Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson & Protestant Resistance to Louis X1V, 1647-1698

The Bellicose Dove is the first English biography of the Huguenot lawyer, preacher, diplomat and martyr Claude Brousson for 150 years. It examines his life (1647-98), letters, sermons, books, and the role he played in resisting Louis XIV’s persecution of the Huguenots until his death on the scaffold in 1698. As a critical, scholarly biography, Bellicose Dove revises the apologetic picture painted by 19th-century writers of Brousson as a pious pacifist. It explores his flirtation with treason in the 1683 Toulouse Project and his invitation to the duc de Schomberg to invade France and end the Revocation in 1690-91, as well as his and Francois Vivent’s use of violence inside France. Unique features of the book include a detailed examination of biographical details in his letters, analysis of the symbolism in his sermons and books (especially his anti-Catholic rhetoric), the importance of his three missionary journeys into France, and the effectiveness of his international diplomatic efforts in England, Holland, and Prussia. From fresh archival research conducted in Geneva, Paris and London, new details are revealed concerning his life in exile, his relationship with his wife and children, his preaching style, and his torture, and execution in Montpellier in November 1698.