Boyle called it ‘the grand arch of the refugees.’  No documents exactly compute their number; one author calculates it at fifty-five thousand, and another, in 1686, at nearly seventy-five thousand souls.  In the Dutch Republic and Germany, as was the result in England, the Huguenots exercised a most powerful influence on politics, literature, war, and religion, and industry and commerce.  Holland, contrary to the general expectation, outlived the invasion of 1672, the Prince of Orange fortunately checking the designs of Louis XIV.  Refugee soldiers had powerfully contributed to the triumph of his cause in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and then they followed him, with valor, in the war against Louis XIV., which compelled that monarch to sue for peace.

Literary men and preachers obtained repose and liberty in that land, with consideration and honor.  Amsterdam alone received sixteen banished refugee ministers; and more than two hundred spread themselves through all the towns of the United Provinces.  Very eloquent French pastors filled the pulpits of the Hague, Rotterdam, Leyden, and Harlaem.  Their most brilliant orator was James Saurin.  Abbaddie, hearing him for the first time, exclaimed, ’Is this a man or an angel, who is speaking to us?’ Let us dwell a moment upon the character of this wonderful man.  By the elevation of his thoughts and brilliancy of imagination, his luminous expositions, purity of style, with vigor of expression, he produced the most profound impression on the refugees and others who crowded to hear his varied eloquence.  What charmed them most was the union in his style of Genevese zeal and earnestness with southern ardor, and especially those solemn prayers, with which he loved to close his discourses.  Saurin displayed in these petitions strains of supplication which up to this time among the Hollanders had never been observed in any other preacher.

All the branches of human learning were advanced in Holland by the Protestant Frenchmen.  Here no fetters on genius, no secret censorship or persecution, existed.  The boldest democratic theories, with the most daring philosophic systems, were freely discussed, and the refugees promoted this spirit of investigation.  They also increased the commerce and manufactures and agriculture of the Netherlands, and rendered Amsterdam one of the most famous cities of the world.  Like the ancient city of Tyre, which the prophet named the ‘perfection of beauty,’ her merchant princes traded with all islands and nations.  Macpherson, in his Annals of Commerce, estimates the annual loss to France, caused by the refugees establishing themselves in England and Holland, was not less than 3,582,000 pounds sterling, or about ninety millions of francs.  Until the close of the eighteenth century, the descendants of the Huguenots in Holland were united among themselves, by intermarriage and the bonds of mutual sympathies.  But in time a fusion with the Dutch became inevitable.