Massacre of the St. Bartholomew\'s Day Massacre

The Massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre is the massacre perpetrated with Paris by the Catholique S on the Protesting S the August 24th 1572, day of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. This massacre was prolonged in the capital during several days, then extended to more than one score of provincial towns during the following weeks.

This tragic episode of the wars of religion results from a complex tangle from factors multiple, as well religious and policies that social. It is the consequence of military and civil tearings of the French Noblesse between catholics and Protestants, in particular of the vendetta between the clan of the Own way and that of Châtillon-Montmorency. It is the result of a savage reaction popular, ultra-catholic and hostile with the royal policy of appeasing. It also reflects the international tensions between the kingdoms of France and Spain, revived by the insurrection in the Netherlands.

For a long time, the historiographic tradition made of the king Charles IX and his mother Catherine de Médicis the principal persons in charge of the massacre. For lack of sources, the historians divide themselves still today on the exact role of the crown.

Context of the massacre

The massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre is placed following a series of events of which it is the consequence:

the Peace of Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer which puts an end to the third war of religion, on August 8th 1570
the marriage between Henri de Navarre and Marguerite de Valois, on August 18th, 1572
the assassination missed by the Admiral of Coligny, on August 23rd, 1572

An unpopular peace and a marriage

The peace of Saint-Germain puts an end to three years terrible civil wars between catholics and Protestants. This peace is precarious because the most intransigent catholics do not accept it. The return of the Protestants to the court of France shocks them, but the queen-mother Catherine de Médicis and his son the king Charles IX are decided not to let the war begin again. Conscious of the financial problems of the kingdom, they defend peace and leave Gaspard de Coligny, the chief of the Protestants, to return in the royal council. To concretize peace between the two religious parties, Catherine de Médicis projects to marry her daughter Marguerite de Valois with the prince protesting Henri de Navarre, future Henri IV. The princely marriage is envisaged the August 18th 1572. It is accepted neither by the intransigent catholics, nor by the pope. This one and the king of Spain, Philippe II, condemns the policy of the queen-mother vigorously.

A city under tension

The marriage causes the presence in Paris of a very great number of Protestant gentlemen come to escort their prince. However, Paris is a city savagely anti-huguenote. The Parisian ones, catholics to the extreme, do not accept their presence. Because of the hammering of the preachers, capuchin S in the highest degree, the marriage of a princess of France with a Protestant is to them a horror. The Parlement of Paris itself decides to be sulky the ceremony of the marriage. The Parisian people very went up. Moreover, harvests were bad. The rises of the prices and the luxury deployed at the time of the royal weddings accentuate the hatred of the people.

The court itself is very tightened. Catherine de Médicis did not obtain the agreement of the pope to celebrate this exceptional marriage. Consequently, the French prelates hesitate over the attitude to adopt. One needs all the skill of the queen-mother to convince the cardinal of Bourbon to link the husbands. In addition, the competitions between the big families reappear. The Own way are not ready to leave the place to Montmorency. François duke of Montmorency, and governor of Paris, does not manage to control the urban disorders. Yielding vis-a-vis the Parisian danger, he prefers to leave the city a few days after the marriage.

The attempted murder of Coligny

The August 22nd 1572, an attack by shooting of Arquebuse is perpetrated against Gaspard de Coligny. So today, it is impossible to know the exact author of this attack, historiography retained three names:

the Own way: are the most probable suspects. Leaders of the catholic party, they want to avenge death for François de Guise, assassinated ten years before, on the order of Coligny, according to them. The fired gunshot on the admiral is drawn from a house belonging to one from their familiar. The cardinal of Lorraine and the duke of Aumale and the duchess dowager of Own way Antoinette are the most determined family members. Nevertheless, certain historians think that the Own way étaint too much anxious to return in grace near the king not to make imprudence to irritate it against them.
the pile cluster governor of the Netherlands in the name of Philippe II: Coligny projects to intervene militarily in the Netherlands to release them from the Spanish yoke, according to the alliance which it had contracted with the Nassau. To June, it sent several clandestine troops to the help of the Protestants of Mons, besieged by the pile cluster. Coligny hopes after the marriage to open the war with Spain. For the pile cluster and the Spaniards, the admiral was a threat. The reading of the mails of the Spanish ambassador made it possible to prove the opposite and to clear them.

