Holland) of the division of labour. The thriving manufactories of cloth at Rheims, Abbeville, Elbœuf, Louviers, Rouen, Sedan, and numerous other places, owed their establishment and progress to Protestant families. The Protestants of the Gévaudan, a district of Languedoc, annually sent to foreign parts a value of from two to three millions of livres of serge and other light fabrics. Every peasant had his loom, and worked at it in the intervals of agricultural occupation. The manufactures of silk stuffs and stockings, of hardware, gold and silver lace, and notably of paper, were chiefly in Protestant hands. In Brittany they made sail-cloth, of which, previously to the emigration, the English and Dutch annually purchased very large quantities. In Touraine they were tanners, and their leather was celebrated throughout France. They had four hundred tanneries in that province. The silk and velvet manufactures of Tours and Lyons, so renowned in the middle of the seventeenth century, owed their success and prosperity mainly to the Protestants. We abstain from enumerating a number of other important articles of consumption produced, almost exclusively, by that industrious people, whose reputation stood as high for commercial probity as for activity and intelligence. The reasons for their general superiority over their Catholic fellow-citizens are concisely and forcibly given by Mr Weiss. A mere handful amongst jealous and suspicious millions, austere morality and integrity were their sole safeguard against calumny, and against the severity of the laws levelled especially at them. Their very enemies were compelled to admit that they were frugal, laborious, lovers of truth and of their religion, conscientious in their conduct, constant in their fear and reverence of God. Placed at disadvantage by the State on account of their creed, their stimulus to exertion was strong, since it was only by superior industry and intelligence that they could place themselves on a level with their more favoured Catholic fellow subjects."They were further aided by the principles of their religion, unceasingly tending to instruct and enlighten them, by conducting them to

faith only through the gate of investigation. Thence their superior enlightenment, which necessarily extended itself to all their actions, and rendered their minds more capable of seizing every idea whose application could contribute to their welfare." Most of the Protestants, when young, visited Protestant countries, French Switzerland, Holland, and England, and thence brought back valuable knowledge and enlarged ideas. One more circumstance is to be noted: the Protestants' working year contained 310 days, only the Sundays and solemn festivals being given to rest; the Catholics, on the other hand, gave barely 260 days to labour-the rest were holidays. Hence a clear gain of one-sixth to Protestant industry.

When, upon the death of Mazarin, Louis XIV. grasped the reins of power, the Protestant religion was not only tolerated, but authorised and permitted throughout the kingdom of France. The Huguenot political faction was destroyed; the French nobility, a few years before so warlike and turbulent, had abandoned their provincial strongholds to bask in court favour; the plebeians were contented and happy because peace and public order were maintained; the triumph of the crown was complete. For a while the king's policy was to maintain the Protestants in the privileges granted them by his predecessors, but to show them no further favour, and to exclude them from all benefits and advantages in his own individual gift. He hoped that they would gradually go over to Rome, in order to share the good things bestowed upon Catholics-a motive which had already induced most of the Protestant nobles to abjure their religion. The king, however, did not long adhere to a system which, although neither just nor impartial, was at least prudent and moderate. His first notable act of aggression against his patient, peaceable, and valuable Protestant subjects, was the demolition, in the district of Gex, of twenty-two of their churches, under the pretence that the Edict of Nantes did not apply to that bailiwick, which had been annexed to the kingdom since its promulgation. Another decree granted to the Catho

lics of Gex a term of three years for payment of their debts. This was an immoral lure held out to the Protestants, who, by changing their religion, would partake of the advantage. Then came an order in council, forbidding Protestants to bury their dead save at daybreak or nightfall. In 1663, newly-converted Protestants were dispensed from payment of their debts to their former co-religionists. The effects of this iniquitous dispensation upon the various trades in which the Protestants were so largely engaged, need hardly be indicated. Old and barbarous laws against converts who relapsed into the reformed religion, were revived and put in force. The bodies of persons who had abjured Protestantism, and who, upon their deathbeds, refused the sacraments of Rome, were drawn upon hurdles amidst the outrages of the populace. This law was applied to persons of quality; amongst others to a demoiselle de Montalembert, whose corpse was dragged naked through the streets of Angoulême. In 1665, priests were authorised to present themselves, in company with the magistrate of the place, at the bedside of dying Protestants, to exhort them to conversion; and if they appeared disposed to it, the work was to be proceeded with in spite of the family. It may be imagined what gentle and conscientious use Catholic priests would make of this scandalous permission. A dying man, agonised and speechless, made, or was said to have made, a sign with his head, hand, or eyes, indicating adherence to the Church of Rome. Thereupon his body was interred in the Catholic cemetery, and his children were hurried to mass-Catholics by virtue of their father's pretended abjuration.

