The Revocation

The edict signed at Fontainebleau on 22 October 1685 runs to twelve articles and it is written as though the problem had already solved itself. Its preamble states that the better and greater part of the king's subjects of the so called reformed religion have embraced the Catholic faith, so that the execution of the Edict of Nantes has become useless. On that footing it revokes the edict and the articles granted under it, entirely and without exception.

What follows is a programme. Every temple is to be demolished immediately. Assemblies for worship are forbidden anywhere in the kingdom, including in private houses and on the estates of nobles. Ministers who will not convert must leave within fifteen days, and those who do convert receive a pension and exemption from certain duties. Protestant schools are closed. Children born to Protestants are to be baptised by the parish priest and brought up Catholic. And the article that gives the rest its character: ordinary Protestants are forbidden to leave the kingdom or send out their property, on pain of the galleys for men and confiscation and imprisonment for women.

The last provision reveals the intention. The state did not want the Huguenots gone. It wanted them converted and it wanted their skills, their trade and their capital to stay. The dragonnades, the billeting of soldiers in Protestant households with licence to make life intolerable, had been running since 1681 and were the instrument that produced the conversion figures the preamble cites.