The Massacre of St Bartholomew was the slaughter of the French Protestants, which began on the 24th of August, 1572, by secret orders from Charles IX, at the instigation of his mother, Catharine de Medici, and in which, according to Sully, 70,000 Huguenots, including women and children, were murdered throughout the country. During the minority of Charles and the regency of his mother a long war raged in France between the Catholics and Huguenots, the leaders of the latter being the Prince of Conde and Admiral Coligny.
In 1570 overtures were made by the court to the Huguenots, which resulted in a treaty of peace. This treaty blinded the chiefs of the Huguenots, particularly the Admiral Coligny, who was wearied with civil war. The king appeared to have entirely disengaged himself from the influence of the Guises and his mother; he invited Coligny to his court, and honoured him as a father. The most artful means were employed to increase this delusion. The sister of the king was married to the Prince de Beam on August the 18th 1572 in order to allure the most distinguished Huguenots to Paris. On August the 22nd a shot from a window wounded the admiral. The king hastened to visit him, and swore to punish the author of the villainy; but on the same day he was induced by his mother to believe that the admiral had designs on his life. 'God's death!' he exclaimed; 'kill the admiral; and not only him, but all the Huguenots; let none remain to disturb us.' The following night Catharine held the bloody council, which fixed the execution for the night of St Bartholomew, August the 24th, 1572. After the assassination of Coligny a bell from the tower of the royal palace at midnight gave to the assembled companies of burghers the signal for the general massacre of the Huguenots. The Prince of Conde and the King of Navarre saved their lives by going to mass and pretending to embrace the Catholic religion. By the king's orders the massacre was extended throughout the whole kingdom; and the horrible slaughter continued for thirty days in almost all the provinces. Research Massacre of St Bartholomew
Catherine de Medici (Catharine de Medici) was the wife of Henry II, King of France. She was born in 1519 at Florence and died in 1589. She was the only daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, duke of Urbino, and the niece of Pope Clement VII. She was married to the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Henry II, in 1533, but had little or no influence at the French court either during the reign of her husband, who was under the influence of his mistress Diana de Poitiers, or during the reign of her eldest son, Francis II, who, in consequence of his marriage with Mary Stuart, was devoted to the party of the Guises. The death of Francis II placed the reins of government, during the minority of her son Charles IX, in her hands. Wavering between the Guises on one side, who had put themselves at the head of the Catholics, and Conde and Coligny on the other, who had become very powerful by the aid of the Protestants, she played off one faction against the other in the hope of increasing her own power; and the thirty years of civil war which followed were mainly due to her. Her influence with Charles IX was throughout of the worst kind, and the massacre of St Bartholomew's Day was largely her work. After the death of Charles IX, in 1574, her third son succeeded as Henry III, and her mischievous influence continued. She died in 1589, shortly before the assassination of Henry III. Of her two daughters, Elizabeth married Philip II of Spain, and Margaret of Valois married Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. Research Catherine de Medici
Charles IX was king of France. He was born in 1550 and died in 1574. He was a son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici. He succeeded to the throne at the age of ten following the death of his brother Francis II, his mother becoming regent and consolidating her power during his reign. Along with the Guises his mother headed the Catholic League against the Calvinists, and her tortuous and unscrupulous policy helped to embitter the religious strife of the factions. After a series of Huguenot persecutions and civil wars a peace was made in 1570, which, two years later, on 24th August, 1572, was treacherously broken by the Massacre of St Bartholomew's. The king, who had been little more than the tool of his scheming mother, died two years afterwards, in 1574. Research Charles IX
Gustavus II (Gustavus Adolphus) was a king of Sweden. He was born in 1594 at Stockholm and died in 1632. He was a son of Charles IX. He ascended the throne in 1611 and his tact and wisdom gradually gained over the wealthy nobles whom his stern father had attempted to crush, and persuaded them to take the chief burdens on their own shoulders. Yet he protected the lower classes from the tyranny of the landowners, reorganised the government and placed it in the hands of a well organised bureaucracy. He built new towns and encouraged commerce, and in 1624 granted a charter to the Swedish West India Company founded by William Usselinx, and pledged himself to subscribe 400,000 daler of the royal treasury to the company's stock. Research Gustavus II
Henry III was King of France. He was born in 1551 and died in 1589. He was the third son of Henry II of France and Catharine de Medici and succeeded his brother, Charles IX, in 1574. In the previous year he had been chosen king of Poland, which he was obliged to quit secretly when called to the throne of France. In 1576, after a civil war, he granted to the Protestants the favourable edict of Beaulieu, but the concession led to the formation of the League, and Henry, to re-establish his authority, declared himself its head.
