The Edict of Nantes, promulgated by Henri IV in 1598 and which recognised Protestantism in the French kingdom, was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. There followed a period of very severe repression of Protestantism, marked in Languedoc and in the Cevennes in the early 18th century by the "Camisards' War".

In 1686, the Constance Tower, like the town's other towers, became a prison for Huguenots who refused to convert to Catholicism. In 1703, Abraham Mazel, a Camisard leader, managed to escape with 16 of his companions by loosening a stone from an arrow slit. From 1715, the tower became a prison exclusively for women. These women of the people, often from the Cevennes, were imprisoned for having been reported to be Huguenots.

Their living conditions were very harsh, some recanted; others were released under rare acts of clemency. Marie Durand was one of the leading figures, unwavering in her faith and in her vigour. A native of Ardeche, she was arrested when she was very young, in order to put pressure on her brother Pierre, a pastor, in the hope he would give himself up to the authorities.

She remained imprisoned for 38 years and was not released until 1768. It is to her that is attributed, though without proof, the inscription of the word "register" (resist) on the coping of the round window in the upper room, a heartfelt cry for freedom fo conscience.

 

RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS

In 1598 Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes which established, for the first time amongst one of the great European nations; a religious tolerance; a civil - but not religious - unity. A considerable number of the protestant population of the West welcomed such a measure/step/ with relief.

However, after the Paix d’Alés in 1629, Cardinal Richelieu effectively removed the political rights of the Protestants. The arrival of Louis XIV, who feared collusion between French Protestant’s 5Calvanists/Huguenots) with enemy protestant countries, wore away little by little the content of the Edict of Nantes (the destruction of the temples, the order that all burials should be carried out at night). From 1681, Louis introduced <dragonnades> particularly unpleasant and difficult soldiers -dragoons- and later his most brutal soldiers, who were lodged amongst protestant families where they were encouraged to make life as difficult and chaotic as possible. The ultimate goal was to persecute the families until they converted to the state religion. Those who continued to resist such measures could expect their assets to be confiscated. Unsurprisingly, people converted ‘en masse’. But, the king considered these to be still insufficient and, in 1685, he revoked the Edict of Nantes, in doing-so affirming that it was forbidden to assemble to worship, ministers were exiled, the baptism - without consultation - of protestant children, and immigration was forbidden under pain of death for men or lifetime imprisonment for women. Naturally, these measures lead to new conversions, but simultaneously stirred up clandestine emigration to reformed nations.

AIGUES-MORTES – THREE PHASES OF CONFLICT

Public sermons in Aigues-Mortes, and the arrest and hanging in 1560 of church minister Hélie Boisset, was symbolic of both the establishment of Calvinism in this region and at the same time of the resultant clashes/confrontations over the two centuries. An examination of the Calvinist phenomenon and its consequences, within the geographical arena, leads to the first observation. At Aigues-Mortes the conflict and its after-effects can, in broad outline, be spread over three stages.

The initial phase (1560-1629) was certainly that of a <religious> war, but one in which the stakes were nevertheless also the defence of the salt-marshes via the Fort de Peccais. Conflict and violence characterised this stage right up to the peace of Alés, but at a time of absolute fidelity to King and Catholicism on the part of the majority of inhabitants.

The successive period (1629-1685) saw the clear re-emergence of the Roman Catholic worship to the extent that a forced tolerance was instilled between the papists and the Huguenots, that both sides tried to reconcile themselves to. Already, royal decrees in 1601 from Henry IV recognising the inhabitants of one or other religions in accordance with the Edict of Tolerance of Damville 1575, and having been adopted by Aigues-Mortes, was not without opposition. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, preceded by the demolition of the temple after the public sermon delivered by minister Jacques Constantin, divided the third phase (1685-1767). This latter phase saw the Prince of Beauvau at last set free the last of the prisoners of the Tour de Constance. A prison fortress where the Power, in the form of the Intendant <king and tyrant of the Languedoc>, since 1686 had buried the <preachers> and <motivators> not answerable by death or hanging, Aigues-Mortes which, amongst its forays, never crossed the former frontier of the Tour de Carbonnière.