Huguenot was frequently used in reference to those of the Reformed Church of France from the time of the Protestant Reformation. The Huguenots were concentrated 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 to The wars ended with the Edict of Nantes of , which granted the Huguenots substantial religious, political and military autonomy.
Huguenot rebellions in the s resulted in 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 This ended legal recognition of Protestantism in France and the Huguenots were forced to either convert to Catholicism possibly as Nicodemites or flee as refugees; they were subject to violent dragonnades.
Louis XIV claimed that the French Huguenot population was reduced from about , or , adherents to just 1, or 1, He exaggerated the decline, but the dragonnades were devastating for the French Protestant community. The exodus of Huguenots from France created a brain drain , as many of them had occupied important places in society. The remaining Huguenots faced continued persecution under Louis XV. By the time of his death in , Calvinism had been all but eliminated from France.
Two years later, with the Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of , Protestants gained equal rights as citizens.
A term used originally in derision, Huguenot has unclear origins. Various hypotheses have been promoted. It used a derogatory pun on the name Hugues by way of the Dutch word Huisgenoten literally 'housemates' , referring to the connotations of a somewhat related word in German Eidgenosse 'Confederate' in the sense of 'a citizen of one of the states of the Swiss Confederacy'.
