Popular Disorder and Religious Tensions

The St Bartholomew’s massacres that began in Paris in August 1572 and spread to the provinces over the next three months began with an assassination attempt in Paris on the Protestant military leader, Admiral Coligny. It ended with 4,000 Protestant deaths in Paris alone, including the military leadership of the Protestant cause. Murder squads led by the king and the duke of Anjou’s Swiss guards, as well as another squad led by some violent members of the capital’s civic militia, carried out the killings. The violence eventually spread to provincial cities with significant Huguenot populatoins, resulting in a further 3,000 deaths. This led to a further outbreak of civil war.