The policy of Henry IV., of Richelieu, Mazarin, and even of Louis XIV. himself, was struck to the core. It was no longer possible to preserve the natural allies of France in Protestant Europe, when the world resounded with the piteous cries of the Reformed. All Protestantism rose against Louis XIV.: it found a leader in the prince of Orange, and the Parliamentary revolution of 1688 was the answer to the royal attempt of 1685. Less powerful abroad, the country was weakened within. Emigration, of which we shall speak in the next book, assumed immense proportions. The wise Vauban wrote, only a year after the Revocation, that “France had lost a hundred thousand inhabitants, sixty millions of money, nine thousand sailors, twelve thousand tried soldiers, six hundred officers, and its more flourishing manufactures.” The Duke de Saint-Simon says in his memoirs, that “commerce was ruined in every branch, and a quarter of the kingdom was sensibly depopulated.” From this moment (as all historians have remarked), the fortunes of Louis XIV. declined; and some years after, beaten at Blenheim, Ramilies, and Malplaquet, this king, so fortunate and so superb in the beginning of his reign, humbly sued to Europe for peace: and hard, indeed, were the conditions which he obtained at Utrecht.[96] Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, the kingdom bore the pain of this humiliation; and even down to our own times, at the Congress of Vienna. The prestige of royalty was deeply wounded by the same blow. If there still remained the appearance of submission and respect, the mind began to revolt against the omnipotence of the monarch. It was asked, whether nations ought to confide every right and every power to a single man, who might be governed by a female favourite, by a confessor, by a foolish or a senseless passion for personal glory. In England, and in Holland, popular liberty had vehement apologists. In France, the pious Fénélon took the initiative, and was followed by Massillon, Montesquieu, Rousseau, the Abbés Mablay and Raynal, the Protestant Necker, and Mirabeau. These men, although of such different origin, ideas, and objects, all belong to the same family. This was the political side of the question. In a social and moral point of view, the edicts promulgated from 1660 to 1685, the _dragonnades_, the Revocation, and the acts which were its inevitable consequence, attacked the very foundations, as it concerned two or three millions of Frenchmen, of the sacred and inviolable principles of all human society, religion, family, and property. The Socialists of modern times have never carried their theories to such an extent, as did Louis XIV., the Jesuits, the (Roman) Catholic priesthood, and the magistracy against the Reformed. Let every one of these, then, take their share of the responsibility.