Louis XIV, being bent upon the subjection of the Huguenots, and knowing full well that violence alone could accomplish the matter only in part, cast about in his mind for a suitable person to undertake the milder rôle of persuasion. Fénelon had already attracted notice both by his good work at the community of New Catholics and also by the treatise which he had written in defense of the Apostolic Succession. So when Bossuet suggested him as a suitable commissioner for the districts of Poitou and Saintonge, in the West, not far from the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle, districts where great confusion and irritation prevailed, and where only a tender, judicious hand could hope to guide matters, the king very gladly made the appointment. Fénelon, before accepting it, made two stipulations. One was that he should be allowed to choose his fellow-workers. He selected the Abbé de Langeron, his lifelong friend, the Abbé Fleury, the well-known historian, the Abbé Bertier, and the Abbé Milon, who later on became respectively Bishops of Blois and of Condom. The other stipulation was that the troops, together with all that savored of military terrorism, should be withdrawn before he entered on what should be solely a work of peace and mercy. There had been terrible doings and violent outrages with which Fénelon could have no sympathy. There is no doubt whatever upon this point. His own words are abundantly on record. Although the country was so disturbed, he positively refused a military escort; and when the king represented the danger he might be exposed to, he answered: “Sire, ought a missionary to fear danger? If you hope for an apostolical harvest, we must go in the true character of apostles. I would rather perish by the hands of my mistaken brethren than see one of them exposed to the inevitable violence of the military.” In a letter to a duke he says, “The work of God is not effected in the heart by force; that is not the true spirit of the Gospel.”