Louis Xiv
Why did King Louis XIV persecute the Huguenots?
I know they were Protestant but why did only King Louis XIV persecute them and not other previous kings?
First off, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which took place between 24 August and 3 October 1579, resulted in the deaths of at least 3,000 Huguenots, so Louis XIV wasn’t the first French king to persecute French Protestants–he merely renewed the process. Ministers Mazarin and Richelieu had earlier protected the Huguenots’ religious liberties as long as they remained politically obedient.
But Louis, who was perpetually short of funds, took grants from the Roman Catholic Church on the condition that he accepted their anti-Protestant views. Originally, he sought to re-convert French Protestants, imposing severe penalties upon them and closing Protestant schools. Eventually, however, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes and declared Protestantism in France to be illegal. Upon their forced conversion at gunpoint, the majority of Huguenots abandoned their homes and fled France.
Huguenots included members of the French nobility as well as many middle class merchants and skilled workers, so they were an influential group of subjects. Since these followers of John Calvin linked salvation with a personal faith without the intercession of the Roman Catholic Church, they came into direct conflict with the Roman Catholic hierarchy at a time when the French government as personified by the king was a theocratic system.
France was severely damaged by the immigration of ten percent of its urban, well-educated population. Huguenots fled to Britain and German as well as North American. Notable descendants of Huguenots in the United States include Paul Revere and the du Pont family while prominent descendants of French Calvinists in the United Kingdom include Harriet Martineau and John Everett Milais.
My paternal great grandmother, Andora Kessee, was a direct descendant of Jacques La Cage, who was part of the Huguenot settlement in Manakin, Virginia.
Louis XIV (1638-1715)