CATION.

The Revocation struck with civil death the entire Protestant
population of France. All the liberty of conscience which they had
enjoyed under the Edict of Nantes, was swept away by the act of the
King. They were deprived of every right and privilege; their social
life was destroyed; their callings were proscribed; their property was
liable to be confiscated at any moment; and they were subjected to
mean, detestable, and outrageous cruelties.

From the day of the Revocation, the relation of Louis XIV. to his
Huguenot subjects was that of the Tyrant and his Victims. The only
resource which remained to the latter was that of flying from their
native country; and an immense number of persons took the opportunity
of escaping from France.

The Edict of Revocation proclaimed that the Huguenot subjects of
France must thenceforward be of "the King's religion;" and the order
was promulgated throughout the kingdom. The Prime Minister, Louvois,
wrote to the provincial governors, "His Majesty desires that the
severest rigour shall be shown to those who will not conform to His
Religion, and those who seek the foolish glory of wishing to be the
last, must be pushed to the utmost extremity."

The Huguenots were forbidden, under the penalty of death, to worship
publicly after their own religious forms. They were also forbidden,
under the penalty of being sent to the galleys for life, to worship
privately in their own homes. If they were overheard singing their
favourite psalms, they were liable to fine, imprisonment, or the
galleys. They were compelled to hang out flags from their houses on
the days of Catholic processions; but they were forbidden, under a
heavy penalty, to look out of their windows when the Corpus Domini was
borne along the streets.

The Huguenots were rigidly forbidden to instruct their children in
their own faith. They were commanded to send them to the priest to be
baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, under the penalty
of five hundred livres fine in each case. The boys were educated in
Jesuit schools, the girls in nunneries, the parents being compelled to
pay the required expenses; and where the parents were too poor to pay,
the children were at once transferred to the general hospitals. A
decree of the King, published in December, 1685, ordered that every
child of _five years_ and upwards was to be taken possession of by the
authorities, and removed from its Protestant parents. This