Bartholomew

Massacre of St., in French history, a slaughter of Protestants by the Catholics on the night of St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572. France had been plunged into civil war, but at this time the Protestants and Catholics were nominally at peace. They were engaged in bitter strife for the control of the government. Assassinations had been perpetrated by both sides, and party feeling ran high. Catherine de Medici, the mother of the king, is blamed for the guilty deed. A midnight bell gave the signal. The Catholics fell upon their neighbors unawares. De Coligni, the venerable leader of the Huguenots, and many thousand Protestants were slain. Companies of soldiers ran from house to house butchering and killing, flinging the dead bodies of the slain into the streets. The butchery was continued for a number of days, and orders were sent into the provinces to exterminate root and branch. To their credit, be it said, many governors refused to stain their hands in the blood of their fellow citizens. The massacre belongs to a bloody period of history and is not to be judged by modern standards. It was due to a mixture of bigotry and political passion. The feelings of the excitable French people were no doubt played upon by the Italian advisers of the queen, who persuaded them that their lives, and the very existence of France, were in danger. At Rome, the slaughter was reported as a great victory over a conspiracy of the Huguenots who had banded together to murder the king and establish the Protestant religion. The authorities accordingly ordered the Te Deum to be chanted and a medal struck off commemorating the glorious event. Authorities estimate the number of slain variously at from thirty to seventy thousand. See Coligni; Huguenot; Catherine De Medici