THE HUGUENOT GALLEY-SLAVES.
THE French galleys were vessels usually a hundred and fifty feet long and forty wide. They were employed to guard the coasts, and sometimes to attack English cruisers that approached the shore. Along each side of the galley ran a bench or seat, to which the slaves were fastened by an iron chain around one leg, and of sufficient length to allow them to sleep on the deck beneath. Here they remained night and day, exposed to the torrid heat or the winter's cold, half fed, and urged on by blows and imprecations in the painful task of pulling the heavy oars. In these floating dungeons, surrounded by convicts and criminals of the deepest guilt, the pure and gentle Huguenots sometimes continued for ten or twenty years, chained to the bench, or often died of exposure or the enemy's shot, and were flung ignominiously into the sea. Old men of seventy years or boys of fifteen or sixteen soon yielded to the fearful toil; but others, more vigorous and mature, endured long years of torture, and were at last released at the instance of the Protestant powers. The captains of the galleys usually treated their galley-slaves with barbarous severity. They scourged their bare backs to make them row with speed; they threw them on the deck, and had them beaten for trivial faults. Emaciated, faint, and feeble, the poor slave often sunk beneath the blows and died, happy to escape from the intolerable torments inflicted by the stately and gracious Louis. But the most unsparing of their tormentors was usually the chaplain or priest of the galley. He was almost always a Jesuit. The disciples of Loyola were thought peculiarly fitted for this unattractive task. It seems to have been the duty of the chaplain to see that the Huguenots were not spared in any one of their sufferings, and to strive to induce them to recant by incessant cruelty and blows. Yet such was the wonderful constancy of these faithful martyrs that they chose rather all the pains of their sad condition than to accept an idolatrous mass. With one word of recantation, they were offered a release from all their sufferings; with one feigned submission, they might have been free. No promises moved them from their resolution; no artful insinuations could deceive them into insincerity. "You must know," said Father Garcin, a priest, to the maimed and bleeding Marteilhe, who has left an account of his imprisonment—"you must perceive that the church has no share in this matter. You are punished for disobedience to the king." "But suppose," he replied, "we wish for time to reflect, could we not be set free?" "By no means," said the priest; "you shall never leave the galleys until you recant." And he ordered their torments to be redoubled. It was the church that instigated the barbarity of the king. In the galleys might be seen for many years a sacred company of the purest, the most refined, and the most intelligent of the French. The men who might have saved and reformed the nation were chained, in horrible torture, amidst robbers and assassins. Marolles, once counselor to the king, by the express order of Louis, was secured by a heavy chain around his neck, and compiled his "Discourse on Providence" while fastened to the oar. Huber, father of three illustrious sons, was also a galley-slave. The Baron De Caumont, at the age of seventy, labored with the rest. But few ministers of the reformed faith were found among the number, since, if captured, they were usually put to death. More than a thousand Huguenots appear on the list of galley-slaves, and it is believed that the real number has never been told.—Historical Studies.