which the king revokes that of Nantes; nothing can be more beautiful than its contents, and never did or will any king do anything more memorable.”  The noble libertine and freethinker replied to her, “I admire the steps taken by the king to reunite the Huguenots.  The war made upon them in former times and the St. Bartholomew gave vigor to this sect; his Majesty has sapped it little by little, and the edict he has just issued, supported by dragoons and Bourdaloues, has given it the finishing stroke.”  It was the honorable distinction of the French Protestants to proclaim during more than two centuries, by their courageous resistance, the rights and duties which were ignored all around them.

Whilst the reformers were undergoing conversion, exile, or death, war was recommencing in Europe, with more determination than ever on the part of the Protestant nations, indignant and disquieted as they were.  Louvois began to forget all about the obstinacy of the religionists, and prepared for the siege of Philipsburg and the capture of Manheim and Coblentz.  “The king has seen with pleasure,” he wrote to Marshal Boufflers, “that, after well burning Coblentz, and doing all the harm possible to the elector’s palace, you were to march back to Mayence.”  The haughtiness of the king and the violence of the minister went on increasing with the success of their arms; they treated the pope’s rights almost as lightly as those of the Protestants.  The pamphleteers of the day had reason to write, “It is clearly seen that the religion of the court of France is a pure matter of interest; the king does nothing but what is for that which he calls his glory and grandeur; Catholics and heretics, Holy Pontiff, church, and anything you please, are sacrificed to his great pride; everything must be reduced to powder beneath his feet; we in France are on the high road to putting the sacred rights of the Holy See on the same footing as the privileges granted to Calvinists; all ecclesiastical authority is annihilated.  Nobody knows anything of canons, popes, councils; everything is swallowed up in the authority of one man.”  “The king willeth it:”  France had no other law any longer; and William III. saved Europe from the same enslavement.

The Palatinate was in flames; Louvois was urging on the generals and armies everywhere, sending despatch after despatch, orders upon orders.  “I am a thousand times more impatient to finish this business than you can be,” was the spirited reply he received from M. de la Hoguette, who commanded in Italy, in the environs of Cuneo; “besides the reasons of duty which I have always before my eyes, I beg you to believe that the last letters I received from you were quite strong enough to prevent negligence of anything that must be done to prevent similar ones, and to deserve a little more confidence; but the most willing man can do nothing against roads encumbered with ice and snow.”  Louvois did not admit this excuse; he wanted soldiers to be able to cross