The tone of the ministerial instructions changed quickly on the reception of despatches announcing the effect of the edict in the provinces. This effect teaches us more in regard to the situation of the dragooned people than could the most sinister narratives. The edict which proscribed the Reformed worship, which interdicted the perpetuation of the Protestant religion by tearing from it infants at their birth, was received as a boon by Protestants who remained faithful to their belief. They saw, in the last article of the edict, the end of persecution, and, proud of having weathered the storm, they claimed the tolerance that the King promised them, and the removal of their executioners. The new converts, who, persuaded that the King desired to force all his subjects to profess his religion, had yielded through surprise, fear, want of constancy in suffering, or through a worthier motive, the desire of saving their families from the license of the soldiers, manifested their regret and their remorse, and were no longer willing to go to mass. All the leaders of the dragonades, the Noailles, the Foucaults, the Basvilles, the Marillacs, complained bitterly of a measure that was useless to them as to the demolition of Protestant churches and the prohibition of worship, and very injurious as to the progress of conversions. They had counted on rooting out the worship by converting all the believers. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes sinned, therefore, in their eyes by excess of moderation! Louvois hastened to reassure them in this respect, and authorized them to act as if the last article of the edict did not exist. "His majesty," he said, "desires that the extremest rigors of the law should be felt by those who will not make themselves of his religion, and those who shall have the foolish glory of wishing to remain the last must be pushed to the last extremity." "Let the soldiers," he said elsewhere, "be allowed to live very licentiously!" (November, 1685).