Edict of Nantes in the context of "Louis XIV"

The French Wars of Religion were a series of civil wars between French Catholics and Protestants (called Huguenots) from 1562 to 1598. Between two and four million people died from violence, famine or disease directly caused by the conflict, and it severely damaged the power of the French monarchy. One of its most notorious episodes was the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. The fighting ended with a compromise in 1598, when Henry of Navarre, who converted to Catholicism in 1593, was proclaimed King Henry IV of France and issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted substantial rights and freedoms to the Huguenots. However, Catholics continued to disapprove of Protestants and of Henry, and his assassination in 1610 triggered a fresh round of Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s.

Tensions between the two religions had been building since the 1530s, exacerbating existing regional divisions, and quests for power among the nobles. The sudden accidental death of Henry II of France in July 1559 initiated a prolonged struggle for power between his widow Catherine de' Medici and powerful nobles. These included a fervently Catholic faction led by the Guise and Montmorency families, and Protestants headed by the House of Condé and the Navarrese queen, Jeanne d'Albret. Both sides received assistance from external powers, with Spain and Savoy supporting the Catholics, and England and the Dutch Republic backing the Protestants.

The Edict of Fontainebleau (18 October 1685, published 22 October 1685) was an edict issued by French King Louis XIV and is also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Edict of Nantes (1598) had granted Huguenots the right to practice their religion without state persecution. Protestants had lost their independence in places of refuge under Cardinal Richelieu on account of their supposed insubordination, but they continued to live in comparative security and political contentment. From the outset, religious tolerance in France had been a royal, rather than popular, policy.

The lack of universal adherence to his religion did not sit well with Louis XIV's vision of perfected autocracy.

Henry IV (French: Henri IV; 13 December 1553 – 14 May 1610), also known by the epithets Good King Henry (le Bon Roi Henri) or Henry the Great (Henri le Grand), was King of Navarre (as Henry III) from 1572 and King of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first monarch of France from the House of Bourbon, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. He pragmatically balanced the interests of the Catholic and Protestant parties in France, as well as among the European states. He was assassinated in Paris in 1610 by a Catholic zealot, and was succeeded by his son Louis XIII.

Henry was baptised a Catholic but raised as a Huguenot in the Protestant faith by his mother, Queen Jeanne III of Navarre. He inherited the throne of Navarre in 1572 on his mother's death. As a Huguenot, Henry was involved in the French Wars of Religion, barely escaping assassination in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. He later led Protestant forces against the French royal army. Henry inherited the throne of France in 1589 upon the death of Henry III. Henry IV initially kept the Protestant faith (the only French king to do so) and had to fight against the Catholic League, which refused to accept a Protestant monarch. After four years of military stalemate, Henry converted to Catholicism, reportedly saying that "Paris is well worth a Mass". As a pragmatic politician (politique), he promulgated the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants, thereby effectively ending the French Wars of Religion.

The Dutch Cape Colony (Dutch: Nederlandse Kaapkolonie), officially known as the Cape of Good Hope Waystation (Dutch: Tussenstation Kaap de Goede Hoop), was a colony of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and Batavian Republic in Southern Africa. Centered on the Cape of Good Hope, from where it derived its name, it was founded in 1652 by a VOC expedition under Jan van Riebeeck to serve as a re-supply and layover port for VOC vessels trading with Asia. The Cape was under VOC rule from 1652 to 1795 and Batavian rule from 1803 to 1806. Much to the dismay of the VOC's shareholders, who focused primarily on making profits from the Asian trade, the Cape Colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding.

As the only permanent settlement of the VOC which served as a trading post, it proved an ideal retirement place for employees of the company. After several years of service in the company, an employee could lease a piece of land in the Cape Colony as a Free Burgher, on which he had to cultivate crops that he had to sell to the VOC for a fixed price. As these farms were labour-intensive, Free Burghers imported slaves from Madagascar, Mozambique and Asia (mostly the Dutch East Indies and Dutch Ceylon), which rapidly increased the number of inhabitants. After King Louis XIV of France issued the Edict of Fontainebleau in October 1685 (revoking the Edict of Nantes of 1598), thereby ending protection of the right of Huguenots in France to practise Protestant worship without persecution from the state, the Cape Colony attracted some Huguenot settlers, who eventually mixed with the general Dutch population.

The Huguenot rebellions, sometimes called the Rohan Wars after the Huguenot leader Henri de Rohan, were a series of rebellions of the 1620s in which French Calvinist Protestants (Huguenots), mainly located in southwestern France, revolted against royal authority. The uprising occurred a decade after the death of Henry IV who, himself originally a Huguenot before converting to Catholicism, had protected Protestants through the Edict of Nantes. His successor Louis XIII, under the regency of his Italian Catholic mother Marie de' Medici, became more intolerant of Protestantism. The Huguenots responded by establishing independent political and military structures, establishing diplomatic contacts with foreign powers, and openly revolting against central power. The Huguenot rebellions came after two decades of internal peace under Henry IV, following the intermittent French Wars of Religion of 1562–1598.

The Edict of Versailles, also known as the Edict of Tolerance, was an official act that gave non-Catholics in France the access to civil rights formerly denied to them, which included the right to contract marriages without having to convert to the Catholic faith, but it denied them political rights and public worship. The edict was signed by King Louis XVI on 7 November 1787, and registered in the Parlement of Paris during the Ancien Régime on 29 January 1788. Its successful enactment was caused by persuasive arguments by prominent French philosophers and literary personalities of the day, including Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot; Étienne François, duc de Choiseul, Americans such as Benjamin Franklin and especially the joint work of Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, minister to Louis XVI, and Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne, spokesman for the Protestant community in France.

King Henry IV had granted Huguenots significant amount of freedom to practice their faith when he announced the Edict of Nantes on 13 April 1598. Those rights were revoked by Louis XIV during the Edict of Fontainebleau (18 October 1685). Enforcement of the revocation relaxed under the reign of Louis XV, but the revocation remained law for a century.