6.5. OUTLAWING PROTESTANTISM BRINGS CAPITALISTS TO HEEL

"ONE KING, ONE FAITH!" LOUIS FORBIDS PROTESTANTISM.*

MOST CATHOLICS' ACCLAIM THAT RULE

*He revokes the decree tolerating Protestantism that ended the civil wars (the Edict of Nantes) in 1594.

Dragonnade (detail) by Maurice Leloir in Le Roy Soleil by Gustave Toudouze, 1931

Although they pay double taxes, Protestants make most textiles, buttons, gold and silver lace, other luxuries, weapons and tools. They have become shipowners, exporters of Bordeaux wine, and owners of pre-modern production on which different establishments collaborate. They employ three-four million Catholics (imagine their feelings about working on saints' days).

-- Economic information, Blond, Les enragés de Dieu, p. 286.

Their dynamism threatens royal control of the economy.

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Penalties for being Protestant have increased since the start of the reign. Now Louis tells dragoons billeted in Protestant homes that they may do anything to their hosts except kill them, unless they convert.

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New missionary sent on the order of Louis the Great throughout the kingdom of France to bring the heretics back to the Catholic faith [illegible] 1686.

Europe's first exodus: If caught trying to leave, men are sent to the galleys and women imprisoned for life. In spite of the danger... 

"Nearly 50,000 families left the kingdom in the first three years and others followed. They took to foreign lands arts, manufactures, wealth. Almost all northern Germany, a land that was still agricultural and without industry, was transformed by those transplanted multitudes. They peopled whole towns. Cloth, insignia, hats, stockings, which one used to buy in France, were now made there. A whole suburb of London was peopled by French silk makers; others took the art of making crystal perfect, that then was lost in France. One still often finds in Germany the gold that the refugees spread. In that way France lost about 500,000 inhabitants, a prodigious amount of species, and especially arts that enriched the enemy. Hollande gained excellent officers and soldier. The prince of Orange and the Duke of Savoy had whole regiments of refugees. Some went as far as the Cape of Good Hope  [... ]. French were dispersed farther than Jews."

-- The Century of  Louis XIV by Voltaire, Fr. ed. 2015, pp. 612-613.

• In Reims, the number of looms is halved.

• Hat making moves to England and Holland.

• Over half the watchmaking moves to Switzerland.

• Previously busy ports decline.

• In Sedan, there are no skilled workers.

• In Lyons, 9,000 out of 12,000 silk weavers leave.

Les enragés de Dieu (reference above), 1970, p. 296.

• People with French names in Protestant countries are often those Protestants' descendants (as I am — Catherine Aubin, a name common in France).  

Protestants who convert keep their fortunes and are honored and rewarded. Each day the king receives hundreds of names. Sincerity is impossible. That doesn't matter. 

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At first glance the prohibition seems pointless — the religious wars are long past, and Protestants are fitting in:

Fathers send their sons to Jesuit schools, their daughters would rather marry a Catholic than stay single, moralists cannot keep girls from dressing up, boys from drinking and gambling with Catholics in taverns and youth generally from going to dances, the theater, participating in the Carnaval... .

As well, paying pastors' salaries and their trips to synods is expensive and some Protestants refuse.

-- Histoire des protestants de France, dir. Ph. Wolff, 2001, p.75.

The heroic times are over.

  

The edict is thought the aberration of an aging bigot isolated in Versailles. But if one translates "Protestants" by "nascent capitalists," eliminating them becomes a way to suppress an evolution that threatens the king's control of the economy and destabilizes the status quo.

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Destruction and authority coincide, as ever:

• The image of God is directly over the king's pew.

 Royal Chapel of Versailles by Antoine Coypel, 1689 / fb zoom

• Instead of being represented by light he is shown as a patriarch, like the king.

Saint Ignatius, founder of the Jesuit order, is received in Heaven, by Andrea Pozzo, 1691-94 / Video

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Like the Mauritanian nobles who raid producers for market

Louis means, "We only want to keep you in your little corner."  

Like Senufo who approve Nambolosse's "crimes" and Dahomeyans who cheer each time an executioner raises a head, most French people acclaim the forced conversions and terrible fates of Protestants captured in flight.

Kings protect their societies by violence when peaceful methods fail. Their subjects agree. 

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By dominating multinationals' skyscrapers, the Grande Arche de la Défense proclaims State control of capitalism. 

France still regulates business

 more than other capitalist countries do. 

Claude Abron

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Next,

 6.6. 

Detour:
A faith specific to France