The refugees seen as rivals

“Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. – In 1598, Henri IV had signed in Nantes an edict allowing French Protestants to practice their faith. In 1685, his grandson, Louis XIV revoked this edict. All over France, the Protestants were horribly persecuted. In spite of a strict injunction, thousands of them left the country and headed for England, Prussia, Switzerland and beyond.

In Geneva, Louis XIV had for some years established a Resident. This representative of the Great King was essentially handling the French government's mail, rerouting it inside Switzerland and through to Italy but he also had the mission of supervising the Genevans and to exercise some pressure on their Councils to stop them from doing anything contrary to French interests. Geneva, as indeed other Swiss cantons and for that matter other European countries were under the dominance of Louis XIV who had become the most powerful monarch in his time. Thus when unfortunate refugees arrived at the gates of the city, nobody dared take them in as had been done for so many years for fear of the Sun-King's displeasure. With some secret subsidy pressed upon them, they were moved on to other Swiss cantons. And yet many of these wretches stayed in the city ; others returned to it and the population grew considerably.

In the beginning, the refugees were treated like brothers. But gradually the people saw them as rivals because these newcomers were generally hard-working, frugal people content with modest salaries. They presented a less resilient local workforce with a doughty challenge. On the demand of the burghers, the councils took against them discriminatory measures; everything was tried to prevent them from becoming burghers and to force them to leave town. However many of them stayed ; their offspring would form a new social class, that of the Natifs that would later play an important part in the history of the Republic [meaning that they were among the leaders of the Democratic Revolutions].”

Charles PESSON, Petite histoire illustrée de Genève [A short Illustrated History of Geneva]. Adopted by the Department of Public Education of the Canton of Geneva, Geneva, Atar, 1920, p. 133-134 (paragraph on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes).