crease in the emigration from all parts of France
immediately after the Act of Revocation had been proclaimed.[11] All
the roads leading to the frontier or the sea-coast streamed with
fugitives. They went in various forms and guises--sometimes in bodies
of armed men, at other times in solitary parties, travelling at night
and sleeping in the woods by day. They went as beggars, travelling
merchants, sellers of beads and chaplets, gipsies, soldiers,
shepherds, women with their faces dyed and sometimes dressed in men's
clothes, and in all manner of disguises.

[Footnote 11: It is believed that 400,000 emigrants left
France through religious persecution during the twenty years
previous to the Revocation, and that 600,000 escaped during
the twenty years after that event. M. Charles Coquerel
estimates the number of Protestants in France at that time to
have been two millions of _men_ ("Eglises du Desert," i. 497)
The number of Protestant pastors was about one thousand--of
whom six hundred went into exile, one hundred were executed
or sent to the galleys, and the rest are supposed to have
accepted pensions as "new converts."]

To prevent this extensive emigration, more violent measures were
adopted. Every road out of France was posted with guards. The towns,
highways, bridges, and ferries, were all watched; and heavy rewards
were promised to those who would stop and bring back the fugitives.
Many were taken, loaded with irons, and dispatched by the most public
roads through France--as a sight to be seen by other Protestants--to
the galleys at Marseilles, Brest, and other ports. As they went along
they were subject to every sort of indignity in the towns and villages
through which they passed. They were hooted, stoned, spit upon, and
loaded with insult.

Many others went by sea, in French as well as in foreign ships. Though
the sailors of France were prohibited the exercise of the reformed
religion, under the penalty of fines, corporal punishment, and seizure
of the vessels where the worship was allowed, yet many of the
emigrants contrived to get away by the help of French ship captains,
masters of sloops, fishing-boats, and coast pilots--who most probably
sympathized with the views of those who wished to fly their country
rather than become hypocrites and forswear their religion. A large
number of emigrants, who went hurriedly off to s