THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE 55 



leaving the kiugdom under penalty of serving a life sen- 

 tence in the gallej's. Thus by a single stroke of the pen, 

 Louis made life for the Protestants unbearable in France, 

 and at the same time made it a crime for them to seek an 

 asylum in other lands. 



The condition of the Huguenots now became truly Dragooning 

 pitiable, for not content with robbing them of all their 

 liberties the king desired their wholesale conversion. 

 In the endeavour to accomplish this the most heartless 

 methods were resorted to, chief among them being the 

 fiendish process called "dragooning." A day was ap- 

 pointed for the conversion of a certain district, and the 

 dragoons, who were carefully selected from among the 

 most ruffianly swash bucklers in the French army, made 

 their appearance accordingly and took possession of 

 the Protestants' houses. Their orders were to make as 

 much trouble as possible, and they obeyed them with 

 barbarous exactness ; converting a quiet home into a 

 bedlam and subjecting the family to the grossest insults 

 and most outrageous tortures. Woe to the unhappy 

 wretch upon whom the troopers were quartered. They 

 stabled their horses in his parlour, smashed his furniture ' 

 at will, destroyed whatever they could not eat or drink, 

 kept his family awake at night by their drunken uproar 

 or by prodding them with their swords, exposed his wife 

 and daughters to foul language and abuse, and taught his 

 sons the vices of the soldiery. 



Rather than subject his loved ones to such treatment Recanting to 

 many a brave man, who would cheerfully have suffered Famiiy°^ ^ 

 the rack or the wheel for the sake of his faith, forced 

 himself to become an unwilling convert to the "true 

 religion." Those who refused to submit after the dra- 

 goons had been in their homes a few days were beaten 

 without mercy, or starved, or half- roasted over a fire ; 

 mothers were bound securely and forced to see their 

 young babes perish at their feet ; some were hung in the 

 chimneys and piles of wet straw burned under them until 



