The fundamental issue in France was simple politics ~ who would be second to the king. They tested the process with newly developed lightweight personal firearms.
Very quickly the French found that an awful lot of people of all ranks and stations could end up dead with these items, and fired up with a little bit of ideological ferver, even more folks could end up dead.
That was stage one. Stage two was an uneasy peace under the Edict of Nantes. Stage three was a resumption of state persection of Huguenots.
Well over 150,000 well to do Huguenots are known to have emigrated from France during that period, and up to 1.5 million others probably emigrated. Civil records were not good during that period.
Our family castle was finally dismantled and scattered about as a "lesson to us" ~ so many of the remaining family members fled to Sweden where one of their number became the third ranking noble in the Vasa King's new nobility. He eventually conquered most of Europe, even brought the French in as allies (all was not well in the top ranks of French government at any time), founded Nieuwe Sweden, and scattered descendants all over the globe in every country. I think some of them still live in Scandinavia, and almost unbelievably, some of them managed to creep back to France.
The carnage in the royal family and noble ranks was so bad that it creates many difficult to handle genealogical blocks ~ just impossible to tell who had which kids, when, where and how.
You wrote:
“Richelieu (the Jesuit Minister of State) seized his Huguenot grandfather’s estate (a huge whopping place).”
Are you sure he was a Jesuit? I could very well be wrong on this, but I thought he was secular clergy.
Get over it.
It sounds like you and I are making the same point.
Likewise in England it was a top down, Henry VIII led, rebellion. In Switzerland the protestant princes tried at one point to starve out the catholics in seige. Zwingli himself was, if I recall correctly, killed in battle. In Lutheran lands the state church was simply replaced with one loyal to princes supporting lutheranism.
In most cases there was an incredible amount of money and lands siezed by the princes supporting the “reformation”. Persecution of Catholics who remained loyal to Rome in protestant lands was real and deadly.
And his name was? My direct ancestor, Peter Anderson, (b. before 1620 in the Gotenburg area) arrived in New Sweden on the Kalmar Nykel (sp.?) and became the skipper of the Governor's boat that he used to access his house on an island near what is now Philadelphia. He sailed back to Amsterdam to collect his wages, returned to Sweden to collect a bride, and brought her back to New Sweden where they settled to establish a farm and raise their family in Kingsessing. He and his family were among the founders of Gloria Dei (Swedish) Church and are listed on the roll.