limbs of others with blows of sticks. Many had their lips burned with hot irons, and others were thrown into damp dungeons, with threats that they should be left there to rot." These atrocities brought about, as may be imagined, a vast number of conversions. Suspended for a while, in consequence of the moral effect of a bill passed by the English parliament, granting extraordinary privileges to French refugees, the dragonnades recommenced in 1684,-this time in Béarn, where the soldiery, incited by the fanatic intendant Foucault, committed even greater excesses than in Poitou. Amongst other tortures inflicted upon the unhappy Huguenots, were those called the Veillées. The soldiers mounted regular guards, relieving each other as if on sentry, for the sole purpose of depriving their victims of repose. They forced them to stand upright, and to keep their eyes open. Benoît, a writer of that day, details the revolting insults and cruel sufferings to which both men and women were subjected. Human nature could not endure such torments, and Foucault was able to report the conversion of the whole of Béarn. "I certainly believe," wrote Madame de Maintenon, "that those conversions are not all sincere. But God employs all manner of means to bring heretics back to him; the children at least will be Catholics, though their fathers be hypocrites." The "manner of means " referred to by this saintly prude and ex-Calvinist, are thus described by Benoît, as applied to persons of her own sex. The soldiers offered to the women indignities which decency will not suffer me to describe. The officers were no better than the soldiers. They spat in the women's faces; they made them lie down in their presence upon hot embers; they forced them to put their heads into ovens, whose vapour was hot enough to suffocate them. All their study was to devise torments which should be painful without being mortal." Such was the pastime of the chivalrous warriors of the most Christian and magnanimous of French kings.

Similar scenes were enacted in every province where Protestants dwelt. Louis XIV. daily received the joyful

intelligence of thousands of conversions. In September and October 1685, he was informed that six large and important towns, noted strongholds of the reformed religion, had definitively abjured their errors. The court then believed that Protestantism was annihilated in France, and the king, sharing in the general illusion, no longer hesitated to strike the last blow. On the 22d October he signed, at Fontainebleau, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Its merciful provisions may be summed up in few words: "The Protestant temples were all to be demolished, and the worship forbidden in private houses, under pain of confiscation. Ministers who refused to be converted were to quit the kingdom within a fortnight, or to be sent to the galleys. Protestant schools were to be closed; children were to be baptised by priests, and brought up in the religion of Rome. Four months were granted to refugees to return to France and abjure; that term expired, their property would be confiscated. Under pain of galleys and confiscation, Protestants were forbidden to quit the kingdom and carry their fortunes abroad. They were to remain, until it should please God to enlighten them." We have seen the gentle means by which the divine spirit was aided in such cases. Upon the same day that this insane edict was registered, the demolition of the great temple at Charenton, built by the celebrated architect, Jacques Debrosse, and capable of containing fourteen thousand persons, was commenced. In five days no trace of the structure remained. The church at Quevilly, near Rouen, was levelled by a fanatic mob, headed by the intendant of the province, and several other high officials, axe and hammer in hand. On its site was raised a cross, twenty feet high, adorned with the royal arms. In every respect the edict of revocation, and some severe supplementary ordinances that were soon after published, were enforced with the utmost rigour, and even with bad faith. Thus were clergymen refused passports (indispensable to their departure from France), in order that the fortnight granted them might elapse, and that they might be cast into prison.

prosperity at the cost of a fleeting evil. A great part of the nation partook of the delusion; and it may be said that, with the exception of Vauban, St Simon, and a small number of superior minds (amongst which must be reckoned Christina of Sweden), the nation was the accomplice, either by its acts or by its silence, of the great king's fault."

Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter how fine a thing was the edict of revocation, compared to which no king had ever done, or ever would do aught as memorable. The chancellor, Le Tellier, after affixing the seal of state to the document, declared that he would never seal any other, and pronounced those words of the canticle of Simeon which, in the mouth of the aged Hebrew, referred to the coming of the Lord. Bossuet, Massillon, Fléchier, the great preachers of that day, exulted in their pulpits, and lauded Louis to the skies. Rome was in raptures. A Te Deum was sung, and Innocent XI. sent a brief of thanks and praise to the French monarch. Medals were struck, statues raised;* and at Versailles may still be seen a masterpiece of Lesueur's, in which hideous forms fly at sight of the chalice. The allegory represents the defeat of Protestantism by Popery.

