The imprisonment and execution of the pastor Rochette, and the three Grenier brothers, "gentlemen glassmakers", in Toulouse in February 1762 marks the last significant act of official persecution against the Protestants of Ancien Régime France. It also provides the essential background to the Calas affair. Initial events unfolded in 1761 and 1762 in Caussade, a little town north of Montauban, an area in which about half the peasants in the surrounding countryside were Protestants.
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| The commune of Caussade today |
The arrest of Rochette
François Rochette, a young man of twenty-six, was a native of the Cévennes who had been sent from the seminary in Lausanne as pastor for Quercy and the Agenais (29 parishes in all). Although full rigour of law against Protestantism theoretically applied, up until this point he had not been much troubled by the authorities: he had conducted his services in unofficial maisons d'oraison rather than out in the open and had moved between locations without bothering unduly to conceal himself. On 13th September 1761, having presided at a service in Bioule near Nègrepelisse, he was on his way to Caussade for a baptism, when he was arrested by chance in the countryside on suspicion of being a highwayman. When questioned he freely admitted his identity; a search of his belongings yielded a register of marriages and baptisms, several notebooks of sermons and his ministerial robes. In theory, exercise of the Protestant ministry carried the death penalty - Rochette himself was fully prepared for martyrdom; his maternal grandfather and uncle had both been condemned to the galleys in 1690. Nonetheless, it could reasonably be expected that he would be shown mercy.
At this point, the local priest in Caussade
escalated the situation by alerting the municipality to a possible hostile
gathering of Protestants, timed to coincide with the grand marché
fermier fixed for the following day, Monday 14th
September. The authorities took his fears serious; they sounded the
tocsin and mobilised the militia. As soon as the market opened, a few
hotheads began to molest known Huguenots as they set out their produce for
sale. Rumour, noise and panic soon spread and there was widespread
disorder. The market was postponed to the following week. A few
known Protestants were arrested.
As they sensed disorder spreading the municipality ordered the alarm to be sounded in the surrounding towns, Septfonds, Caylus, Saint-Antonin,Montpezat and Réalville. Panic soon began to take hold of the countryside, without the inhabitants really understanding what was happening. However, there was already little to be seen, when the next day, Tuesday 15th September, the militia began to converge on Caussade from the area around, including even Montauban.
The arrest of the Grenier brothers
Early on the morning the 15th - about 4am - the three brothers Grenier, gentilshommes verriers, were arrested as ringleaders of the revolt.
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| Illustration from Haudicqueur de Blancourt, L'Art de verrerie, 1697. |
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| Meeting in the Desert, engraved by L.Bellotti, 1775 http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_235174/%28after%29-Storni%2C-J.J./Meeting-in-the-Desert%2C-engraved-by-L.-Bellotti%2C-1775 |
On hearing of the arrest of Rochette, the three brothers and a small group of companions rushed to Caussade, perhaps to reinforce their co-religionists; perhaps to lend their presence for a service planned for the 15th September. Between them, they were carrying a sword and two hunting rifles. However, they never reached the town. A patrol of militia spotted them in open country, put them to flight and gave chase with a pack of dogs. They were captured near Réalville, five kilometres from Caussade. They later submitted that they had been surprised to find themselves suddenly pursued through the fields by a mob of angry Catholics. Their only violence had been when one brother had struck a assailant who was about to cosh him with an iron bar. Catholic eye-witnesses stood by their story of a Protestant attack (although they reduced their estimate of the numbers involved from two hundred to nine).
On 16th September the authorities in Caussade released the
captives apart from eleven men, the Gernier brothers included, who were
transferred to Cahors under the guard of six brigades of maréchaussée marching
to a drum. Tension continued to run high. It is estimated that there were
now as many as 1,500 men pressed into service to defend Caussade. On
17th September the municipality announced to the population that the
Protestants intended to set fire to the town. In one incident a guardsmen fired
on a group of Catholic peasants who were still under arms - an ominous anticipation
of the incompetences of the Great Fear of 1789 and the White Terror of
1815.
