In the 16th and 17th centuries, a French Protestant who followed the beliefs of Calvin. By 1561 there were 2000 Calvinist churches in France and the Huguenots had become a political faction that seemed to threaten the state. Persecution followed and during the French Wars of Religion the Huguenots fought eight civil wars against the Catholic establishment and triumphed when, by the Edict of Nantes in 1598, Henry IV gave them liberty of worship and a ‘state within a state’. Their numbers grew, especially among merchants and skilled artisans, until they were again persecuted. The centre of their resistance in 1627 was in the town of La Rochelle, which the Richelieu government had to besiege for over a year before capturing it. In 1685 the Edict was revoked; many thousands of Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Brandenburg, some settling as far away as North America and the Cape of Good Hope. All these places were to benefit from their skill in craftmanship and trade, particularly as silk-weavers and silversmiths.