Neglect about fictional bloody weddings like those in Sport of Thrones and even Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Nothing compares to the very actual marriage ceremony that set the stage for one of many bloodiest massacres in French historical past on August twenty fourth, 1572: St-Bartholomew’s Day.
When you have by no means heard of it, right here’s the quick model: in an effort to try to put an finish to the continuing French Wars of Faith between the Catholics and the Protestants (often known as the Huguenots), Queen Mom Catherine de Medici organized for the pinnacle of the Protestants, Henry de Bourbon, King of Navarre (future Henri IV) to be married to her daughter, the sister of King Charles IX, Princess Marguerite de Valois (the long run Reine Margot).
Hundreds of Protestant nobles attended the marriage at Notre Dame Cathedral on August 18th, and festivities lasted for over per week to have a good time what many thought could be the start of peace.
However they grew agitated after an assassination try on one in all their leaders, Admiral de Coligny (who was additionally a trusted confidante to the younger king). Supposedly panicked by the indignant requires justice (and revenge), the Catholics led by the highly effective Guise household satisfied the king to permit a pre-emptive strike to kill the entire Protestant leaders whereas they had been conveniently within the metropolis. Sadly, it acquired out of hand and became a three-week-long bloodbath that unfold from city to city till an estimated 30,000 Huguenots had been killed earlier than the king might regain order.
This well-known portray of the occasion by François Dubois, a Huguenot painter who fled France after the bloodbath, depicts Admiral Coligny’s physique hanging out of a window on the precise (the Catholics completed him off firstly of the bloodbath). Should you look nearer, you’ll see Catherine de Medici simply exterior the Louvre Palace in her black widow’s gown inspecting a heap of bare our bodies:
Henri’s life was spared since he was now “a part of the household”, however when every of Catherine de Medici’s 4 sons died one after the other, Henri of Navarre would finally — after a few years in exile and at last laying siege to Paris — convert to Catholicism to turn out to be one in all France’s strongest kings, Henri IV. He signed the Edict of Nantes in 1598 to permit the Protestants freedom of faith (which his grandson, the Solar King Louis XIV, would rescind lower than a century later, tsk tsk).
Should you’re into barely fictionalized historic dramas, you may watch the 1994 movie concerning the bloodbath, “Reine Margot” (primarily based on Alexandre Dumas’ novel) starring Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, and Vincent Perez (NSFW or kids):
Weird truth: Pope Gregory XIII on the Vatican celebrated the bloodbath of the Huguenots by minting a commemorative medal!
