The village of Gatumba lies on the western side of Burundi , near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo . The place is known for a massacre that took place at Gatumba refugee camp connected to the village.
83-563: On August 13, 2004, a refugee camp in Gatumba was the scene of one of the largest civilian massacres carried out in Burundi in recent years. A force of armed combatants, many of them members of the Forces for National Liberation (FNL) , massacred at least 166 Congolese civilians and wounded another 106. The FNL is a predominantly Hutu rebel movement known for its hostility to Tutsi and
166-404: A "descent into hell", and announcing that he had been replaced. Rwasa was reported to have fled to Tanzania. 3°20′S 29°15′E / 3.333°S 29.250°E / -3.333; 29.250 This Burundi location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . massacre Note: Varies by jurisdiction Note: Varies by jurisdiction A massacre
249-424: A change from his views in earlier works that even ungodly kings should be obeyed. This change was soon picked up by Huguenot writers, who began to expand on Calvin and promote the idea of the sovereignty of the people , ideas to which Catholic writers and preachers responded fiercely. Nevertheless, it was only in the aftermath of the massacre that anti-monarchical ideas found widespread support from Huguenots, among
332-462: A month. According to Mack P. Holt: "All twelve cities where provincial massacres occurred had one striking feature in common; they were all cities with Catholic majorities where there had once been significant Protestant minorities.... All of them had also experienced serious religious division... during the first three civil wars... Moreover seven of them shared a previous experience ... [they] had actually been taken over by Protestant minorities during
415-522: A more recent work than his history of the period, Holt concludes: "The ringleaders of the conspiracy appear to have been a group of four men: Henry, duke of Anjou; Chancellor Birague ; the duke of Nevers , and the comte de Retz" (Gondi). Apart from Anjou, the others were all Italian advisors at the French court. According to Denis Crouzet , Charles IX feared a Protestant uprising, and chose to strangle it at birth to protect his power. The execution decision
498-437: A necessity. Shortly after this decision, the municipal authorities of Paris were summoned. They were ordered to shut the city gates and arm the citizenry to prevent any attempt at a Protestant uprising. The king's Swiss mercenaries were given the task of killing a list of leading Protestants. It is difficult today to determine the exact chronology of events, or to know the precise moment the killing began. It seems probable that
581-693: A signal was given by ringing bells for matins (between midnight and dawn) at the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois , near the Louvre, which was the parish church of the kings of France. The Swiss mercenaries expelled the Protestant nobles from the Louvre Castle and then slaughtered them in the streets. In the Holy Innocents' Cemetery , on 24 August at noon, a hawthorn bush , that had withered for months, began to green again near an image of
664-463: A single one alive to reproach me!" The author of the Lettre de Pierre Charpentier (1572) was not only "a Protestant of sorts, and thus, apparently, writing with inside knowledge", but also "an extreme apologist for the massacre ... in his view ... a well-merited punishment for years of civil disobedience [and] secret sedition..." A strand of Catholic writing, especially by Italian authors, broke from
747-600: A special mission by Gondi, prevented the collapse of her policy of remaining on good terms with them. Elizabeth I of England 's ambassador to France at that time, Sir Francis Walsingham , barely escaped with his life. Even Tsar Ivan the Terrible expressed horror at the carnage in a letter to the Emperor. The massacre "spawned a pullulating mass of polemical literature, bubbling with theories, prejudices and phobias". Many Catholic authors were exultant in their praise of
830-562: A sword before which are the felled Protestants. Pope Gregory XIII also commissioned the artist Giorgio Vasari to paint three frescos in the Sala Regia depicting the wounding of Coligny, his death, and Charles IX before Parliament, matching those commemorating the defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). "The massacre was interpreted as an act of divine retribution ; Coligny
913-469: A turning point in the French Wars of Religion . The Huguenot political movement was crippled by the loss of many of its prominent aristocratic leaders, and many rank-and-file members subsequently converted. Those who remained became increasingly radicalised. Though by no means unique, the bloodletting "was the worst of the century's religious massacres". Throughout Europe, it "printed on Protestant minds
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#1732782741174996-574: Is again used in 1695 for the Sicilian Vespers of 1281, called "that famous Massacre of the French in Sicily" in the English translation of De quattuor monarchiis by Johannes Sleidanus (1556), translating illa memorabilis Gallorum clades per Siciliam , i.e. massacre is here used as the translation of Latin clades "hammering, breaking; destruction". The term's use in historiography
