Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

Le massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy - François Dubois

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The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants), during the French Wars of Religion. The massacre took place six days after the wedding of the king’s sister Margaret to the Protestant Henry III of Navarre (the future Henry IV of France). This marriage was an occasion for which many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris.

The massacre began on 23 August 1572 (the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle), two days after the attempted assassination of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots. The king ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, but the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks, the massacre expanded outward to other urban centres and the countryside. Modern estimates for the number of dead vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000.

Le massacre de Wassy

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The Massacre of Vassy, also known as the Massacre of Wassy, is the name given to the murder of Huguenot worshipers and citizens in an armed action by troops of Francis, Duke of Guise, in Wassy, France on 1 March 1562. The tragedy is identified as the first major event in the French Wars of Religion. The series of battles that followed concluded in the signing of the Edict of Amboise the next year, on 19 March 1563.

The events surrounding the Massacre of Wassy became widely known by a series of forty engravings published in Geneva seven years later.

Lettre de Catherine de Médicis adressée à Henri III, en fuite à Chartres, relatant les événements survenus à Paris après la journée des Barricades. Long post-scriptum autographe et signature de Catherine de Médicis. Fait à Paris.

Catherine de’ Medici’s letter to Henri III, in Chartres, telling him about the events that happened in Paris after the Day of the Barricades

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In the French Wars of Religion, the Day of the Barricades (Journée des barricades), 12 May 1588, was an apparently spontaneous public uprising in staunchly Catholic Paris against the moderate, hesitant, temporalizing policies of Henry III. It was called forth by the “Council of Sixteen”, representing the sixteen quartiers of Paris, led by Henri, duc de Guise, head of the Catholic League, and coordinated in detail by Philip II of Spain’s ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza.

The timing of the tumult was not as well coordinated with the sailing of the Spanish Armada against England as the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, had planned, but it still effectively distracted any French Huguenot interference. The genuine animosity of the staunchly Catholic people of Paris towards Henri III, his unacceptable mignons and his fashionable court, perceived as effete and disengaged, all too ready to come to terms with the Protestants and the heir presumptive to the French throne, Henri of Navarre, who had not yet been formally designated heir to the childless Henri III, and their alarm at the troops posted in the city were easily exploited.

From this strong position Guise forced the King to sign at Rouen the Édit d’union, registered at Paris 21 July. By its terms the King promised never to conclude a truce or peace with the “hérétiques”, to forbid public office to any who would not take a public oath of their Catholicité and never to leave the throne to a prince who was not Catholic; secret clauses extended amnesty to all deeds of the Catholic League, accorded support to its troops and made over to the League additional fortified places de sécurité. Two weeks later the duc de Guise was named lieutenant général of the kingdom. That December the duc de Guise and his brother Louis II de Lorraine were assassinated.