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The Reformation in France

St. Bartholomew's Day

By the 1570s, the young king Charles IX was asserting himself independently of his mother. Charles leaned toward the Protestants and was friendly with Coligny. Coligny, in turn, was conspiring with the Dutch to lead an invasion of the Netherlands to drive out the Spanish there. This greatly worried Catherine, who knew that it would be a mistake for France to risk war with Spain.

On 18 August 1572, Henry of Navarre married Marguerite of Valois. Henry was a leading Protestant prince, Marguerite was Charles IX's sister. The Protestants were moving ever closer to the throne. Four day's later, Coligny was shot by an assassin, though the bullet failed to kill him. Catherine was evidently a party to this plot, as was the Guise family, and she now feared for her life and for the crown.

Desperate, Catherine convinced her son that a Protestant plot to overthrow the monarchy was imminent, and that only swift action could save France. On 24 August (St. Bartholomew's Day), Guise led troops into the city. Coligny was arrested and executed on the spot. On that same day, about three thousand Huguenots in Paris were massacred. Within three days, around twenty thousand Huguenots were executed across France. The scale of the slaughter, and its timing, clearly shows that the Guises had planned such an attack for some time.

Catholics around Europe rejoiced, while Protestants mourned and cried out in anger. The massacre in an instant transformed the nature of the religious struggle in France; henceforward it became a battle to the death, and a battle in which Catholics and Protestants around Europe felt directly involved.

One of many effects of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre was that French Protestants began producing a literature of political resistance. Works poured out during the 1570s. We begin to see arguments in favor of resistance for reasons of conscience, and that the people themselves are the ultimate source of political authority. These arguments were not entirely novel, but they appeared with a new intensity and clarity as a result of religious wars.