Paris noir: St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Paris, 18th of August 1572. Numerous noblemen gathered in the Louvre to celebrate the marriage of the King Charles IX's sister Marguerite and the Protestant Henry III of Navarre. Many of the wedding guests had mixed feelings about this arrangement. True, a peace treaty had been signed two years before, which had put an end to the third war of religion between Catholics and Protestants. That paper peace, however, hadn't changed the deeply established malicious feelings of conservative Catholics against the Huguenots. The Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici, had planned the marriage in order to consolidate the Huguenot friendly politics that found its origins with the peace in 1570. At the same time, with introducing Henry into her family, she would be able to exert her influence on him and on the higher officials of the Huguenot movement, and created a union that supported the crown. Many Protestants followed Calvin, who had declared that royalty misused the so-called Divine power, and therefore many Protestants were a direct opponent to the king. One of the wedding guests was Gaspard de Coligny was also invited to the wedding. The Admiral of France had become the military and political leader and had grown to be a danger for the crown. The Duke of Guise, one of the strongest opponents of the Huguenots, had a personal aversion against Coligny since he believed him to have ordered the assassination of his father Francis.

In spite of the tense atmosphere among the different religious fractions, the wedding festivities were celebrated grandly and lasted three days. But only a day after the ending of the celebrations, on August 22, De Coligny was shot at with an arquebus by a citizen named Maurevert. The attempted assassination failed, however, as the Huguenot leader was only wounded at the elbow and lost a finger, and those injuries were way too marginal to actually kill him. Maurevert escaped and it ever remained unclear whether he was hired by someone - and if so, by whom - or if he acted at his own initiative. Catherine de' Medici could have ordered his death because of his growing power over Protestant Parisians, but most likely Maurevert was hired by the Guise family, as the shot was fired from a house that was owned by the Guises.

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