Massacre of the Huguenots

Not Just the Tudors

The royal wedding of Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre on 18 August 1572, was designed to reconcile France’s Catholics and Protestants - or Huguenots. But six days later, the execution of Protestant leaders led to a massacre by Catholics of thousands more Protestants in Paris and across France.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Sophie Nicholls - who is currently writing a popular history of the French Wars of Religion - to explore the events and tensions that led to one of the most frenzied and brutal outbreaks of religious violence in early modern history.