ring of
soldiers in the houses of the Protestants. The soldiers knew what was
the object for which they were thus quartered. They lived freely in
all ways. They drank, swore, shouted, beat the heretics, insulted
their women, and subjected them to every imaginable outrage and
insult.

One of their methods of making converts was borrowed from the
persecutions of the Vaudois. It consisted in forcing the feet of the
intended converts into boots full of boiling grease, or they would
hang them up by the feet, sometimes forgetting to cut them down until
they were dead. They would also force them to drink water perpetually,
or make them sit under a slow dripping upon their heads until they
died of madness. Sometimes they placed burning coals in their hands,
or used an instrument of torture resembling that known in Scotland as
the thumbscrews.[14] Many of their attempts at conversion were
accompanied by details too hideous to be recorded.

[Footnote 14: Thumbscrews were used in the reign of James II.
Louis and James borrowed from each other the means of
converting heretics; but whether the origin of the thumbscrew
be French or Scotch is not known.]

Of those who would not be converted, the prisons were kept full. They
were kept there without the usual allowance of straw, and almost
without food. In winter they had no fire, and at night no lamp. Though
ill, they had no doctors. Besides the gaoler, their only visitors were
priests and monks, entreating them to make abjuration. Of course many
died in prison--feeble women, and aged and infirm men. In the society
of obscene criminals, with whom many were imprisoned, they prayed for
speedy deliverance by death, and death often came to their help.

More agreeable, but still more insulting, methods of conversion were
also attempted. Louis tried to bribe the pastors by offering them an
increase of annual pay beyond their former stipends. If there were a
Protestant judge or advocate, Louvois at once endeavoured to bribe him
over. For instance, there was a heretical syndic of Strasbourg, to
whom Louvois wrote, "Will you be converted? I will give you 6,000
livres of pension.--Will you not? I will dismiss you."

Of course many of the efforts made to convert the Huguenots proved
successful. The orders of the Prime Minister, the free quarters
afforded to the dragoons, the preachings and threatenings of the
clergy, all contributed to terrify the Protest