THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
supported by his devoted officials, to whom the king's word was law; and the anti-Protestant inclination of king and people was fostered by the clergy.
Only a brief sketch can be given of the policy of gradual encroachment on the rights of the Reformed Church. The first blow was struck at the permission of public worship, which a com-
3. Anti- mission was appointed (Apr. 15, 1661) Protestant to investigate throughout the kingdom. Campaign, In 1663 140 churches were closed, forty-
1661-79. one in 1664, and sixteen in 1666, and so on year by year, often on the most absurd and arbitrary pretexts, while the erection of new ones was strictly forbidden. Many schools were also closed, or limited to elementary instruction; the higher school at Nimes was placed in the hands of the Jesuits and the theological faculty suppressed. Every possible facility was offered for conversions to the Roman Catholic faith; the age at which children might declare their conversion was fixed at twelve for girls and fourteen for boys. In towns with a preponderating Protestant population the officials were drawn equally from both religions, but Protestants were never allowed to preside. They were allowed to attend baptisms and weddings only in limited numbers; when they were dying, the priest might come in unbidden to ascertain if they were determined to die in their faith; in places where there was no Evangelical public worship, they could be buried only at daybreak or nightfall, and then only with a limited number of attendants.
Toward 1680 the position of the Protestants grew markedly worse. The Peace of Nimeguen (1679) had set Louis XIV free from foreign dangers; and the change which about the same time came over his life in the direction of religious 4. Increas- strictness tended to make him more ing Harsh- anxious to carry out what he believed ness, 1679- to be his duty. The Protestant ques- 1684. tion had become the most important problem of internal administration, and the king's mood, now that he stood at the height of his power and regarded the defection of his subjects from his faith as a personal injury, tended more and more toward a forcible solution. This tendency was encouraged by the pitiless and violent Louvois and his father the chancellor Le Tellier, as well as by the king's confessor, Pere La Chaise. The closing of churches went on with increasing frequency; ordinance after ordinance excluded the Huguenots from a still greater number of public functions. In 1681 the age for the voluntary conversion of children was lowered to seven years. A fever of zeal for the conversion of the Protestants seized the. country; the upper classes especially vied with each other in attempting to reclaim their kinsfolk and subordinates; hosts of missionaries preached up and down the land, and houses for the reception and support of converts of both sexes were founded everywhere. Deeds of violence against the Huguenots, too, increased in number. Churches were destroyed and their Bibles burned. Early in 1681, at the suggestion of the intendant Marillac, Louvois began to apply in Poitou the method of quartering soldiers principally upon the
Protestants, who might escape the burden altogether for two years by conversion to the State Church. This method was abandoned, nearly nine months later, when emigration had begun to assume alarming proportions and notice had been taken of it in the English Parliament; but meanwhile the Reformed religion had been almost annihilated in the province. Throughout the country, however, the majority of the Huguenots displayed an admirable constancy, in the face alike of violence and seductive invitations such as those given by the national assembly of the clergy in July, 1682. The end was not far off; in the summer of 1683 the two religions came to blows in the Cevennes, the Vivarais, and Dauphin^, and the government put down rebellion without mercy.
As early as August, 1684, the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes was definitely contemplated in
government circles, and by the next January the
keener-sighted Protestants had begun
5. The to familiarize themselves with the idea.
Dragon- Foucault, intendant of Beam, set the nades. ball rolling when by royal authority he closed the twenty churches of his province without more ado, drove out the pastors, and asked for troops to support the missionaries (Apr. 18, 1685). This was the beginning of the general dragonnades, which struck terror into the hearts of all the Reformed; sixteen thousand had made their submission by the middle of July, and in August B6arn, the former bulwark of Protestantism, could number only three or four hundred professors of the Evangelical faith. On July 7 the method of conversion by military force was extended to the districts of Bordeaux and Montauban; and thence it spread throughout France. Conversions en masse were witnessed on a scale hitherto unprecedented— it took only a week to change the faith of Montauban, and Montpellier was converted by Baville with sixteen companies inside of twentyfour hours. By the autumn Protestantism as an organized religious body had been destroyed; nothing remained but a handful of individuals or scattered families. The time had come for the final blow. If there were practically no Protestants left in France, the Edict of Nantes had lost its raison d'etre and might as well be revoked. The theologians assembled in the king's presence declared its revocation a religious duty, the procureur-g6neral of the parliament of Paris pronounced the revocation legally unobjectionable. Le Tellier drew up the draft of the new decree, which Louis read and altered in certain points on Oct. 15, signing it at Fontainebleau a day or two later. It was registered in parliament on the 22d, thus attaining full force. According to its terms, the edicts of April and May, 1598, and July, 1629, were declared null and void; all "temples" of the so-called Reformed religion were to be at once destroyed, and Evangelical worship was prohibited, even in private houses; all recalcitrant pastors were to leave the kingdom inside of a fortnight; Evangelical schools were entirely suppressed; children were ordered to be baptized according to the Roman Catholic rite; and emigration was forbidden under severe penalties. This momentous step was applauded by the whole of Roman