Dragonnades

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historical term referring to forced conversions of Huguenots into Catholicism often accompanied by violence and oppression
2. Describing the brutal campaigns in 17th-century France where Protestant followers were persecuted under royal orders to adopt Catholic faith
3. Signifying the state-sponsored actions which involved the imposition of Catholicism on dissenting religious groups, often involving military coercion

Etymology: The dragonnades were a real policy of Louis XIV of France, and the word comes from "dragon," the French word for a dragoon, a mounted soldier. In the 1680s, after the king moved to suppress French Protestantism (the Huguenots), he quartered dragoons in Huguenot households and let them behave violently until families converted or fled. The soldiers were the "dragons," and the practice took its name from them. The French term "dragonnade" was formed by adding the suffix "-ade" to "dragon," the same pattern that gives English words like "fusillade" (a volley of gunfire) and "barricade." Its sense as a verb, to "dragonnade" a region, was used in the same spirit as "to dragoon," which in English meant to force someone into submission by military means. English borrowed the French word in the 19th century, when historians writing about the Huguenots needed a precise name for this campaign.