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24 August 1572Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre

A royal wedding meant to reconcile Catholics and Huguenots ends in mass killing

On the timeline · around 24 August 1572 · Counter-Reformation and Religious WarCounter-Reformation and Religious WarThe St Bartholomew's Day Massacre15551560156515701575158015851590

Quick facts

Location
Paris, then other French cities
Estimated deaths
5,000 to 25,000
Context
Fourth French War of Religion, part of 1562 to 1598 conflict

What happened

By 1572, France had already suffered a decade of intermittent civil war between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots, dating to 1562. Leading Huguenots gathered in Paris that August for the wedding of the Protestant Henry of Navarre to the Catholic Marguerite de Valois, an event intended to ease religious tension. Fearing a Huguenot uprising, the Catholic faction instead moved first: the Huguenot military leader Gaspard de Coligny was killed on 24 August, and the assassinations of other prominent Protestants followed within hours. The violence spread beyond the initial targeted killings into mob attacks on Huguenots across Paris and then other French cities, continuing for more than two months and killing an estimated 5,000 to 25,000 people.

Why it matters

The massacre ignited the fourth of France's Wars of Religion and became, across Protestant Europe, a defining symbol of Catholic violence against reformers, cited for generations afterward as proof that Catholic promises of toleration could not be trusted. It took another 26 years of intermittent war before Henry of Navarre, having survived the massacre and later converted to Catholicism to secure the throne as Henry IV, issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598 to end the conflict.

How we know

Contemporary chronicles, diplomatic dispatches, and later scholarly demographic studies of parish and burial records establish both the sequence of killings and the range of death-toll estimates; the World History Encyclopedia's article documents the timeline from Coligny's killing through the following weeks of violence.

Sources

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The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre · The Protestant Reformation · SourcedStory