ABSTRACT
If, in the late seventeenth century, you happened to be looking for a gripping adventure story, you had best ask a Huguenot refugee. Not only had they experienced persecution in France, they also prided themselves on a miraculous escape abroad. In fact, storytelling was so ubiquitous among the refugees that in December 1686 minister Abel Rotolp de la Devèze tempered their enthusiasm from his pulpit in The Hague, telling them to worry about their future redemption rather than recount the horrors of the dragonnades and their sensational escape: ‘I think, actually, that we speak too confidently of these first successes of our struggle; we congratulate ourselves to have slipped past the guard of harsh Inquisitors & a hungry army of Guards that stood in the way of our escape’, but Rotolp de la Devèze wryly observed that God was never on their mind. 1