1079-668: Is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians en masse by an armed group or person. The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage". Other terms with overlapping scope include war crime , pogrom , mass killing , mass murder , and extrajudicial killing . Massacre derives from late 16th century Middle French word macacre meaning "slaughterhouse" or "butchery". Further origins are dubious, though may be related to Latin macellum "provisions store, butcher shop". The Middle French word macecr "butchery, carnage"
1162-577: Is first recorded in the late 11th century. Its primary use remained the context of animal slaughter (in hunting terminology referring to the head of a stag) well into the 18th century. The use of macecre "butchery" of the mass killing of people dates to the 12th century, implying people being "slaughtered like animals". The term did not necessarily imply a multitude of victims, e.g. Fénelon in Dialogue des Morts (1712) uses l'horride massacre de Blois ("the horrid massacre at [the chateau of] Blois") of
1245-540: Is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, and not very much after, until Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism. It also gave added impetus to the strong anti-Italian feelings already present in Huguenot polemic. Christopher Marlowe was one of many Elizabethan writers who were enthusiastic proponents of these ideas. In
1328-671: The Jew of Malta (1589–90) "Machievel" in person speaks the Prologue, claiming to not be dead, but to have possessed the soul of the Duke of Guise, "And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France/ To view this land, and frolic with his friends" (Prologue, lines 3–4) His last play, The Massacre at Paris (1593) takes the massacre, and the following years, as its subject, with Guise and Catherine both depicted as Machiavellian plotters, bent on evil from
1411-596: The Battle between Duke Charles and Sigismund , Duke Charles defeated King Sigismund 's troops in the Battle of Stångebro in Sweden in 1598 and then made an expedition to Finland, where he defeated the resistance during the Cudgel War and executed the estates in Turku without consulting Finland's leading nobles . An early use in the propagandistic portrayal of current events was the " Boston Massacre " of 1770, which
1494-555: The Duke of Anjou , the king's younger brother, did urge massacres in the king's name; in Nantes the mayor fortunately held on to his without publicising it until a week later when contrary orders from the king had arrived. In some cities the massacres were led by the mob, while the city authorities tried to suppress them, and in others small groups of soldiers and officials began rounding up Protestants with little mob involvement. In Bordeaux
1577-572: The Prince of Condé (respectively aged 19 and 20), were spared as they pledged to convert to Catholicism; both would eventually renounce their conversions when they managed to escape Paris. According to some interpretations, the survival of these Huguenots was a key point in Catherine's overall scheme, to prevent the House of Guise from becoming too powerful. On 26 August, the king and court established
1660-707: The Principality of Orange around Avignon in southern France for his brother William the Silent , who was leading the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish. This intervention threatened to involve France in that war; many Catholics believed that Coligny had again persuaded the king to intervene on the side of the Dutch, as he had managed to do the previous October, before Catherine had got the decision reversed. After
1743-503: The Saturday Night Massacre —the dismissals and resignations of political appointees during Richard Nixon 's Watergate scandal . Robert Melson (1982) in the context of the " Hamidian massacres " used a "basic working definition" of "by massacre we shall mean the intentional killing by political actors of a significant number of relatively defenseless people... the motives for massacre need not be rational in order for
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#17327827411741826-461: The " Monarchomachs " and others. "Huguenot writers, who had previously, for the most part, paraded their loyalty to the Crown, now called for the deposition or assassination of a Godless king who had either authorised or permitted the slaughter". Thus, the massacre "marked the beginning of a new form of French Protestantism: one that was openly at war with the crown. This was much more than a war against
1909-705: The Burundian government issued arrest warrants for the group's leader, Agathon Rwasa , and declared its intention to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court . The United Nations issued a resolution condemning the attack, and the African Union declared the FNL a terrorist organisation. No arrests have yet been made. In October 2005, the FNL issued a statement condemning the Gatumba massacre, denouncing Agathon Rwasa for leading
1992-599: The Guises, the city militia and the common people. According to Thierry Wanegffelen , the member of the royal family with the most responsibility in this affair is Henry, Duke of Anjou, the king's ambitious younger brother. Following the failed assassination attack against the Admiral de Coligny (which Wanegffelen attributes to the Guise family and Spain), the Italian advisers of Catherine de' Medici undoubtedly recommended in
