Editing St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (section)

==Background==
[[File:François Clouet - Admiral Gaspard II de Coligny - 168-1925 - Saint Louis Art Museum.jpg|thumb|upright|Admiral [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Gaspard de Coligny]], the leader of the [[Huguenots]]]]

The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day was the culmination of a series of events:
*The [[Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye]], which put an end to the [[third War of Religion]] on 8 August 1570.
*The marriage between [[Henry III of Navarre]] and [[Margaret of Valois]] on 18 August 1572.
*The failed assassination of Admiral de Coligny on 22 August 1572.

=== Unacceptable peace and marriage ===
The [[Peace of Saint-Germain]] put an end to three years of civil war between Catholics and Protestants. This peace, however, was precarious, since the more intransigent Catholics refused to accept it. The strongly Catholic [[House of Guise|Guise]] family was out of favour at the French court; the Huguenot leader, Admiral [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Gaspard de Coligny]], was readmitted into the king's council in September 1571. Staunch Catholics were shocked by the return of Protestants to the court, but the queen mother, [[Catherine de' Medici]], and her son, [[Charles IX of France|Charles IX]], were practical in their support of peace and Coligny, as they were conscious of the kingdom's financial difficulties and the Huguenots' strong defensive position: they controlled the fortified towns of [[La Rochelle]], [[La Charité-sur-Loire]], [[Cognac, France|Cognac]], and [[Montauban]].

To cement the peace between the two religious parties, Catherine planned to marry her daughter [[Margaret of Valois|Margaret]] to the Protestant Henry of Navarre (the future King [[Henry IV of France|Henry IV]]), son of the Huguenot leader Queen [[Jeanne d'Albret]].<ref>Holt, p. 78.</ref> The royal marriage was arranged for 18 August 1572. It was not accepted by traditionalist Catholics or by the [[Pope Gregory XIII|Pope]]. Both the Pope and King [[Philip II of Spain]] strongly condemned Catherine's Huguenot policy as well.

===Tension in Paris===
[[File:Bemberg Fondation Toulouse - Portrait de Charles IX - François Clouet - Inv.1012.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Charles IX of France]], who was 22 years old in August 1572, by [[François Clouet]].]]
The impending marriage led to the gathering of a large number of well-born Protestants in Paris, but Paris was a violently anti-Huguenot city, and Parisians, who tended to be extreme Catholics, found their presence unacceptable. Encouraged by Catholic preachers, they were horrified at the marriage of a princess of France to a Protestant.<ref>Lincoln (1989), pp. 93–94</ref> The [[Parlement]]'s opposition and the court's absence from the wedding led to increased political tension.<ref name="Shennan1998">{{cite book|author=J. H. Shennan |author-link=J. H. Shennan |title=The Parlement of Paris|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HCOJAAAAMAAJ|year=1998|publisher=Sutton|isbn=978-0-7509-1830-5|page=25}}</ref>

Compounding this bad feeling was the fact that the harvests had been poor and taxes had risen.<ref>Knecht (2001), p. 359</ref> The rise in food prices and the luxury displayed on the occasion of the royal wedding increased tensions among the common people. A particular point of tension was an open-air cross erected on the site of the house of {{ill|Philippe de Gastine|fr}}, a Huguenot who had been executed in 1569. The mob had torn down his house and erected a large wooden [[cross]] on a stone base. Under the terms of the peace, and after considerable popular resistance, this had been removed in December 1571 (and re-erected in a cemetery), which had already led to about 50 deaths in riots, as well as mob destruction of property.<ref>Holt, Mack P. (2005). ''The French Wars of Religion 1562–1626'', Cambridge University Press, pp. 79–80 [https://books.google.com/books?id=En23VTbYwhQC&q='The+French+Wars+of+Religion+1562+-+1629'&pg=PA95 google Books]</ref> In the massacres of August, the relatives of the Gastines family were among the first to be killed by the mob.<ref>Holt (2005), p. 86</ref>

The court itself was extremely divided. Catherine had not obtained Pope Gregory XIII's permission to celebrate this irregular marriage; consequently, the French prelates hesitated over which attitude to adopt. It took all the queen mother's skill to convince the [[Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon (born 1523)|Cardinal de Bourbon]] (paternal uncle of the Protestant groom, but himself a Catholic clergyman) to marry the couple. Beside this, the rivalries between the leading families re-emerged. The Guises were not prepared to make way for their rivals, the [[House of Montmorency]]. [[François de Montmorency|François, Duke of Montmorency]] and governor of Paris, was unable to control the disturbances in the city. On 20 August, he left the capital and retired to [[Chantilly, Oise|Chantilly]].<ref name="Daussy2002">{{cite book|author=Hugues Daussy|title=Les huguenots et le roi: le combat politique de Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, 1572–1600|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DxQjVTLAgC4C&pg=PA84|year=2002|publisher=Librairie Droz|isbn=978-2-600-00667-5|page=84}}</ref>

