The French Wars of Religion (French: Guerres de Religion en France) were a series of civil wars between French Catholics and Protestants (called Huguenots) from 1562 to 1598. Between two and four million people died from violence, famine or disease directly caused by the conflict, and it severely damaged the power of the French monarchy. The fighting ended with a compromise in 1598, when Henry of Navarre, who converted to Catholicism in 1593, was proclaimed King Henry IV of France and issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted substantial rights and freedoms to the Huguenots. However, Catholics continued to disapprove of Protestants and of Henry, and his assassination in 1610 triggered a fresh round of Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s.
Tensions between the two religions had been building since the 1530s, exacerbating existing regional divisions, and quests for power among the nobles. The sudden accidental death of Henry II of France in July 1559 initiated a prolonged struggle for power between his widow Catherine de' Medici and powerful nobles. These included a fervently Catholic faction led by the Guise and Montmorency families, and Protestants headed by the House of Condé and the Navarrese queen, Jeanne d'Albret. Both sides received assistance from external powers, with Spain and Savoy supporting the Catholics, and England and the Dutch Republic backing the Protestants.
Moderates, also known as Politiques, hoped to maintain order by centralising power and making concessions to Huguenots, rather than the policies of repression pursued by Henry II and his father Francis I. The Politiques were initially supported by Catherine de' Medici, whose January 1562 Edict of Saint-Germain was strongly opposed by the Guise faction and led to an outbreak of widespread fighting in March. She later hardened her stance and backed the 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris, which resulted in Catholic mobs killing between 5,000 and 30,000 Protestants throughout France.
The wars threatened the authority of the monarchy and the last Valois kings, Catherine's three sons Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. Their Bourbon successor Henry IV responded by creating a strong central state and extending toleration to Huguenots; the latter policy would last until 1685, when Henry's grandson Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes.
Name and periodisation
Along with "French Wars of Religion" and "Huguenot Wars", the wars have also been variously described as the "Eight Wars of Religion", or simply the "Wars of Religion" (only within France).
The exact number of wars and their respective dates are subject to continued debate by historians: some assert that the Edict of Nantes (13 April 1598) and the Peace of Vervins (2 May 1598) concluded the wars, while the ensuing 1620s Huguenot rebellions lead others to believe the Peace of Alès in 1629 is the actual conclusion. However, the agreed upon beginning of the wars is the Massacre of Wassy in 1562, and the Edict of Nantes at least ended this series of conflicts. During this time, complex diplomatic negotiations and agreements of peace were followed by renewed conflict and power struggles.
American military historians Kiser, Drass and Brustein (1994) maintained the following divisions, periodisations and locations:
- Massacre of Vassy (1562) – Western France
- First War of Religion (1562–1563) – Western and Southwestern France
- Second War of Religion (1567–1568) – Western and Southwestern France
- Third War of Religion (1568–1570) – Western and Southwestern France
- St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (1572) – Northeastern France
- Fourth War of Religion (1572–1573) – Western and Southwestern France
- Fifth War of Religion (1575–1576) – Western and Southwestern France
- Sixth War of Religion (1576–1577) – Western and Southwestern France
- Seventh War of Religion (1580) – Western and Southwestern France
- Eighth War of Religion (1585–1589) – Western and Southwestern France
- Ninth War of Religion (1589–1598) – Western and Southwestern France
Both Kohn (2013) and Clodfelter (2017) followed the same counting and periodisation and noted that "War of the Three Henrys" was another name for the Eighth War of Religion, with Kohn adding "Lovers' War" as another name for the Seventh War. In her biography of Michel de Montaigne (2014), Elizabeth Guild concurred with this chronology as well, except for dating the Seventh War of Religion to 1579–1580 rather than just 1580. Holt (2005) asserted a rather different periodisation from 1562 to 1629, writing of "civil wars" rather than wars of religion, dating the Sixth War to March–September 1577, and dating the Eight War from June 1584 (death of Anjou) to April 1598 (Edict of Nantes); finally, although he didn't put a number on it, Holt regarded the 1610–1629 period as 'the last war of religion'.
Background
Renaissance humanism began during the 14th century in Italy and arrived in France in the early 16th, coinciding with the rise of Protestantism in France. The movement emphasised the importance of ad fontes, or study of original sources, and initially focused on the reconstruction of secular Greek and Latin texts. It later expanded into the reading, study and translation of works by the Church Fathers and the New Testament, with a view to religious renewal and reform. Humanist scholars argued interpretation of the Bible required an ability to read the New Testament and Old Testaments in the original Greek and Hebrew, rather than relying on the 4th century Latin translation known as the "Vulgate Bible".
In 1495, the Venetian Aldus Manutius began using the newly invented printing press to produce small, inexpensive, pocket editions of Greek, Latin, and vernacular literature, making knowledge in all disciplines available for the first time to a wide audience. Cheap pamphlets and broadsides allowed theological and religious ideas to be disseminated at an unprecedented pace. In 1519, John Froben published a collection of works by Martin Luther and noted in his correspondence that 600 copies were being shipped to France and Spain and sold in Paris.
In 1521, a group of reformers including Jacques Lefèvre and Guillaume Briçonnet, recently appointed bishop of Meaux, formed the Circle of Meaux, aiming to improve the quality of preaching and religious life in general. They were joined by François Vatable, an expert in Hebrew, along with Guillaume Budé, a classicist and Royal librarian. Lefèvre's Fivefold Psalter and his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans emphasised the literal interpretation of the Bible and the centrality of Jesus Christ. Many of the tenets behind Lutheranism first appeared in Luther's lectures, which in turn contained many of the ideas expressed in the works of Lefèvre.