2075-468: The Huguenot community shrank from 16,500 to fewer than 3,000 mainly as a result of conversions and emigration to safer cities or countries. Some cities unaffected by the violence nevertheless witnessed a sharp decline in their Huguenot population. It has been claimed that the Huguenot community represented as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, declining to 7–8% by
2158-551: The Huguenots' strong defensive position: they controlled the fortified towns of La Rochelle , La Charité-sur-Loire , Cognac , and Montauban . To cement the peace between the two religious parties, Catherine planned to marry her daughter Margaret to the Protestant Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV ), son of the Huguenot leader Queen Jeanne d'Albret . The royal marriage was arranged for 18 August 1572. It
2241-457: The Protestant groom, but himself a Catholic clergyman) to marry the couple. Beside this, the rivalries between the leading families re-emerged. The Guises were not prepared to make way for their rivals, the House of Montmorency . François, Duke of Montmorency and governor of Paris, was unable to control the disturbances in the city. On 20 August, he left the capital and retired to Chantilly . In
2324-521: The Protestant leaders. Holt speculated this entailed "between two and three dozen noblemen" who were still in Paris. Other historians are reluctant to speculate on the composition or size of the group of leaders targeted at this point, beyond the few obvious heads. Like Coligny, most potential candidates for elimination were accompanied by groups of gentlemen who served as staff and bodyguards, so murdering them would also have involved killing their retainers as
2407-529: The Virgin. That was interpreted by the Parisians as a sign of divine blessing and approval to these multiple murders, and that night, a group led by Guise in person dragged Admiral Coligny from his bed, killed him, and threw his body out of a window. The terrified Huguenot nobles in the building initially put up a fight, hoping to save the life of their leader, but Coligny himself seemed unperturbed. According to
2490-601: The assassination of Henry I, Duke of Guise (1588), while Boileau , Satires XI (1698) has L'Europe fut un champ de massacre et d'horreur "Europe was a field of massacre and horror" of the European wars of religion . The French word was loaned into English in the 1580s, specifically in the sense "indiscriminate slaughter of a large number of people". It is used in reference to St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in The Massacre at Paris by Christopher Marlowe . The term
2573-458: The attempted assassination of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny , the military and political leader of the Huguenots. King Charles IX ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, and the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks in all, the massacre expanded outward to the countryside and other urban centres. Modern estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000. The massacre marked
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2656-477: The city feared it might take revenge on the Guises or the city populace itself. That evening, Catherine held a meeting at the Tuileries Palace with her Italian advisers, including Albert de Gondi , Comte de Retz. On the evening of 23 August, Catherine went to see the king to discuss the crisis. Though no details of the meeting survive, Charles IX and his mother apparently made the decision to eliminate
2739-463: The city, including women and children. Chains were used to block streets so that Protestants could not escape from their houses. The bodies of the dead were collected in carts and thrown into the Seine . The massacre in Paris lasted three days despite the king's attempts to stop it. Holt concludes that "while the general massacre might have been prevented, there is no evidence that it was intended by any of
2822-643: The clear-sighted Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, was then detained in Rome). The Parisian St. Bartholomew's Day massacre resulted from this conjunction of interests, and this offers a much better explanation as to why the men of the Duke of Anjou acted in the name of the Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, consistent with the thinking of the time, rather than in the name of the King. One can also understand why,
2905-455: The contemporary French historian Jacques Auguste de Thou , one of Coligny's murderers was struck by how calmly he accepted his fate, and remarked that "he never saw anyone less afraid in so great a peril, nor die more steadfastly". The tension that had been building since the Peace of St. Germain now exploded in a wave of popular violence. The common people began to hunt Protestants throughout
2988-512: The contemporary Huguenot Maximilien de Béthune , who himself barely escaped death. Accurate figures for casualties have never been compiled, and even in writings by modern historians there is a considerable range, though the more specialised the historian, the lower they tend to be. At the low end are figures of about 2,000 in Paris and 3,000 in the provinces, the latter figure an estimate by Philip Benedict in 1978. Other estimates are about 10,000 in total, with about 3,000 in Paris and 7,000 in
