The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands of lives from the Nazis - A Good Place to Hide (37 page)

The fifteenth century marked the beginnings of the Renaissance, when art and science flourished for the first time throughout Europe. Leonardo da Vinci had yet to paint the
Mona Lisa
(or invent the helicopter), but a spirit of intellectual curiosity began to eat away at the bleak superstitions of the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages.

This situation remained undisturbed for both church and state until 31 October 1517. On the eve of All Saints’ Day a 33-year-old German monk called Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. His specific target was the decision of Pope Leo X to sell ‘indulgences’—bits of paper that absolved the purchaser of his sins, without repentance or even confession—to pay for the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

In the language of today’s computer world, Luther’s scandalous attack on church greed and corruption went viral. It was part of the church’s bad luck that the printing press had recently been invented in Germany, in time to spread Luther’s accusations to the wider world. Within months, all Europe knew about the young monk’s anger and disgust. In his lifetime, his books became international bestsellers, with hundreds of thousands of copies printed and sold. Luther’s attack resonated throughout Europe, and led to the creation
of breakaway churches—generally known as Protestant or Reformed churches—which did not accept the Pope’s authority, and whose priests and monks displayed an unprecedented interest in simplicity, honesty and modesty. The new church movement quickly took root.

However, the new teachings of Luther did not take serious hold in the Vivarais-Lignon until sometime after 1528, when a certain Étienne Machipolis preached the Reformation message in Annonay, on the far northeast edge of the Plateau. Machipolis, so it was said, had heard Luther himself preaching in Saxony, so his message came straight from the source.

It was not all plain sailing. The next year a local priest called Laurent Chazot was burned at the stake, as a heretic, in what is now called the Place du Martouret (Place of Martyrs) in Le Puy. He was accused of preaching support for Luther’s ideas. He seems to have been the victim of a bizarre miscarriage of justice, springing from a case of mistaken identity: he was accused of coming from ‘Le Chambon
vers
Dunières’, meaning a village in the direction of Dunières, which is fifteen kilometres north of Le Chambon and not at all in the same direction. In the similar-sounding Dernières, two noble families and a priest were known to be ardent followers of Luther. In fact, Chazot was quite a different priest, and not from either Dunières or Dernières. However, the local inquisitors were in no mood to be distracted by petty details, and carted him off to the stake anyway. He has some claim to being the Plateau’s first post-Reformation martyr.

In 1554 a young theology student named Pierre Bourgeois de Beaux set off from Tence on the Plateau for Geneva, in Switzerland, to continue his studies. He arrived on 15 October. A second theology student, Claude Riou de l’Aulagnier-Grand, followed him, arriving on 8 August 1559. These two students opened up the strong religious and political connection between the Plateau and Geneva, while bringing back to the Plateau the most rigid and fundamentalist forms
of  Protestantism, as taught by Jean (in English usually rendered as ‘John’) Calvin. What neither the students nor the anti-Semitic Calvin could have predicted was that 400 years later, their brand of Protestantism and the Geneva connection would become vital factors in saving the lives of thousands of Jews.

• • •

The word ‘Huguenot’ is the French nickname for a Calvinist. Calvin was born in Picardy in northern France in 1509. He broke with the Catholic Church in 1530 and fled to Geneva, where he continued to teach and preach. There is no record of where or how the word Huguenot first appeared, though it was certainly in use by 1560. It is a slightly derogatory term, originally used in the same way an Englishman today might call an Irishman a ‘Paddy’, or an Australian might call an Englishman a ‘Pom’.

