A considerable quantity of blonde was made at Meran, a village in the neighbourhood of Beauvoisin, but the commerce had fallen off at the end of the last century. These blondes go by the familiar name of "bisettes." ORLÉANOIS. Colbert's attempts at establishing a manufactory of point de France at Montargis appear by his letters to have been unsuccessful. BERRY. Nor were the reports from Bourges more encouraging. POITOU. Lace was made at Loudun, one of Colbert's foundations, in the seventeenth century, but the fabric has always been common. "Mignonettes et dentelles à poignet de chemises, et de prix de toutes espèces," from one sol six deniers the ell, to forty sols the piece of twelve ells. Children began lace-making at a very early age. "Loudun fournit quelques dentelles communes," says the Government Reporter of 1803.[686] [Illustration: Fig. 112. POINT DE BOURGOGNE.--Bobbin-made. _To face page 256._] {257}Peuchet speaks of lace manufactories at Perpignan, Aix, Cahors, Bordeaux,[687] etc., but they do not appear to have been of any importance, and no longer exist.[688] {258}CHAPTER XX. HOLLAND, GERMANY, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY. ---- HOLLAND. "A country that draws fifty feet of water, In which men live as in the hold of nature, And when the sea does in them break, And drowns a province, does but spring a leak."--_Hudibras._ We know little of the early fabrics of this country. The laces of Holland, though made to a great extent, were overshadowed by the richer products of their Flemish neighbours. "The Netherlanders," writes Fynes Moryson, who visited Holland in 1589, "wear very little lace,[689] and no embroidery. Their gowns are mostly black, without lace or gards, and their neck-ruffs of very fine linen." We read how, in 1667, France had become the rival of Holland in the trade with Spain, Portugal and Italy; but she laid such high duties on foreign merchandise, the Dutch themselves set up manufactures of lace and other articles, and found a market for their produce even in France.[690] A few years later, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes[691] caused 4,000 lace-makers to leave the town of Alençon alone. Many took refuge in Holland, where, says a writer of the day, "they were treated like artists." Holland gained more than she lost by Louis XIV. The French refugees founded a manufactory of that point lace called "dentelle a la Reine"[692] in the Orphan House at Amsterdam.[693] PLATE LXVI. [Illustration: WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE, FATHER OF WILLIAM III., 1627-1650. School of Van Dyck. The collar is edged with Dutch lace. National Portrait Gallery. Photo by Walker and Cockerell.] _To face page 258._ {259}A few years later, another Huguenot, Zacharie Châtelain,[694] introduced into Holland the industry, at that time so important, of making gold and silver lace.