Briefly, the French nation looked with contempt on the left-handed marriage contracted by the king. Madame de Maintenon, less a bigot than an assumed one, hypocritical, ambitious, wrapped about in a veil of piety, ruled Louis to the disaster of the country. She was calmly, ruthlessly cruel in her methods of fostering the natural passion of Louis for getting all under his own control. Not content with the grasp of government which Richelieu had bequeathed to him, and he had retained with iron hand, he only too readily allowed himself to be urged to acquire the grip of the consciences of his subjects. The Edict of Nantes, established by the other great king, which had brought peace to the distracted land, and permitted the Protestants freedom of worship after their own simple forms, was revoked, religious intolerance was once more rampant, and to such a degree, that a few months later, a second edict deprived the Huguenots of keeping their children. The quick death of the night of St Bartholomew only took on now the guise of slow torture, prolonged into years, which witnessed the departure of an industrious community, and sowed the dragon’s teeth of revolution, which in less than another hundred years was to ripen into such fearful harvesting. Discontent prevailed, deep hatred rankled against the despotism of Versailles. The faults of Louis, glaring as they had ever been, had hitherto been toned in the eyes of his people by the brilliancy and glory of martial successes, and of great achievement in civil government; but victory was no longer constant, and the Thirty Years’ War had exhausted the public funds.