Editing St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (section)

===Provinces===
{{main|St Bartholomew's Day massacre in the provinces}}
Although Charles had dispatched orders to his provincial governors on 24 August to prevent violence and maintain the terms of the 1570 edict,<ref name="Holt91">Holt (2005 ed.), p. 91</ref> from August to October, similar massacres of Huguenots took place in a total of twelve other cities: [[Toulouse]], [[Bordeaux]], [[Lyon]], [[Bourges]], [[Rouen]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Benedict |first=Philip |date=2004 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N4hwtKRfj8UC&dq=%22St+Bartholomew%27s+day+Massacre%22+deaths&pg=PA128 |title=Rouen During the Wars of Religion |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=126 |isbn=0-521-54797-0}}, {{ISBN|978-0-521-54797-0}}</ref>
[[Orléans]], [[Meaux]], [[Angers]], [[La Charité]], [[Saumur]], [[Gaillac]] and [[Troyes]].<ref>Holt (2005 ed.), p. 91. The dates are in Garrison, p. 139, who adds [[Albi]] to the 12 in Holt. [https://books.google.com/books?id=wfFDhvXCS90C&dq=St.+Bartholomew%27s+Day+massacre+Auger+Bordeaux&pg=PA144 online]</ref> In most of them, the killings swiftly followed the arrival of the news of the Paris massacre, but in some places there was a delay of more than a month. According to Mack P. Holt: "All twelve cities where provincial massacres occurred had one striking feature in common; they were all cities with Catholic majorities where there had once been ''significant'' Protestant minorities.... All of them had also experienced serious religious division... during the first three civil wars... Moreover seven of them shared a previous experience ... [they] had actually been taken over by Protestant minorities during the first civil war..."<ref name="Holt91"/>

[[File:Le Siege de La Rochelle par le Duc d Anjou en 1573.jpg|thumb|The [[Siege of La Rochelle (1572–1573)]] began soon after the St. Bartholomew massacre.]]
In several cases the Catholic party in the city believed they had received orders from the king to begin the massacre, some conveyed by visitors to the city, and in other cases apparently coming from a local nobleman or his agent.<ref>Holt (2005 ed.), pp. 93–94, and Benedict (2004), p. 127</ref> It seems unlikely any such orders came from the king, although the Guise faction may have desired the massacres.<ref>Benedict (2004), p. 127</ref> 

Apparently genuine letters from the [[Henry III of France|Duke of Anjou]], the king's younger brother, did urge massacres in the king's name; in [[Nantes]] the mayor fortunately held on to his without publicising it until a week later when contrary orders from the king had arrived.<ref>Knecht (2001), p. 367</ref> In some cities the massacres were led by the mob, while the city authorities tried to suppress them, and in others small groups of soldiers and officials began rounding up Protestants with little mob involvement.<ref>Knecht (2001), p. 368, though see Holt (2005), pp. 93–95 for a different emphasis</ref> In Bordeaux the inflammatory sermon on 29 September of a [[Jesuit]], Edmond Auger, encouraged the massacre that was to occur a few days later.<ref>("Emond" or "Edmond"). Garrison, pp. 144–45, who rejects the view that this "met le feu au poudres" (lit the powder) in Bordeaux. See also: Pearl, Jonathan L. (1998), ''The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560–1620'', Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, p. 70, {{ISBN|978-0-88920-296-2}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=2TJeVkAMz5sC&dq=St.+Bartholomew%27s+Day+massacre+Auger+Bordeaux&pg=PA70 Google Books]</ref>

In the cities affected, the loss to the Huguenot communities after the massacres was numerically far larger than those actually killed; in the following weeks there were mass conversions to Catholicism, apparently in response to the threatening atmosphere for Huguenots in these cities. In Rouen, where some hundreds were killed, the Huguenot community shrank from 16,500 to fewer than 3,000 mainly as a result of conversions and emigration to safer cities or countries. Some cities unaffected by the violence nevertheless witnessed a sharp decline in their Huguenot population.<ref>Holt (2005 ed.), p. 95, citing Benedict (2004), pp. 127–132</ref> It has been claimed that the Huguenot community represented as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, declining to 7–8% by the end of the 16th century, and further after heavy persecution began once again during the reign of [[Louis XIV of France|Louis XIV]], culminating with the [[Revocation of the Edict of Nantes]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Hans J. |last=Hillerbrand |title=Encyclopedia of Protestantism: 4-volume Set}}</ref>

Soon afterward both sides prepared for a [[French Wars of Religion#The "fourth" war (1572–1573)|fourth civil war]], which began before the end of the year.