again; and, as their religious as well as civil rights were secured to them, their academies soon became national synods; and they have been charged with infractions of several of the articles of the Edict.

Deprived, by death, of the counsels of the sagacious Richelieu and the prudent Mazarin, and likewise of the politic advice of the displaced Colbert, Louis, encouraged by the fanatical, war-loving Louvois, determined upon taking more effective measures to hasten the conversion of the Huguenots which he was so desirous of bringing about.

By degrees many of the privileges guaranteed to them were curtailed; and they, fearing lest in time they might see the Edict rendered null, began to hold their assemblies as in days gone by; and, as in those times, force was now likewise used to prevent them, sometimes indeed to such a degree as to cause bloodshed. Symptoms of insurrection in the southern and western portions of France caused Louis to realize that the spirit of Calvin yet lived; and that the Huguenots were still a political body which might give cause for alarm. "It is necessary to recognize this fact," says Poole, "in order to render the attitude of Louis towards them intelligible. This has been denied persistently by them and their descendants, and its assertion is stigmatized as an attempt to vindicate conduct which, judged by its results, is in a supreme degree indefensible. But the truth is that, from this point of view of the national disaster, the recall of the Edict, setting the whole world in an attitude hostile to Louis, stands at so indefinite a height among the follies of statesmen that no exaggeration of fact can aggravate it; for this very reason we should grasp at anything which, while it cannot palliate it, may serve to explain its stupendous mistake."

At the king's council held October 2, 1685, the Act of Revocation was passed by a unanimous vote,

and Louis signed the declaration to be sent to the different intendants of the provinces, to be read by them in public.

In concert with his minister, Louvois, he now set about the prosecution of the work with all the vigor of which he was capable. The dragonade was established, and cruelty succeeded cruelty. Threats, imprisonment, and death followed each other, the latter by single murders and public massacres, until it seemed that the heresy would be extinguished in blood.

The only alternative for the proud-spirited Huguenots was to abjure their faith or suffer the penalty. Escape was prohibited under pain of the galleys if they were caught in the act. Many of the Huguenots that lived in the shadow of the court abjured their religion; others, along with gentlemen living in the provinces, men of commerce and manufacturers, determined to leave their native land, however hazardous the attempt might be.

The depopulation of his kingdom had no part in the king's intention; therefore he ordered the ports to be closed and the frontiers to be closely guarded, thinking thus to prevent the threatened exodus; but determined men are not easily thwarted in their designs, and many ways were devised to elude the vigilance of the officials.

of

In many cases gold proved the "open sesame closed ports and guarded frontiers; disguises also and second-hand passports served to pass many across the boundaries, and frequently bales of merchandise came to life when safely stowed away in the holds of friendly ships.

As the Protestant countries offered hospitality to the refugees, some sought homes in Holland and others in Switzerland. They were obliged to make their way thither during the darkness of the night,

concealing themselves by day, and crossing the frontiers by the least frequented roads. Many found means of crossing to England, notwithstanding the precautions taken to prevent them from doing so.

Certainly, the migration of such numbers of industrious people could not but make itself felt throughout the kingdom, and it did paralyze commerce and manufactures to a great extent. It being impossible to ascertain the exact number of refugees, each historian seems to have set down figures according to his own conjecture; consequently the numbers are in some cases undoubtedly exaggerated. Hume has estimated the exodus to have cost France half a million of her subjects, and many have accepted his statement. Larrey, Jurieu, and Benoit give as a total two hundred thousand, Basnage, one hundred and fifty thousand, Caveirac fifty-five thousand, and others seventy, and sixty thousand. The Duke of Burgundy, of whose opportunity of ascertaining the nearest approach to the correct figures and of whose sincerity in stating them an historian has assured us,1 asserts their number not to have exceeded sixty-eight thousand.

There can be no doubt that the loss of even the least of these numbers of subjects did affect the material prosperity of France; and this fact was most probably the cause of the unwillingness of Louis to have the Huguenots leave his kingdom. And here likewise historians differ. Some assert that their migration was the ruin of the country, while, on the contrary, others say that the disadvantage to France has been greatly overstated. Tessereau, the king's intendant, says: "Although the refugees from La Rochelle were from amongst the principal inhabitants, both in regard of substance and reputation, the generality of the emigrants were those who either had little

1 Fredet.

or nothing, or were compelled to leave what they had behind them." Certainly the majority were obliged to receive assistance from the countries in which they sought refuge, instead of enriching them as some would believe.

They did take with them, however, a vast amount of energy, industry, and a knowledge of manufacture, along with the germs of the principles of the democratic government they afterwards helped to establish in the new world, and a corresponding love for freedom, and hatred of monarchial forms of government, and all that savored of royalty.

With their loss agriculture declined, and likewise the culture of the vine; consequently the domestic supply and the foreign trade in wines were cut off. Imports failed, as the links of commerce were sundered; weaving also suffered greatly. Yet, notwithstanding all this, some writers have declared that, instead of being a misfortune to France, the king received congratulations because this emigration freed his kingdom from rebellious subjects whose loss would soon be made good.

The greatest misfortune would seem to lie in the fact of a mother country so treating her children as to oblige them to seek a home on foreign shores, even were the reproach of one of the exiles to his fellow refugees merited, — of having caused these extreme measures by their own conduct; to which he added a second, saying that the laws of most of the Protestant countries against Catholics were more severe than those of Catholic princes against Protestants.1

Those of the refugees that reached Switzerland immediately became incorporated into its civil as well as religious life, while those that succeeded in reaching Holland joined the Walloons, and some of them eventually reached the shores of the new world in 1 Avis aux Refugiés, Baylé.

Dutch ships. Others again that sought permanent homes or a temporary asylum upon the English coast found in some localities French Protestant churches with the surplus of a fund, raised some years previously, and which was now devoted either to their maintenance or to defray their expenses to some of the British colonies in the new world.

Those of the exiles that settled in England adopted the established religion, alleging, as a reason for so doing, that the kindness received from the country as well as the church made such a step a duty for them; but others, so long as they were not obliged to renounce it, clung to the form of religion in use in their native land. Those that intended to make their future home in the colonies adopted, for the time being, the form of the established church.

During their sojourn in England, the wealthier and more intelligent of the refugees had the opportunity of gaining information regarding the different British colonies, and had leisure to mature plans for their future. Many of them had relatives or acquaintances in the new worid, and, after some correspondence with them, their future course was decided.

Such of the refugees as had foreseen their flight, had left their property in the care of friends, who afterwards contrived to transmit at least a portion of it to the To such, although saddened by reverses and separation from friends and country, the future did not present such a dreary aspect as it did to those who had only their passage money, or not even that. The latter were obliged to trust their future in the hands of some captain willing to convey them to the sometimes very distant port to which the vessel was bound.

None of the French vessels being of sufficient size to cross the Atlantic, the poor Huguenots were usually landed upon some European coast, were they fortunate enough to reach it alive; for the voyage was full of dan