Catholics massacre Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day
A royal wedding in Paris turns into a nationwide slaughter of Protestants
Quick facts
- Location
- Paris and provincial France
- Death toll
- 5,000-25,000 (estimates vary)
- Conflict
- French Wars of Religion (1562-1598)
What happened
During the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots, a wave of Catholic mob violence and organized killing began in Paris on the night of 23-24 August 1572, days after the wedding of the Protestant Henry of Navarre to the Catholic princess Margaret of Valois had brought many prominent Huguenots into the city. The killing, which targeted the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny among the first victims, spread from Paris to provincial cities over the following two months, in the end killing between 5,000 and 25,000 people nationwide. Margaret of Valois herself later wrote one of the only surviving firsthand royal accounts of the massacre's opening night in her memoirs.
Why it matters
The massacre deepened the religious civil wars that had already been tearing France apart since 1562 and hardened Protestant distrust of the French crown for a generation, feeding conflicts that would not be resolved until Henry of Navarre, the bridegroom who survived the massacre, became king and issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598.
How we know
Margaret of Valois's memoirs give a direct royal eyewitness account of the massacre's start, one of the few surviving records from within the royal family itself describing that night.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (Margaret of Valois's account) · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Protestant Reformation → · See the wider Reformation-era religious conflict across Europe