The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in the provinces refers to a series of killings that took place in towns across France between August and October 1572. A reaction to the arrival of news of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris, total deaths are estimated as between 3,000 and 5,000, roughly equivalent to those in the capital. These events severely impacted Huguenot communities outside their strongholds in Southern France; the deaths combined with fear and distrust of Catholic intentions resulted in a large wave of abjuration, while many others went into exile.
Responsibility was traditionally placed on Charles IX himself, who was alleged to have provided secret orders for the extermination of the Huguenots to municipal governors. However lack of direct evidence for this means historians now view the massacres as driven by zealous Catholics within provincial administrations or the court, who either knowingly or unknowingly deceived themselves as to the King's wishes regarding the fate of the Huguenots.
Culpability For the Protestant polemicists of the sixteenth century onwards, there was no question that the massacres had been personally directed by Charles IX and his secret council, and this was largely the position adopted by historians into the nineteenth century. However, these assumptions began to unravel as historians investigated the archives in the early twentieth century. They discovered Charles despatched two sets of letters to the provinces, on 24 and 28 August respectively, in which he ordered recipients to comply with the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and protect local Protestants from violence.
Although Calvinist historians were aware of these instructions, they suggested they were simply a cunning charade to disguise his true orders to his governors, which would be delivered orally. There is little evidence for this assertion, since the councillors of Rouen were rebuked by the king for failing to keep the peace, and after the massacre in Lyon in September local officials critiqued it in their correspondence with the king, fearing his disapproval. Indeed, by the end of September they had removed their prior endorsement of the massacre, to bring themselves into line with royal policy.
However, this does not absolve Charles from all responsibility and it appears he initially sent verbal orders to Lyon and Bordeaux among others. Their nature can be deduced from the letter of 2 September from Mandelot, the Governor of Lyon, announcing he had arrested the Huguenots and seized their property. Once he had cooled, he countermanded all verbal orders he had sent out. It is thus clear then that the orders did not contain instructions to commit a massacre. His vacillations did not end there however; when Vaucluse approached him at a public banquet and attempted to clarify whether his orders included killing, Charles asked him to return the following morning to his chambers, where he told him in private that Huguenots in Provence should be spared. This suggests those who wanted to extend the killings into the provinces included the hardline Catholic extremist nobles who were present at the banquet and whom Charles was uncomfortable at speaking against in public.
In the days following the massacre, many of these nobles would write back to their respective provinces, insinuating that it was the king's wish that the Huguenots be eliminated throughout France. This includes the Duke of Anjou who instructed his subordinate as related to Saumur and Angers, the Duke of Montpensier who wrote a letter to Nantes, instructing them to kill their Huguenot population and the Duke of Nevers who personally led troops in the massacre of La Charité. Many other hardline local representatives of towns, who had been to Paris on official business, likewise reported back that the king desired a massacre, as happened with Belin in Troyes and with Rubys in Lyon.
Popular fury also plays a key part in explaining responsibility, as in towns such as Rouen and Lyon, where the governors did not wish to lead a massacre, and instead, the prisons where they were keeping the Huguenots in protective custody were broken into by angry mobs, who then set about killing all the Huguenots inside.
Distribution of the massacres
In traditional scholarship, the provincial massacres were assumed to be part of a centrally planned scheme to eliminate all Huguenots. This meant explaining why they occurred in some towns but not others was taken to be a factor of which governors had followed orders and which had not. Since the lack of orders from Charles means this theory has now been rejected, explaining what made a town likely to have a massacre has become more difficult.
One observation is that all were towns where at one time Protestants had been a significant minority. Further, many of them had experienced a violent history in the first three religious wars, with Orléans, Lyon, Bourges, Meaux and Rouen all having been seized by the Protestants in the first religious war, and some again in the second and third. Toulouse and Troyes had both seen failed attempts at takeovers, the former a very bloody one, and La Charité had been granted to the Huguenots as a security town at the end of the third civil war. By 1572, Bordeaux and Toulouse were both Catholic strongholds in largely Protestant areas, worrying the Catholic majority of the towns. Gaillac had borne witness to two massacres previously, one in 1562 by Catholics, and another in 1568 by Protestant troops. Saumur and Angers are exceptions to this pattern of violent civil war history, yet their massacres are also different in character to many of the others, largely the work of zealous officials with little popular involvement.
