'One faith, one law, one king'?: Louis XIV, Gallicanism and the Protestants

'One faith, one law, one king'?: Louis XIV, Gallicanism and the Protestants

'Two million Calvinists brought back to the Church.' This headline, taken not from a modern newspaper but from a coin struck in 1685 to commemorate the revocation of the edict of Nantes, shows just how modern were some of the techniques used by the propagandists of Louis XIV. The revocation was depicted as the extinction of heresy and the triumph of the Church. Historians have not failed to notice a connection between the promulgation of the famous Four (Gallican) Articles of 1682 and the revocation of the edict of Nantes three years later. It is for this reason that we will treat Gallicanism and the fate of the Huguenots together as one theme, though in reality they are separate subjects: nevertheless, the 'newly converted' Catholics after 1685 were intended to form part of a national Catholic Church newly rid of heresy.

1. The origins of Louis XIV's conflict with the Papacy and the Four Articles

French history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had been dominated by the lurch in royal policy between agreement with the Papacy (the regime of the Concordat of Bologna after 1516) and periods of intense conflict when Gallican principles had been enunciated, sometimes by the crown itself, at other times by institutions outside direct monarchical control such as the Parlements. During the pontificate of Innocent XI (1676-89), relations between the French monarchy and the Papacy became increasingly strained. The point of departure in the conflict was the king's extension of the right to levy the régale, the appropriation of the revenues of a vacant bishopric, in provinces where this had not previously been levied. On 10 February 1673, this had been extended throughout the dioceses of France, including those of the Midi which had previously been exempt. This was, in essence, the enunciation by the crown of a jurisprudence proposed originally by the Parlement of Paris. Two bishops refused to comply with a requirement to conform, but they were already considerable figures in the Jansenist conflict: Étienne de Caulet (1610-80) of Pamiers and Nicolas Pavillon (1597-1677) of Alet. Pavillon and then Caulet appealed to the Pope at the attempt by the crown to appoint its nominees (régalistes) to the cathedral chapters of the two dioceses. By April 1678, conflict between crown and Papacy had become inevitable. Three Papal briefs were issued in 1678-80 proclaiming the liberty of the church, the third of which threatened the king with divine punishment and ecclesiastical censure.

Two prominent bishops, Charles-Maurice Le Tellier, archbishop of Reims (1642-1710), the younger brother of Louvois; and François de Harlay de Champallon (1625-95), first archbishop of Rouen and after 1671 of Paris, persuaded the king that it was appropriate to summon a general council of the French church (or an extraordinairy or special assembly of the clergy) to deal with the issue. This meeting took place in November 1681 and continued into 1682. In return for an edict from the crown in January 1682 that abusive nominations would not be made, which was registered subsequently by the Parlement of Paris, the Assembly voted to accept the régale, and wrote to this effect to the Papacy. Innocent XI, however, refused to accept a settlement and it was left to a later successor, Innocent XII (Pope, 1691-1700), to do so tacitly: in effect, from 1693, the Pope accepted the crown's right to levy the régale in accordance with the edict of January 1682.

Rumours that Innocent XI might censure members of the assembly of clergy with excommunication led it towards an open assertion of Gallican principles. The Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris had drawn up a résumé of six Gallican principles in 1663; these had been the object of a commission of the assembly of clergy, presided over by the bishop of Tournai, since November 1681. The resulting proposals were criticized by Jacques-Béninge Bossuet (1627-1704), bishop of Meaux (best known for his treatise of political thought, the Politics drawn from the True Words of Holy Scripture), who presented his counter-proposals which were accepted by the assembly. On 19 March 1682, a declaration of 4 articles 'on ecclesiastical authority' (la puissance ecclésiastique) resulted. The first article contended that kings and princes (and not, as the Faculty of Theology had contended, the Most Christian King) were not subject to any ecclesiastical authority in temporal affairs, nor could they be deposed or their subjects dispensed from loyalty and obedience. The second article appealed to the authority of the Councils of Constance and Basle, and implicitly asserted the principle that a council of the church was superior to the Pope. The third article accepted the authority of the Pope as head of the church but asserted that this was modified by the canons, 'rules, customs and institutions accepted in the French kingdom and Church', which were 'fixed' and were 'to remain undisturbed'. The fourth article accepted that the Pope had 'the leading role' in questions of faith, but denied him personal infallibility: his judgement was not without appeal unless it had received 'the consent of the church'.

Innocent XI reacted to the Four Articles by issuing the brief Paternae caritati, which condemned the conduct of the bishops, while his successor Alexander VIII (Pope, 1689-91) insisted on the withdrawal of the Four Articles and condemned the extension of the régale in his bull Inter multiplices (4 August 1690). The complications of the War of the League of Augsburg were such that Louis XIV had little relish for prolonging the conflict with the Papacy, and in 1693 he allowed episcopal nominees who had not signed the Four Articles to request papal bulls of investiture. In effect, the conflict over the Four Articles and the régale was allowed to fade away, in Grever's words 'in the same mysterious manner as it had started'.

2. The position of the Huguenots prior to Louis XIV's personal rule

The position of the Huguenots had been guaranteed by Henri IV in the settlement of Nantes of 1598. The edict conveyed rights of worship somewhat broader than those allowed in 1577, with the château of the local Huguenot magnate confirmed as the focus of Protestant worship. Secularized ecclesiastical property was to be returned by the Protestants, who in turn were to be allowed to enter royal, seigneurial and municipal offices. The 'mixed tribunals' (chambres mi-parties or chambres de l'édit) to hear Protestant cases were re-established in 1598. These courts operated on the principle that half the membership were Protestants, while the other half were Catholics, chosen directly from the Parlements; but this was insufficient to satisfy the superior courts, which wanted the abolition of the chambres de l'édit, the conversion of the Protestant personnel, and their incorporation into the Parlements. In addition, there were secret articles which allowed the Huguenots to retain for eight years (a period subsequently extended) all towns and fortresses in their possession in August 1597, and permitted them a religious organization of consistories, synods and colloquies. Two additional documents assigned an annual subsidy to the Huguenots for the upkeep of their garrisons, which amounted on paper to 675,000 livres per annum, though it is doubtful whether as much as this was ever paid in a single year. The edict was no guarantee that the king would not change his mind, however. Only the public part of the settlement - the edict itself - was registered in the Parlements, and then with the greatest difficulty. At Paris, Henri IV had had to appear before the Parlement in January 1599, reminding the office-holders that he had 'established the state' and that they owed their positions to his victory over the League, before they would accept the edict. Nevertheless, the Parlement of Rouen had resisted the king until 1609. Even with registration, there was no cast-iron security that a subsequent ruler would not modify the supposedly 'perpetual and irrevocable edict' and this is what happened under Louis XIII in 1629.

The settlement of Nantes could not heal divisions in French society which had lasted for forty years of intermittent civil war in the sixteenth century. It was not a permanent solution, because it depended on the will of the king, while the majority of Frenchmen remained Catholic and regarded it as a temporary arrangement to secure peace. The Huguenots continued to distrust a king who had abandoned their faith and against whom they had had to rebel in 1597 to secure the concessions ratified subsequently at Nantes. There were further Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s, which were brought to an end by Cardinal de Richelieu, who won considerable prestige by forcing the surrender of La Rochelle in October 1628 after a siege lasting a year. The peace of Alais (June 1629) was open to criticism from the hard-line dévot party, who wanted to see the complete elimination of heresy in France. Instead, Richelieu ended nine years of intermittent civil and religious war in France by guaranteeing the edict of Nantes. The peace was a considerable achievement for the Cardinal: whereas previous edicts had given the Huguenots 'advantages (which were) prejudicial to the state', that of Alais was an 'edict of grace', an act of clemency on the part of the king. The political and military organization of the Huguenots was destroyed, all Protestant fortifications were to be razed, all cannon melted down and sold, and the Protestant population disarmed. The great Huguenot leader, the duc de Rohan, was sent into exile, though he received reparations and his troops were allowed to serve the French cause in Italy. The success of the war and of the enforcement of the peace is best illustrated by the fact that the Huguenots did not join any of the subsequent rebellions during the ministries of Richelieu and Mazarin.

