The council could not yet proceed to extremities, [and] refused [to do so]. But in the following year it passed a most comprehensive act, by sanctioning, under the form of a general law, all the decrees that had been made upon particular cases by the courts of justice. The preamble stated that this law had been accorded on the demand of the assembly of the clergy. It comprised fifty-nine articles, which all tended to restrict the liberties that the Edict of Nantes had declared perpetual and irrevocable. The first emigration dates from this epoch. The Reformed hoped no longer to meet with either justice or repose in their native land, and preferred the sufferings of exile to those of persecution. The Protestant powers of Europe began to be moved. The elector of Brandenburg, one of the most faithful and useful allies of Louis XIV., wrote to him in favour of the Reformed. The king replied that he permitted them to live on an equality with his other subjects. “I am bound to do so,” said he, “by my royal word, and by the gratitude I feel for the proofs they have given of their fidelity during the late disturbances (of the Fronde), in which they bore arms in my service.” These were but diplomatic phrases, that deceived no one. England and Sweden, whose neutrality was necessary to Louis XIV. after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, expressed also their solicitude for the fate of the Reformed of France. Emigration continued; and all these circumstances induced the council to publish, in 1669, a kind of retractation of the preceding decrees. Nine articles of the declaration of 1666 were suppressed and twenty-one softened. Although this was but half-justice, the poor oppressed people esteemed themselves fortunate [in obtaining it]. Shortly afterwards the celebrated edict was published, which prohibited the king’s subjects, under pain of confiscation of liberty and property, from going to establish themselves in foreign countries without express permission, and particularly from taking service in the quality of ship-builders or sailors. This law struck all Frenchmen in their ancient liberties; but it was enforced only against those who emigrated on account of their religion. The Marshal de Turenne had just abjured (1669). This conversion had all the importance of a general act. Turenne had resisted the invitations of Mazarin and Louis XIV., and had not even been dazzled by the offer of the constable’s sword. He changed all at once, when no one any longer expected it, and why, has never been made known.