Station: [5] The Eight Huguenot Wars and the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre

This old copperplate engraving commemorates a historical event of unimaginable cruelty. The St Bartholomew's Day events of 1572 were the worst massacre in French history. Thousands of Huguenots lost their lives. 
A series of eight civil wars, fought between Roman Catholics and Protestant Huguenots in 16th century France, culminated in this terrible affair. 
On the 23rd of August 1572, the eve of St Bartholomew's Day, the royal court of France was celebrating a wedding. Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot by birth, was marrying the King's sister, Margaret of Valois, a Roman Catholic. Among the many invited guests were numerous influential members of the civil authorities and military leaders of both faiths: Roman Catholics and Huguenots alike. The wedding was meant to seal the reconciliation between the Reformed Christians and the Roman Catholics, but the opposite happened:
The Roman Catholic royal house exploited the presence of the senior Huguenot leaders to carry out a murderous plot. On the night of the wedding, the armed royal guard was ordered to kill the Huguenot leader Admiral Coligny and other influential members of the Reformed Church. That unleashed bloody carnage, as reported by an eyewitness: 
"At dawn, between three and four o'clock, they rang the bells heralding a storm, along with two small bells called war bells, and instantly, the rumour spread that the king had given permission to cut all the Huguenots' throats and to loot their houses. Then a massacre started all over Paris, so that presently, there was no alley, not even the smallest, where someone wasn't killed, and blood ran in the streets as if following a downpour.
The severed head of the Huguenot leader, Coligny, was taken as a trophy to the Pope in Rome. The pontiff responded by reading a Mass of Thanksgiving. 
The bridegroom, Henry of Navarre, one of the few surviving Huguenots, was forced to convert to Roman Catholicism. However, he later re-converted to the Reformed faith.
But on the streets of Paris, the killings continued and spread to many other parts of France, where they carried on for months on end. 

Foto: © DHG