This is set in France just before and after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and shows just how bad things were for Huguenots, who even had their children taken away if they refused to convert to Catholicism. We have a marked tendency to look at situation from the viewpoint of how it influenced events in England, so it was good to find a book which was purely from the viewpoint of French Protestants themselves – and which also showed some of the issues faced in any era by refugees, something which we’re sadly seeing yet again with people fleeing Ukraine. We see the characters, those who escaped imprisonment or forced labour, effectively facing a choice between becoming Catholics or trying to leave for England, Protestant parts of Switzerland or America – easier said than done with Louis XIV trying to stop the departure of Huguenots, many of them skilled craftspeople or businesspeople, from his kingdom.
It’s not the best book I’ve ever read, but it’s worth reading as a reminder of just how bad religious persecution in Europe was, well into the early modern period. It was only really in the 19th century that the rights of religious minorities came actually to be respected, and not even then in some cases.
The persecution of Huguenots was a big stain on the reign of Louis XIV, which in so many other ways was glorious; and the book, the first in a trilogy (many loose ends are left untied) gets it across very well.
setinthepast 