Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) and the Huguenot Exodus

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October 1685 was the moment Louis XIV made Protestantism illegal in France. His Edict of Fontainebleau cancelled the toleration that Henry IV had granted the Huguenots in 1598, and it set off one of the largest religious migrations of early modern Europe, as an estimated 150,000–200,000 French Protestants fled to the Dutch Republic, England, Switzerland, Prussia and beyond.

Background: toleration under strain

French Protestants, known as Huguenots, followed the Reformed teaching of John Calvin. After decades of civil war, the French Wars of Religion, Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes in April 1598. It allowed Protestant worship in many places, gave Huguenots civil rights and let them keep dozens of fortified towns as security.

That settlement was always seen by the Catholic crown as temporary. After Cardinal Richelieu besieged La Rochelle in 1627–1628, the Peace of Alès (also spelled Alais) of 1629 removed the Huguenots’ military and political privileges but kept their right to worship. From then on they depended entirely on the goodwill of the king.

When Louis XIV began his personal rule in 1661, French Protestants numbered perhaps 700,000 to 900,000, around 4–5 per cent of the population. They were concentrated in the south and west, in regions such as Languedoc, the Cévennes, Poitou, Dauphiné and Béarn, and were well represented among merchants, artisans and professionals.

The squeeze of the 1660s–1680s

Louis XIV did not revoke the edict at once. Instead, royal officials began to apply it “à la rigueur”, meaning as narrowly as possible. Any right not spelled out in the 1598 text was denied. Hundreds of Protestant churches, called temples, were closed or pulled down on legal technicalities, and Protestants were gradually excluded from offices, guilds and professions such as law and medicine.

The crown also tried persuasion and money. A fund known as the Caisse des conversions, set up in 1676 and run by Paul Pellisson, paid small sums to Protestants who converted. A 1681 law allowed children to convert to Catholicism from the age of seven, which made it possible to take them from their parents.

The harshest tool was the dragonnade. In 1681 René de Marillac, the royal intendant (governor) of Poitou, billeted dragoons, mounted soldiers, in Protestant homes. The troops were permitted to eat the family’s food, damage property, deprive people of sleep and threaten violence until the household converted. Tens of thousands of “conversions” followed in a few months. The scandal led to Marillac’s recall, but in 1685 the method returned on a far larger scale in Béarn, Languedoc, Guyenne and elsewhere, with the backing of the war minister, the Marquis de Louvois.

The Edict of Fontainebleau

By the autumn of 1685, officials were sending Versailles reports of entire towns converting. On this basis the king’s council argued that the Edict of Nantes had become pointless. Louis XIV signed the Edict of Fontainebleau on 18 October 1685, and the Parlement of Paris registered it on 22 October. It was countersigned by the elderly chancellor Michel Le Tellier, Louvois’s father, who died a few days later.

The edict’s preamble claimed that “the better and greater part” of Protestants had embraced Catholicism. Its main provisions were:

• All remaining Protestant temples were to be demolished, and Protestant worship, public or in private houses, was forbidden.
• Protestant pastors had to convert or leave the kingdom within fifteen days.
• Children born to Protestant parents were to be baptised and brought up as Catholics.
• Ordinary Protestants were forbidden to leave France, on pain of the galleys for men and confiscation of property for women.

A final clause said that Protestants who had not yet converted could stay without being troubled for their faith until God enlightened them. In practice the dragonnades continued, and this apparent concession meant little.

The Huguenot exodus

Because emigration was banned, flight was dangerous. Refugees travelled at night, hid in carts and barrels, paid guides to lead them across the Alps and the Jura, or bribed ship captains on the Atlantic and Channel coasts. Those caught could be sent to row in the royal galleys or, if women, imprisoned in convents and fortresses. The Tour de Constance at Aigues-Mortes became a notorious prison for Protestant women in the following decades.

Historians usually put the number who escaped at 150,000–200,000, although figures as low as 140,000 and as high as 250,000 have been proposed. Emigration had already begun during the dragonnades of the early 1680s and continued, in waves, into the early eighteenth century.

