Two millions of people by the stroke of his pen, at the bidding of de Maintenon, were disfranchised; prohibited under severe penalties from any observance of their religion; their property confiscated, an attempt to flee from the country punished by the galleys.
The prisons were full of Protestants and the scaffolds dyed with their blood.

Two hundred thousand perished by imprisonment, by the galleys, and the executioner; while two hundred thousand more managed to escape to America and to the lands of the enemies of France, which they would enrich with their skill.
Not a word of protest came from a person in France.

Not even from Fenelon or Bossuet! Madame de Maintenon told him it was the "glorious climax of a glorious reign." Madame de Sevigne said it was "magnificent!" And Bossuet, greatest of French divines, exclaimed, "It is the miracle of the century!" France at one stroke was impoverished.

The skill, the trained hand, the element which was at the foundation of her excellence, and of that which was to constitute her future supremacy in the world, had gone to enrich her enemies.

And whether in Germany, in England, or America, no foreign people have had such glad welcome as was given to the Huguenots.
Then came the rebound in a form not expected.