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.

Controversy

One of the early historians of the tragic event, Jacques-Auguste de Thous (The History of the Bloody Massacres of the Protestants in France in the year of our Lord, 1572 (London 1674)), among others, suggests that the entire Protestant movement among the nobility in Europe was primarily motivated by avarice, as princes coveted the vast properties that had been acquired by the Roman Catholic church; and that when the Protestant Reformation took hold, French nobility forlornly looked on for several decades as the English nobility enriched themselves on stolen loot, and some of them sought a way to similarly fill their coffers. The Huguenot movement soon showed itself to be a genuine threat to the Guise family and the unity of France, after it was newly invigorated by the systematic teachings of John Calvin. According to de Thous these rival princes saw in the momentum of the Protestant cause that the opportunity had arrived, and thus they supported the Huguenots in hope of securing their personal fortunes.

Related Topics:
Jacques-Auguste de Thous - John Calvin

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Naturally, as with the Lutheran movement in Germany, there were many pedestrian and sincere followers of the Reformation. But in de Thous' view, shared by many critics of French Protestantism, the nobility's motivation for supporting the Huguenots was avaricious, not at all theological or philosophical. The most notable of these Huguenot political conspiracies against the crown was the Amboise plot in 1560, which was ultimately unsuccessful. During the Wars of Religion that ensued, the Huguenots were never an impotent faction, but rather had military strength and ample funding, which continually applied toward the overthrow of their Catholic rivals in France. Huguenot forces allegedly committed random massacres of Catholics, destroyed churches, shrines and private houses. For a time, it looked as if the Huguenots would win. In 1569, the Huguenot general, Gabriel de Montgomery, enjoyed a victory over the royal forces led by General Terride at the Battle of Orthez in French Navarre. The surrender of the Catholic nobility was predicated upon a promise by the Huguenots that their lives would be spared. In spite of that pledge, General Montgomery had the Catholic nobles massacred in cold blood on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1569. Thus, according to de Thous, the date was not arbitrarily chosen on which to unleash revenge on the House of Bourbon; however, he supposes that the killing was supposed to be limited to the nobility attending the wedding, in revenge for the betrayal of the Guise captives three years earlier to the day, in 1569.

Related Topics:
Amboise plot - 1560 - Wars of Religion - 1569 - Gabriel de Montgomery - Battle of Orthez - Navarre

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