The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII.: Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration.Voltaire
Philosophy
The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII.: Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration.
Voltaire
Voltaire, 1694-1778 -- Translations into English
In the hundred and eighty-first page of the fifth volume of his
works he says that one man only offered to discover upwards of
twenty millions of livres that the persecuted Huguenots had found
means to send out of France. Louis XIV., in answer to this, writes
to M. d’Avaux: “The accounts which I daily receive of the prodigious
numbers of those who are converted convince me that in a short time
the most obstinate will follow the example of the others.”
This letter of the king’s plainly shows that he was firmly persuaded
of the greatness of his power. He was accustomed to hear said to him
every morning: “Sire, you are the greatest monarch upon earth; you
have but to declare your opinion and the whole world will be proud
to follow it.” Pelisson, who had accumulated a prodigious fortune
in the place of head clerk of the treasury, who had been three
years confined in the Bastille as an accomplice with Fouquet, who,
changing his religion, was from a Calvinist made a Roman, a deacon
and a beneficed priest, who composed hymns for the mass and verses to
Chloe, and who had got the post of comptroller and converter in chief
of the heretics; this very Pelisson, I say, used to produce every
morning a long list of pretended abjurations purchased at the rate
of seven or eight crowns apiece, and made his prince believe that he
could, whenever he pleased, convert the whole Mahometan empire at the
same price. In short, every one was in league to impose upon him;
how then was it possible for him to avoid being deceived?
This very M. d’Avaux also acquaints the court that one Vincent kept
upwards of five hundred workmen employed in the neighborhood of
Angoulême, and that it would be of great prejudice to the nation
should they quit the kingdom. Vol. v., page 194.
The count likewise mentions two regiments at that time actually being
raised by French refugee officers for the service of the prince of
Orange; he observes that the entire crews of three French ships of
war had deserted and entered into the same service, and that besides
the two regiments above mentioned, the prince was forming a company
of cadet refugees, who were to be commanded by two refugee captains.
Page 240. The same ambassador in another letter to M. de Seignelay,
dated the 9th of May, 1686, says that he can no longer conceal the
uneasiness it gives him to see the manufactures of France transported
into Holland, where they will be established, never more to return.
Add to these incontestable evidences the testimonies of the several
intendants of the kingdom in 1698, and then let any one judge whether
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes has not done more harm than
good, notwithstanding the opinion of the worthy author of the
“Harmony of Religion and Inhumanity.”
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