Dragonnades (Wikipedia)

A community-edited reference article on the dragonnades, Louis XIV's 1681 to 1685 policy of billeting Royal Army dragoons in Huguenot households, with implicit license to mistreat occupants and destroy or steal property, to compel Protestant conversion to Catholicism. Covers the initial 1681 Poitou campaign under intendant Rene de Marillac, its expansion nationwide by 1685, Louis XIV's own (acknowledged exaggerated) claim of reducing the Protestant population from 800,000 to 900,000 down to 1,000 to 1,500 converts, the resulting mass emigration to England, Switzerland, the Dutch Republic and other Protestant territories, the documented economic damage from the loss of skilled Huguenot tradespeople, and the policy's formal conclusion in the October 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau.