CAMISARDI. – The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, enacted by decree of Louis XIV on 18 October 1685, by which freedom of worship was abolished and the French Protestants were compelled to accept Catholicism, created a reaction in France that degenerated into savage episodes. The English, the Dutch, the German Lutherans, and the Calvinists of Geneva supported it for their political interests.
The War of the Spanish Succession, which began in 1701, provided the Protestants with a new opportunity to rebel. A great number of “seers,” “prophets, sons of God, soldiers of the Eternal” began to proclaim the triumph of the persecuted and the destruction of the Roman Church, and to assemble in defiance of royal prohibitions. The revolutionary movement spread particularly through certain rural districts of the Vivarese, Languedoc, and especially the Cévennes, and the royal officials tried in vain to oppose it by force and repression. The killing of Francesco de Langlade de Chayla, archpriest of Lont-de-Montvert (Logère), who had shown particular harshness toward the rebels, on 24 July 1702, was the signal for a general uprising under the command of two young men: Cavalier and Roland. The name c., by which the rebels were designated, derived from the shirt that was the only garment they wore in certain night attacks; no religious war was ever as cruel as this one, in its massacres of people, looting, burning of churches, and acts of ferocity, and it was kept alive by the fanatical preaching of their prophets. For their part, the royal troops gradually became more cruel in their repression as a reaction; especially in 1703–1704, when they were under the command of Marshal de Montrevel, a converted Calvinist. Thanks to the energy and clemency of Marshal de Villars, the movement was suppressed; Cavalier submitted to him, while Roland was killed on 14 August 1704; disturbances and conflicts, however, continued to appear here and there until 1715, when many c. left France and the support of the Protestant powers ceased.