Jacques de La Fontaine

“ War! what is more probable than that the princes, with whom so many Huguenots have taken refuge should be aroused to avenge them of their persecutors? Famine! for who will cultivate our fields? all our young people are leaving us, and what an army may be raised for our adversaries out of these brave young men whom we are driving away. Pestilence may naturally be expected to tread on the heels of famine. ”

“ The year 1685 opened with a bitter spirit of persecution, far beyond all that had proceeded it. There was no longer the slightest semblance of justice in the forms of proceeding, the dragoons ravaged and pillaged without mercy, resembling in their progress a lawless and victorious army in an enemy’s country. In the history of past ages we look in vain for any record of such cruelties as they inflicted upon the unoffending and unresisting Huguenots. ”

“ Famine and poverty covered the land, the gold and the silver disappeared and its place was supplied by a species of enchanted paper, which still remains in their portfolios to remind them of all that they have lost. And pestilence also has overtaken that doomed and wretched nation. ”