Civil war, however, again broke out, and though hostilities were again put an end to by the Peace of Bergerac in 1577, they were renewed in 1580 until the Peace of Fleix in November 1580. The death of his brother the Duc d'Anjou in 1584, which left Henry of Navarre, a Calvinist, heir-apparent to the throne, brought on another war, called the War of the Three Henries, the leading persons engaged in it besides the king being Henry of Guise, the real head of the League, and Henry of Navarre.
In 1588 Henry of Guise expelled the king from his capital. An apparent reconciliation at Blois was followed by the assassination of the Guises, and Henry, finding himself everywhere opposed by the Catholic party, was compelled to ally himself with Henry of Navarre. The two princes advanced on Paris, but in 1589 Henry III of France was stabbed by Jacques Clement, a Dominican, and died the next day. He was the last of the branch of Orleans-Angouleme of the stock of the Valois, and was succeeded by Henry of Navarre, the first of the house of Bourbon. Research Henry III of France
Henry IV was king of France. He was born in 1553 at Pau and died in 1610. He was son of Anthony of Bourbon, duke of Vendome, and of Jeanne d'Albret, daughter of Henry, king of Navarre, and herself afterwards queen of Navarre. Educated by his mother in the Calvinistic faith, he early joined, at her wish, the Protestant army of France, and served under Admiral Coligny. In 1572 he married Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX., and after the massacre of St Bartholomew, which took place during the marriage festivities, was forced to adopt the Catholic creed.
In 1576 he escaped from Paris, retracted at Tours his enforced abjuration of Calvinism, put himself at the head of the Huguenots, and took a leading part in all the subsequent religious wars. On becoming presumptive heir to the crown in 1584 he was obliged to resort to arms to assert his claims. In 1587 he defeated the army of the League at Coutras, and after the death of Henry III gained the battles of Arques in 1589 and Ivri in 1590. He was obliged, however, to raise the siege of Paris; and convinced that a peaceful occupation of the throne was impossible without his professing the Catholic faith, he became nominally a Catholic in 1593. After his formal coronation in 1594 only three provinces held out against him - Burgundy, reduced by the victory of Fontaine - Frangaise in 1595; Picardy, reduced by the capture of Amiens in 1596; and Brittany, which came into his hands by the submission of the Duke of Mercoeur in the spring of 1598.
The war against Spain was concluded in 1598 by the Peace of Vervins to the advantage of France. The same year was signalized by the granting of the edict of Nantes, which secured to the Protestants entire religious liberty. He made use of the tranquillity which followed to restore the internal prosperity of his kingdom, and particularly the wasted finances, in which he was successful with the aid of his primeminister Sully. At the instance of Sully Henry divorced Margaret of Valois, and in 1600 married Maria de Medici, niece of the Grand-duke of Tuscany, mother of Louis XIII. She was crowned at St Denis in 1610, but on the following day Henry was stabbed by a fanatic named Ravaillac, while examining the preparations for the queen's entry into Paris. The great benefits which Henry IV of France bestowed upon France entitle him to the designation which he himself assumed at an assembly of the Notables at Eouenin 1596, the Regenerator of France (Restaurateur de. la France). Research Henry IV of France
Huguenots is a term of unknown origin, applied by the Roman Catholics to the Protestants of France during the religious struggles of the 16th and 17th centuries. During the early part of the 16th century the doctrines of Calvin, notwithstanding the opposition of Francis I, spread widely in France. Under his successor Henry II, 1547-1559, the Protestant party grew strong, and under Francis II became a political force headed by the Bourbon family, especially the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde. At the head of the Catholic party stood the Guises, and through their influence with the weak, young king, a fanatical persecution of the Huguenots commenced. The result was that a Huguenot conspiracy, headed by Prince Louis of Conde, was formed for the purpose of compelling the king to dismiss the Guises and accept the Prince of Conde as regent of the realm. But the plot was betrayed, and many of the Huguenots were executed or imprisoned.
