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?