The second period of Richelieu's ministry (1630-42) was thus quite different from the first with regard to policy towards the Protestants. Richelieu continued to seek a conference of the two religions at which the 'errors' of the Protestants would be demonstrated conclusively: the illusion that the Protestants would voluntarily return to the Catholic fold was an enduring one. Although the edict of Nantes was guaranteed under Richelieu, its provisions were interpreted in the narrowest way possible and in important respects redefined. After the death of Louis XIII and Richelieu, the edict of Nantes was confirmed (8 July 1643), as was the jurisdiction of the chambres de l'édit in cases involving Protestants (30 January 1645). The rebellion of the Parlements in 1648-9 gave the Protestants hope that these institutions might become discredited - the chambres de l'édit in general supported the cause of the government during the Fronde. The declaration of Saint- Germain (21 May 1652), issued shortly before Mazarin's second exile, appeared to remove all the legal obstacles to a full interpretation of the edict of Nantes as a reward for the loyalty of the Huguenots 'notably in the present circumstances, with which we remain well satisfied'.

The declaration of Saint-Germain was extremely unpopular with Catholic opinion generally, and above all with the hard-line dévot party, who wanted to secure its revocation. In June 1654, April 1656 and July 1656, the clergy presented remonstrances to the government. The upshot was a new royal declaration issued on 18 July 1656, perhaps issued to distract attention from the fact that France had a diplomatic alliance with Cromwell. The vicissitudes of French foreign policy certainly had an impact on dealings with the Huguenots throughout the period before 1685. The royal declaration stated that the government had no intention of innovating when it issued the declaration of Saint-Germain, which, it alleged, was merely a restatement of decisions taken during Louis XIII's reign. The restrictive legislation and interpretations of the legislation would thus continue to apply. The declaration pleased neither side. The clergy protested that the declaration of 18 July 1656 was not being implemented in full, and that in any case it was too liberal with regard to the chambres de l'édit, which they wanted to see abolished. The chambres de l'édit refused to register the declaration until forced to do so by the council of state. A Huguenot manifesto entitled the Apology of the Reformed Churches of Languedoc, which was declared seditious by the council of state in January 1658, proclaimed that the government was about to abolish the chambres de l'édit, to revoke the edict of Nantes and to expel the Huguenots from the kingdom.

Yet the Huguenot organization survived Mazarin's ministry relatively unscathed, and this is demonstrated by the evidence of the acts of the Huguenot provincial synod of Dauphiné, held at three different locations in June 1657, September 1658 and May 1661. Its business was usually divided into subsections concerning general affairs, academic affairs, individual matters, matters treated by the previous synod and appeals by laymen or pastors arising from decisions taken by local colloquies since the previous synod. For the most part, the issues discussed were not particularly interesting or important - rather, the documents are a good illustration of routine business in a Huguenot synod prior to the restrictive measures of Louis XIV's personal rule. 114 pastors attended the 1657 synod, 101 that of 1658, and 115 that of 1661. 45 of the 65 pastors whose age may be ascertained were under forty years of age. Among the general matters discussed at the 1657 synod was a formula for the summoning of future synods 'for fear that the letters sent to the governor use terms which are contrary... to our liberties'. The 1658 synod reaffirmed earlier decisions of the national synods of 1612 and 1620 and united with the synods of Bas Languedoc, Haut Languedoc, the Cévennes and Gévaudan in doctrinal and disciplinary matters in order 'to resist the adversaries of the truth, under obedience to the king and fidelity to... his service'. Finally, the 1661 synod protested at the failure of the president of the chambre de l'édit to observe fully article 49 of the edict of Nantes concerning the distribution of lawsuits. The Parlement of Grenoble had also obtained a decree of the council dated 9 November 1660 which was regarded as of extreme importance for the 'wellbeing of the churches and the peace and conservation of our lives and wealth...' This was clearly a portent of worse to come, but both in numbers and in spirit, the pastors of Dauphiné seem to have been a more formidable force at the commencement of Louis XIV's personal rule than might have been expected. The same was true elsewhere with regard to the regional synods; however, the last national synod was held at Loudun in 1659-60.

3. The elimination of Huguenot rights before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

The declaration of 18 July 1656 had committed the government to send out royal commissioners charged with the 'implementation' (exécution) of the edict of Nantes. On 15 June 1661, Louis XIV gave the clergy an assurance that the declaration of 1656 would be implemented in full, while in his memoirs for 1661 he noted that he sought to restrict the concessions accorded by the edict of Nantes. The appointment of two commissioners, one Catholic, the other Protestant, to make recommendations on the implementation of the edict of Nantes in fourteen provinces where there was a signficant Protestant population marks a decisive break in the restriction of Huguenot rights. In most cases, the Catholic commissioner was the provincial intendant, while the Protestant commissioner was a secondary figure anxious to retain royal favour and thus inclined to follow the views of the intendant. If they could not agree on their recommendation, the commission of the council which heard the case was composed exclusively of Catholics. The uphsot of the investigation was a declaration issued on 2 April 1666, which severely limited the edict of Nantes, but which was revoked on 28 May 1669: the anti-Huguenot offensive was suspended for a decade because of the requirements of foreign policy, above all the English alliance secured by the Secret Treaty of Dover (1670) on the eve of the Dutch War.

The Protestants retained their own courts, the chambres de l'édit, until 1669 (in the case of Paris and Rouen) and 1679 (in the case of Castelnaudary within the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Toulouse; Grenoble and Bordeaux). The abolition of these courts, the conversion of their personnel to Catholicism, and their incorporation into the Parlements removed a vital aspect of the legal protection for Huguenots which had been conferred by the edict of Nantes. With the end of the Dutch War, a flood of restrictive legislation was passed after 1679 which rendered unnecessary the revocation of the edict of Nantes in the sense that Huguenot rights had been so curtailed that little further restriction was possible. The Papal Nuncio, Ranuzzi, noted that Protestant rights of worship were removed from 28 localities in 1681; from 48 in 1682; from 45 in 1683; and from 65 in 1684. One estimate is that 587 Protestant churches were destroyed between 1657 and 1685.

The diplomatic situation again perhaps holds the key as to why the offensive was unleashed against Protestantism in these years. The deepening conflict with the Papacy had undoubtedly made a crusade against heresy at home attractive, not least because of Louis XIV's refusal to participate in Leopold I's struggle against the Turks besieging Vienna in 1683. The Truce of Regensburg of August 1684 gave Louis XIV the diplomatic freedom to concentrate on his 'great work' (grand dessein) to unify the Gallican church. Marillac, intendant of Poitou, was the first to attempt the forced mass conversion of Protestants by the billetting of troops. His methods were not regarded as legitimate by Louvois, and Marillac was replaced by Lamoignon de Basville, a client of Le Tellier, who showed greater respect for legal procedures. Basville was transferred to the larger province of Languedoc, which had a bigger Protestant population, in 1685. He was replaced by Foucault. The mass conversion of Protestants through the billetting of troops was officially condemned by Louis XIV - Louvois informed Foucault, intendant of Poitou, of this fact in October 1685; but Foucault continued to use the dragonnades to secure conversions and was not recalled. It was inconvenient to give the Protestants any hint that the king disapproved of the methods used to convert them.

There was, however, for the first time in 1683 a hint of Protestant resistance in the Vivarais, the Cévennes and Dauphiné, one of the purposes of which was to ensure preachings where the exercise of the faith had been prohibited. A significant number of Protestant pastors (some 130 in Languedoc) were excluded in 1684 from an amnesty. This was the period which has been called the 'pre-Desert', that is to say, the period before the church of the so- called 'Desert', the prohibited church or church in the wilderness, after 1685: clandestine worship, with three or four hundred worshippers, was already being practised in this earlier period.

