Certain followers of Jesus were evicted from St Marie in the Alsace in 1712 for their faithfulness to God, including their belief in non-violence. This group of Anabaptists found refuge in the high mountain community of Salm and founded the Salm Amish Mennonite Church. During the 1790s, amid the violence of the French Revolution, French official Phillip Goupilleau came into the mountains to inform the men that they would need to be armed for military participation. Amish Mennonite Bishop Jacob Kupferschmidt invited him to share a meal, then retrieved his Ausbund and led the singing of a very slow-tuned hymn about Christ's teaching on peace and nonresistance. Deeply moved, the official praised the Anabaptists as warm, congenial, and good citizens. A later petition was officially approved by the governing Convention in Paris, and a document issued by the Committee of Public Safety exempted Mennonites from military training while allowing other forms of service. In 1794, in commemoration of God's answer to their prayers and the military exemption, Bishop Kupferschmidt was reputed to have planted a small oak tree at the edge of his woodland in Salm, France, in the upper Vosges Mountains. Known as the Peace Oak, it became a symbol of appreciation to God for enabling humanity to seek Christ's way of peace and redemptive love for all peoples of the earth, and by 2013 it had grown so large that four people stretching fingertip to fingertip were needed to reach around its trunk.