3071-405: The critical and incendiary role that militant preachers played in shaping ordinary lay beliefs, both Catholic and Protestant. Historian Barbara B. Diefendorf, Professor of History at Boston University , wrote that Simon Vigor had "said if the King ordered the Admiral (Coligny) killed, 'it would be wicked not to kill him'. With these words, the most popular preacher in Paris legitimised in advance
3154-403: The day after the start of the massacre, Catherine de' Medici, through royal declaration of Charles IX, condemned the crimes, and threatened the Guise family with royal justice. However, when Charles IX and his mother learned of the involvement of the duke of Anjou, and being so dependent on his support, they issued a second royal declaration, which, while asking for an end to the massacres, credited
3237-506: The elites at court", listing a number of cases where Catholic courtiers intervened to save individual Protestants who were not in the leadership. Recent research by Jérémie Foa, investigating the prosopography suggests that the massacres were carried by a group of militants who had already made out lists of Protestants deserving extermination, and the mass of the population, whether approving or disapproving, were not directly involved. The two leading Huguenots, Henry of Navarre and his cousin
3320-509: The end of the 16th century, and further after heavy persecution began once again during the reign of Louis XIV , culminating with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes . Soon afterward both sides prepared for a fourth civil war , which began before the end of the year. Estimates of the number that perished in the massacres have varied from 2,000 by a Roman Catholic apologist to 70,000 by
3403-475: The ensuing confusion. Other theories about who was ultimately responsible for the attack centre on three candidates: The attempted assassination of Coligny triggered the crisis that led to the massacre. Admiral de Coligny was the most respected Huguenot leader and enjoyed a close relationship with the king, although he was distrusted by the king's mother. Aware of the danger of reprisals from the Protestants,
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3486-419: The events of St. Bartholomew's Day". Diefendorf says that when the head of the murdered Coligny was shown to the Paris mob by a member of the nobility, with the claim that it was the King's will, the die was cast. Another historian Mack P. Holt, Professor at George Mason University , agrees that Vigor, "the best known preacher in Paris", preached sermons that were full of references to the evils that would befall
3569-463: The first civil war..." In several cases the Catholic party in the city believed they had received orders from the king to begin the massacre, some conveyed by visitors to the city, and in other cases apparently coming from a local nobleman or his agent. It seems unlikely any such orders came from the king, although the Guise faction may have desired the massacres. Apparently genuine letters from
3652-473: The following years by witnesses to the events at court, including the famous Memoirs of Margaret of Valois , the only eye-witness account of the massacre from a member of the royal family. There is also a dramatic and influential account by Henry, duke of Anjou that was not recognised as fake until the 19th century. Anjou's supposed account was the source of the quotation attributed to Charles IX: "Well then, so be it! Kill them! But kill them all! Don't leave
3735-431: The harrowing details of violence, expounded various conspiracy theories that the royal court had long planned the massacres, and often showed extravagant anti-Italian feelings directed at Catherine, Gondi, and other Italians at court. Diplomatic correspondence was readier than published polemics to recognise the unplanned and chaotic nature of the events, which also emerged from several accounts in memoirs published over
3818-406: The indelible conviction that Catholicism was a bloody and treacherous religion". The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day was the culmination of a series of events: The Peace of Saint-Germain put an end to three years of civil war between Catholics and Protestants. This peace, however, was precarious, since the more intransigent Catholics refused to accept it. The strongly Catholic Guise family
3901-461: The inflammatory sermon on 29 September of a Jesuit , Edmond Auger, encouraged the massacre that was to occur a few days later. In the cities affected, the loss to the Huguenot communities after the massacres was numerically far larger than those actually killed; in the following weeks there were mass conversions to Catholicism, apparently in response to the threatening atmosphere for Huguenots in these cities. In Rouen, where some hundreds were killed,
3984-553: The initiative with the desire of Charles IX to prevent a Protestant plot. Initially the coup d'état of the duke of Anjou was a success, but Catherine de' Medici went out of her way to deprive him from any power in France: she sent him with the royal army to remain in front of La Rochelle and then had him elected King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Traditional histories have tended to focus more on