In 1560 Francis II died, and during the minority of the next king, Charles IX, it was the policy of the queen mother, Catharine de Medici, to encourage the Protestants in the free exercise of their religion in order to curb the Guises. But in 1562 an attack on a Protestant meeting made by the followers of the Duke of Guise commenced a series of religious wars which desolated France almost to the end of the century. Catharine, however, began to fear that Protestantism might become a permanent power in the country, and suddenly making an alliance with the Guises between them they projected and carried out the massacre of St. Bartholomew's on August the 25th, 1572. The Protestants fled to their fortified towns and carried on a war with varying success.
On the death of Charles IX, Henry III., a feeblesovereign, found himself compelled to unite with the King of Navarre, head of the house of Bourbon and heir-apparent of the French crown, against the ambitious Guises, who openly aimed at the throne, and had excited the people against him to such a degree that he was on the point of losing the crown. After the assassination of Henry III the King of Navarre was obliged to maintain a severe struggle for the vacant throne; and not until he had, by the advice of Sully, embraced the Catholic religion in 1593, did he enjoy quiet possession of the kingdom as Henry IV.
Five years afterwards he secured to the Huguenots their civil rights by the Edict of Nantes, which confirmed to them the free exercise of their religion, and gave them equal claims with the Catholics to all offices and dignities. They were also left in possession of the fortresses which had been ceded to them for their security. This edict afforded them the means of forming a kind of republic within the kingdom, which Richelieu, who regarded it as a serious obstacle to the growth of the royal power, resolved to crush. The war raged from 1624 to 1629, when Rochelle, after an obstinate defence, fell before the royal troops; the Huguenots had to surrender all their strongholds, although they were still allowed freedom of conscience under the ministries of Richelieu and Mazarin. But when Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon set the fashion of devoutness, a new persecution of the Protestants commenced. They were deprived of their civil rights, and bodies of dragoons were sent into the southern provinces to compel the Protestant inhabitants to abjure their faith.
The first Huguenots to settle in America were a small band who had been induced to emigrate under the charter of the Carolinas granted to Sir Robert Heath in 1630. Upon reaching Virginia their means of transportation failed, so they remained in that colony. The Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, and by this act more than 500,000 Protestant subjects were driven out to carry their industry, wealth, and skill to other countries. In Massachusetts they made a settlement at Oxford in 1686, but were massacred and driven away by the Indians. Parties went to Virginia about 1700 under Claude Philippe de Richebourg. By 1737, they had become an important element in South Carolina, where they founded at Charleston the 'South Carolina Society', a benevolent organization. They also made early settlements in the Middle States, notably in New York.
In the reign of Louis XV a new edict was issued repressive of Protestantism, but so many voices were raised in favour of toleration that it had to be revoked. The revolution first put the Protestants on an equality with their Catholic neighbours. Research Huguenots
Louis de Balbes de Berton de Crillon was a French soldier of the 16th century. He was born in 1541 and died in 1615. He distinguished himself in five successive reigns: those of Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX, Henry III., and, above all, in that of Henry IV. He distinguished himself at the capture of Calais, and in the battles of Dreux, Jarnac, and Moncontour, against the Huguenots, and in the naval battle of Lepanto against the Turks. The massacre of St Bartholomew was reprobated by him. He fought for Henry at Ivry against the Catholic League. Research Louis de Balbes de Berton de Crillon
Marie Joseph Blaise De Chenier was a French poet. He was born in 1764 and died in 1811. The brother of Andre-Marie De Chenier, he served as an officer of dragoons, left the service, and devoted himself to literature. His dramas Charles IX, Henry VIII, La Morte de Calas, full of wild democratic declamation, were received with great applause. He was chosen a member of the Convention, and belonged to the party of the most violent Democrats. His works comprise odes, songs, hymns, etc. Research Marie De Chenier
Francois Joseph Talma was a French actor. He was born in 1763 at Paris and died in 1826. He made his debut in 1787 at the Comedie Francaise and two years later at the same venue created a furore in Chenier's Charles IX. Founding a new theatre, the Theatre de la Republique, he achieved a series of successes which earned him the reputation of the greatest tragedian of his time. Napoleon was his friend and patron, and in 1808 took him to Erfurt, where he acted La Mort de Cesar before an audience of royalty, and to Dresden in 1813. Research Francois Talma
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Abbreviations
Research Massacre of St Bartholomew