A Protestant insurrection?
A Protestant insurrection?
Historians have been divided about the reality of any
Protestant movement in Caussade. There seems to have been some sort of
spontaneous disorder outside the prison on the morning of the market, 14th
September. The curé, by no means a reliable
witness, maintained that a "collection of seditious men armed with
sticks", had appeared at the prison and tried unsuccessfully to
rescue Rochette. But clearly neither Rochette himself, nor the
Greniers who were still in Montauban, could have been directly
responsible. According to the curé's report, on
the night of 14th September bands of Protestant peasants gathered at strong points near
the town. There were subsequently several bloody encounters, with
exchanges of gunfire and deaths; at one point a Protestant charge was led
across the fields by a horseman shouting, "Kill, kill!" Only the
capture the Greniers, the military leaders, halted the Huguenot
onslaught. Other accounts refer to hundreds of Protestants roaming the
countryside in murderous bands. In a history written twenty-five
years, the lawyer Cathala-Coture wrote of pitched battles between brave
groups of Catholics and groups of two to six hundred Protestants, all armed
with guns, clubs and pitchforks. However, the records of the later
investigation by the Parlement of Toulouse make no reference to any of these
events. The curé himself acknowledged that the
Protestant inhabitants of the town, and the bourgeois militia under the
command of a Protestant, remained faithful to the consuls. It seems
scarcely conceivable that they would have fought against their
co-religionists. The early Protestant historian of events, Onésime
de Grenier-Fajal, concluded - probably with justice - that the entire
affair was the product of collective hysteria.
Trial in Toulouse
In Toulouse, news from Caussade was understandably greeted
with alarm. The magistrates of the Parlement acted vigorously. On 6th
October orders were issued for the prisoners to be brought to
Toulouse for trial. Security for the transfer was assured by a gigantic
deployment of troops, totally out of proportion to the affair, the brunt of the
cost to be borne by the Protestants of Guyenne. On 23rd October Rochette
and his guide were brought separately to Toulouse in a closed carried.
The other eleven captives were not moved until the next day, when they were
transported to the prisons of the Palais de Justice in a covered wagon,
accompanied by a escort of fifty soldiers, armed in readiness for an ambush.
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| Portrait of Paul Rabaut, Bibliothèque du protestantisme français, Paris |
In reality, there was never any question of an armed rescue
bid. Protestant leaders restricted themselves to written protests, or to futile attempts to corrupt the judges and prison
warders, whose venality was well know. Paul Rabaut in Nîmes appealed to
Marie-Adélaïde, the daughter of Louis XV, but received no reply.
Enlightenment figures were also approached. Rabaut wrote to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, who was sympathetic but embroiled in his own struggles and
condemned rebellion against rightful authority. A Huguenot by the name of
Ribotte alerted Voltaire at Ferney, who wrote immediately to the maréchal de
Richelieu, the governor general of Guyenne; it would be too much, he argued, to
both grill Jesuits in Lisbon (Malagrida, executed in September 1761)
and at the same time hang Protestant pastors in France. (letter of 25th
October 1761). When he failed to elicit a response, he too declared he was
powerless to help; "Jesus Christ said that He was to be found wherever
three or four were gathered in His name...when there are three or four
thousand, it's the devil who is to be found there." The flippant
tone of the correspondence is easy to misread; Voltaire later regretted
that he had given up so easily, and probably took up the cudgels on behalf of
Calas with greater determination as a result.
