The Scourge of God

The Camisard war in the Cévennes, when the Protestant peasants of the mountains rose against Louis XIV's dragoons after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and were hunted down in their turn. Bloundelle-Burton wrote a long series of novels about the France of the Sun King, and takes his title from the refugee preacher Saurin, who called the king the scourge of God. Fifty-seven plates by painters including Pierre Mignard I and Adam Frans van der Meulen carry the peasant families and royal households of the France that persecuted them.