4. The regime of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685-1715

The edict of Nantes was revoked by the edict of Fontainebleau of 17 October 1685, drafted by the Chancellor Le Tellier. The preamble justified the royal decision, arguing that this had been the intention of Henri IV. Since most of the Protestants had already converted, it was asserted, the arrangements for the Protestant religion had now become without purpose. The first article declared the edict perpetual and irrevocable. As a result, all Protestant churches were to be demolished. All Protestant religious worship, whether on a fief or elsewhere, was banned by articles 2 and 3. Article 4 gave Protestant pastors a fortnight to convert or to leave the kingdom. Protestant schools were banned (article 7) and Catholic baptism was prescribed for those who were born as Protestants (article 8). Huguenot émigrés were given four months to return to the kingdom or their goods would be confiscated (article 9). Huguenots were forbidden from going into exile. Lapsed Catholics (that is 'new converts' who returned to Protestantism) would be pursued with the rigour of the law. Article 12 permitted Huguenots to remain in the kingdom 'without being troubled or (their rights) curtailed' ('sans pouvoir être troublés ni empêchés') but without rights of worship. This last clause might have seemed to imply that the king and his ministers would allow an interior faith to Protestants; the reality was that Louvois and even Seignelay allowed the intendants full rein to interpret the edict of Fontainebleau to the rigour of the law, especially in the case of those 'new Catholics' who had been 'badly converted' ('mal convertis').

Some 32 administrative measures such as decrees of the council and ministerial letters prescribed the method of enforcement of the revocation of the edict of Nantes in the years 1685-6. The intendants were ordered to prosecute Protestants captured trying to flee abroad. They were ordered by a decree of the council of state, dated 13 May 1686, to supervise the drawing up of inventories of the possessions left behind by Protestant exiles, as a preliminary measure to the confiscation of such property. The intendants prosecuted those 'new converts' who remained in France in the hope of practising their old religion and who were captured by the troops at illegal Protestant prayer meetings. The intendants even carried out posthumous prosecutions of new converts who refused to receive the Catholic sacrament on their death bed. The influence of certain intendants in the formation of government policy towards the Protestants was great. Basville engaged in a long controversy with Bossuet, on whether or not the new converts should be forced by the intendants and the troops to attend Mass - significantly, the intendant thought that the converts should be forced to attend. Basville came to have his doubts about this policy of coercing the Protestants - but this was later, during the long struggle with the Camisard rebellion in the Cévennes after 1702. Le Gendre at Montauban had no inhibitions at forcing Protestant consciences to secure the attendance of new converts at Mass.

5. The theoretician of resistance to the Revocation: Pierre Jurieu

Catholic opinion at home was more or less united in welcoming the revocation. Harlay de Champvallon, the archbishop of Paris and the père de La Chaize, the king's Jesuit confessor praised the measure; Bossuet called Louis the new Constantine; Madame de Sévigné considered that 'never had a king achieved a more memorable deed'. Abroad, Catholic opinion was muted or even hostile. Pope Innocent XI was reported to have wept at the forcing of consciences. Clearly it was among the Protestant states that opinion hardened decisively against Louis XIV as a result of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and the elector of Brandenburg joined the League of Augsburg in 1686 as a consequence: Brandenburg-Prussia opened up its borders to Huguenot refugees.

