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St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
Catholic mobs, initially mobilized by Queen Mother Catherine de Medici and King Charles IX, massacre thousands of Huguenot (Protestant) leaders and civilians in Paris, with violence spreading across France. Estimates of deaths range from 5,000 to 30,000. The massacre becomes a defining atrocity of the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) and a lasting trauma in Protestant memory, deepening the civil war between Catholic League and Huguenot forces.
Sources
- T3 Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in 16th-Century Paris Institutional western
- T2 Le Monde – Saint-Barthélemy historical analysis Major western