It was a persecution and an expulsion very similar, {96} in its motives and in its effects, to the flight from Spain of the converted Jews and Mahommedans, and of the Pilgrim Fathers and other Puritans from England. It is curious that in each instance it was a flight of a singularly industrious, intelligent, and valuable portion of the population of each nation, and resulted in a serious loss to those nations from which the exodus was made. And as they were a loss to those countries which they left, so were they a gain to those which received them. The Huguenots in England retain to this day those characteristics of valuable citizens. Years before, England had been similarly fortunate in receiving the Flemish weavers who had fled from Flanders before the Inquisition and the Spanish armies commanded by the Duke of Alva. France could very ill afford such a loss. Louis XIV., who came to the throne at the age of four years old in 1643 and lived until 1715, reigning thus no less than seventy-two years, became towards the end of the seventeenth century without dispute the greatest monarch in Europe and in all the western world. It is safest to limit his greatness by that word "western," because in another part of the world-stage there was at least one other monarch, the Emperor of China, who could not conceive the possibility that there was a human being so eminent as himself; and also in India there was a very powerful sovereign of the Moguls who yielded an authority and lived in a splendour perhaps as great as either of these. Louis's court at least was splendid beyond all that had been seen in the West, his courtiers more magnificent in their costumes and brilliancy, more sumptuous in their expenditure. Over the people on their estates, the nobles had unbounded power. Had the people been in very name slaves they could not have been more enslaved in reality. But even the most powerful of the nobles was absolutely subservient {97} to the king. He had an army, which was immense for those days, at his command. Consider, for a moment, what that power meant, in the hands of one who had been a king since four years old. It meant that his will had always been law to those about him. He had heard only pleasant words, because no one had dared tell him an unpleasant truth. What chance, then, had he, coming to manhood in such circumstances, of knowing anything of the real truth about the world and about his subjects? [Sidenote: The French peasantry]