ABSTRACT
The Camisard uprising was part of the long struggle against Catholic religious practice by French Protestants following the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had permitted Protestant religious observance alongside Catholicism in France since 1598. The defeat of the Camisards was not the end of the Protestant resistance. De facto toleration for Protestants did not come about until the end of the 1760s, and it was not until 1787 that Louis XVI finally gave the Protestants legal and civil status, meaning they no longer had to submit to the Catholic priests. What makes the Cevenol uprising unique is the strength of the oral tradition concerning the Camisards, a tradition that stretches well beyond the normal three generations allotted to memory. Oral traditions encouraged cohesion, and solidarity amongst a minority group in a Catholic nation, and it is worth adding that for the Catholic minority within the Cevennes, oral tradition played the same role.
