Huguenots would find a welcome and prosperous trade network along the lengths of the river.

Huguenots would find a welcome and prosperous trade network along the lengths of the Rhone river.

The term Huguenots is the old name given to French Protestants of Calvinist doctrine during the wars of religion in France.

Its origin goes back to 1512 but it was not until 1534 when the French Protestants would join the doctrine of John Calvin, that is, Calvinism. The religious was forced to leave France in 1534, but settled in Geneva, where he developed his work "The Institution of the Christian Religion." From his exile, he organized the reformed Churches of France, criticized the Catholic Church for its methods and promoted the Protestant belief that "heaven had to be earned on earth."

The French powers were not at all supporters of the Huguenots and their "Reformed Church." They saw them as a scourge and described them as "pretended reformed religion." In 1559, at the Synod of Paris, the French Huguenots presented a Calvinist doctrinal statement to Francis II, newly proclaimed King of France. However, the aristocracy belonging to the House of Guise provoked a harsh repression against the declarants. Between 1562 and 1594, all those related to the Huguenots (relatives, etc.) were persecuted and exterminated, blaming them for heresy.

The arrival to the throne of Henry IV changed the luck for the Huguenots. The king, of Calvinist belief, was forced to embrace Catholicism in order to be recognized as king of France. But this did not prevent him from sympathizing with the Protestant collective and granting them positions of power within the government and society. On April 13, 1598, he signed the Edict of Nantes, which put an end to the Wars of Religion and guaranteed a certain freedom of worship.

However, on October 18, 1685, Louis XIV decided to unanimously revoke the Edict of Nantes and continue the extermination of French evangelicals. Seeing the hostile panorama, most of the Huguenots fled to the Netherlands, Switzerland, England and Prussia, as well as to the British colonies.

Finally, thanks to Napoleon, they regained all their rights in 1802.