The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre by, Charlie J.

Blood soaked piles of bodies lined the roads as hoards of French Catholics marched through the streets of Paris. On August 24th, 1572 the streets were covered with enraged Catholics, convinced that their enemies the Protestants were conspiring an attack. The St. Bartholomew's day massacre was a horrid bloody time in French history. Anger, hate, and discontent controlled the public's minds as religious reform split the country apart. The massacre quickly swept over all of France, leading to the deaths of 70,000 French Protestants. The carnage resulted in yet another year of bloodshed between Protestants and Catholics, restarting a 36-year civil war. The tragic event was initiated when King Charles, along with his mother and other members of the royal community, ordered the murder of some of the fixtures of the Protestant religion. The day was later named the St. Bartholomew's day massacre.

Over the course of the 16th century in France, a civil war had broken out between the Protestants and the Catholics, a war commonly known as “the war of religions”. Protestants and Catholics had been at each other's throats since the rise of the Protestant minority, and war had fallen over the nation causing a growing buildup of tension. The Catholics hated the Protestants gradual rise of power and the Protestants wanted the religious reform the Catholics were so adamantly against. Religious reform had been spreading across Europe and when it reached France the previously rigid leader of France, Catherine de Médicis, tolerated the continuous rise of the Huguenot or Protestant religion. As the war continued a pattern began to emerge, war would rage on for a few years than a short period of tense peace would sweep the nation only to be followed by more violent warfare. By the time of the St. Bartholomew's day massacre, three periods of war had passed out of the eventual eight. The war began after an angry hoard of Catholics had massacred a group of Protestants and in retaliation, they attacked.

After the first war, anger boiled hot in Protestants and Catholics blood. The trigger for the widespread massacre was pulled when the Protestant leader Gaspard II de Coligny was murdered. Catherine, the leader who previously allowed the rise of the protestant religion, and the mother of the king, had been conspiring with the pope in Rome to lure Protestants to Paris with a wedding between a Protestant leader and her daughter, in order to attack. After hearing about the wedding most protestants traveled to Paris to celebrate the marriage of their leader Coligny. Coligny’s murder was ordered by Catherine, yet he was only wounded after the attempt on his life. King Charles, in order to calm enraged protestants, declared he would investigate the attempt on Gaspard’s life. Yet after meeting with his mother, she convinced him that the Protestants were plotting a rebellion and that they would soon be under siege. Charles, convinced of his mother's honesty, then warranted the murder of many leaders of the Protestant religion. The morning after the start of the massacre, Coligny was stabbed, then thrown out a window by enraged Catholics. Once word had spread of the murders Catholics in Paris, overcome with bloodlust, began the brigade of Protestants. The massacre raged on in Paris for three days. Eventually, the king tried to halt the bloodshed but the damage had been done and no one paid any attention to the royal decree. An estimated four thousand victims were claimed by the killings in Paris. Around the same time as the order, King Charles addressed parliament and took responsibility for the deaths. The carnage swiftly spread throughout all of France. Local massacres raged on for about a month in the provinces, lasting into early October until Protestants began to fight back starting up full-fledged warfare.

The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre was one of many bloody travesties in the War of religions, and one that swept both sides with distrust of the other. It started in Paris, with the royal family but the massacre itself was a symbol of a larger problem than the royal family's trickery. The massacre was a symbol of the anger felt throughout Europe as those who wanted religious reform battled those who did not. On that fateful day, Protestant bodies lined the streets, yet no one in all of France was truly victorious.