Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 313 pages of information about Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II..

Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 313 pages of information about Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II..
of the Huguenots to England, none was more important than the energetic support to the Prince of Orange against James II.  The Prince employed no less than seven hundred and thirty-six French officers, brave men who had been learned to conquer under the banner of Turenne and Condi.  Schomberg was the hero at the battle of Boyne.  One of his standards bore a BIBLE, supported on three swords, with the motto—­’Ie maintiendray.’  The gallant old man, now eighty-two years of age, fell mortally wounded, but triumphing, and with his dying eyes he saw the soldiers of James vanquished, and dispersed in headlong flight.  Ruoigny, in the same battle, received a mortal wound, and, covered with blood, before the advancing French refugee regiments, cheered them on, crying, ’Onward, my lads, to glory! onward to glory!’

In England, the French Protestants long remained as a distinct people, preserving in a good degree a nationality of their own, but in the lapse of years this disappeared.  One hardly knows in our day where to find a genuine Saxon,—­’pure English undefiled,’—­for the Huguenot blood circulates beneath many a well-known patronymic.  Who would imagine that anything French could be traced in the colorless names of White and Black, or the authoritative ones of King and Masters?  Still it is a well-known fact that such names, at the close of the last century, delighted in the designations of Leblanck (White), Lenoir (Black), Loiseau (Bird), Lejeune (Young), Le Tonnellier (Cooper), Lemaitre (Master), Leroy (King).  These names were thus translated into good strong Saxon, the owners becoming one with the English in feeling, language, and religion.  Holland, too, glorious Protestant Holland! the fatherland of American myriads, welcomed the fugitive Huguenots.  From the beginning of the Middle Ages that noble land had been a hospitable home for the persecuted from all parts of Europe.  During the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, the French emigration into that country became a political event.  Amsterdam granted to all citizenship, with freemen’s privilege of trade, and exemption of taxes for three years; and all the other towns of that nation rivalled each other in the same liberal and Christian spirit.  In the single year of the revocation, more than two hundred and fifty Huguenot preachers reached the free soil of the United Provinces.  Pensions were allowed to them, the married receiving four hundred florins, those in celibacy two hundred.  The Prince of Orange attached two French preachers to his person, with many French officers to his army against James II.—­thanks to the generous Princess of Orange, who selected several Huguenot dames as ladies of honor.  One house at Harlaem was exclusively reserved for young ladies of noble birth.  At the Hague, an ancient convent of preaching monks was changed into an asylum for the persecuted ladies.  Of all lands which received the refugees, none witnessed such crowds as the Republic of Holland; and hence

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Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.