Louis XIV: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685)
Under the pretense that no Protestants remained in France, in 1685 King Louis XIV issued his Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had preserved a tentative peace between the nation's Catholic majority and Huguenot minority and had guaranteed Huguenots the right to worship without the interference of Catholics since 1598. The revocation came as the culmination of the king's twenty-five-year program to eradicate French Calvinists through policies of ecclesiastical, financial, and personal harassment. In 1660, Louis had commissioned his advisers to interpret the Edict of Nantes in the narrowest possible sense. This “strict application” of the edict brought the destruction of every Reformed temple built before 1598 or within walking distance of a cathedral. Afterward, Louis attempted to bribe Huguenots into Catholicism through a “conversion fund.” To towns that refused to forsake the Calvinist faith, Louis sent the dragoons (royal shock troops) and threatened to integrate...
