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.

The massacres

At the instigation of the Catholic queen mother, Catherine de' Medici, Huguenots throughout France were slaughtered in an unprecedented massacre that began in Paris on Saint Bartholomew's Day, August 24 1572.

Related Topics:
August 24 - 1572

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In 1572, a series of inter-related incidents occurred after the royal wedding of Marguerite of Valois to Henry of Navarre, an alliance that strengthened his claim to the throne of France. Admiral de Coligny had told his supporters who urged him to quit Paris that he was aware of the danger and of the Queen Mother's enmity, however he chose to linger at court in hopes of winning a concession from the King of greater tolerance for the Huguenot religion, in exchange for possible support in the Low Countries. On 22 August, Catherine's agent, a Catholic named Maurevel, attempted to assassinate Admiral de Coligny on the street, but succeeded only in wounding him and infuriating the Huguenot party. Then in the early hours of the morning of 24 August, St. Bartholomew's Day, Coligny and several dozen other Huguenot leaders were murdered at the Inn of Ponthieu, where they were staying, in a series of coordinated assassinations that could only have been planned at the highest level. That was the signal for a widespread massacre. Beginning on 24 August, and lasting to 17 September, there was a wave of popular killings of Huguenots by the Paris mob, as if spontaneous.

Related Topics:
1572 - Marguerite of Valois - Henry of Navarre - Paris - 22 August - 24 August - St. Bartholomew's Day - 17 September

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"To be a Huguenot," wrote the historian, Mézeray, "was to have money, enviable position, or avaricious heirs." Hence, according to Mézeray, when on the following morning the houses of the rich were pillaged and blood flowed in streams, it was an outpouring of popular envy and resentment, mixed with religious zeal. As the massacres spread to the countryside, they were carried out by the peasantry against Huguenots who were perceived by them to be anti-Catholic and anti-national enemies of France.

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From August to October, similar seemingly spontaneous massacres of Huguenots took place in other towns, such as Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyon, Bourges, Rouen, and Orléans. Again, carried out by the populace, not regimens of the crown. Estimates of the number of those murdered range as high as 100,000. A Huguenot source gives a figure of 70,000. Other sources estimate 30,000 or fewer. Among the slain was composer Claude Goudimel. Hilaire Belloc reckoned the number to be "perhaps 2,000" as he surmised the lasting impact of the massacres thus: "...for a time thoroughly cowed anti-Catholic nobles. The fury of the populace had a lasting effect which could never be undone." The number of victims in the provinces is unknown, with figures varying between 2,000 and 100,000. The Martyrologe des Huguenots, published in 1581, brings the toll up to 15,138, but mentions only 786 dead. At any rate only a short time afterwards the reformers were preparing for a fourth civil war.

Related Topics:
Toulouse - Bordeaux - Lyon - Bourges - Rouen - Orléans - Claude Goudimel - Hilaire Belloc

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"Catholics say only 30,000 were slain in the Inquisition of France. Protestants put the number at 70,000. We would prefer the latter figure. If there were 70,000 Huguenots in Paris on the night of the massacre, so much more the justification for the slaughter… We have heard ring out many times the very bells that called the Catholics together on that fatal night. They always sounded sweetly in our ears." (Western Watchman, No. 21, 1912)

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Contemporary accounts report bodies in the rivers for months afterwards, so that no one would eat fish. Pope Gregory XIII's reaction was jubilant: all the bells of Rome pealed for a public day of thanksgiving, the guns of the Castel Sant'Angelo sounded a joyous salute, a special commemorative medal was struck to honour the occasion, and Gregory commissioned Giorgio Vasari to paint a mural depicting the Massacre, which is in the Vatican. In Paris, the poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf, founder of the Academie de Musique et de Poésie, wrote a sonnet extravagantly praising the killings. The Roman Catholic view was that the Protestant heretics got what they deserved.

Related Topics:
Pope Gregory XIII - Castel Sant'Angelo - Giorgio Vasari - The Vatican - Jean-Antoine de Baïf

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