} They committed atrocities, such as killing 52 people at the village of [[Brenoux]], including pregnant women and children.

Other opponents of the Protestants included six hundred [[Miquelet (militia)|miquelet]] marksmen from [[Roussillon]] hired as [[mercenary|mercenaries]] by the King.

In 1704, [[Claude Louis Hector de Villars]], the royal commander, offered vague concessions to the Protestants and the promise to Cavalier of a command in the royal army. Cavalier's acceptance of the offer broke the revolt, although others, including Laporte, refused to submit unless the [[Edict of Nantes]] was restored. Scattered fighting went on until 1710, but the true end of the uprising was the arrival in the Cévennes of the Protestant minister [[Antoine Court (Huguenot)|Antoine Court]] and the reestablishment of a small Protestant community that was largely left in peace, especially after the death of [[Louis XIV]] in 1715.