ea in little boats,
must have been drowned, as they were never afterwards heard of.

There were also many English ships that appeared off the coast to take
the flying Huguenots away by night. They also escaped in foreign ships
taking in their cargoes in the western harbours. They got cooped up in
casks or wine barraques, with holes for breathing places; others
contrived to get surreptitiously into the hold, and stowed themselves
away among the goods. When it became known to the Government that many
Protestants were escaping in this way, provision was made to meet the
case; and a Royal Order was issued that, before any ship was allowed
to set sail for a foreign port, the hold should be fumigated with
deadly gas, so that any hidden Huguenot who could not otherwise be
detected, might thus be suffocated![12]

[Footnote 12: We refer to "The Huguenots: their Settlements,
Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland," where a
great many incidents are given relative to the escape of
refugees by land and sea, which need not here be repeated.]

In the meantime, however, numerous efforts were being made to convert
the Huguenots. The King, his ministers, the dragoons, the bishops, and
clergy used all due diligence. "Everybody is now missionary," said the
fascinating Madame de Sevigne; "each has his mission--above all the
magistrates and governors of provinces, _helped by the dragoons_. It
is the grandest and finest thing that has ever been imagined and
executed."[13]

[Footnote 13: Letter to the President de Moulceau, November
24th, 1685.]

The conversions effected by the dragoons were much more sudden than
those effected by the priests. Sometimes a hundred or more persons
were converted by a single troop within an hour. In this way Murillac
converted thousands of persons in a week. The regiment of Ashfeld
converted the whole province of Poitou in a month.

De Noailles was very successful in his conversions. He converted
Nismes in twenty-four hours; the day after he converted Montpellier;
and he promised in a few weeks to deliver all Lower Languedoc from the
leprosy of heresy. In one of his dispatches soon after the Revocation,
he boasted that he had converted 350 nobility and gentry, 54
ministers, and 25,000 individuals of various classes.

The quickness of the conversions effected by the dragoons is easily to
be accounted for. The principal cause was the free quarte