In the year 1598, King Henry IV., feeling the need of the support of the Protestants to protect his kingdom from the perils by which it was surrounded, and having himself been educated a Protestant, had granted to the Protestants the world-renowned edict of Nantes. By this edict, Protestants were allowed liberty of conscience; were permitted, in certain designated places, to hold public worship; were declared to be eligible to offices of state, and in certain places, were allowed to publish books. Louis XIV. was a Catholic, a bigoted Catholic; hoping in some measure to atone for his sins, by his supreme devotion to the interests of the church, and while assuring the Protestant powers of Europe that he would continue to respect the edict of Nantes, he commenced issuing a series of ordinances in direct opposition to that contract. In 1680 he excluded Protestants from all public offices, whatsoever. A Protestant could not be employed as a physician, lawyer, apothecary, bookseller, printer, or even as a nurse. [Illustration: REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.] In some parts of the kingdom, the Protestants composed nearly the entire population. Here it was impossible to enforce the atrocious decree. Riots and bloodshed followed. Affairs went from bad to worse, and on the 18th of October, 1685, the king, yielding to the wishes of his confessor and other high dignitaries of the Church, signed the _Revocation of the Edict of Nantes_. In this act of revocation, it was declared that, “the exercise of the Protestant worship should nowhere be tolerated in the realm of France. All Protestant pastors were ordered to leave the kingdom within fifteen days, under pain of being sent to the galleys. Parents were forbidden to instruct their children in the Protestant religion. Every child in the kingdom was to be baptized and educated by a Catholic priest. All Protestants who had left France, were ordered to return within four months, under penalty of confiscation of their possessions. Any Protestant man or woman who should attempt to emigrate, incurred the penalty of imprisonment for life.” This infamous ordinance caused an amount of misery which can never be gauged, and inflicted upon the prosperity of France the most terrible blow it had ever received. Only one year after the revocation, Marshal Vauban wrote, “France has lost one hundred thousand inhabitants, sixty millions of coined money, nine thousand sailors, twelve thousand disciplined soldiers, six hundred officers, and her most flourishing manufactures.” The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the great blot upon the reign of Louis XIV. From that hour the fortunes of the _Grand Monarque_ began manifestly to decline.