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After half a century of self-confident but inconclusive pursuit of
military glory in Italy, brought to an end by the Treaty of
Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, France was plunged into another period
of devastating internal conflict. The Protestant ideas of
Luther and Calvin had gained widespread adherence among all classes
of society, despite sporadic brutal attempts by François I and Henri
II to stamp them out.
When Catherine de Médicis , acting as regent for Henri III,
implemented a more tolerant policy, she provoked violent reaction from
the ultra-Catholic faction led by the Guise family. Their
massacre of a Protestant congregation coming out of church in March 1562
began a civil war of religions that, interspersed with
ineffective truces and accords, lasted for the next thirty years.
Well organized and well led by the Prince de Condé and Admiral Coligny,
the Huguenots - French Protestants - kept their end up very
successfully, until Condé was killed at the battle of Jarnac in 1569.
Three years later came one of the blackest events in the memory of
French Protestants, even today: the massacre of St Bartholomew's Day
. Coligny and three thousand Protestants who had gathered in Paris for
the wedding of Marguerite, the king's sister, to the Protestant Henri of
Navarre were slaughtered at the instigation of the Guises, and the
bloodbath was repeated across France, especially in the south and west
where the Protestants were strongest.
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In
1584 the king's son died, leaving his brother-in-law, Henri of
Navarre , heir to the throne, to the fury of the Guises and their
Catholic league, who seized Paris and drove out the king. In
retaliation, Henri III murdered the Duc de Guise, and found himself
forced into alliance with Henri of Navarre, whom the pope had
excommunicated. In 1589 Henri III was himself assassinated, leaving
Henri of Navarre to become Henri IV of France. It took another four
years of fighting and the abjuration of his faith for the new king to be
recognized. "Paris is worth a Mass", he is reputed to have said.
Once on the throne Henri IV set about reconstructing and reconciling the
nation. By the Edict of Nantes of 1598 the Huguenots were
accorded freedom of conscience, freedom of worship in certain places,
the right to attend the same schools and hold the same offices as
Catholics, their own courts and the possession of a number of fortresses
as a guarantee against renewed attack, the most important being La
Rochelle and Montpellier.
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