HUGUENOT CRISIS
FLIGHT FROM FRANCE
The Edict of Nantes (revoked in 1685), which had granted considerable freedom of conscience and worship - and even some geographical independence - to the Huguenots in France, allowed them to flourish. Their numbers continued to swell. Every time there was some kind of attack on them it served only to attract more to convert to Protestantism. After all, the argument went, their religion must have something going for it that the Huguenots and Waldensians were prepared to suffer so much.
Generally, though, Louis XIV (1638-1715), like Richelieu, took the view that tolerance was more likely to see the end of Protestantism than persecution. He even publicly acknowledged that the Protestants had been right about the debauchery and excesses of the clergy in the previous century. Yet he remained acutely aware that the schism in his society over religion and the absolutism of the monarchy held the seeds of further social unrest. He could not continue to ignore the acceleration of petitions and formal complaints against the Huguenots.
The lawyers of the de Croisettes family were closely involved at the royal court in the years before their flight to London. They lived in Paris rather than in their Picardie homelands further north and west, in the areas around Clermont, Beauvais and Senlis. They, more than many, would have been aware of the shifts in attitude of the King, and of the groundswell of opinion at court against the Huguenots with pressure mounting for the final solution: the extirpation of Protestantism for ever from France.
Besides, these clean-living and loyal subjects, the pious Huguenots, were a constant reminder to the King of the aggravating presence of neighbouring Calvinist Holland. He became increasingly obsessed with the need to strike a blow against William of Orange. It rankled with him that Holland was in a key position to influence France's prosperity: they had the ships to carry the bulk of the world's trade. Their cloth was superior to that of the French and they acted punitively against any attempt to impose tariffs. They had the capacity as well to sail the seas and import goods to sell in Europe at any price they chose. So Louis went to war. The Rhine was easily crossed, there was no resistance from the run-down Dutch army, but William responded by opening the sluices to flood the land. Once the French went home, William of Orange set about repairing the damage and restoring Holland to its former strength. He also recruited a formidable coalition in Europe against Louis. While Louis basked in his sense of victory, France's position both internally and externally only continued to decline.
With enemies on all his borders, somewhere between 1679 and 1688 the King's religious beliefs took a turn towards deeper piety: his own religion was the only true one, and unity at home was now paramount. But it was no easy matter to reconcile and balance so many competing priorities, with France itself racked with internal conflict. Rebellions broke out across the land over increased taxation. The skirmishes with Dutch and Spanish armies over border territories continued, sapping France's strained resources. Moreover, Louis's relations with the head of the Catholic church were in tatters over his right to appoint bishops and his failure to act decisively over the Protestants. He felt assailed, and he needed to act. So he turned to home affairs. The running sore of the Huguenot dilemma was a problem within his own capabilities to resolve, and he could choose when and how to do so. The last straw came when the news broke that some pastors were doing a roaring trade in feigned conversions to Catholicism which brought relief from taxation. Good tax-paying Catholics would not tolerate footing this particular bill so Louis found his hand forced.
Until this point Huguenots had enjoyed a unique privilege: no other country in Europe tolerated the coexistence of two prominent national religions. But when the Edict of Fontainebleau was proclaimed not only were they prohibited from leaving the country, but they were fundamentally excluded from French society. Churches were abolished, assemblies forbidden - even among the nobility in their own homes - and all children were forced to attend mass. Protestants were expelled from Paris. This must have hit a family such as the de Croisettes very hard: they lost their jobs and their Paris base.
The picture across the land was in fact worse than this. Even though Protestants were supposed to be free to enjoy their property and continue their way of life so long as they did not meet together, there was a massacre of Waldensians in Savoy, burials were refused in daytime, fresh dragonnades (the punitive billeting of troops) were ordered, children were carried off, pastors hunted down. Six hundred people were executed for conducting 'assemblies'. For further detail click here.
There was a mass exodus involving almost a quarter of a million Protestants that would have looked familiar on contemporary television: flight under cover of darkness, safe houses, mule trains over the mountains, secret compartments in boats, whole families hidden beneath ship's cargoes, with all manner of ruses to evade capture. It was a huge migration representing a loss of economic life-blood from France of both wealth and skills. Almost half the Protestants of Picardie left the country, mostly workers in the cloth industry. They took their money and their industries, some setting up so rapidly in their new homes that there was scarcely a break in their ability to earn.
France's neighbouring Protestant states were deeply offended. By persecuting the Huguenots, Louis XIV had engineered the conditions for even worse problems ahead.