The exact derivation of the word is still a matter of controversy. There are three main contenders. The simplest is that it is formed from the Flemish term
huis genooten
, meaning ‘housemates’, and refers to the fact that the early Protestants met in each other’s houses rather than in churches. A  rival suggestion looks to an early sixteenth-century Swiss religious leader called Besançon Hugues. Although Hugues died in 1532, he was regarded as the inspiration for the Amboise Plot of 1560, a French Protestant attempt to usurp the power of the French House of Guise and thereby bring about closer ties with Switzerland. As the Amboise plotters were about as popular in France as Guy Fawkes and the Roman Catholic Gunpowder Plotters are to this day in England, to be called a Huguenot (follower of Hugues) was not the obvious first step to winning friends and influencing people. The final—and only flattering—possible explanation is that a long-dead King of France named Hugues Capet was noted for his fairness and respect for the dignity of others. According to this version, the word
Huguenot simply means ‘little Hugues’ or ‘those who follow Hugues’. I leave it to the reader to make up his or her own mind. I’d put my money on Besançon Hugues.

Although the Reformed Church grew rapidly, particularly in northern Europe, Protestants remained a comparatively small minority in countries like France. By the middle of the sixteenth century there were perhaps 2000 Protestant congregations, with 1.5 million adherents, in a total French population of around 15 million. However, the new religion proved very attractive to the French nobility in particular, so its strength and influence went well beyond its limited numbers. By 1570, Huguenots had their own castles, garrisoned towns, even ports, as well as their own schools and churches.

Understandably, the Catholic Church decided it could not simply sit back and let the Protestants get away with their impudent rebellion. They regarded Luther personally and his followers as heretics, to be hunted down and destroyed where possible. Thus began the Wars of Religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These were fought with the kind of bitterness and cruelty that is made possible to this day when both sides in a conflict are convinced God is with them.

This time the Plateau did not escape the violence. The Protestants led the charge. In 1567 a Protestant force, recruited from the Vivarais lowlands, laid siege to Catholic defences, first capturing the town of Saint-Agrève, then seizing the Catholic commander in Devesset. They continued their rampage well into the following year. It was a rare military win for the rebels. Elsewhere in France, the Catholics had both the numbers and the military might, and they continued to dominate.

In 1570 Catherine de Medici, the wife of King Henry II of France, offered the Protestants some respite with the Peace of Saint-Germain, which, in one of its many provisions, specifically named Saint-Agrève on the Plateau as a place of Protestant refuge. The peace did not last. On 23 August 1572 Catholics set about massacring Protestants all
over France in what has come to be known as the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
⁶²
The bloodbath began at a Protestant royal wedding in Paris and rapidly spread to the provinces, with some 3000 Protestants killed
⁶³
in the space of a few days. It is still remembered with bitterness by Huguenots all over the world. The plot had the full support of the French king, Charles IX.

The Plateau survived the massacre more or less unscathed. Whether as part of the plot or merely by coincidence, the Catholic governor of Le Puy had issued a decree a few days earlier that all non-Catholic church services were to end, and all citizens should take themselves off to mass. The Protestant citizenry in the lowlands around Le Puy decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and responded by either going along with the order or else scattering, some to the comparative safety of the Plateau and some to exile in other countries. This avoided an immediate catastrophe.

However, St Bartholomew’s Day proved to be the beginning of a Catholic counter-offensive in the area. In 1574 the Catholics burned down the church in Tence and set about massacring any Protestants they could find. Four Protestant ministers from Velay were hanged under the orders of the governor of Le Puy. Under this pressure, the Huguenots of the Haute-Loire continued to split three ways: some simply capitulated, some moved out of France altogether and a third group retreated deeper into the Plateau, where the local population hid them. Legend has it that when the hanging governor of Le Puy finally arrived on the Plateau to see for himself what was going on, he found the population prostrate on the Catholic church’s flagstones, singing canticles, while the Catholic priests calmly conducted a mass. It may not have been heroic, but it was highly effective. The Huguenots lived to fight again.

Religion and politics continued to mingle in France. By law, all French kings were required to be Catholics. In 1589, the Protestant
Henri de Navarre was due to succeed Charles IX then Henri III and be crowned King Henri IV of France. He was told he had to convert to Catholicism. This he did, famously declaring: ‘Paris is well worth a mass.’ However, he continued to look kindly on Protestants, and in 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes, which, while affirming Catholicism as the state religion of France, nevertheless gave the Huguenots more or less equal rights of worship with Catholics. The edict was intended to end the Wars of Religion, and it certainly brought about a lull that lasted beyond Henri IV’s assassination in 1610.

