Protestantism in France From Death of Henry IV to the Revolution - James Aitken Wylie

of a foreign army. He was condemned to die. On
the scaffold, which he mounted on the 4th of
November, he would once more have raised his
voice, but it was drowned by the roll of eighteen
drums. Little did Louis XIV then dream that his
great-grandson, and next successor save one on the
throne of France, should have his dying words
drowned by drums stationed round his scaffold.
Of all the punishments to which the proscribed
Protestants of France were doomed, the most
dreadful was the galleys. The more famous galleys
were those of Marseilles, and the journey thither
entailed hardships so terrible that it was a common
thing for about three-fourths of the condemned to
die on the road. They marched along in gangs,
carrying heavy irons, and sleeping at night in
stables or vaults. "They chained us by the neck in
couples," says one who underwent this dreadful
ordeal, "with a thick chain, three feet long, in the
middle of which was a round ring. After having
thus chained us, they placed us all in file, couple
behind couple, and they passed a long thick chain
through these rings, so that we were thus all
123