A narrow bigot in matters of religion and completely under the influence of fanatics, Madame de Maintenon persuaded Louis that a crusade against heresy would be a fitting atonement for his past sins. In 1681 she writes, "The king is seriously thinking of his salvation and of that of his subjects, and if God spares him to us there will soon be but one religion in his kingdom." Colbert, who had always stood by the Protestants, died (1683) in disfavour, protesting that if he had done for God what he had done for the king, he would have been saved ten times over. At first political pressure and money were tried; a renegade Protestant was given control of a "conversion fund," and six livres were paid for each convert. Children were seduced from their parents; brutal dragoons were quartered on Protestant families, and as a result many of the wretched people submitted. "Every post," wrote Madame de Maintenon, "brings tidings which fill the king with joy; conversions take place daily by thousands." Thousands too, proved stubborn, and on 22nd October 1685, the first blow was struck. By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes the charter of Protestant liberties was destroyed, and those who had given five out of ten marshals to France, including the great Turenne, were denied the right of civil existence. Whole cities were depopulated; tens of thousands (for the Huguenots had long ceased to exist as a political force) of law-abiding citizens expatriated themselves and carried their industries to enrich foreign lands.[137] Many pastors were martyred, and drummers were stationed at the foot of the scaffold to drown their exhortations to the spectators. Let us not say persecution is ineffective; Duruy estimates the Calvinist population of France before the revocation of the Edict at 1,000,000: in 1870 at 15,000 to 18,000. On the whole, the measure was approved by the nation; Racine, La Fontaine, the great Jansenist Arnault, as well as Bossuet and Massillon, applauded. The king was hailed a second Constantine, and believed he had revived the times of the apostles. But the consequences to France were far-reaching and disastrous. In less than two months the Catholic James II. of England was a discrowned fugitive, and the Calvinist William of Orange, the inveterate enemy of France, sat in his place; England's pensioned neutrality was turned to bitter hostility, and every Protestant power in Europe stirred to fierce resentment. Seven years of war followed, which exhausted the immense resources of France; seven years,[138] rich in glory perhaps, but lean years indeed to the dumb millions who paid the cost in blood and money. "Nearly the tenth part of the nation," writes Vauban, after the Peace of Ryswick, "is reduced to beggary; of the nine other parts, five are little removed from the same condition; three-tenths are very straitened; the remaining tenth counts no more than a hundred thousand, of which not ten thousand