Huguenots are an ethnoreligious group of French Protestants who follow the Reformed tradition. The term has its origin in early 16th century France. It was frequently used in reference to those of the Reformed Church of France from the time of the Protestant Reformation. Huguenots were French Protestants who held to the Reformed tradition of Protestantism, while the populations of Alsace, Moselle and Montbéliard were mainly German Lutherans. In his Encyclopedia of Protestantism, Hans Hillerbrand claimed that on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, the Huguenot community included as much as 10% of the French population, but it declined to 7–8% by around 1600 and even further after the return of heavy persecution in 1685 with Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau. Huguenot numbers peaked near an estimated two million by 1562, concentrated mainly in the southern and western parts of the Kingdom of France. As Huguenots gained influence and more openly displayed their faith, Catholic hostility grew. A series of religious conflicts followed, known as the French Wars of Religion, fought intermittently from 1562 to 1598. The Huguenots were led by Jeanne d'Albret, her son, the future Henry IV and the princes of Condé. The wars ended with the Edict of Nantes, which granted the Huguenots substantial religious, political and military autonomy. Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s prompted the abolition of their political and military privileges. They retained the religious provisions of the Edict of Nantes until the rule of Louis XIV, who gradually increased persecution of Protestantism until he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau , ultimately ending any legal recognition of Protestantism in France and forcing the Huguenots to either convert or flee in a wave of violent dragonnades. Louis XIV laid claim that the French Huguenot population was reduced from about 800,000 to 900,000 adherents down to just 1,000 to 1,500; although he overexaggerated the reduction, the dragonnades certainly were devastating for the French Protestant community. Nevertheless, the remaining Huguenots faced continued persecution under Louis XV. At the time of Louis XV's death in 1774, Calvinism had been nearly eliminated from France. Persecution of Protestants officially ended with the Edict of Versailles, signed by Louis XVI in 1787. Two years later, with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, Protestants gained equal rights as citizens.The bulk of Huguenot émigrés relocated to Protestant states such as England and Wales, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the Dutch Republic, the Electorate of Brandenburg and Electorate of the Palatinate in the Holy Roman Empire, the Duchy of Prussia and the Channel Islands, as well as majority Catholic but Protestant-controlled Ireland. They also fled to the Dutch Cape Colony in South Africa, the Dutch East Indies, the Caribbean, New Netherland and several of the English colonies in North America. A few families also went to Orthodox Russia and Catholic Quebec. By now, most Huguenots have been assimilated into various societies and cultures, but remnant communities of Camisards in the Cévennes, most Reformed members of the United Protestant Church of France, French members of the largely German Protestant Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine and the Huguenot diaspora in England and Australia all still retain their beliefs and Huguenot designation.
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