<P> With the proclamation of the Edict of Nantes, and the subsequent protection of Huguenot rights, pressures to leave France abated . However, enforcement of the Edict grew increasingly irregular over time, making life so intolerable that many fled the country . The Huguenot population of France dropped to 856,000 by the mid-1660s, of which a plurality lived in rural areas . The greatest concentrations of Huguenots at this time resided in the regions of Guienne, Saintonge - Aunis - Angoumois and Poitou . </P> <P> Montpellier was among the most important of the 66 "villes de sûreté" that the Edict of 1598 granted to the Huguenots . The city's political institutions and the university were all handed over to the Huguenots . Tension with Paris led to a siege by the royal army in 1622 . Peace terms called for the dismantling of the city's fortifications . A royal citadel was built and the university and consulate were taken over by the Catholic party . Even before the Edict of Alès (1629), Protestant rule was dead and the ville de sûreté was no more . </P> <P> By 1620 the Huguenots were on the defensive, and the government increasingly applied pressure . A series of three small civil wars known as the Huguenot rebellions broke out, mainly in southwestern France, between 1621 and 1629 . revolted against royal authority . The uprising occurred a decade following the death of Henry IV, a Huguenot before converting to Catholicism, who 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 respond by establishing independent political and military structures, establishing diplomatic contacts with foreign powers, and openly revolting against central power . The rebellions were implacably suppressed by the French Crown . </P> <P> Louis XIV gained the throne in 1643 and acted increasingly aggressively to force the Huguenots to convert . At first he sent missionaries, backed by a fund to financially reward converts to Catholicism . Then he imposed penalties, closed Huguenot schools and excluded them from favoured professions . Escalating, he instituted dragonnades, which included the occupation and looting of Huguenot homes by military troops, in an effort to forcibly convert them . In 1685, he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, revoking the Edict of Nantes and declaring Protestantism illegal . </P>

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