St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) was a wave of Catholic mob violence against the Huguenots (French Protestants), under the authority of Catherine de Medici, the mother of Charles IX. Starting on August 24, 1572, with the assassination of a prominent Huguenot, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the massacres spread throughout Paris and later to other cities and the countryside, lasting for several months, during which as many as 70,000 may have been killed. The massacres marked a turning-point in the French Wars of Religion by stiffening Huguenot intransigence.

Background

After the third war in 1570, there was a possibility of peace. The House of Guise had fallen from favour at the court and had been replaced by moderates who were more willing to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. The Huguenots were in a strong defensive position as a result of the Edict of Saint-Germain (August 1570). They controlled the fortified towns of La Rochelle, La Charité-sur-Loire, Cognac, and Montauban. Catherine de Medici had hoped that the marriage alliances of her children would support her move for peace, including the proposed marriage of her son, François, Duke of Anjou and Elizabeth I of England.

Related Topics:
1570 - House of Guise - Edict of Saint-Germain - La Rochelle - La Charité-sur-Loire - Cognac - Montauban - François, Duke of Anjou - Elizabeth I of England

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By 1571, however, hopes of peace were collapsing. Relations between the Huguenots and the Catholics had deteriorated, and in Rouen on a Sunday in March, forty Huguenots were killed as they emerged from the sermon, because they refused to kneel in front of the host (the eucharist) during a Catholic street procession.

Related Topics:
1571 - Rouen - Eucharist

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With the Guise faction out at the French court, the Huguenot leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, was readmitted into the king's council in September 1571. The Guises hated Coligny for two reasons: he was the leader of the Huguenots, and they thought he was implicated in the assassination of Francis, Duke of Guise, in February 1563.

Related Topics:
Gaspard de Coligny - Assassination - Francis, Duke of Guise - 1563

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The Catholic fleet assembled under Don John of Austria defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto. This confirmed to the Huguenots that Catholicism could resurge across Western Europe, led by Philip II of Spain. In April 1572, Sea Beggars took control of Brielle, thus taking control of Holland. This meant that there was pressure within France to intervene on behalf of the rebels in the Netherlands to prevent a Spanish intervention in France. Coligny was the main supporter of this intervention. There was then the possibility of either another civil war or a major war against Spain, which was at that time western Europe's greatest Catholic power.

Related Topics:
Don John of Austria - Turks - Battle of Lepanto - Philip II of Spain - Sea Beggars - Brielle - Holland - The Netherlands - Spanish

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Ostensibly to quell the rancour between the Protestants and the Catholics (the House of Bourbon and the House of Guise), the Queen-Mother, Catherine de Medici, arranged for Henry of Navarre, Duke of Bourbon, the patron of the Huguenots, to marry her daughter Marguerite. The wedding provided an extraordinary occasion to get all of the powerful Huguenots in one place. Catherine therefore planned the massacre of many of the Huguenots while they were in town for the wedding, but she had a hard time convincing her son, Charles IX of France, to go along, since he had developed a friendly relationship with Admiral de Coligny. Finally, after much argument, Charles became furious and lashed out at his mother, commanding the massacre to be done thoroughly if it were to be done at all — in other words, he didn't want to face any retaliation, so he ordered them all to be killed.

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