It is clear that the Protestants and the Catholic
magistrates did not regard the affair in the same light. The Protestants
saw it as a legal issue, a simple miscarriage of justice. But
Catholic opinion in Toulouse was coloured by two centuries of conflict -
the War in the Cévennes was still within living memory. The magistrates were in
no doubt that the security of the kingdom was at stake - the case
was heard by the Grand' Chambre of the Parlement rather than
the Tournelle. The documents which had been seized on Rochette, seemed to
prove the existence of a vast network of Protestant resistance, coordinated
by Lausanne, organised through confessional registers and financed by
popular contributions, with armed men at its disposal. They anticipated a
Protestant attempt to seize power in the South-West. The Procurator General
Bonrepos informed the Parlement that the whole district north of Montauban had
been in open rebellion and that Caussade had narrowly escaped being
sacked. The Huguenots, in a "considerable rising and sedition"
had attempted to take back their imprisoned pastor by force. The procureur pressed his secret police, informers and spies to establish proofs of
this vast conspiracy. The two pastors of Ganges and of the Vigan in
Languedoc, warned one another of police provocations. Respectable
Protestant businessmen attempted to dissociated themselves from the supposed
revolt. Some members of the National Synod which met in 1763 even wanted
the Reformed Church formally to disclaim responsibility.
The execution
It was probably inevitable that the Parlement not only condemned the prisoners but invoked the full penalties at its disposal. On 18th February 1762 François Rochette was sentenced to be hanged for having preached, baptised and conducted marriages in clandestine assemblies in defiance of the royal proscription. The three Grenier brothers were condemned to death for "seditious and riotous assemblage while bearing arms"; in deference to their status as "gentlemen glassmakers" they were to be beheaded. .Viguier and Vialla, who had been with the pastor on the night of the 13th were to be branded and sent to the galleys; another man, Donnadieu, was banished and the rest released.
The four condemned men passed their last night in prayer. The next day at two o'clock in the afternoon a large crowd gathered for the spectacle of the quadruple execution. The heightened security measures deployed shows that fear persisted. The executions were performed in the place du Salin immediately outside the prison rather than the much larger place Saint-Georges. (One of the spectators, a law student, reported that the square held only one-sixth of the persons who wanted to attend. The roofs of surrounding houses were filled with people and a place inside at a window sold for six livres.) It was reported that all the troops in Toulouse were under arms. The two royal army regiments garrisoned in the town marched to the place, followed by the troops of the Marechaussee and all sixty of the city police. Soldiers were also stationed in the adjoining streets with their guns loaded and ready. Rochette mounted the scaffold first; he was precipitately strangled to prevent him from speaking. The three brothers embraced, pardoned each other their faults and were beheaded one after the other: "They were fine men, whose sacrifice seemed the more inequitable".
The execution
It was probably inevitable that the Parlement not only condemned the prisoners but invoked the full penalties at its disposal. On 18th February 1762 François Rochette was sentenced to be hanged for having preached, baptised and conducted marriages in clandestine assemblies in defiance of the royal proscription. The three Grenier brothers were condemned to death for "seditious and riotous assemblage while bearing arms"; in deference to their status as "gentlemen glassmakers" they were to be beheaded. .Viguier and Vialla, who had been with the pastor on the night of the 13th were to be branded and sent to the galleys; another man, Donnadieu, was banished and the rest released.
The four condemned men passed their last night in prayer. The next day at two o'clock in the afternoon a large crowd gathered for the spectacle of the quadruple execution. The heightened security measures deployed shows that fear persisted. The executions were performed in the place du Salin immediately outside the prison rather than the much larger place Saint-Georges. (One of the spectators, a law student, reported that the square held only one-sixth of the persons who wanted to attend. The roofs of surrounding houses were filled with people and a place inside at a window sold for six livres.) It was reported that all the troops in Toulouse were under arms. The two royal army regiments garrisoned in the town marched to the place, followed by the troops of the Marechaussee and all sixty of the city police. Soldiers were also stationed in the adjoining streets with their guns loaded and ready. Rochette mounted the scaffold first; he was precipitately strangled to prevent him from speaking. The three brothers embraced, pardoned each other their faults and were beheaded one after the other: "They were fine men, whose sacrifice seemed the more inequitable".
