Thousands of emigrants perished of fatigue, cold, hunger, or shipwreck, and by the bullets of the soldiery. Thousands of others were captured, chained to murderers, dragged across the kingdom to inspire their brethren with greater fear, and were condemned to labour at the oar on board convict vessels. The galleys of Marseilles were filled with these unfortunates, among whom were ancient magistrates, officers, people of gentle blood, and old men. The women were crowded into the convents and the tower of Constance, at Aigues-Mortes. But neither threats, nor dangers, nor executions, could prevail against the energy and heroic perseverance of an oppressed conscience. The court became alarmed at the depopulation of the country and the ruin of industry. It thought that it was less a matter of faith that excited the French to flee from France, than the attraction of danger, and one day it therefore threw open all the outlets from the country. The next day, finding that the emigration had only multiplied, it closed them. Touched by so great and so noble a misfortune, foreign nations rivalled each other in the display of their sympathy for the refugees. England, Switzerland, Holland, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, generously met their first wants, and it never appeared more clearly, according to the remark of a contemporary, that the fountain of charity is inexhaustible. The more there was given, the more it seemed necessary to give. Private individuals contended with their governments in the distribution of relief. The fugitives were received with open arms: they were furnished with the means of work, with houses, and even churches; and they repaid this liberal hospitality by the example of their faith, a life of probity, and an industrious activity that enriched their adopted countries. “The French Protestants carried to England,” says Lemontey, “the secret and use of the valuable machinery which has been the foundation of her prodigious fortune, while the just complaint of these exiles cemented the avenging league of Augsburg.”[99] It is difficult to fix the number of the refugees precisely. The figures indicated by Vauban have been already noticed. An intendant of Saintonge wrote, in 1698, that his province had lost a hundred thousand Reformers. Languedoc had lost from forty to fifty thousand before the war of the Camisards,[100] and Guienne at least as many. The emigration was proportion ably greater still in the Lyonnese and Dauphiny, on account of their proximity to the frontiers. Whole villages were abandoned, and many towns were half deserted. Manufactories were closed by hundreds; certain branches of industry entirely disappeared, and a vast extent of land went altogether out of cultivation.