Refuge, Le. Term used to describe the Huguenot communities which fled from France, particularly after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 (though there had been such exiles since the Wars of Religion, and departures picked up again from the mid-1650s onwards). Estimates of the number who left in and after 1685 vary between 200, 000 and 300, 000. Most went to the Low Countries or England; by the late 17th c. there were between 50, 000 and 80, 000 Huguenots in England, constituting about 1 per cent of the English population. Most exiles were from the Huguenot élite; rural Huguenots, particularly in the Cévennes and the Languedoc in general, mostly stayed put. Many exiles were soldiers or sailors, and about 10, 000 Huguenots fought in enemy ranks in the next war. It is often argued that the loss of the economic skills of the exiles, and also of much of their capital, had a serious retarding effect on French economic growth (though continuing warfare was probably a much more serious cause). Many Huguenot families remained abroad for generations. In the Low Countries in particular, pastors and spokesmen of the Refuge such as Jurieu and Bayle remained a constant centre of propaganda against French Catholicism and the French state.
— Ralph Gibson
