Document 9
In this excerpt, Barbara Tuchman is commenting on the effects of Louis XIV’s policy toward the Huguenots.
… Recent [196os and 197os scholarly] studies have concluded that the economic damage done
to France by the Huguenot [French Protestants] emigration has been overrated, it being only
one element in the larger damage caused by the wars. Of the political damage, however, there
is no question. The flood of anti-French pamphlets and satires issued by Huguenot printers and
their friends in all the cities where they settled aroused antagonism to France to new heat. The
Protestant coalition against France was strengthened when Brandenburg entered into alliance
with Holland, and the smaller German principalities joined. In France itself the Protestant faith
was reinvigorated by persecution and the feud with Catholics revived. A prolonged revolt of the
Camisard Huguenots in the Cévennes, a mountainous region of the south, brought on a cruel
war of repression, weakening the state. Here and among other Huguenot communities which
remained in France, a receptive base was created for the Revolution to come.…
Source: Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, Alfred A. Knopf, 1984
According to Barbara Tuchman, what was one political consequence of Louis XIV’s policy toward the
Huguenots?