West, east, and north, fled the scattered Protestants-the bigoted south offered them no refuge. To Germany they went, to England and America, to Switzerland and Holland, even to Scandinavia. Their proceedings in each one of these countries, the succours they found, and the services they rendered, their influence upon arts and manufactures, their ultimate fate, the blending (in most instances) of their descendants with the natives, are recorded by Mr Weiss in separate books. The first of these is devoted to Brandenburg (Prussia), a country to which, owing to its then backward state of civilisation as compared with France, England, and Holland, the

immigration of a large body of cultivated Frenchmen, including military officers of rank and experience, men of learning, manufacturers, artisans, and trades of every kind, was an inestimable benefit. The Elector, Frederick William, who had been brought up at the French court of the Prince of Orange, felt this, and spared no pains to attract the refugees to his dominions. He was a Protestant; his wife was a granddaughter of Coligny; French was the language spoken at his court, where all the elevated posts were filled by men who had lived in Paris, and who habitually spoke and wrote in French. When he came to the throne in 1640, he found his country depopulated by war, agriculture neglected, trade and manufactures destroyed. His long reign was passed in healing the wounds inflicted on Brandenburg by the Thirty Years' War. He encouraged foreigners to settle in the country, where he granted them lands or aided them to establish themselves. On the 29th October 1685, exactly one week after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he published the Edict of Potsdam, by which he offered shelter and protection to the persecuted Protestants. His agents at Amsterdam and Hamburg, and in the various German states through which they might pass on their flight from France, were directed to care for their safety and supply them with means to travel. They acquired, by the mere act of settling in his dominions, all the civic rights of those born there, besides various privileges and immunities confined to themselves. He offered land to the agriculturist, facilities to the manufacturer, honours, rank, and military employment to nobles and men of the sword. His tempting proclamation was quickly disseminated in France; and although the intendants of the provinces used the most rigorous measures to suppress it, and affirmed it to be a forgery, the Pro

testants read it and knew it to be true, and soon a number of French colonies were formed in Brandenburg. Frederick William's country was poor; he had but two millions of subjects; his treasury was exhausted by a ruinous war; and he had great difficulty in raising the funds necessary for the establishment of the refugees, and for the support of those for whom employment could not at once be found. He emptied his privy purse. "I will sell my plate," he one day said, sooner than let them want." He was repaid for his generosity and sound policy. The difficulty was but temporary. The fugitives did not all come empty-handed. He received their money in deposit, allowed them interest, and applied the capital to the relief of the necessitous. Collections were made, and the French officers voluntarily abandoned a twentieth part of their pay for the relief of their suffering fellow exiles. To this fund the Duke of Schomberg subscribed the annual sum of 2000 livres, which was paid until his departure for England.

"The Electress, Louisa Henrietta, and the future queen, Sophia Charlotte, desired to have presented to them the women whom the rigours of persecution had driven from their country. With delicate attention, the court etiquette was modified in their favour, and they were admitted in black dresses-their best ornament the voluntary indigence they had preferred to apostasy."

Brandenburg received about 25,000 French refugees. Amongst these were 600 officers, whom the Elector admitted at once into his army, forming new companies and regiments to make room for them, and-with a degree of favour which can hardly have been very pleasing to the native officers giving them all a higher grade than that they had held in France. Thus captains became majors, colonels major-generals, &c., and

so on through all ranks. A great number of the Huguenots enlisted as private soldiers. Men and officers did good service, as soon as the opportunity was afforded them.