Such was the beginning of the persecution. Thenceforward no month passed without some fresh act of rigour. Temples were shut up or demolished; the number of Protestant schools was limited; the education of Protestant children was restricted to reading, writing, and ciphering. French Protestants were forbidden to leave the country; and those already in foreign parts were ordered to return. The physicians of Rouen were forbidden to admit

into their corporation more than two persons of the reformed religion. Slackened a little during the war with Holland, these odious persecutions resumed their vigour after the peace of Nimeguen. On the most absurd pretexts, the temples, in a number of those large towns where the population was chiefly Protestant, were pulled down. And by an edict of the 17th June 1681, children of seven years of age were authorised to abjure their parents' faith and embrace the Catholic religion! It was opening a fine field to the unscrupulous proselytising emissaries of Rome. "It now sufficed that an envious person, an enemy, a debtor, declared before a tribunal that a child wished to become a Catholic, had manifested an intention of entering a church, had joined in a prayer, or made the sign of the cross, or kissed an image of the Virgin, for the child in question to be taken from his parents, who were compelled to make him an allowance proportioned to their supposed ability. But such estimates were necessarily arbitrary, and it often happened that the loss of his child entailed upon the unfortunate father that of all his property." We have not room to multiply instances of the abominable system then adopted. Whilst Colbert lived, his voice was ever uplifted in the king's council against the maltreatment and oppression of men whom he held to be peaceable, industrious, and useful citizens. After his death, Louvois, anxious to please the king, went far beyond anything that had yet been done. He instituted what were called the dragonnades. Troops, principally dragoons, were sent into the provinces and quartered in Protestant houses, where they were encouraged to every kind of excess short of rape and murder. "In many villages (of Poitou) the priests followed them in the streets, crying out:

Courage, gentlemen; it is the king's intention that these dogs of Huguenots should be pillaged and sacked.' The soldiers entered the houses sword in hand, crying 'Kill! kill!' to frighten women and children. ... They employed threats, outrages, and even tortures, to compel them to conversion; burning the feet and hands of some at a slow fire, breaking the ribs and

limbs of others with blows of sticks. Many had their lips burned with hot irons, and others were thrown into damp dungeons, with threats that they should be left there to rot." These atrocities brought about, as may be imagined, a vast number of conversions. Suspended for a while, in consequence of the moral effect of a bill passed by the English parliament, granting extraordinary privileges to French refugees, the dragonnades recommenced in 1684,-this time in Béarn, where the soldiery, incited by the fanatic intendant Foucault, committed even greater excesses than in Poitou. Amongst other tortures inflicted upon the unhappy Huguenots, were those called the Veillées. The soldiers mounted regular guards, relieving each other as if on sentry, for the sole purpose of depriving their victims of repose. They forced them to stand upright, and to keep their eyes open. Benoît, a writer of that day, details the revolting insults and cruel sufferings to which both men and women were subjected. Human nature could not endure such torments, and Foucault was able to report the conversion of the whole of Béarn. "I certainly believe," wrote Madame de Maintenon, "that those conversions are not all sincere. But God employs all manner of means to bring heretics back to him; the children at least will be Catholics, though their fathers be hypocrites.' "manner of means "referred to by this saintly prude and ex-Calvinist, are thus described by Benoît, as applied to persons of her own sex.

The

The soldiers offered to the women indignities which decency will not suffer me to describe. The officers were no better than the soldiers. They spat in the women's faces; they made then lie down in their presence upon hot embers; they forced them to put their heads into ovens, whose vapour was hot enough to suffocate them. All their study was to devise torments which should be painful - without being mortal." Such was the pastime of the chivalrous warriors of the most Christian and magnanimous of French kings.

