THE FRENCH EXILES IN EUROPE 65 



ligious festivals of Christmas and Easter, while the Roinau 

 Catholics had double the uuniber in order to celebrate the 

 saints' days. Thus the Huguenots worked on 310 daj'S 

 in the year, the Roman Catholics only on 260, which 

 made a decided difference, aside from the superior qual- 

 ity and speed of the Protestant workmen. 



Weaving was one of the principal industries of France, Arts and 

 with over 44,000 persons engaged iu it in 1669; and the 

 Protestants had a practical monopoly. Cloth in Cham- 

 pagne and the southeast, serges and light stuifs in Langue- 

 doc, the linens of Normandj^ and Brittany, the silks and 

 velvets of Tours and Lyons, glass in Ormandy, paper in 

 Auvergne and Angoumois, the tan-yards of the Touraine, 

 the furuaces of iron, steel and tin in the Sedanais — these 

 were Protestant industries whose products made France 

 known in every market. And it was this splendid indus- 

 trial population which the infatuated Louis, at the be- 

 hest of his Roman Catholic advisers, scourged from his 

 kingdom. 



Colbert, the great French minister of finance, and the 

 only French statesman who knew the value of trades, a valuable 

 recognized the worth of the Huguenots. ''This great ^^'=*°'' 

 man," says Anyillon, ''was too able an administrator 

 tjO fail of being tolerant. He had learned that civil and 

 religious liberty was the principle of work, of industry, 

 and of the wealth of the nations." Thus he employed 

 the German Protestant Herward, his comptroller-general 

 of finance, and kept the Huguenots in the financial de- 

 partment as long as his influence prevailed at court. It 

 was not until the profligate king had wearied of his faith- 

 fulness and wise counsels that the fierce persecutions began, 

 and not until after his death that the Edict was revoked 

 and commerce lost to the France he devotedly loved and 

 served. 



II 



Holland at first received the intellectual and com- Holland 

 mercial flower of the French Protestants. Haarlem is 