Catherine de Médicis: according to the tradition, Coligny would have acquired too much influence on the king. Inevitably, the queen mother would have conceived a sharp fear to see her son involving the kingdom in a war in the Netherlands against the Spanish power. However, the majority of the contemporary historians find difficult to believe in the culpability of Catherine de Médicis within sight of her efforts made for interior peace and the peace of the State. In addition, it is allowed that Coligny did not exert any influence which was dangerous for the queen.

Lastly, there remains the assumption of an isolated act, financed by a character relatively not very important, near to the medium guisard and pro-Spanish. If the Own way, the Spaniards and Catherine de Médicis were not the authors of the attack, were they with the current of what prepared?

With exceptional circumstances, exceptional justice

The attempted murder of Coligny is the event release of the crisis which will lead to the massacre. The Protestants protest against this attack against their chief more respected, and claim revenge. The capital is at the edge of the civil war between the partisans of the Guise and the huguenots. To reassure Coligny and the Protestants, the king comes with his court to the bedside from the casualty, and justice promises to him. In front of the backing of the king vis-a-vis the Protestants, the Own way make mine leave the capital leaving the king and the queen mother in the greatest distress. Charles IX and Catherine de Médicis take fear only of being found with the Protestants. Since the Surprised of Meaux in 1567, the queen mother always had the greatest apprehension with regard to the Protestants. During the meal of the queen-mother, Protestants bruyamment come to claim justice to him.

The evening even of August 23rd, the king would have held a meeting with his advisers to decide control to follow. He were there the queen-mother, the duke of Anjou, it Minister of Justice Rene de Birague, the marshal of Tavannes, the baron de Retz, and the duke of Nevers. There does not exist any document making it possible to affirm with certainty that the decision to kill the Protestant military main leaders was made at this meeting. Considering the circumstances, the council decided to proceed to an extraordinary justice and the elimination of the Protestant chiefs was decided. It was a question of putting out of state to harm all the Protestant captains of war. The council saved the young princes of blood, king Navarre and the prince of Condé.

The night of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Little time after this decision, the municipal authorities of Paris was convened. It was ordered to them to close the doors of the city and to arm the middle-class men in order to prevent any attempt at rising. It is today difficult to determine the chronology of the events and to know the exact moment where slaughter started. A signal was given, seems it, by the ringing of Matines (in a strict sense, between midnight and the paddle), with the bell of the church Saint-Germain-the Auxerrois, near to the Louvre and parish of kings de France. Previously, the noble Protestants were driven out palate of Louvre then massacred in the streets. The admiral de Coligny was drawn from his bed, completed and défenestré. The bodies are trailed in the streets and are gathered in the court of Louvre.

In the small hour, the people, discovering the massacre, started to pursue the Protestants in all the city. The massacre lasted several days, in spite of the attempts of the king to make it stop. The foreign students, the booksellers, the changers are massacred by the people, encouraged by the priests; the corpses are thrown in the Seine. That of Coligny, found by crowd, is émasculé, plunged in the Seine, where it rots three days before being hung with the gibet of Montfaucon (ritual crime according to Mandrou and Estèbe).

At the cemetery of Saint-Innocent, this Sunday, August 24, 1572 at midday, a bush of hawthorn, desiccated since months, starts to reverdir close to an image of the Virgin. To the rumor of the wonder, the gavroches in fright run and of the women are hysterical, because they interpret it like a sign of the divine blessing to these multiple murders.