Similar scenes were enacted in every province where Protestants dwelt. Louis XIV. daily received the joyful

intelligence of thousands of conversions. In September and October 1685, he was informed that six large and important towns, noted strongholds of the reformed religion, had definitively abjured their errors. The court then believed that Protestantism was annihilated in France, and the king, sharing in the general illusion, no longer hesitated to strike the last blow. On the 22d October he signed, at Fontainebleau, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Its merciful provisions may be summed up in few words: "The Protestant temples were all to be demolished, and the worship forbidden in private houses, under pain of confiscation. Ministers who refused to be converted were to quit the kingdom within a fortnight, or to be sent to the galleys. Protestant schools were to be closed; children were to be baptised by priests, and brought up in the religion of Rome. Four months were granted to refugees to return to France and abjure; that term expired, their property would be confiscated. Under pain of galleys and confiscation, Protestants were forbidden to quit the kingdom and carry their fortunes abroad. They were to remain, until it should please God to enlighten them." We have seen the gentle means by which the divine spirit was aided in such cases. Upon the same day that this insane edict was registered, the demolition of the great temple at Charenton, built by the celebrated architect, Jacques Debrosse, and capable of containing fourteen thousand persons, was commenced. days no trace of the structure remained. The church at Quevilly, near Rouen, was levelled by a fanatic mob, headed by the intendant of the province, and several other high officials, axe and hammer in hand. its site was raised a cross, twenty feet high, adorned with the royal arms. In every respect the edict of revocation, and some severe supplementary ordinances that were soon after published, were enforced with the utmost rigour, and even with bad faith. Thus were clergymen refused passports (indispensable to their departure from France), in order that the fortnight granted them might elapse, and that they might be cast into prison.

In five

On

Some of the more influential amongst them, held especially dangerous, were ordered to quit the kingdom within two days. Upon the other hand, the utmost pains were taken to prevent the emigration of laymen. Marshal Schomberg and the Marquis de Ruvigny were the only persons permitted to leave the country. The king sent for Admiral Duquesne, one of the creators of the French navy, and urged him to change his religion. The old hero, then eighty years of age, pointed to his white hair. "For sixty years, sire," he said, "have I rendered unto Cæsar that which I owe to Cæsar; suffer me still to render unto God that which I owe fo God." He was suffered to end his days in France, unmolested for his religion.

The enactments against emigration were all in vain to prevent it. In vain were the coasts guarded, the high-roads patrolled, and the peasants armed and made to watch day and night for fugitives. Hundreds were captured, and sent, chained in gangs, to the galleys; but thousands escaped. "They set out disguised as pilgrims, couriers, sportsmen with their guns upon their shoulders, peasants driving cattle, porters bearing packages, in footmen's liveries and in soldiers' uniforms. The richest had guides, who, for sums varying from 1000 to 6000 livres, helped them to cross the frontier. The poor set out alone, choosing the least practicable roads, travelling by night, and passing the day in forests and caverns, sometimes in barns, or hidden under hay.

The

women resorted to similar artifices. They dressed themselves as servants, peasants, nurses; they wheeled barrows; they carried hods and burthens. The younger ones smeared or dyed their faces, to avoid attracting notice: others put on the dress of lackeys, and followed, on foot, through the mire, a guide on horseback who passed for their master. The Protestants of the seaboard got away in French, English, and Dutch merchant vessels, whose masters hid them under bales of goods and heaps of coal, and in empty casks, where they had only the bunghole to breathe through. There they remained, crowded one upon another, until the ship sailed. Fear of discovery and of the galleys gave them courage to

