roperty and goods of all those
Protestants who had already escaped should be confiscated to the
Crown, unless they returned within three months from the date of the
Revocation. Then, with respect to the Protestants who remained in
France, he decreed that all French_men_ found attempting to escape
were to be sent to the galleys for life; and that all French_women_
found attempting to escape were to be imprisoned for life. The spies
who denounced the fugitive Protestants were rewarded by the
apportionment of half their goods.

This decree was not, however, considered sufficiently severe, and it
was shortly after followed by another, proclaiming that any captured
fugitives, as well as any person found acting as their guide, should
be condemned to death. Another royal decree was issued respecting
those fugitives who attempted to escape by sea. It was to the effect,
that before any ship was allowed to set sail for a foreign port, the
hold should be fumigated with a deadly gas, so that any hidden
Huguenot who could not otherwise be detected, might be suffocated to
death.

These measures, however, did not seem to have the effect of
"converting" the French Protestants. The Dragonnades were next
resorted to. Louis XIV. was pleased to call the dragoons his Booted
Missionaries, _ses missionnaires bottes_. The dragonnades are said to
have been the invention of Michel de Marillac, whose name will
doubtless descend to infamous notoriety, like those of Catherine de
Medicis, the Guises, and the authors of the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew.

Yet there was not much genius displayed in the invention of the
Dragonnades. It merely consisted in this: whenever it was found that a
town abounded with Huguenots, the dragoons, hussars, and troops of
various kinds were poured into it, and quartered on the inhabitants.
Twenty, thirty, or forty were quartered together, according to the
size of the house. They occupied every room; they beat their drums and
blew their trumpets; they smoked, drank, and swore, without any regard
to the infirm, the sick, or the dying, until the inmates were
"converted."

The whole army of France was let loose upon the Huguenots. They had
been beaten out of Holland by the Dutch Calvinists; and they could now
fearlessly take their revenge out of their unarmed Huguenot
fellow-countrymen. Whenever they quartered themselves in a dwelling,
it was, for the time being, their own. They rummaged the cellars,
drank the wines,