===Shift in Huguenot thought===
In the years preceding the massacre, Huguenot political rhetoric had for the first time taken a tone against not just the policies of a particular monarch of France, but [[monarchy]] in general. In part this was led by an apparent change in stance by [[John Calvin]] in his ''Readings on the Prophet [[Daniel (biblical figure)|Daniel]]'', a book of 1561, in which he had argued that when kings disobey God, they "automatically abdicate their worldly power" – a change from his views in earlier works that even ungodly kings should be obeyed. This change was soon picked up by Huguenot writers, who began to expand on Calvin and promote the idea of the [[Popular sovereignty|sovereignty of the people]], ideas to which Catholic writers and preachers responded fiercely.<ref>Holt (2005), pp. 78–79; Calvin's book was "Praelectiones in librum prophetiarum Danielis", Geneva and [[Laon]], 1561</ref>

Nevertheless, it was only in the aftermath of the massacre that anti-monarchical ideas found widespread support from Huguenots, among the "[[Monarchomachs]]" and others. "Huguenot writers, who had previously, for the most part, paraded their loyalty to the Crown, now called for the deposition or assassination of a Godless king who had either authorised or permitted the slaughter".<ref>{{aut|[[Felipe Fernández-Armesto|Fernández-Armesto, F.]]}} & Wilson, D. (1996), ''Reformation: Christianity and the World 1500–2000'', Bantam Press, London, {{ISBN|0-593-02749-3}} paperback, p. 237</ref> Thus, the massacre "marked the beginning of a new form of French Protestantism: one that was openly at war with the crown. This was much more than a war against the policies of the crown, as in the first three civil wars; it was a campaign against the very existence of the [[Gallicanism|Gallican]] monarchy itself".<ref>Holt (1995 ed), p. 95</ref>

===Huguenot intervention in the Netherlands===
Tensions were further raised when in May 1572 the news reached Paris that a French Huguenot army under [[Louis of Nassau]] had crossed from France to the [[Netherlandish]] province of [[Hainaut (province)|Hainaut]] and captured the Catholic strongholds of [[Mons, Belgium|Mons]] and [[Valenciennes]] (now in Belgium and France, respectively). Louis governed the [[Principality of Orange]] around [[Avignon]] in southern France for his brother [[William the Silent]], who was leading the [[Dutch Revolt]] against the Spanish. This intervention threatened to involve France in that war; many Catholics believed that Coligny had again persuaded the king to intervene on the side of the Dutch,<ref name="Holt81">Holt (2005), p. 81</ref> as he had managed to do the previous October, before Catherine had got the decision reversed.<ref>[[Robert Jean Knecht|Knecht, Robert Jean]] (2001), ''The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, 1483–1610'', p. 356, Blackwell Publishing, {{ISBN|978-0-631-22729-8}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=nuyx5E_wp7QC&dq=Elizabeth+England+St+Bartholomew%27s+Day&pg=PA355 Google Books]</ref>

===Attempted assassination of Admiral de Coligny===
{{main|Assassination of Admiral Coligny}}

[[File:Frans Hogenberg, The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, circa 1572.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|This [[popular print]] by [[Frans Hogenberg]] shows the attempted assassination of [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Coligny]] at left, his subsequent murder at right, and scenes of the general massacre in the streets.]]
After the wedding of Catholic Marguerite de Valois and Huguenot Henry de Navarre on 18 August 1572,<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Usher |first=Phillip |date=2014 |title=From Marriage to Massacre: The Louvre in August 1572 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26378894 |journal=L'Esprit Créateur |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=33–44 |doi=10.1353/esp.2014.0023 |jstor=26378894 |s2cid=162224757 }}</ref> Coligny and the leading Huguenots remained in Paris to discuss some outstanding grievances about the Peace of St. Germain with the king. An attempt was made on Coligny's life a few days later on 22 August<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gaspard II de Coligny, seigneur de Châtillon {{!}} French admiral and Huguenot leader |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gaspard-II-de-Coligny-seigneur-de-Chatillon |access-date=2 April 2022 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref> as he made his way back to his house from the Louvre. He was shot from an upstairs window, and seriously wounded. The would-be assassin, most likely [[Charles de Louviers]], Lord of [[Maurevert]]<ref name=":0" />({{Circa|1505}}–1583), escaped in the ensuing confusion. Other theories about who was ultimately responsible for the attack centre on three candidates:

*The Guises: the [[Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine|Cardinal of Lorraine]] (who was in Rome at the time), and his nephews, the Dukes of Guise and [[Claude, Duke of Aumale|Aumale]], are the most likely suspects. The leaders of the Catholic party, they wanted to avenge the death of the two dukes' father [[Francis, Duke of Guise]], whose assassination ten years earlier they believed to have been ordered by Coligny. The shot aimed at Admiral de Coligny came from a house belonging to the Guises.
*The [[Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba|Duke of Alba]]: he governed the Netherlands on behalf of Philip II. Coligny planned to lead a campaign in the Netherlands to participate in the [[Dutch Revolt]] to free the region from Spanish control. During the summer, Coligny had secretly dispatched a number of troops to help the Protestants in Mons, who were now besieged by the Duke of Alba. So Admiral de Coligny was a real threat to the latter.
*Catherine de' Medici: according to tradition, the Queen Mother had been worried that the king was increasingly becoming dominated by Coligny. Among other things, Catherine reportedly feared that Coligny's influence would drag France into a war with Spain over the Netherlands.<ref name="Holt1995">{{cite book|author=Mack P. Holt|title=The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dUBQKCEhylIC&pg=PA83|date=1995|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-35873-6|page=83}}</ref>