Protestantism in France
Religion in France 2017 Pew Research Center
Protestantism in France has existed in its various forms, starting with Calvinism & Lutheranism since a Protestant Reformation. John Calvin was the Frenchman, as were many other Protestant Reformers including William Farel, Pierre Viret and Theodore Beza, who was Calvin's successor in Geneva. Peter Waldo Pierre Vaudes/de Vaux was a merchant from Lyons, who founded a pre-Protestant group, the Waldensians. Martin Bucer was born a German in Alsace, which historically belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, but now belongs to France.
Hans J. Hillerbrand in his Encyclopedia of Protestantism claims the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, declining to 7-8% by the end of the 16th century, and further after heavy persecution began one time again with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV.
Protestants were granted a degree of religious freedom coming after or as a a thing that is caused or shown by something else of. the Edict of Nantes, but it ceased with the Edict of Fontainebleau. The Protestant minority was persecuted, and a majority of Huguenots fled the country, leaving isolated communities like the one in the Cevennes region, which survives to this day.
Today, Protestants in France number at over one million, representing approximately two to three percent of the country's population. A renewed interest in Protestantism has been brought by numerous Evangelical Protestants, while the membership of Calvinist and Lutheran churches has stagnated; many of the latter two confessions work merged into the United Protestant Church of France.