The massacre of the Protestants was not general. Number of them were the familiar ones of the royal family or the clan of the Own way. To protect itself from popular fury, several groups of Protestants sought a protection with the hotel of Own way or that of his/her mother the duchess of Nemours, where the duchess of Ferrare Renee de France took refuge with her servants.
Others remained in Louvre near the royal family. It is the case of the duchess of Uzès, friend of Catherine de Médicis and the princes and the princesses of blood. The Protestants present in Paris on August 24th who survived are especially those which placed out of the city, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

The season of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

No matter what it was, the August 26th, the king held a Lit of justice where it endorsed the responsibility for the execution of the Protestant war leaders. He declared whereas he had wanted:

to prevent the execution of unhappy and hateful conspiracy made by the aforementioned admiral, chief and author of icelle and sesdits adherent and accomplices in the person of the known as lord king and against his State, the queen her mother, Misters its brothers, king de Navarre, princes and lords being close to them.

But the massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre was followed by good of others: it lasts a whole season, according to the expression of Michelet. Informed by witnesses, mails of tradesmen, encouraged by agitators like the count de Montsoreau in the Loire Valley, the provincial towns started their own massacres. The August 25th, slaughter reached Orleans (where it would have made a thousand of victims) and Meaux; the 26, the Charity-on-Loire; 28 and 29, with Angers and Saumur; the August 31st, with Lyon; the September 11th, with Bourges; the October 3rd, with Bordeaux; October 4th with Troyes, Rouen, Toulouse; October 5th, with Albi, Gaillac; Bourges, Romance, Valence, Orange, was also touched. One misses sources to reconstitute violence in other cities.

The reaction of the authorities is variable: sometimes they encourage the massacres, as in Meaux where it is the prosecutor of the king who gives the signal of it, or in Bordeaux (the massacre is organized by the Parliament), Toulouse (the duke of Merry, governor, are very favorable there). Enough often, they tries to protect the huguenots, by putting them in prison (in Mans, in Tours). That always does not go, and the prisons are forced and the Protestants are massacred there (as in Lyon, Rouen, Albi). The military governors contradict those which claim that the king orders and approves the massacres (what is not always enough to prevent them).

On the whole, the number of deaths is estimated at 2.000 in Paris, and from 5.000 to 10.000 in all France.

By learning the news from the massacre, the pope Gregoire XIII made sing a Te Deum and a medal with the effigy of sovereign pontiff was struck in order to celebrate the event. Gregoire XIII also ordered with the painter Vasari a series of frescos reporting the massacre (above, a detail of painting always present in the Sala Regia at the the Vatican). Philippe II of Spain announced its satisfaction and would have declared: " It is more the beautiful day of my vie." Elisabeth I {{Re}} of England took mourning and made make the foot of crane to the French ambassador before appearing to accept, for diplomatic reasons, the thesis of the plot huguenot and the " massacre préventif".

The massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre started the fourth war of religion.

Historiographic interpretation

Historiographic tradition

The massacre of the Saint Barthelemy became very early a stake historiographic. In front of contradictions of the royal policy, each one went there from its interpretation. Among Protestants, one accuses the king and the queen-mother culprits in their eyes not to have known to protect the huguenots, to have even ordered the massacre. Writers as of Aubigné do not hesitate to exaggerate the figures and to transform the event like resulting from the only religious fact. As regards catholic protagonist, one seeks to be cleared by rejecting the fault on the other, it is the case of the marshal of Saulx-Tavannes, or of Marguerite de Valois, which never says not to have known anything. Actually, the complexity and the speed of the drama such as anybody were forever known really to seize the various phases of its unfolding (De Thou). While asserting - tardily the massacre, Charles IX became the person in charge about it in front of the posterity. Another diagrammatic interpretation of the massacre consists in retaining only the religious aspect of it. Under the French revolution, a play which puts it in scene is a great success: Charles IX or the Saint Barthelemy (1790) of Marie-Joseph Chénier. The time is with the dechristianization and the massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre is used to vituperate catholic fanaticism. At the XIXe century, Alexandre Dumas perennializes this tradition by romançant the event.

