Massacre de la Saint Barthelemy

(extra credit)
The massacre happened on August, 1572. It was a massacre between protestants and      

catholics. This tragic episode of the wars of

religion is the result of a complex fight of multiple

 factors.There was a lot of reasons and causes for why this happened, like the wedding of the 

king's sister Margaret to the Protestant Henry III of Navarret. This marriage was an occasion for

 which many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely 

Catholic Paris, the assassination of  Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the

 Huguenots. The king ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, and

 the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks, the massacre expanded 

outward to other urban centres and the countryside.

A list of those to be killed was drawn up, headed by Coligny, who was brutally beaten and 

thrown out of his bedroom window just before dawn on August 24. Once the killing started, 

mobs of Catholic Parisians, apparently overcome with bloodlust, began a general massacre of 

Huguenots. The massacre also marked a turning point in the French Wars of Religion.