#catherine medici

St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots (French Protestants) during the French Wars of Religion. It was traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de Medici, mother of King Charles IX. Many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris to attend the wedding of King Charles IX. The original plot was directed at a group of Huguenot leaders, but the slaughter extended throughout Paris and the surrounding countryside to all Protestants.

At the time of the massacre, Elizabeth I of England’s ambassador to France, Sir Francis Walsingham, was present in Paris along with his pregnant wife and child. The Walsinghams opened their Parisian home as a refuge to fleeing Huguenots. The family managed to escape the carnage and return to England. Protestant countries, such as England, were horrified at the events. The massacre was later dramatized in Elizabethan theater by Christopher Marlowe as a story of Machiavellianism with Catherine de Medici playing the main aggressor.