Today, certain historiographic traditions are called into question like the famous sentence pronounced by the king, the evening of August 23rd. He would have exclaimed of anger, under the repetitive councils of his mother, exceeds: “Eh well is! That they are killed! But that they are killed all! How there does not remain about it any more one so that me cannot to it reprocher ! ”.

New historiographic orientation

So today, the historians dissociate the execution of the Protestant chiefs of the popular massacre itself, they still discuss responsibilities for the royal family. The stake is to know the degree of their implication or their inaction in the organization of the massacre.

the traditional interpretation, supported by Janine Garrisson, made Catherine de Médicis and of its catholic advisers principal persons in charge. Panicked with the idea to be discovered to have financed the attack of Coligny and to undergo the revenge on the Protestants, they would have forced the hand with a hesitant and weak-willed king to decide the execution of the military main leaders. This interpretation for a long time acquired today is given up little by little, including Janine Garrisson which had taken it again.

Denis Crouzet replaces the massacre in the ideological context of the time: the Néoplatonisme. Charles IX and Catherine de Médicis could not have the intention assassinating Coligny, because it had been contrary with their desire to maintain the harmony and the harmony around the royal person. It is once the assassination consumes the rupture and that the civil war threatens balance again, that the position of the king and the queen mother changes. By fear to see the war beginning again and the rise of a Protestant insurrection, they would have chosen to choke those in egg. The néo-platonic principle expensive with Catherine de Médicis who tends to preserve the unit around the person of the king, pushed them to sacrifice the Protestant main leaders and to agree in spite of them to the massacre.

For Jean-Louis Bud, they are the Parisian ones, the Own way and the agents of the king Philippe II of Spain which are the true persons in charge of the attack and the massacre. Charles IX and Catherine de Médicis would be absolutely foreign there. The historian underlines the quasi-insurrectionary state of the city at the time of the marriage. In December 1571, several Protestant houses had already been plundered. The Own way, very popular in Paris, benefitted from this situation to make pressure on the king and the queen-mother. Charles IX would thus have been constrained to precede the future riot, which would have been the fact of the Own way, the middle-class militia and the people.

According to Thierry Wanegffelen, one of the principal persons in charge of the royal family in this business is the duke of Anjou. Following the assassination attempt against the admiral de Coligny, whom it allots to the Own way and Spain, the Italian advisers of Catherine de Médicis undoubtedly recommended in the royal Council the murder of about fifty Protestant chiefs to benefit from the occasion to eliminate the danger huguenot, but the queen mother and the king are very firmly opposite there. However Henri of Anjou, general lieutenant of the kingdom, present at this meeting of the Council, could see in the achievement of this crime of State an good occasion to impose itself on the government. He contacted another ambitious young man, in evil of authority and being able, the duke Henri de Guise (whose uncle, the clear-sighted Charles cardinal of Lorraine was then retained in Rome), and with the Parisian authorities. The Parisian St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre is resulting from this conjunction of interests, and she is explained of as much better than the men of the duke of Anjou acted in the name of the general lieutenant of the kingdom, therefore in mentalities of the time, in the name of the king. It is included/understood why, the shortly after the release of the massacre, Catherine de Médicis made condemn by royal declaration of Charles IX the crimes, and threatened the Own way of royal justice. But when Charles IX and his mother learned the implication from the duke of Anjou, they were dependant on its company, so that one second royal declaration, while asking the end of the massacres, into ready the initiative with the will of Charles IX to prevent a Protestant plot. Initially the coup d'etat of Henri of Anjou is a success, but Catherine de Médicis would have ingénié itself to draw aside it from the capacity in France: she sends it with the royal army enliser in front of La Rochelle and the fact of electing king de Pologne.