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References
"La triple exécution des frères de Grenier en 1762", Arriège par Michel Bégon. Article of May 2007
http://ariegeparmichelbegon.blogspot.com/2009/11/la-triple-execution-des-freres-de.html
David D. Bien, The Calas Affaire, Princeton University Press 1960: chpt 4: "Rochette, the Brothers Grenier, and the hysteria at Caussade", p.77-91.
[Available for loan on Open Library]
https://archive.org/details/calasaffair00bien
"François Rochette et les trois frères de Grenier", Extract from a 1932 publication produced by the musée du Désert
http://www.graphicsfair.com/grenier/verriers/index.html
"François Rochette et les trois frères de Grenier", Extract from a 1932 publication produced by the musée du Désert
http://www.graphicsfair.com/grenier/verriers/index.html
On the gentilshommes verriers:
"Gentilshommes verriers", UNEPREF Ariège website, post of 23.07.2010.
La Réveillée: Association des descendants des Gentilshommes verriers du sud-ouest.
Readings
Two accounts of the executions
Court de Gébelin, Les Toulousaines (Edimbourg, 1763) letter 22.
On the 19th of February, at two o’clock in the afternoon, the mournful procession started on its way. Rochette was, according to the terms of the sentence, bare-headed, bare-footed, with a halter hung about his neck, from which, before and behind, labels were suspended, with these words, Minister of the pretended Reformed religion.
When the array passed before the church of Saint Etienne, an attempt was made to force him, in pursuance of the terms of the Parliament’s condemnation, to kneel with a torch of yellow wax in his hand, and to ask pardon of God, the king, and justice, for all his crimes and misdeeds.
Rochette stepped down from the tumbril, and instead of abjuring or making a confession which his heart denied, he pronounced on his knees the following words: “I beseech God to pardon me for all my sins, and I firmly believe that they have been washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us so dearly. I have no pardon to ask of the king, whom I have ever honoured as the Lord’s anointed, and loved as the father of my native land; I have ever been a good and faithful subject, and of this I believe my judges to be convinced. I have always preached to my flock patience, obedience, and submission; and my sermons, which you possess, are summed up in these words: ‘Fear God, honour the king.’ If I have contravened the law touching religious assemblies, it was by God’s commandments I contravened them; God must be obeyed before men. As for justice and the law, I am guilty of no offence against them, and I pray God may pardon my judges.”
Every door, balcony, window, roof, and approach near to the place of execution, was covered with spectators. “Toulouse,” says Count de Gebelin, an eye-witness, who related these circumstances, “Toulouse, that city drunk with the blood of martyrs, seemed a Protestant town. People asked what was the creed of these heretics; and when they heard our martyrs speak of Jesus Christ and of his death, every one was surprised and afflicted. They were infinitely touched, also, with the lofty, yet mild bearing of the three brothers, which compelled their admiration almost as much as the inexpressible serenity of the minister, whose graceful and spiritual physiognomy, whose words full of firmness and courage, and whose youth, filled every beholder with interest, knowing, as all did, that he only died because he disdained to save his life by a lie.”
Rochette was executed first. He exhorted his companions until the end, and sang the canticle of the Protestant martyrs: This is the blessed day. “Die a Catholic,” said the executioner, moved with pity. “Judge which is the better religion,” replied Rochette, “that which persecutes, or that which is persecuted.”
The youngest of the three brothers (he was only twenty-two years of age), hid his face in his hands to shut out this tragic scene. The two others contemplated it with calmness. As they were gentlemen, their sentence was, to be beheaded. They embraced each other, recommending their souls to God. The eldest offered his head to the axe first. When it came to the turn of the last, the executioner said: “You have seen your brothers die; change, lest you perish like them.” “Do thy duty,” said the martyr, and his head rolled upon the scaffold.
Count de Gebelin adds, as he concludes his recital: “Everyone present returned home in silence, in a state of consternation, and unable to persuade themselves that there could be such courage and such cruelty in the world; and I, who describe it, cannot refrain from tears of joy and sadness, as I contemplate their blessed lot, and that our church should be still capable of affording examples of piety and firmness that will compare with the most illustrious monuments of the primitive church.