Pierre Jurieu (1637-1713), the 'Goliath of the Protestants' was the most prolific polemical writer of the period of the Huguenot Dispersion. Most of his writings appeared in the United Provinces, where he spent his period of exile from 1681 until his death; from 1689 he began espionage activities on behalf of William III and Heinsius, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, against France; from 1692-3 until his death, he directed a committee of secret agents for this purpose, but it was a closely guarded secret in his lifetime to preserve his apparent objectivity as a polemicist. His first statement on the persecution was The policy of the French clergy (La Politique du clergé de France..., 1681), in which he asserted that the increased persecution resulted from the state of peace in the realm and the conflict with the Pope over the régale. Jurieu regarded the edicts of pacification, above all therefore the edict of Nantes itself, as perpetual laws which lie at the very foundation of the peace of the state. In another work, Legitimate Prejudices against Papistry (Préjugez légitimes contre le Papisme, 1685), he recalled that the edict of Nantes had been termed 'perpetual and irrevocable'. The Huguenots will seek to break free from their chains, he predicted in his Reflections on the cruel persecution which the Reformed Church of France suffers (1685). That said, he described the preaching in forbidden places (les Églises du désert) as impatient and imprudent. For Jurieu, the year 1685 carried the greatest danger for Protestantism than any year since the Reformation. William of Orange, however, was seen by him as the Joshua of Protestantism, and the successes of the allies in the War of the League of Augsburg as the fulfilment of scriptural pronouncements: the war was a religious war for Jurieu. Jurieu held to a traditional concept of popular sovereignty and contract theory; when the king sought to destroy the church and the true religion by persecution, then the people, in his view, were released from obedience.

Though the authorship has been contested, Jurieu's most famous single work was The Sighs of an enslaved France which aspires after liberty (Les soupirs de la France esclave qui aspire après la liberté, 1689). This presented the pro-Protestant argument through the voice of a moderate Catholic. The speaker depicted the oppression of all the orders of France under an allegedly despotic regime; analyzed how the French government sustained its absolute power; described the difference between the government in France and the ancient form of the French monarchy; and suggested ways in which the monarchy could be restored to its former position. The estates were the principal depositaries of sovereignty and were declared superior to the king.

6. Resistance to the Revocation: The revolt of the Camisards and its aftermath in Languedoc, 1702-10

Jurieu was, among other things, the apologist of the Camisard rebellion in Languedoc. The revolt was legitimate, Jurieu declared, because 'juist defence is always permitted by the law of nations'. Jurieu argued that the Allies should intervene in France's domestic troubles, and arouse as many disturbances as possible. There had been an apocalyptic strand to Jurieu's earlier writings in 1686: he had believed, or had seemed to believe, that the persecution in France would come to an end by 22 April 1689, with an end of Papistry by 1710-20. This prophecy was regarded by some of his Catholic critics as intended to encourage the French Calvinists to revolt. Apocalyptic visions and semi-hysterical convulsions were a feature of the Protestant resistance before the outbreak of the Camisard revolt in 1702. William of Orange was depicted as a Messiah, a liberator who would arrive with an army of 100,000 men to liberate the oppressed Huguenots. These unarmed 'fanatics', as they were termed, simply turned on the troops when their prayer meetings and prophesyings were surprised; as a result 300 were left killed at the Assembly of Le Serre de la Salle (19 February 1689). The Camisard rebellion was in part a rebellion of the 'inspired ones' (inspirés), as they were termed by their supporters, or 'fanatics' as they were called by their opponents.

