Persecution of Protestants

Persecution of Protestants is presented as a royal policy pursued in the name of conversion but, in Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien’s assessment, producing disaster, treason, and rewards for undeserving men instead. Its force lies not only in the orders themselves but in Louis XIV’s decision to extend them after their failures were already apparent. The episode places religious coercion beside other questions of governance—who bears the cost of royal decisions, and whether the King can still be persuaded to stop harming his own people.

Background and Political Stakes

The policy belongs to a wider crisis in Lucien’s view of Louis XIV’s rule. After Yves de la Croix’s discoveries during the secret dissection, Lucien imagines that the King might never die. He follows this possibility through a series of hoped-for consequences: the realm would avoid the next reign, Louis XIV would escape the influence of the Marquise de Maintenon, the Edict of Nantes might be restored, and the King might cease making war on his own people. These are Lucien’s hopes, not changes that have occurred. Their sequence makes the treatment of Protestants a test of the King’s rule and of the future Lucien wants for France.

A separate decision about Brittany clarifies the material stakes behind the court’s religious and fiscal choices. When Louis XIV asks Lucien whom he would nominate to a vacant bishopric, Lucien recommends no one. Without a bishop and the expenses of a bishop’s household, parishioners could pay their taxes to the Crown and retain something to eat after a harvest threatened to be poor. The arrangement would also prevent the bishop’s lands from sending much of their revenue to Rome. This exchange does not make the vacant bishopric part of the anti-Protestant policy; rather, it shows Lucien measuring government decisions by their effects on people who must live with their costs.

The Orders and Their Renewal

The immediate act is plain: the minister responsible for presenting the papers brings Louis XIV orders for quartering troops among Protestants, and the King signs them. The policy is explicitly intended to hasten the conversion of those labeled heretics. The scene records no conversion as an outcome. Instead, Lucien judges that, as far as he has seen, the measures have produced disaster and treason while enriching men who do not deserve reward.

The signing matters because the orders are not simply allowed to continue by inertia. Louis XIV extends them, although Lucien considers them failed. François de la Chaise and the minister look on with approval; the Marquise de Maintenon smiles while occupied with needlework. Their presence sets Lucien’s silent opposition against a court scene in which the decision meets no visible resistance from those around the King. The contrast does not establish that the Marquise directed the policy. Lucien prefers to attribute the King’s intolerance to her influence, but the narrative also presents Louis XIV as the person who hears the proposal and signs the orders.

Lucien’s Opposition and Exposure

Lucien says nothing at the signing. He has already tried to change Louis XIV’s mind, harder than prudence allowed, and believes that further speech will not reverse the decision. His silence is therefore not evidence of agreement: it follows from his judgment that argument has failed. He sees the extension as proof that the King’s intolerance—whether his own or, as Lucien would rather believe, the Marquise’s—keeps him from recognizing the damage the measures do to France and to his own rule.

The policy is also personal in a way that exposes unequal vulnerability. Lucien reflects that atheism seems easier and less dangerous, then contrasts his position with that of Protestants whose homes are subject to military quartering. The troops do not have permission to quarter themselves in Lucien’s house, loot it, or abuse members of his household. His observation identifies a protection he possesses, not an experience he shares with those targeted. The contrast sharpens his criticism: the orders impose risks on households less protected than his own, while he can contemplate their danger from outside it.

Significance

The episode frames persecution as both an instrument of religious conformity and a failure of government. Its stated aim is conversion; Lucien’s account of its results is instead social disaster, treason, and undeserved enrichment. The King’s renewal of the orders turns those consequences into an ongoing choice, while the court’s approving response makes clear how little support Lucien has in the room. Nothing in the passage shows the policy being withdrawn or its intended conversion achieved.

Lucien’s hope that Louis XIV might restore the Edict of Nantes supplies a pointed counter-image to the signed papers. The hoped-for restoration would reverse the direction of the King’s policy; the actual scene records its extension. Between those possibilities stands Lucien, who has attempted to intervene and now judges further protest futile. His response links the fate of Protestants to a larger question of royal power: whether rule serves the people who bear its consequences, or insists on coercion even when its adviser believes it has harmed both the kingdom and the sovereign.