nd's treacherous ruler, Charles II, who, to his
lasting shame, became a pensioner of the French King, agreeing, in
return for French subsidies, to second Louis' designs on Spain. France
herself was torn by wars of religion in 1698 when the Edict of Nantes
was revoked and the real intentions of the King were revealed to
subjects who had striven, in the face of persecution, to be loyal.

Louis XIV was under the influence of Madame de Maintenon, whom he
married privately after the death of his neglected Queen. This
favourite, once the royal governess and widow of the poet Scarron, was
strictly pious, and desired to see the Protestants conform. She
founded the convent of Saint-Cyr, a place of education for beautiful
young orphan girls, and placed at the head {134} of it Fenelon, the
priest and writer. She urged the King continually to suppress heresy
in his dominions, and was gratified by the sudden and deadly
persecution that took place as the seventeenth century closed.

Torture and death were excused as acts necessary for the establishment
of the true faith, and soon all France was hideous with scenes of
martyrdom. Children were dragged from their parents and placed in
Catholic households, where their treatment was most cruel unless they
promised to embrace the Catholic religion. Women suffered every kind
of indignity at the hands of the soldiers who were sent to live in the
houses and at the cost of heretics. These _Dragonnades_ were carried
on with great brutality, shameful carousals being held in homes once
distinguished for elegance and refinement. Nuns had instructions to
convert the novices under their rule by any means they liked to employ.
Some did not hesitate to obtain followers of the Catholic Church by the
use of the scourge, and fasting and imprisonment in noisome dungeons.

There was fierce resistance in the country districts, and armed men
sprang up to defend their homes, welcoming even civil war if by that
means they could attain protection. The contest was unequal, for the
peasants had been weakened by centuries of oppression, and there were
strange seignorial rights which the weak dared not refuse when they
were opposing the government in their obstinate choice of a religion.

The reign of the Grand Monarch was losing radiance, though Louis was
far from acknowledging that all was not well in that broad realm which
owned him master. He had discarded the frivolities of his youth and
kept a dr