The meaning of the term 'Camisard' for the rebellion which broke out in the Cévennes mountains in Languedoc in 1702 is uncertain. It may be derived from the camisa, the shirt worn by the rebels in distinction to the uniform of the regular troops; or it may refer to the camisade, a night attack by the rebels in what became a sustained guerilla war. This commenced on 24 July 1702, with an assassination of the abbé du Chaila, the inspector of missions and a renowned persecutor of Protestants, and its main phase of operations ended in October 1704. Some of the feats of arms of the rebellion were amazing: Jean Cavalier and 60 Camisards defeated 700 regular troops near Alès in December 1702. Negotiations with Marshal Villars, the royalist commander, in May 1704 succeeded in splitting the Camisard rebellion and Cavalier went into exile first in the Swiss Confederation and ultimately Jersey, where he died in 1740. From this splitting of the movement, Villars gained the reputation of 'the pacifier of the Cévennes. The distinguishing features of the revolt were its popular character (very few nobles and members of the bourgeoisie participated), with an emphasis on artisans, carders, wool combers and weavers: the revolt was one of the proto-industrial classes. The second distinguishing feature of the rebellion was its prophetic zeal and sense of mission and direct inspiration from God. In his self-justificatory memoirs, Jean Cavalier denied the prophetic and millenarian zeal of the Camisard rebels, and thus one of their distinguishing characteristics. But one only has to read the correspondence of Basville, the intendant throughout the years of the revolt, to know that they remained 'fanatics' in his view. It was only in the later stages of Camisard resistance, between 1705 and 1710, that the Allies sought to intervene and to associate Catholics in an anti-fiscal rebellion with foreign assistance. In reality, the government had anticipated the danger posed by an Anglo-Dutch attack on the Languedoc ports in sending Villars, already an experienced general - he was the future victor at Denain over Eugene (24 July 1712) - to contain the revolt in 1704.

7. The economic consequences of the Revocation of the edict of Nantes

Perhaps 200,000 Huguenots sought exile or 'refuge' abroad in the years before 1730 rather than endure the regime of the revocation. The four years 1685-9 saw the great bulk of this exodus, some 140,000 or 160,000 Huguenots seeking exile abroad in these years. The consequences of this migration, comparable in some ways to that of the exile of the Moriscos from Spain in 1609, has long attracted attention. The provincial intendants commented on its effects in 1697, when the drew up memoranda for the 'instruction' of the duke of Burgundy: thus, the intendant of Orléans, Jubert de Bouville, alluded to the two great demographic issues, the subsistence crisis of 1693 and the Huguenot emigration after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. A fall of a fifth in the overall population level was his estimate of the effect of the subsistence crisis; while the Protestant population was estimated as having declined by two-thirds. Ferrand, the intendant of Burgundy, noted in his memorandum that in thepays de Gex, some 888 Huguenot families out of a total of 1,370 had left because of the proximity of the territory to Geneva. Thus the extent of the emigration depended in part on the capacity of the Huguenots to escape: the frontier provinces saw a more widespread exodus than the interior ones. In Picardy and Normandy, Protestantism virtually ceased to exist as a result of the exodus, while in other areas such as the Cévennes in Languedoc and Béarn, Protestantism retained a significant presence.

The economic effects of the revocation are particularly difficult to assess, for a number of reasons. The first is that much depended on the type of emigrant. It used to be assumed that there was a disproportionate number of artisans among the emigrants, who took their skills abroad and placed them at the service of the economic rivals of France. This is undoubtedly of considerable importance, but the number of rural emigrants was also high. What proportion of the emigrants was male? Were families broken up by the exodus? Were there differences in the extent of family, as against individual, migration according to region? We need much more evidence before the social consequences of the revocation can be clearly perceived.

Overall, less than 1 per cent of the population emigrated abroad. This suggests that whatever the differential effects on certain trades and activities - a theme well studied by Warren C. Scoville in his study on The Persecution of the Huguenots and French Economic Development, 1680-1720 (1960) - the economic effects in France itself were likely to be small. There was no inherent reason why Catholics could not take the place of Protestants, and there is evidence to suggest they did, for example in rugmaking at Abbeville; on the other hand, the skilled Dutch Protestant craftsmen brought in by Colbert emigrated to a man. Sometimes, the process of emigration could create for the Protestants who remained in France a network of communications abroad which assisted their trade: this seems the case with the Montauban Huguenots, whose commercial relations extended to the Dutch ports, England and Germany. It was also true of those Protestant bankers and financiers who remained behind in France, most notably Samuel Bernard. Bernard (1651-1739) abjured his Protestantism on 17 December 1685, and eventually became the main court banker, responsible for 200 million livres in bills of exchange for the payment of the French armies abroad between 1700 and 1714. The Huguenot network of bankers abroad remained of considerable assistance to Samuel Bernard during the period of his financial ascendancy, while he was the 'banker of the Protestants' in exile. Some of the Huguenot bankers in exile achieved astonishing pre-eminence, witness the careers of two of them who became founding directors of the Bank of England. In order to assess the significance of the Huguenot banking exodus, however, we need not merely to look at French nationals abroad, but at Genevans. Many of the Genevan bankers were French-born Huguenots, and Geneva took full economic advantage of its neutrality during the War of the Spanish Succession. There is no doubt at all that Huguenots and Genevans were primary investors in English stocks in the early eighteenth century. The number of Protestant bankers at Paris in the later eighteenth century remained totally disproportionate to the number of Protestants within the population as a whole.