The refugees settled across Protestant Europe:

• The Dutch Republic received perhaps 50,000–60,000, many of whom stayed in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Leiden. The philosopher Pierre Bayle and the polemicist Pierre Jurieu wrote from Rotterdam.
• England and Ireland took in an estimated 40,000–50,000. Weavers settled in Spitalfields in London, where they strengthened the silk industry, while others went to Soho, Canterbury, Norwich and Dublin. The English word “refugee”, from the French réfugié, came into common use at this time.
• Brandenburg-Prussia invited Huguenots with the Edict of Potsdam, issued by Frederick William, the “Great Elector”, on 29 October 1685 (8 November in the modern calendar). Some 20,000 settled in his lands; by about 1700 French settlers made up a large minority of Berlin’s population.
• Switzerland, especially Geneva, served as a main transit route, and many refugees stayed there or moved on to the German states.

Smaller groups crossed the oceans. A party of about 200 reached the Dutch Cape Colony in 1688, the origin of the Huguenot settlers at the Cape and of the Franschhoek wine region. Others went to South Carolina, New York, where New Rochelle was founded in 1688, Massachusetts and Virginia.

Resistance in France

Most Huguenots, perhaps three-quarters or more, stayed in France. Many became “nouveaux convertis” (new converts) who outwardly attended Mass but kept their faith at home. Others met secretly in the countryside for worship, in what became known as the Church of the Desert, a name taken from the Israelites’ time in the wilderness.

In the Cévennes mountains, persecution and the activity of lay preachers led to the Camisard revolt. It broke out in July 1702 after the killing of the abbé du Chaila, a priest who had imprisoned Protestants, and lasted until about 1704, with sporadic fighting later. Its leaders included Jean Cavalier and Roland (Pierre Laporte). Royal troops under marshals such as Montrevel and Villars suppressed it through a mix of force, village burnings and negotiation.

From 1715 the preacher Antoine Court began to rebuild an organised Reformed church in secret, holding synods and training pastors in Lausanne.

Consequences

At home, the revocation was popular with much of Catholic France at first. Leading churchmen such as Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet celebrated it, and many courtiers praised the king. Critics emerged later. In 1689 the military engineer Vauban wrote a memorandum urging the king to recall the Huguenots, and in the eighteenth century writers such as Voltaire held it up as an example of intolerance.

Abroad, the edict deeply damaged France’s reputation in Protestant countries. It came in the same year that the Catholic James II became king of England, and it fed English fears of “popery and arbitrary government” that helped bring about the overthrow of James in 1688. Many Huguenot officers served in William III’s armies, including in the Nine Years’ War against Louis XIV.

The economic effects are debated. Older accounts claimed the exodus ruined French industry; most historians now see the damage as real but limited to particular trades and regions, such as silk, paper, hat-making and some ports. The gains for host countries were more visible, in textiles, finance, printing, watchmaking and the professions.

Myths and facts

• Myth: all Huguenots left France. Fact: most stayed, either as nominal Catholics or as secret Protestants. Emigrants were probably a quarter or less of the community.
• Myth: the revocation destroyed the French economy. Fact: it harmed specific industries and regions, but France remained Europe’s largest economy and population. Wars and famine in the 1690s did far more damage.
• Myth: the edict came out of nowhere. Fact: it was the end point of more than twenty years of mounting restrictions, financial incentives for conversion and, from 1681, the dragonnades.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1598, April: Henry IV issues the Edict of Nantes.
• 1629, June: The Peace of Alès removes Huguenot military privileges but keeps freedom of worship.
• 1661: Louis XIV begins his personal rule; the edict starts to be applied as narrowly as possible.
• 1681: First dragonnades in Poitou under the intendant René de Marillac.
• 1685, summer: Dragonnades are extended across southern France, producing mass forced conversions.
• 1685, 18 October: Louis XIV signs the Edict of Fontainebleau; it is registered on 22 October.
• 1685, 29 October: The Edict of Potsdam invites Huguenot refugees to Brandenburg.
• 1702, July: The Camisard revolt begins in the Cévennes.
• 1787, November: The Edict of Versailles restores civil status to French Protestants.

Why it matters

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes showed how far an absolute monarch would go to impose religious uniformity, and how high the human cost could be. It scattered a skilled minority across Europe, Africa and North America, strengthened France’s Protestant rivals and became a lasting reference point in debates about tolerance and the rights of religious minorities, a part of the wider story of Louis XIV’s personal rule.