A few, a very few, followed this suggestion and allowed themselves to be baptized by the nearest village priest. But the vast majority of these simple people remained faithful to the ideals of their childhood. At last, however, when one after another their churches were closed and their clergy were sent to the galleys, they began to understand that they were doomed. Rather than surrender, they decided to go into exile. But when they reached the frontier, they were told that no one was allowed to leave the country, that those who were caught in the act were to be hanged, and that those who aided and abetted such fugitives were liable to be sent to the galleys for life. There are apparently certain things which this world will never learn. From the days of the Pharaohs to those of Lenin, all governments at one time or another have tried the policy of “closing the frontier” and none of them has ever been able to score a success. People who want to get out so badly that they are willing to take all sorts of risks can invariably find a way. Hundreds of thousands of French Protestants took to the “underground route” and soon afterwards appeared in London or Amsterdam or Berlin or Basel. Of course, such fugitives were not able to carry much ready cash. But they were known everywhere as honest and hard working merchants and artisans. Their credit was good and their energy undiminished. After a few years they usually regained that prosperity which had been their share in the old country and the home government was deprived of a living economic asset of incalculable value. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the prelude to the French Revolution. France had been and still was a very rich country. But commerce and clericalism have never been able to coöperate. From the moment that the French government surrendered to petticoats and cassocks, her fate was sealed. The same pen that decreed the expulsion of the Huguenots signed the death-warrant of Louis XVI. CHAPTER XXIV FREDERICK THE GREAT The house of Hohenzollern has never been famous for its love of popular forms of government. But ere the crazy strain of the Bavarian Wittelsbachs had tainted this sober-minded family of bookkeepers and overseers, they rendered some very useful service to the cause of tolerance. In part this was the result of a practical necessity. The Hohenzollerns had fallen heir to the poorest part of Europe, a half-populated wilderness of sand and forests. The Thirty Years War had left them bankrupt. They needed both men and money to start in business once more and they set out to get them, regardless of race, creed or previous condition of servitude.