Huguenots, members of the Protestant →Reformed Church of France, historically Calvinists. The toleration of protestants in catholic France had been the object of repeated and at times violent conflicts since the 16th century. It ended in 1685 when →Louis XIV finally lifted the Edict of Nantes. Protestantism became with the revocation of the edict illegal in France; Huguenots – with estimates ranging from 200,000 to 500,000 – fled to surrounding Protestant countries, an estimated 50,000 to Britain alone. →Wikipedia