11. Revocation of Edict of Nantes

With the death of Mazarin (Mar. 9, 1661) the autocratic reign of Louis XIV. began. For twenty- four years systematic persecution was carried on, which culminated in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes Oct. 17, 1685. Public worship was prohibited, and ministers were to leave France in fifteen days, or embrace Roman Catholicism. Huguenot schools were to be abolished at once. Refugees who did not return . would have their property confiscated. Thousands, some of them educated ministers, were sent to the galleys, where many died of hardship; thousands died in prison; and hundreds, if not thousands, were cruelly executed. The dragonnades were continued with increasing barbarity. Some hundreds of thousands professed conversion, while several hundred thousand left France, despite the fact that emigration was forbidden. It has been estimated that about 100,000 found homes in Holland, 100,000 in England, Ireland, and America, 25,000 in Switzerland, and 75,000 in Germany. Thus France lost a large proportion of its best intellect and manufacturing skill, and the exiled Huguenots, by establishing manufactures abroad, raised up ruinous competition for the French. In many parts of France the persecuted people took all risks and met secretly for worship. They maintained themselves in greatest numbers in the C6vennes mountains. From 1702 to 1710 the C6vennes Huguenots carried on a terrible guerrilla warfare against the Catholics (see Camisards). With the death of Louis XIV. (1715) persecution was somewhat relaxed, but it was renewed with fearful vigor in 1724 under Cardinal Fleury (q.v.). From 1715 onward Antoine Court (q.v.) carried on a work of stupendous importance in truly apostolic spirit in reorganizing and planting churches. In 1730 he established at Lausanne a training-school for preachers, from which scores of self-sacrificing young men went forth to minister to the persecuted in France. Equally apostolic and fruitful were the labors of Paul Rabaut (q.v.). At the death of Fleury (1743) persecution almost ceased. As a result of agitation by the clergy, a furious persecution was carried on 1745-52. Skeptical writers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and

D'Alembert from the middle of the eighteenth cen tury diffused a spirit of toleration that redounded to the benefit of the Huguenots (see Deism, II.; and Encyclopedism). Largely through the efforts of Rabaut St. Etienne and Court de G6belin, sons of Paul Rabaut and Antoine Court, an edict of toleration was secured in 1787. A large proportion of the Huguenots, as of the Catholics, were swept into infidelity by the French Revolution (q.v.). In 1802 Huguenots were placed by Napoleon side by side with Roman Catholics as a state-controlled and state-supported body. This relationship con tinued until the separation of Church and State in 1905. See France.

A. H. Newman.