The Life of Francis Marion | Page 6

of a kind to make him imprudent. He
was not distinguished for great strength of arm, or great skill in his
weapon. We have no proofs that he was ever engaged in single combat:
yet the concurrent testimony of all who have written, declare, in general
terms, his great services: and the very exaggeration of the popular
estimate is a partial proof of the renown for which it speaks. In this
respect, his reputation is like that of all other heroes of romantic history.
It is a people's history, written in their hearts, rather than in their books;
which their books could not write -- which would lose all its golden
glow, if subjected to the cold details of the phlegmatic chronicles. The
tradition, however swelling, still testifies to that large merit which must
have been its basis, by reason of which the name of the hero was
selected from all others for such peculiar honors; and though these
exaggerations suggest a thousand difficulties in the way of sober
history, they yet serve to increase the desire, as well as the necessity,
for some such performance.
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The family of Marion came from France. They emigrated to South
Carolina somewhere about the year 1685, within twenty years after the
first British settlement of the province. They belonged, in the parent
country, to that sect of religious dissenters which bore the name of
Huguenots; and were among those who fled from the cruel persecutions
which, in the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV., followed close

upon the re-admission of the Jesuits into France. The edict of Nantz,
which had been issued under the auspices of Henri IV., and by which
the Huguenots had been guaranteed, with some slight qualifications,
the securities of the citizen, almost in the same degree with the Catholic
inhabitants, had, under the weak and tyrannous sway of the former
monarch, proved totally inadequate to their protection. Long before its
formal revocation, the unmeasured and inhuman persecutions to which
they were subjected, drove thousands of them into voluntary
banishment. The subsequent decree of Louis, by which even the
nominal securities of the Huguenots were withdrawn, increased the
number of the exiles, and completed the sentence of separation from all
those ties which bind the son to the soil. The neighboring Protestant
countries received the fugitives, the number and condition of whom
may be estimated by the simple fact, not commonly known, that
England alone possessed "eleven regiments composed entirely of these
unhappy refugees, besides others enrolled among the troops of the line.
There were in London twenty French churches supported by
Government; about three thousand refugees were maintained by public
subscription; many received grants from the crown; and a great number
lived by their own industry.* Some of the nobility were naturalized and
obtained high rank; among others, Ruvigny, son of the Marquis, was
made Earl of Galway, and Schomberg received the dignity of Duke."**
-- * Memoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en Angleterre,
12mo. La Haye, 1698, p. 362. Quoted by Browning in his History of
the Huguenots. ** Browning, [William Shergold]: History of the
Huguenots. London: Whittaker and Co. 1840. p. 256. Of the Refugees
from France, Hume says, "near fifty thousand passed over into
England;" and Voltaire writes that "one of the suburbs of London was
entirely peopled with French workers of silk." [W. S. Browning was
uncle to the poet, Robert Browning. -- A. L., 1996.] --
America, the new world, was naturally a land of refuge, and soon
received her share of these unhappy fugitives. The transition was easy
from England to her colonies. Every facility was afforded them for
transportation, and the wise policy which encouraged their settlement
in the new countries was amply rewarded by the results. Altogether, the

Huguenots were a much better sort of people than those who usually
constituted the mass of European emigrants. The very desperation of
their circumstances was a proof of their virtues. They were a people of
principle, for they had suffered everything for conscience sake. They
were a people of pure habits, for it was because of their religion that
they suffered banishment. In little patriarchal groups of sixty, seventy,
or eighty families, they made their way to different parts of America;
and with the conscious poverty of their own members, were generally
received with open arms by those whom they found in possession of
the soil. The English, as they beheld the dependent and destitute
condition of the fugitives, forgot, for a season, their usual national
animosities; and assigning ample tracts of land for their occupation,
beheld them, without displeasure, settling down in exclusive colonies,
in which they sought to maintain, as far as possible, the pious habits
and customs of the mother country. One of these communities,
comprising from seventy