6

"The European war which broke out in 1689 was the bloody proof that attested their attachment to their adopted country. Frederick I. took part in it, as the ally of the Emperor, against the King of France, whom he had offended by assisting the Prince of Orange to upset James II. The army he assembled in Westphalia was composed in great part of French regiments. In the first campaign the refugees destroyed the opinion spread against them in Germany, that they would fight but feebly against their former fellowcitizens. At the combat of Neuss the grands mousquetaires* attacked the French troops with a fury that proved a long-cherished resentment, with which French writers have often reproached them. On seeing them gallop towards the enemy with the velocity of lightning, one of the Prussian generals exclaimed, We shall have those knaves fighting against us just now.' Count Dohna, who overheard these offensive words, compelled the general to draw pistol, and washed out, in his blood, this insult to the honour of the refugees." At the siege of Bonn the assault was given by the refugee regiments, who fought like fiends and took all the exterior works. Next morning the French garrison capitulated. In Flanders and in Italy the Franco-Prussians equally distinguished themselves, but were nearly exterminated, at the bloody battle of La Marsaille, by the bayonets of Catinat's army. Those that remained displayed their valour in the War of Succession, under the eyes of Marlborough and Eugene-at Blenheim and Õudenarde, at Malplaquet and Mons. Three regiments, composed entirely of refugees, performed such brilliant ex

ploits at Malplaquet, that, when the Prince-Royal of Prussia came to the throne, he selected from them the principal officers with which he reorganised his army.

Frederick William I., and Frederick the Great, did not show less sympathy than their father and grandfather had shown with the refugees and their descendants. Under the reign of the first-named sovereign, whom George II. was wont to call "my brother the corporal," and who passed his time in drilling his troops, reconnoitring gigantic grenadiers, and in drinking and smoking, the arts and sciences were little encouraged at the Prussian court, although Queen Sophia Dorothea did collect around her a number of learned and accomplished emigrants, some of whom were intrusted with the education of her son and daughter. But the refugees knew how to adapt themselves to circumstances. Frederick William gave new clothes to the whole of his army every year, and he had laid it down as a rule to have everything necessary for their equipment manufactured in his own kingdom. The French refugees founded a number of cloth manufactories, whose fame soon spread abroad-so much so, that in 1733, besides the home consumption, Prussia exported forty-four thousand pieces of cloth of twenty-four ells each. To favour this manufacture, which Prussia owed entirely to the refugees, the king forbade the export of wool, thus compelling his subjects to manufactare it themselves. Under Frederick the Great, Prussia became more French than ever. The refugees supplied generals, privy councillors, ambassadors; their language was substituted for Latin at the Berlin Aca demy, and was near becoming the national tongue. The French officers taken prisoners at the battle of Rosbach were greatly struck at meeting, in the country of their captivity, with a multitude of their countrymen, and at hearing their language almost generally used in all the provinces of the Prussian monarchy. Notwithstanding his scepticism, Frederick the Great never ceased warmly to sympathise with the religious, Godfearing French Protestants. He deemed himself happy, he said, in his

old age, to have lived long enough to celebrate with them, in 1785, the jubilee of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But the French were gradually blending with the native population and losing trace of their origin. "At the present day," Mr Weiss informs us, "the French colony at Berlin is still about six thousand strong, and, all proportion kept, their morality is purer than that of the rest of the population. The number of suicides, illegitimate births, and crimes of all kinds, is smaller. The rigid spirit of Calvin still animates the descendants of his expatriated sectaries." The old men alone continue to speak the French tongue. Intermarriages, and intercourse with Germans, have brought about its disuse amongst the younger descendants of the emigrants. Frederick the Great despised German literature, and a strong reaction occurred after his death.

The disaster of Jena, and the treaty of Tilsit, made everything French unpopular in Prussia-even the language. Many of the refugees had already translated their names into German-as some of their brethren translated theirs into English when the French Revolution and subsequent war made the very name of Frenchman odious in England. The Lacroix, Laforge, Dupré, Savage, had taken the names of Kreutz, Schmidt, Wiese, Wild.

To English readers-perhaps to any readers the most interesting section of Mr Weiss's work is the third book, "The Refugees in England." For more than a century previously to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, this country had supported the cause of the French Protestants, alternately by peaceable negotiation and by force of arms. In 1562, Elizabeth signed the Treaty of Hampton Court, by which she bound herself to furnish six thousand men to the Prince of Condé-half these troops to defend Dieppe and Rouen, the other half to garrison Havre, which was delivered over to the English. But Harry the Eighth's daughter, that staunch and stubborn Defender of the Faith, had to do with a fickle ally. The defeat of Dreux and the treaty of Amboise threw Condé into the ranks of the royal army, and he assisted to take