Chronology

See too

Personalities present in Paris during the events

Similar massacres

Within the framework of wars of religion:

Others:

Crossbred of Bruges
sicilian Vespers
Massacre of the mill of Agau

Bibliography on the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Pierre de Vaissière, Accounts of the time of the disorders (XVIe century). From some assassins , Paris: Emile-Paul Editor, 1912. (chapter II. “" The killer of the roy" : Charles de Louviers, lord of Maurevert”, pp.93-156; chapter III. “Jean Yanowitz, known as Besme, murderer of Coligny”, pp.157-195).
Janine Garrisson :

Alarm bell for a massacre: the season of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (under the name of Janine Estèbe). Editions of Today, collection “the Untraceable ones”, 1975. 216 p. Reproduction in facsimile of the edition of 1968, published with the editions the Centurion, in collection “an Extreme past”.
1572, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre , Brussels: Complex, 1987.

Denis Crouzet:

Warriors of God. Violence at the time of the disorders of religion towards 1525-towards 1610 , Champvallon, 1990.
the night of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. A lost dream of the Rebirth , Beech, coll “Chronicles”, 1994.
“ the night of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre : confirmations and complements”, in the second order: the ideal peerage-book. Homage to Ellery Schalk , s.d. Chantal Grell and Arnaud Ramière de Fortanier, Paris: Presses of the University of Paris-Sorbonne, coll “Myth, Criticism and History”, 1999 (pp.55-81).
the high heart of Catherine de Médicis. A political reason at times of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre , Albin Michel, coll “History”, 2005.

Jean-Louis Bud:

the assassination of Coligny , Geneva: Droz, 1992.
Charles IX front the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre , Geneva: Droz, coll “Work of history éthico-policy”, 1995.

Nicola Mary Sutherland, The Massacres off St Bartholomew and the European Conflict , New York: Noble Barnes and, 1973.
Alfred Soman (s.d.), The Massacres off St Bartholomew, Reappraisals & Documents , La Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.
Acts of the conference " The admiral de Coligny and his temps" (Paris, 24 October 28th, 1972) , Paris: Company of the history of French Protestantism, 1974. 796 p. (Appendix separate from historical charts, 10 p.). Various articles:

Robert McCune Kingdon, “Some reactions to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre outside France” (pp.191-204)
Henri Dubief, “the historiography of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre” (pp.351-365)
Amedeo Molnar, “Reactions to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Bohemia” (pp.367-376)
Marguerite Soulié, “the poetry inspired by the death of Coligny: execration and glorification of the hero” (pp.389-405)
Janusz Tazbir, “the night of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, its echoes in Poland” (pp.427-433)

Robert McCune Kingdon, Myths butt the St Bartholomew' S Day Massacres, 1572-1576 , London: Harvard University Near, 1988.
Marc Venard, “Stop the massacre! ”, Re-examined modern history and contemporary , 39,1992 (pp.645-661)
Thierry Wanegffelen, Catherine de Médicis. Capacity with female the , Payot, 2005.
Arlette Jouanna, St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: Mysteries of a crime of State, August 24th, 1572 , Paris: Gallimard, collection “the days which made France”, 2007.

Artistic representations

the play the massacre of Paris of the English playwright Christopher Marlowe reports the event.
the massacre inspired a famous novel with Alexandre Dumas father: the Queen Margot (1845) like with Robert Blackbird: Paris my good city (1980).
In 1916, D.W. Griffith made of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre the framework of one of the four stories of its film Intolérance ( Intolerance ).
In 1954, Jean Dréville carried out the Queen Margot , a film on a scenario of Abel Gance according to the novel of Alexandre Dumas. As in work éponyme, the king Charles IX plans only the initial attack against Coligny (thesis of the catholic lampoon " the stratagem or the trick of Charles IX, roy of France, against Huguenots rebels with God and luy " , 1574). In parallel, Catherine de Médicis - helped of the duke Henri de Guise - prepares the massacre after having attracted the fine flower of the nobility huguenote in Paris thanks to the marriage between Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre. See the Queen Margot (film, 1954) .
In 1994, Patrice Chéreau, French realizer, sign him also a cinematographic version of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre which borrows elements from the part of Marlowe and with the novel of Alexandre Dumas. See the Queen Margot (film, 1994) .

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