suffer. Persons brought up in every luxury, pregnant women, old men, invalids and children, vied with each other in constancy and fortitude, to escape from their persecutors." Fortunately for the refugees, the guards, both at the sea and land frontiers, were often accessible to bribes or to compassion, and helped the escape of many. It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of Protestants who succeeded in quitting France; but Mr Weiss believes himself near the truth when he estimates that from a quarter of a million to three hundred thousand-between a fourth and threetenths of the entire Protestant population-left the country in the last fifteen years of the seventeenth century. He takes pains to exhibit the grounds upon which he has established this calculation, and quotes various reports and official documents; but we may here content ourselves with mentioning the result, readily accepting it, on the strength of his habitual impartiality and conscientious research, as approximatively correct. The reports of provincial governors afford him exact data with respect to the damage done to the manufactures and prosperity of France by this great Protestant exodus. The following figures are worth the reader's attention: "Of the 400 tanneries which a short time previously enriched Touraine, there remained but 54 in the year 1698. That province's 8000 looms, for the manufacture of silken stuffs, were reduced to 1200; its 700 silk-mills to 70; its 40,000 workmen, formerly employed in the preparation and fabrication of silks, to 4000. its 3000 ribbon-looms, not 60 remained. Instead of 2400 bales of silk, it consumed but 700 or 800." This in one province. In others the decline was proportionate. Floquet, the historian of Normandy, estimates at 184,000 the Norman Protestants who took advantage of the vicinity of the sea, and of their connection with England and Holland, to quit France. For several years the Norman manufactures were completely ruined.

Of

"It would be erroneous to suppose that Louis XIV. did not foresee these fatal consequences; but, doubtless, he guessed not their extent, and thought to give to France durable repose and

prosperity at the cost of a fleeting evil. A great part of the nation partook of the delusion; and it may be said that, with the exception of Vauban, St Simon, and a small number of superior minds (amongst which must be reckoned Christina of Sweden), the nation was the accomplice, either by its acts or by its silence, of the great king's fault."

Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter how fine a thing was the edict of revocation, compared to which no king had ever done, or ever would do aught as memorable. The chancellor, Le Tellier, after affixing the seal of state to the document, declared that he would never seal any other, and pronounced those words of the canticle of Simeon which, in the mouth of the aged Hebrew, referred to the coming of the Lord. Bossuet, Massillon, Flé chier, the great preachers of that day, exulted in their pulpits, and lauded Louis to the skies. Rome was in raptures. A Te Deum was sung, and Innocent XI. sent a brief of thanks and praise to the French monarch. Medals were struck, statues raised ;* and at Versailles may still be seen a masterpiece of Lesueur's, in which hideous forms fly at sight of the chalice. The allegory represents the defeat of Protestantism by Popery.

West, east, and north, fled the scattered Protestants-the bigoted south offered them no refuge. To Germany they went, to England and America, to Switzerland and Holland, even to Scandinavia. Their proceedings in each one of these countries, the succours they found, and the services they rendered, their influence upon arts and manufactures, their ultimate fate, the blending (in most instances) of their descendants with the natives, are recorded by Mr Weiss in separate books. The first of these is devoted to Brandenburg (Prussia), a country to which, owing to its then backward state of civilisation as compared with France, England, and Holland, the

immigration of a large body of cultivated Frenchmen, including military officers of rank and experience, men of learning, manufacturers, artisans, and trades of every kind, was an inestimable benefit. The Elector, Frederick William, who had been brought up at the French court of the Prince of Orange, felt this, and spared no pains to attract the refugees to his dominions. He was a Protestant; his wife was a granddaughter of Coligny; French was the language spoken at his court, where all the elevated posts were filled by men who had lived in Paris, and who habitually spoke and wrote in French. When he came to the throne in 1640, he found his country depopulated by war, agricul ture neglected, trade and manufactures destroyed. His long reign was passed in healing the wounds inflicted on Brandenburg by the Thirty Years' War. He encouraged foreigners to settle in the country, where he granted them lands or aided them to establish themselves. On the 29th October 1685, exactly one week after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he published the Edict of Potsdam, by which he offered shelter and protection to the persecuted Protestants. His agents at Amsterdam and Hamburg, and in the various German states through which they might pass on their flight from France, were directed to care for their safety and supply them with means to travel. They acquired, by the mere act of settling in his dominions, all the civic rights of those born there, besides various privileges and immunities confined to themselves. He offered land to the agriculturist, facilities to the manufacturer, honours, rank, and military employment to nobles and men of the sword. His tempting proclamation was quickly disseminated in France; and although the intendants of the provinces used the most rigorous measures to suppress it, and affirmed it to be a forgery, the Pro