4067-535: The killer of Coligny, on the ground that he was a murderer. On hearing of the slaughter, Philip II of Spain supposedly "laughed, for almost the only time on record". In Paris, the poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf , founder of the Academie de Musique et de Poésie , wrote a sonnet extravagantly praising the killings. On the other hand, the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian II , King Charles's father-in-law,
4150-425: The killings to be intentional... Mass killings can be carried out for various reasons, including a response to false rumors... political massacre... should be distinguished from criminal or pathological mass killings... as political bodies we of course include the state and its agencies, but also nonstate actors..." Similarly, Levene (1999) attempts an objective classification of "massacres" throughout history, taking
4233-468: The king and his court visited Coligny on his sickbed and promised him that the culprits would be punished. While the Queen Mother was eating dinner, Protestants burst in to demand justice, some talking in menacing terms. Fears of Huguenot reprisals grew. Coligny's brother-in-law led a 4,000-strong army camped just outside Paris and, although there is no evidence it was planning to attack, Catholics in
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#17327827411744316-451: The king for his bold and decisive action (after regretfully abandoning a policy of meeting Huguenot demands as far as he could) against the supposed Huguenot coup, whose details were now fleshed out in officially sponsored works, though the larger mob massacres were somewhat deprecated: "[one] must excuse the people's fury moved by a laudable zeal which is difficult to restrain once it has been stirred up". Huguenot works understandably dwelt on
4399-419: The marriage of a princess of France to a Protestant. The Parlement 's opposition and the court's absence from the wedding led to increased political tension. Compounding this bad feeling was the fact that the harvests had been poor and taxes had risen. The rise in food prices and the luxury displayed on the occasion of the royal wedding increased tensions among the common people. A particular point of tension
4482-414: The massacre had been premeditated twice, finally concluding that it was not. The question of whether the massacre had long been premeditated was not entirely settled until the late 19th century by which time a consensus was reached that it was not. Over the centuries, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre has aroused a great deal of controversy. Modern historians are still divided over the responsibility of
4565-525: The massacres of August, the relatives of the Gastines family were among the first to be killed by the mob. The court itself was extremely divided. Catherine had not obtained Pope Gregory XIII's permission to celebrate this irregular marriage; consequently, the French prelates hesitated over which attitude to adopt. It took all the queen mother's skill to convince the Cardinal de Bourbon (paternal uncle of
4648-608: The mother of King Charles IX , the massacre started a few days after the marriage on 18 August of the king's sister Margaret to the Protestant King Henry III of Navarre . Many of the wealthiest and most prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris to attend the wedding. The massacre began in the night of 23–24 August 1572, the eve of the Feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle, two days after
4731-542: The next four years. Gentillet held, quite wrongly according to Sydney Anglo, that Machiavelli 's "books [were] held most dear and precious by our Italian and Italionized courtiers" (in the words of his first English translation), and so (in Anglo's paraphrase) "at the root of France's present degradation, which has culminated not only in the St Bartholemew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers". In fact there
4814-463: The official French line to applaud the massacre as precisely a brilliant stratagem, deliberately planned from various points beforehand. The most extreme of these writers was Camilo Capilupi, a papal secretary, whose work insisted that the whole series of events since 1570 had been a masterly plan conceived by Charles IX, and carried through by frequently misleading his mother and ministers as to his true intentions. The Venetian government refused to allow
4897-500: The official version of events by going to the Paris Parlement . "Holding a lit de justice , Charles declared that he had ordered the massacre in order to thwart a Huguenot plot against the royal family." A jubilee celebration, including a procession, was then held, while the killings continued in parts of the city. Although Charles had dispatched orders to his provincial governors on 24 August to prevent violence and maintain
4980-680: The policies of the crown, as in the first three civil wars; it was a campaign against the very existence of the Gallican monarchy itself". Tensions were further raised when in May 1572 the news reached Paris that a French Huguenot army under Louis of Nassau had crossed from France to the Netherlandish province of Hainaut and captured the Catholic strongholds of Mons and Valenciennes (now in Belgium and France, respectively). Louis governed
