 Many of them were encouraged by the Catholics who looked forward to their departure and the opportunities for seizing their property.By 1688, nearly all of Martinique's French Protestant population had escaped to the British American colonies or Protestant countries in Europe.The policy decimated the population of Martinique and the rest of the French Antilles and set back their colonisation by decades, causing the French king to relax his policies in the region, which however left the islands susceptible to British occupation over the next century.