ABSTRACT
The association of Huguenots with conspiracy in sixteenth-century France was due to their peculiar status as a permitted religious minority combined with the fraught circumstances of civil war. The adoption of a faith contrary to that of their sovereign made them easy targets for accusations of treachery and subversion. The crown's decision to make peace with its Huguenot subjects, embodied in the so-called edicts of pacification, only increased anxieties about provincial and national security. The use of provocative language was combined with accusations that the enemy within was in league with the enemy without. Throughout the wars, Huguenots were claimed to be conspiring with and inviting invasion by the representatives of foreign Protestant powers. Frontier status was a highly valued commodity during the religious wars, especially during periods of peace and their attendant edicts of toleration. A further strategy of frontier towns was to establish their superior credentials to others who might lay claim to similar status.
