With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon France. ... Paris became one vast almshouse, and it is estimated that, at the breaking out of the Revolution, two hundred thousand paupers claimed charity from the hands of the king.  The Jesuits alone flourished in the decaying nation, and ruled with dreadful tyranny over churches and schools, the prisons and the galleys.  (I think this is from Wylie, book 13, ch. 20)