With Henri IV’s departure, the tide turned. Henri’s son Louis XIII was only nine years old when he became king, and he had for his regent the redoubtable Cardinal Richelieu, who set about breaking the power of the French nobility by razing their castles, and attacked Huguenots at all levels and at every opportunity. This was not a happy time to be a Protestant, even on the Plateau. Although Saint-Agrève was nominally a place of refuge, it had been put to the torch in 1580, and its protective walls had been knocked down. The battle raged up and down the Plateau: the Protestants would destroy a castle; the Catholics would sack a town.

Between 1622 and 1627, Richelieu triggered off no fewer than three Huguenot wars, ending in 1629, after the fall in 1628 of La Rochelle, whose siege the Cardinal personally commanded. Louis XIII’s successor, Louis XIV (known as the Sun King), took things further, proclaiming that France should have ‘one king, one law, and one religion’.

For the next 50 years, the French state did what it could to ensure the repression and destruction of the Huguenots. Meetings of Protestants were banned, and Protestant church services were declared illegal. By 1683, the Huguenots of the Plateau had had enough. Armed rebellion looked like the only answer. Led by Jacques Molle, a cavalry officer from Le Chambon, they prepared to fight.

The story of Cadet Molle (in French,
cadet
usually means the younger of two brothers, but it can also mean a young gentleman destined for military service, and in this case both meanings probably apply) is still part of Plateau legend. Molle was an enthusiastic Protestant but also a clever organiser. The Plateau was awash with spies at the time, and the authorities quickly got to hear about Molle and his plans. In March 1683, he was charged with ‘rebellion against justice and disobedience to the orders of the king’. A party of archers was dispatched to Le Chambon to arrest him and bring him to trial. With a few friends, Molle barricaded himself in his house. The group, who were armed with pistols and maybe muskets, promptly killed one archer and wounded another. The surviving archers stood their ground and began shouting at Molle to give himself up, to which Molle responded by shouting equally loudly that the people of the town were on their way to rescue him, and the archers had better watch out. Molle proved to be right. According to the Provost in charge of the archers, what looked like the entire population of the town came charging towards them, roaring with fury. The arresting party beat a prudent retreat.

Next, on the orders of the Provost Marshal of Le Puy, a party of nine archers arrived in Le Chambon in April 1683. They were under orders to disperse the Protestant assemblies in Le Chambon and Saint-Voy and arrest the chief mutineer, Molle. This time Molle barricaded himself in a farmhouse, and again killed one archer and wounded another. No sooner had Molle wreaked this new havoc than two or three hundred irate townspeople, all armed, arrived at the farmhouse and began shouting: ‘Courage! Courage! Courage!’ The townsfolk then killed a second archer, and dragged the bodies of the two dead archers off and burned them. At this point the task of arresting Molle lost all its appeal, and the survivors from the arresting party fled. Molle was
seen parading in the streets of Le Chambon later that day, two pistols jammed in his belt and looking very pleased with himself.

Despite small victories like Molle’s, the pressure on Huguenots was now intolerable. Their churches and schools were closed down all over France; adults were imprisoned and their children packed off to orphanages. The king even chose his roughest dragoon soldiers, under a policy known as
dragonnades
, for the unlikely role of missionaries. The dragoons were forcibly billeted with Huguenot families (at the expense of the host family) and left to ‘persuade’ the Huguenots to renounce their faith. As a result, Huguenots fled in huge numbers to Holland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Britain, America, and even to far-off South Africa. The numbers are hard to come by, but it’s estimated that around 550,000 Huguenots converted to Catholicism and remained in France, while a further 250,000 left the country. This exodus was France’s loss: in general, the Huguenots were from the wealthier, better-educated and most skilled section of the population. They were merchants and entrepreneurs, professionals and artisans. They took with them their money, their talent and their crafts, particularly lace-making, silk weaving, clockmaking and optometry, and often became among the most successful citizens in their new countries.