en two and
three millions. The edict of revocation was enforced with the utmost
severity. Many noble-hearted Catholics sympathized with the
Protestants in their dreadful sufferings, and aided them to escape.
The tide of emigration flowed steadily from all the provinces. The
arrival of the pastors and their flocks upon foreign soil created an
indescribable sensation. From all the courts in Protestant Christendom
a cry of indignation rose against such cruelty. Though royal guards
were posted at the gates of the towns, on the bridges, at the fords
of the rivers, and upon all the by-ways which led to the frontiers,
and though many thousands were arrested, still many thousands escaped.
Some heroic bands fought their way to the frontiers with drawn swords.
Some obtained passports from kind-hearted Catholic governors. Some
bribed their guards. Some traveled by night, from cavern to cavern, in
the garb of merchants, pilgrims, venders of rosaries and chaplets,
servants, mendicants.

Thousands perished of cold, hunger, and exhaustion. Thousands were
shot by the soldiers. Thousands were seized and condemned to the
dungeon or the galleys. The galleys of Marseilles were crowded with
these victims of fanatical despotism. Among them were many of the most
illustrious men in France, magistrates, nobles, scholars of the
highest name and note.

The agitation and emigration were so immense that Louis XIV. became
alarmed. Protestant England, Switzerland, Holland, Prussia, Denmark,
Sweden, hospitably received the sufferers and contributed generously
to the supply of their wants. "Charity," it is said, "draws from an
exhaustless fountain. The more it gives the more it has to give."

It is now not possible to estimate the precise number who emigrated.
Voltaire says that nearly fifty thousand families left the kingdom,
and that they were followed by a great many others. One of the
Protestant pastors, Antoine Court, placed the number as high as eight
hundred thousand. A Catholic writer, inimical to the Protestants,
after carefully consulting the records, states the emigration at two
hundred and thirty thousand souls. Of these, 1580 were pastors, 2300
elders, and 15,000 nobles. It is also equally difficult to estimate
the numbers who perished in the attempt to escape. M. de Sismondi
thinks that as many died as emigrated. He places the number at between
three and four hundred thousand.

As we have mentioned, the Protestants were compelled to