They had been despoiled of all their goods by the persecutions which had driven them into exile.

This, indeed, had been one of the favorite modes by which this result had been effected.

Doubtless, also, it had been, among the subordinates of the crown, one of the chief motives of the persecution.
It was a frequent promise of his Jesuit advisers, to the vain and bigoted Louis, that the heretics should be brought into the fold of the Church without a drop of bloodshed; and, until the formal revocation of the edict of Nantz, by which the Huguenots were put without the pale and protection of the laws, spoliation was one of the means, with others, by which to avoid this necessity.

These alternatives, however, were of a kind not greatly to lessen the cruelties of the persecutor or the sufferings of the victim.

It does not fall within our province to detail them.