5063-514: The provinces. At the higher end are total figures of up to 20,000, or 30,000 in total, from "a contemporary, non-partisan guesstimate" quoted by the historians Felipe Fernández-Armesto and D. Wilson. For Paris, the only hard figure is a payment by the city to workmen for collecting and burying 1,100 bodies washed up on the banks of the Seine downstream from the city in one week. Body counts relating to other payments are computed from this. Among
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#17327827411745146-530: The roles of the political notables whose machinations began the massacre than the mindset of those who actually did the killing. Ordinary lay Catholics were involved in the mass killings; they believed they were executing the wishes of the king and of God. At this time, in an age before mass media, "the pulpit remained probably the most effective means of mass communication". Despite the large numbers of pamphlets and broadsheets in circulation, literacy rates were still poor. Thus, some modern historians have stressed
5229-567: The royal council the execution of about fifty Protestant leaders. These Italians stood to benefit from the occasion by eliminating the Huguenot danger. Despite the firm opposition of the Queen Mother and the King, Anjou, Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, present at this meeting of the council, could see a good occasion to make a name for himself with the government. He contacted the Parisian authorities and another ambitious young man, running out of authority and power, Duke Henri de Guise (whose uncle,
5312-420: The royal family: The traditional interpretation makes Catherine de' Medici and her Catholic advisers the principal culprits in the execution of the principal military leaders. They forced the hand of a hesitant and weak-willed king in the decision of that particular execution. This traditional interpretation has been largely abandoned by some modern historians including, among others, Janine Garrisson. However, in
5395-563: The second being given to the phenomenon of many small killings adding up to a larger genocide . St. Bartholomew%27s Day massacre The Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre ( French : Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy ) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants ) during the French Wars of Religion . Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Queen Catherine de' Medici ,
5478-592: The slain were the philosopher Petrus Ramus , and in Lyon the composer Claude Goudimel . The corpses floating down the Rhône from Lyon are said to have put the people of Arles off drinking the water for three months. The Politiques , those Catholics who placed national unity above sectarian interests, were horrified, but many Catholics inside and outside France initially regarded the massacres as deliverance from an imminent Huguenot coup d'etat . The severed head of Coligny
5561-432: The start. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 was still ready to endorse a version of this view, describing the massacres as "an entirely political act committed in the name of the immoral principles of Machiavellianism" and blaming "the pagan theories of a certain raison d'état according to which the end justified the means ". The French 18th-century historian Louis-Pierre Anquetil , in his Esprit de la Ligue of 1767,
5644-443: The term to refer to killings carried out by groups using overwhelming force against defenseless victims. He is excepting certain cases of mass executions , requiring that massacres must have the quality of being morally unacceptable . The term "fractal massacre" has been given to two different phenomena, the first being the fracturing of Aboriginal tribes by killing more than 30% of the tribe on one of their hunting missions, and
5727-406: The terms of the 1570 edict, from August to October, similar massacres of Huguenots took place in a total of twelve other cities: Toulouse , Bordeaux , Lyon , Bourges , Rouen , Orléans , Meaux , Angers , La Charité , Saumur , Gaillac and Troyes . In most of them, the killings swiftly followed the arrival of the news of the Paris massacre, but in some places there was a delay of more than
5810-525: The victims were largely Banyamulenge , a group often categorized with Tutsi . The FNL is believed to have been behind a series of other attacks, including the December 28, 2000 Titanic Express massacre . Brigadier-General Germain Niyoyankana, head of the Burundian army, accused Congolese troops of complicity in the killings. Following the FNL's admission of responsibility for the Gatumba massacre,
5893-531: The wedding of Catholic Marguerite de Valois and Huguenot Henry de Navarre on 18 August 1572, Coligny and the leading Huguenots remained in Paris to discuss some outstanding grievances about the Peace of St. Germain with the king. An attempt was made on Coligny's life a few days later on 22 August as he made his way back to his house from the Louvre. He was shot from an upstairs window, and seriously wounded. The would-be assassin, most likely Charles de Louviers , Lord of Maurevert ( c. 1505 –1583), escaped in