8. Conclusion: The personality of the king as a factor in the persecution of the Huguenots

When we consider the motivation of Louis XIV in revoking the edict of Nantes we must inevitably take into account the personalities who were closest to him. Firstly, we need to consider the influence of Madame de Maintenon, his second wife by a secret marriage which took place on 9 October 1683, just over two months after the death of Maria Theresa. The marriage was morganatic, that is to say, it was provided that neither the wife nor any children (she was in any case too old to have any) would share the dignities or inherit the possessions of the husband. Madame de Maintenon (Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon, 1635-1719), who had been the king's mistress since 1674, was born a Protestant, the granddaughter of the Protestant poet Agrippa d'Aubigné; but she seems to have little concern for her former co-religionists, even going so far in September 1681 as to advise her brother to buy up lands in Poitou, because they were available cheaply as a result of the 'desolation of the Huguenots'. Basville, the intendant of Languedoc, was a protégé of Madame de Maintenon, and though we do not find her acting in public as an open advocate of the revocation in 1685, she was certainly against a moderation of the policy in 1697. Although she was heavily involved in the Jansenist and Quietist controversies, her Huguenot origins made it unlikely that she was involved in the decision taken by the king to revoke the edict of Nantes. The king is alleged to have said to her in 1681 that her words 'saddened him' and that he feared that there remained 'some inclination for (her) former religion'. Madame de Maintenon certainly criticized Louvois's strong-arm methods for dealing with the Protestants: this was no way to win the battle for hearts and minds.

Nor was the king's Jesuit confessor, the père François de La Chaize (1624-1709), a decisive influence. Between 1675 and the end of 1686, La Chaize and Harlay de Champvallon, the archbishop of Paris, met the king every Friday in a so-called 'council of conscience' (conseil de conscience); from 1686 until his death, La Chaize met the king on his own to deal with religious matters. But it is doubtful whether La Chaize exercised an influence on high politics; Jesuit confessors were inherently controversial figures and to survive they had to tread warily. The primary influence on Louis XIV seems to have been the Chancellor, Michel Le Tellier, who died just ten days after signing the edict of Fontainebleau. Le Tellier's hand may be seen behind the increasingly oppressive legislation against the Huguenots dating from the period of his Chancellorship (1677-85). Leadership by laypeople in religious affairs, rather any than leadership from ecclesiastics, seems to have determined the fate of the Huguenots. The secretary of state in charge of Protestant affairs, Phélypeaux de Châteauneuf, seems to have played a relatively minor role in comparison with Le Tellier. Harlay de Champvallon, the archbishop of Paris, was hardly consulted. Above all, the king determined the outcome: he presided in person and summoned his son, Louis, known as Monseigneur, to the council on Protestant affairs on 8 October 1685. We have the evidence of Monseigneur the duke of Burgundy (1661-1711) that, when he emphasised the political and economic dangers of the policy of revocation the king replied: 'he had taken all this into account long ago... and that questions of temporal interest were of little account beside the advantages of a measure that would restore the splendour of religion, bring peace to the Church and recover authority that the state had lost.' In the first half of the personal rule, Louis XIV had 'interpreted' the edict of Nantes without actually abolishing it. The way in which it had been interpreted was so restrictive meant that by 1685 there was no longer any reason to maintain it.

History

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