War of the Camisards
The War of the Camisards () or the Cévennes War () was an uprising of Protestant peasants known as Camisards in the Cévennes and Languedoc during the reign of Louis XIV. The uprising was a response to the Edict of Fountainebleu in 1685. Background The war in the Cévennes originated from the edict of Fontainebleau, signed by King Louis XIV on October 18, 1685. The law revoked the edict of Nantes, which had granted religious freedom and civil rights to the country's Protestant minority. The edict of Fontaineblue banned Protestantism from the country. In the provinces which the largest Protestant (or Huguenot) minorities, Huguenots were converted by force to Roman Catholicism in what is now known as the dragonnades, which took place in the Cévennes as early as 1683. This persecution was strongest in Poitou, Guyenne, the Dauphiné, and Languedoc, where reformist ideas took root from 1530 to 1560. Many Huguenots decided to flee the country, while others opted to practice their faith in secret. "New Converts" (or NC) were employed by the French monarchy to monitor and suppress the Protestant faith. Since late October 1685, Huguenots held "desert assemblies" in an attempt to continue following their religion, but countermeasures