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Please attach the profiles of French Huguenots who were born in Orange / Comtat Venaissin. If possible, also add their names into the text below, according to their country of emigration.
- All welcome to join & contribute (Map: Coertzen, Pieter. 1988. Die Hugenote Van Suid Afrika 1688-1988: Cape Town, Tafelberg.)
Background History of Orange / Comtat Venaissin at the time of the Huguenot Diaspora
The principality of Orange was a noted Calvinist centre, with a large church in the town of that name and a smaller one at Courthezon to the south, on the borders of the Comtat Venaissin. These congregations were attached to the Baronnies colloquy of Dauphine, while those in the villages of Orpierre and Trescleoux in southern Dauphine, dependencies of Orange, were included in the Gapengais colloquy of the synodal province. John Locke visited one of the Orange temples on his way to Montpellier in 1675 and found it “a pretty sort of building”. At that time Calvinists and Catholics had an equal share in municipal administration.
Dragoons under Rene de Froullai, the count of Tesse, violated Orange sovereignty on October 24, 1685 and were speedily followed by two battalions of infantry. They evicted French Calvinists who had taken refuge there, had the temples demolished and the pastors arrested, and secured the usual mass abjurations under duress.Four of the ministers were imprisoned in the fortress of Pierre-Scize at Lyons; a fifth, Jacques Pineton de Chambrun, abjured at Valence on the journey, but recanted and succeeded in reaching a safe exile. The title of the book he published at The Hague in 1687, Les Larmes de Jacques Pineton de Chambrun, poignantly evokes his anguish of spirit. Pineton died two years later in England.
The French, who had made several incursions into the principality since 1660, evacuated Orange in 1698 after the Treaty of Ryswick and the surviving pastors at Pierre-Scize, Charles Petit of Orange and Etienne Aunet of Courthezon, were released. The restoration of Calvinism was short-lived. France reoccupied the territory in 1703 and a new exodus was precipitated, including the pastors Petit and Aunet.A decade later the Utrecht settlement confirmed French possession of the principality. ...M. Boucher.M (1981). French speakers at the Cape: The European Background. Pretoria, UNISA: Ch 7: Cape Settlers III: from South-Eastern France and Adjoining Territories pp182-3
Countries of Dispersal
South Africa
- Antoine Faure (1686 - 1736) soldier from Orange, Comtat Venaissin
- Paul Roux (1665-1723) from Orange, first teacher and voorlezer of the French congregation