Another explanation lies in the distribution of power and population. In towns such as La Rochelle, Montauban and Nîmes the Protestant ascendency was such that they could be little threatened by their Catholic population, and with their political power, could close the gates to any external threat. Other cities such as Rennes and Nantes had fostered a tolerant and peaceful atmosphere over the last 10 years, largely untouched by the civil war. Finally cities such as Reims and Dijon had reached such a dominant level of Catholicism, that their small Protestant populations were too weak and cowed to pose enough of a threat to be worth massacring.
Montpellier and Dieppe largely fall outside this pattern, and as such can be explained by the way in which the news of the Paris massacre was received by the local government.
Massacres The massacres were generally organised in time, with a few notable exceptions, by their proximity to Paris, as many of them bloomed during the initial chaos when the king's intentions weren't clear. Rouen is a notable exception to this, occurring 4 weeks after the violence in the capital, and at a time when the King's displeasure was well known and published.
Meaux Meaux would be the location of the first massacre outside of Paris, due to its extreme proximity to the city. News of the massacre arrived in the city in the middle of 25 August. The carrier of the news made his way to the procureur du roi of the town, Casset, and his followers, upon hearing the news, seized the gates, and began arresting all the Protestants he could find. They were not however entirely successful, many Protestants were gathered in the suburb of grand marche and hearing of what was going on were able to scatter into the surrounding villages. When Casset and his men arrived in the suburb they were left to take out their frustration on the women who had stayed behind to protect their property. The next day Casset turned to liquidate the arrested Protestants who were filling the prisons, a list was drawn up of 200 names for execution, largely composed of merchants artisans and judicial officials. The executions continued into the evening, but, unable to finish the exhausting work, the remainder of the killing was set aside for the following day.
La Charité La Charité differed from the other massacres in that it was imposed from outside the town, by troops under the command of the duke of Nevers. The duke had been a key player in orchestrating the original plot to assassinate the Huguenot leadership in Paris that had accidentally set off the Paris massacre. Elements of the population were however agitated to enthusiasm for involvement by letters arriving from Paris after the massacre there started. The troops arrived on 26 August to perpetrate the massacre.
Bourges Bourges received news of the massacre on 27 August, by which time many of the town's Huguenots, including François Hotman had already fled the town due to the earlier news of the assassination attempt on admiral Coligny. The town's mayor Jean Joupitre was keen to act on the massacre to eliminate the Huguenots of Bourges, but the municipal officers of the town were more sceptical, and keen to wait for confirmation or denial of the orders to kill Huguenots from the king. As such for the moment the Huguenots were confined to the prisons of the town. On the 30th the impasse broke and the Huguenots in the prison were killed.
Orléans Orléans received news of the massacre the same day as Bourges on 27 August. The preacher Sorbin whipped up the population, urging them to follow the example of Paris in a letter he wrote from the city. Popular bands formed to orchestrate the killings. The first victim was to be a royal conseiller Champeaux who was cut down in his home by a band under Tessier La Court on Monday. It was not until the following day that the massacre became general, as the ramparts neighbourhood was systematically assaulted. The violence would continue for four days with a myriad of small bands breaking down doors, sometimes demanding money in return for sparing the occupants, but always going back on their word if money was delivered to kill them anyway. Occasionally on their rounds they stopped off at taverns, narrating the slaughters they committed during the day to the patrons as they ate. The massacre would be the bloodiest in France, with 1,000 killed from a population of only 50,000.
Saumur and Angers Saumur and Angers were largely instigated into massacre by the work of one man. Monsereau, a deputy of governor Puyguillard who travelled from the capital to execute the orders of Puyguillard and his superior the duke of Anjou. He entered Angers on 29 August and made his way to the house of seigneur du Barbei, Condé's lieutenant in the area. Du Barbei was however, not present in the town, so Monsoreau contented himself with executing his brother. Then he went to the house of the town's Huguenot minister, invited into the garden by the minister's wife he announced his orders 'from the king' to the minister, and, after allowing him a final prayer, shot him. He continued in this fashion house to house, after a few hours, a crowd, getting wind of what he was doing decided to join in, and for a few hours there was a general massacre, before the authorities were able to clamp down on it. Monsereau then moved on to Saumur to repeat this pattern. Puyguillard followed to Angers, unsatisfied with his partial work in the towns, however he was more easily bribed into looking the other way by the town's remaining Huguenots.
Lyon