5976-635: The work to be printed there, and it was eventually published in Rome in 1574, and in the same year quickly reprinted in Geneva in the original Italian and a French translation. It was in this context that the massacre came to be seen as a product of Machiavellianism , a view greatly influenced by the Huguenot Innocent Gentillet , who published his Discours contre Machievel in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over
6059-486: The years preceding the massacre, Huguenot political rhetoric had for the first time taken a tone against not just the policies of a particular monarch of France, but monarchy in general. In part this was led by an apparent change in stance by John Calvin in his Readings on the Prophet Daniel , a book of 1561, in which he had argued that when kings disobey God, they "automatically abdicate their worldly power" –
6142-496: Was among the first to begin impartial historical investigation, emphasising the lack of premeditation (before the attempt on Coligny) in the massacre and that Catholic mob violence had a history of uncontrollable escalation. By this period the Massacre was being widely used by Voltaire (in his Henriade ) and other Enlightenment writers in polemics against organised religion in general. Lord Acton changed his mind on whether
6225-467: Was an open-air cross erected on the site of the house of Philippe de Gastine [ fr ] , a Huguenot who had been executed in 1569. The mob had torn down his house and erected a large wooden cross on a stone base. Under the terms of the peace, and after considerable popular resistance, this had been removed in December 1571 (and re-erected in a cemetery), which had already led to about 50 deaths in riots, as well as mob destruction of property. In
6308-400: Was apparently dispatched to Pope Gregory XIII , though it got no further than Lyon, and the pope sent the king a Golden Rose . The pope ordered a Te Deum to be sung as a special thanksgiving (a practice continued for many years after) and had a medal struck with the motto Ugonottorum strages 1572 (Latin: "Overthrow (or slaughter) of the Huguenots 1572") showing an angel bearing a cross and
6391-487: Was considered a threat to Christendom and thus Pope Gregory XIII designated 11 September 1572 as a joint commemoration of the Battle of Lepanto and the massacre of the Huguenots." Although these formal acts of rejoicing in Rome were not repudiated publicly, misgivings in the papal curia grew as the true story of the killings gradually became known. Pope Gregory XIII himself refused to receive Charles de Maurevert, said to be
6474-604: Was employed to build support for the American Revolution . A pamphlet with the title A short narrative of the horrid massacre in Boston, perpetrated in the evening of the fifth day of March, 1770, by soldiers of the 29th regiment was printed in Boston still in 1770. The term massacre began to see inflationary use in journalism in the first half of the 20th century. By the 1970s, it could also be used purely metaphorically, of events that do not involve deaths, such as
6557-551: Was not accepted by traditionalist Catholics or by the Pope . Both the Pope and King Philip II of Spain strongly condemned Catherine's Huguenot policy as well. The impending marriage led to the gathering of a large number of well-born Protestants in Paris, but Paris was a violently anti-Huguenot city, and Parisians, who tended to be extreme Catholics, found their presence unacceptable. Encouraged by Catholic preachers, they were horrified at
6640-472: Was out of favour at the French court; the Huguenot leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny , was readmitted into the king's council in September 1571. Staunch Catholics were shocked by the return of Protestants to the court, but the queen mother, Catherine de' Medici , and her son, Charles IX , were practical in their support of peace and Coligny, as they were conscious of the kingdom's financial difficulties and
6723-933: Was popularized by Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1781–1789), who used e.g. " massacre of the Latins " of the killing of Roman Catholics in Constantinople in 1182. The Åbo Bloodbath has also been described as a kind of massacre, which was a mass punishment carried out on the Old Great Square in Turku on November 10, 1599, in which 14 opponents of the Duke Charles (later King Charles IX ) in Finland were decapitated ; in
6806-464: Was sickened, describing the massacre as a "shameful bloodbath". Moderate French Catholics also began to wonder whether religious uniformity was worth the price of such bloodshed and the ranks of the Politiques began to swell. The massacre caused a "major international crisis". Protestant countries were horrified at the events, and only the concentrated efforts of Catherine's ambassadors, including
6889-407: Was therefore his own, and not Catherine de' Medici's. According to Jean-Louis Bourgeon , the violently anti-Huguenot city of Paris was really responsible. He stresses that the city was on the verge of revolt. The Guises, who were highly popular, exploited this situation to put pressure on the King and the Queen Mother. Charles IX was thus forced to head off the potential riot, which was the work of
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