Summary and translation from Adam de Félice, History of the Protestants of France, (London, 1853), p.427-8.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ScICAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA427#v=onepage&q&f=false
From the manuscript diary of Pierre Barthès, a Catholic of Toulouse:
19th February 1762
Preacher hanged.
By order of the court dated 18th of the month, in the presence of Sieur Gaspard Bégué, official of the court, on the place du Salin…at two o’clock in the afternoon, on a scaffold erected for the purpose: François Rochette, preacher of the so-called Reformed religion, accused and convicted of having carried out the functions of minister…… was hanged and strangled.
This young man, well-built but a little lame, was from a village called Vialas in Haut Languedoc. He was an apothecary by trade and, according to rumour, very stupid for a man of his communion; he was consecrated as a pastor and minister among his sect. In spite of everything it proved impossible to open his eyes to the true light; he refused to listen to the saintly exhortations of monsieur le curé or any other zealous churchman.
He preferred to die in error, the fatal result of prejudices inculcated since childhood; indeed, he wanted to be listed among the martyrs of the faith in imitation of his father and grandfather who had been hanged for the cause of God…..
The young man, ascended the ladder, wearing on his front and back a board with the words "minister of the R. P. R." He no doubt wished to preach a sermon, to confirm the faith of the others about to be executed by his fermety and perseverence. The drums of the regiment of Berry, which was under arms on the square, began to beat so loudly that the hangman was able to throw himself on him, cut short the words on his tongue, and strangle him immediately.....
Three gentlemen brothers beheaded
On the same day, in the same place. The scaffold comprised three separate blocks, each formed from two chevrons, set in the ground and elevated above the scaffold to a height of two-and-a-half feet with a neck-rest firmly nailed across. Those beheaded were Henri de Grenier, Sieur de Commel, aged 33, Jean de Grenier, Sieur de Sarradon, aged 30, and Jean de Grenier, sieur de Lourmade, aged 26*, three brothers, gentilshommes verriers, natives of a place near the Mas d'Azil in the comté of Foix and all three obdurate Protestants....they lost their lives for the preacher who had just been executed, since it was in order to deliver him from prison that they had incited the Huguenots against the Catholics last October... Commel, the oldest, was beheaded first. He was made to kneel on the scaffold, his eyes covered, his head on the block. His head was cut off with a single blow, apart from the skin of his throat, which the executioner cut off and threw to the ground along with the body, which was still in its clothes and shoes. The second brother, de Sarradon, suffered the same fate and the youngest - a fine young man in both face and figure - was executed the last; his head was cut off skilfully with a single blow. Their bodies and their heads, and the body of the minister, were immediately taken away and buried in a hole within the enclosure of the public gibbet. Several sacks of quicklime were added to ensure that the bodies were rapidly consumed.
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| The Musée du Vieux Toulouse has a wooden model of the traditional "damas à décoller des Capitoux", used for executions - not sure how old this is supposed to be. https://actu.fr/societe/19-fevrier-1762-les-trois-freres-grenier-decapites-a-toulouse_3470956.html |
Before this tragic scene, the three gentlemen had embraced each other on the cart and exhorted each other in few words to die with zeal for the Protestant religion, whose dogmas they had drunk in with their mother's milk. They showed prodigious fortitude and presence of mind.
On this occasion the executioner had essayed a new blade for beheading and acquitted himself very well, with accuracy and firmness. Never had so bloody an execution been seen in Toulouse...
.[there was] an extraordinary crowd of people who, unable to find room on the square or at the windows of the houses, squeezed onto the roofs and any walls that would hold them, to experience the novelty of so unusual and murderous an execution.
Published in Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français, (1913) Vol.6(6): p.571-4. [On JStor]
* There is clearly a discrepancy in accounts of the brothers' ages. The dates of birth of 1717, 1730 and 1740 originate with Onésime de Grenier-Fajal, who studied the records. This would make their ages 44, 32 and 22.
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