CHAPTEE V 

 LIFE m THE GALLEYS 



Living Death 



Strong 

 Character 



Amadee's 

 Memoirs 



Youth of 

 Eighteen 



T 



iHOUSANDS of the Huguenots who attempted 

 to escape from France after the Eevocation were 

 arrested and condemned to the galleys. This 

 was a punishment far worse than torture and death. 

 Men of gentle birth and breeding, whose only fault was 

 their Protestant religion, were worn to death in this 

 inhuman form of slavery, whose horrors are almost 

 beyond description. One of the most graphic narratives 

 of this terrible experience is given in this chapter, in 

 order to show of what stuff the French Protestants were 

 made, that they would undergo such merciless fate rather 

 than abjure their faith. We can only honour and admire 

 these heroes, while we abhor the government that per- 

 mitted the galley system to exist. 



The following account of life in the galleys is based 

 upon the memoirs of a young Huguenot named Amad^e, 

 who in 1700 was convicted of the crime of trying to leave 

 his country when he was forbidden to practice his religion 

 in it. 



Amadee was a mere stripling of eighteen when he was 

 sentenced to the galleys for being on the frontier without 

 a passport. His youth aroused the pity of his captors, 

 and they made many attempts to get him to abjure his 

 faith. One priest told him that a beautiful Moman, the 

 possessor of a large fortune, had expressed a desire to 

 marry him in case he should renounce his faith ; and 

 other equally attractive bribes were offered him — but all 

 in vain, for the young man met each temptation with the 

 answer that he was ''determined to endure even the 



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