“The Saint-Barthélemy massacre was played out between neighbors” – Le Monde

“Saint-Barthélemy”: the name often comes up in the debate like a specter, synonymous with the madness of a collective murder. But who really knows this massacre of August 1572, so emblematic of the wars of religion?

Thanks to in-depth archival work, Jérémie Foa, lecturer in modern history at the University of Aix-Marseille, offers a new perspective on this episode until then mainly told from the greats of the kingdom. In All those who fall. Faces of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (La Découverte, 352 pages, 19 euros), the historian, currently in residence at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, United States, sought to tell the event from below, by giving a face to the massacred anonymous .

Through 25 meticulous investigations, the author brings to light the victims and the killers, simple passers-by or ardent massacrators, in their human triviality, and thus unearths these “Tiny lives” carried away during this disastrous massacre.

What is the context of the Saint-Barthélemy massacre?

France has known wars of religion for ten years when Saint-Barthélemy broke out on the night of August 23-24, 1572. These conflicts pitted the Catholics against the Protestant minority, which represents approximately 2 million subjects out of the 20 million in the kingdom. . Protestantism has been legal in France since 1562, thanks to an edict from Queen Catherine de Medici.

Despite several outbreaks of violence, the Saint-Barthélemy takes place in a context of peace, which lasts since the edict of Saint-Germain, in August 1570. It is to consolidate it that Catherine de Médicis has the idea of ​​marrying her own daughter, Marguerite de Valois – the future Queen Margot -, to a great Protestant aristocrat, Henri de Navarre, who would become Henri IV. This union is supposed to perpetuate peace. The wedding took place on August 18, 1572, in Paris. For the occasion, many great Protestants went there, which created tensions with the inhabitants – Protestant worship was then banned in the city.

“This sequence will not stop until mid-October, causing around 10,000 deaths in total”

In this explosive situation arises a new fact: Admiral de Coligny, a Protestant aristocrat very close to the king, is targeted, on August 22, by a sniper who targets him with an arquebus, and wounds him without killing him. The shooter was sent by the Guises, a large Catholic family that has always been opposed to reconciliation with the Protestants. The Huguenot aristocrats, furious, therefore threaten to take up arms.

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