Translation by Lorine McGinnis Schulze
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The breaking out of war between France and Spain in 1635 caused a large
influx of Protestant refugees into England from Picardy, Artois, Hainault and
Flanders. Amiens was the capital
of the Amienois in Picardy. The
Huguenots were in full force in Amiens.
Louis de Berguin, a Walloon from Artois first maintained the Reformed
doctrines in 1527 and was burnt in Paris for these beliefs. In 1568, 120 Huguenots were slain in
the streets of Amiens and a repetition of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in
Paris was only averted in Amiens by the Governor of Picardy. In 1594 the citizens of Amiens
acknowledged the newly turned Catholic Henry IV as their King. Shortly thereafter, the Spanish
occupied the city. After the Edict
of Nantes, Amiens became the center of a flourishing trade and commerce
although by 1625, Huguenot worship had been banished beyond the gates of the
city. Huguenots could not meet for
worship within the city walls without risking the wrath of mobs. By the Edict of Nantes only two towns
were allowed for the Huguenots to build churches: Desvres in the Boulonnais and
Hautcourt near St. Quentin.
By 1600 the Seigneur de Heucourt had notified
the government at Amiens of his intent to have public worship for himself, his
family and the inhabitants of Amiens, too far from the only allowed towns to
travel there, at Hem, a suburb of Amiens where 36 years before the Protestants
had built a temple. In 1611 they
obtained permission to move to Salouel and build a temple there. Salouel was a small village on the
CelIe. There was another large
church at Oisemont, a market town 12 miles south of Abbeville where the
Huguenots were strong. This was 18
miles west of Amiens. One of the
elders here, living at Oisemont, was David Des Marets, Sieur de Ferets and in
1625 he represented the church. By
the time of the war in 1635, the enemy invaded Picardy and captured Corbie only
nine miles north of Amiens. The
Picards fled and their nearness to the Low Country border offered the Huguenots
of Picardy a good chance of escape.
Many fled through Belgium to the Netherlands; others fled by way of the
Vermandois forests resting at Boahin 12 'miles northeast of St. Quentin where
there were many Huguenots. Calais,
then the extreme northern outlet of Piccardy, near the shores of England, was
strongly Protestant, and a good resort for escaping refugees.
The Picards were French, but of mixed origin; descendants of both Belgae
and Celtae who occupied the border between these two ancient nations, that is
the district which parted the Celtae from the Nervii, the most invincible of
the Belgic tribes. They had an
affinity to the Walloons, whose patois theirs resembled. The narrow strip of the seaboard,
twenty miles or less across, which stretched southerly from Calais to the
Cauche, covered the districts of Guines and Boulonnais, two subdivisions of
Picardy. Its larger part, on
either side of the Somme, and extending 100 miles inland to the borders of
Champagne, was the coast section called l'Onthien, reaching 30 miles up the
Somme. Abbeville was the main
town, then came the Amienois, Santerre, Vermandois and Thierache. These seven districts made up modern
Picardy, but five others lay southerly of these: Beauvoisis, Noyonnois,
Soissonnois, Laennois and Valois.
They were also Picard territory as seen in the characteristics of the
people, although these districts had been annexed to the Isle of France.
These sections of Picardy, except Guines and Boulonnais, were on one or
more of its three principal rivers, the Somme, the Oise and the Aisne. The river Oise stretched westward to
Guise in the same district and ran southwesterly to the Seine, parallel to the
coast.
The Huguenots had long been persecuted in their homelands. Many families, in terror, fled for
other lands after the fall of La Rochelle and Montauban. The West Indies, inviting because of
its climate and fruitfulness, was becoming the refuge of many Huguenots for
whom the cold region of Canada had no attractions. Removals to these islands had been going on under the
direction of a company formed at Paris in 1626, under M. D'Enantbus, who the
year before had visited the island of St. Christopher in a brigantine from
Dieppe. There he planted the first
colony in 1627.In 1635, Martinique was occupied by a hundred old and
experienced settlers from St. Christopher, including Phillippe Casier and his
wife Maria Taine.
But D'Enambue died. In 1640
Jesuit missionaries arrived at Martinique where there were almost a thousand
French, "without mass, without priest,". Having been reluctantly admitted by the governor and the people,
the Jesuits heightened the public dissensions which broke out in the islands
and which grew so violent five years later, especially in Martinique, that many
of the Huguenots were glad to get back to Europe. Many of them went to the Netherlands, some of them, as the
Casier family of Calais, eventually finding safe haven at Harlem, New York.