Other members of the Circle included Marguerite de Navarre, sister of Francis I and mother of Jeanne d'Albret, as well as Guillaume Farel, who was exiled to Geneva in 1530 due to his reformist views and persuaded John Calvin to join him there. Both men were banished from Geneva in 1538 for opposing what they viewed as government interference with religious affairs; although the two fell out over the nature of the Eucharist, Calvin's return to Geneva in 1541 allowed him to forge the doctrine of Calvinism.
A key driver behind the Reform movement was corruption among the clergy which Luther and others attacked and sought to change. Such criticisms were not new but the printing press allowed them to be widely shared, such as the Heptaméron by Marguerite, a collection of stories about clerical immorality. Another complaint was the reduction of Salvation to a business scheme based on the sale of Indulgences, which added to general unrest and increased the popularity of works such as Farel's translation of the Lord's Prayer, The True and Perfect Prayer. This focused on Sola fide, or the idea salvation was a free gift from God, emphasised the importance of understanding in prayer and criticised the clergy for hampering the growth of true faith.
Growth of Calvinism
The Italian revival of classical learning appealed to Francis I (1494–1547), who set up royal professorships in Paris to better understand ancient literature. However, this did not extend to religion, especially after the 1516 Concordat of Bologna when Pope Leo X increased royal control of the Gallican church, allowing Francis to nominate French clergy and levy taxes on church property. Unlike Germany, the French nobility also generally supported the status quo and existing policies.
Despite his personal opposition, Francis tolerated Martin Luther's ideas when they entered France in the late 1520s, largely because the definition of Catholic orthodoxy was unclear, making it hard to determine precisely what was or was not heresy. He tried to steer a middle course in the developing religious schism, but in January 1535, Catholic authorities made a definitive ruling by classifying "Lutherans" as heretical Zwinglians. Calvin, originally from Noyon in Picardy, went into exile in 1535 to escape persecution and settled in Basel, where he published the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1538. This work contained the key principles of Calvinism, which became immensely popular in France and other European countries.
Lutheranism was widespread within the French commercial class; it flourished in the cities but was not adopted among the peasantry. However, it cut across social class and strata and encompassed the entire country. Its rapid growth was driven by the nobility, where being a Huguenot became fashionable. It is believed to have started when Condé passed through Geneva while returning home from a military campaign and heard a Calvinist sermon. Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, converted to Calvinism in 1560, possibly due to the influence of Theodore Beza. Along with Condé and her husband Antoine of Navarre, she and their son Henry of Navarre became Huguenot leaders.
Rise in factionalism
The crown continued efforts to remain neutral in the religious debate until the Affair of the Placards in October 1534, when Protestant radicals put up posters in Paris and other provincial towns that rejected the Catholic doctrine of the "Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist". This allowed Protestantism to be clearly defined as heresy, while Francis was furious at the breach of security which had allowed one of the posters to be placed on the door of his bedchamber. Having been severely criticised for his initial tolerance, he was now encouraged to punish those responsible. On 21 February 1535, a number of those implicated in the Affair were executed in front of Notre-Dame de Paris, an event attended by Francis and members of the Ottoman embassy to France.
The fight against heresy intensified in the 1540s, forcing Protestants to worship in secret. In October 1545, Francis ordered the punishment of Waldensians based in the south-eastern village of Mérindol. A long-standing Proto-Protestantism tradition dating back to the 13th century, the Waldensians had recently affiliated with the Reformed church and became increasingly militant in their activities. In what became known as the Massacre of Mérindol, Provençal troops killed numerous residents and destroyed another 22 to 28 nearby villages, while hundreds of men were forced to become Galley slaves.
Francis I died on 31 March 1547 and was succeeded by his son Henry II, who continued the religious repression pursued by his father in the last years of his reign. His policies were even more severe since he sincerely believed all Protestants were heretics; on 27 June 1551, the Edict of Châteaubriant sharply curtailed their right to worship. Prohibitions were placed upon the distribution of 'heretical' literature, with the property of 'heretics' seizable by the crown.
From his base in Geneva, Calvin provided leadership and organisational structures for the Reformed Church of France. Calvinism proved attractive to people from across the social hierarchy and occupational divides and was highly regionalised, with no coherent pattern of geographical spread. Despite persecution, their numbers and power increased markedly, driven by the conversion to Calvinism of large sections of the nobility. Historians estimate that by the outbreak of war in 1562, there were around two million French Calvinists, including more than half of the nobility, backed by 1,200–1,250 churches. This constituted a substantial threat to the monarchy.
Amboise conspiracy
In 1559, the Italian wars between France and Spain ended with the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. These wars had nearly bankrupted both countries. Additionally, the death of Henry II in July 1559 created a political vacuum and an internal struggle for power between rival factions, which the 15-year-old Francis II lacked the ability to control. François, Duke of Guise, whose niece Mary, Queen of Scots, was married to the king, exploited the situation to establish dominance over their rivals, the House of Montmorency. Within days of the King's accession, the English ambassador reported "the house of Guise ruleth and doth all about the French King".
On 10 March 1560, a group of disaffected nobles led by Jean du Barry, attempted to break the power of the Guise by abducting the young king. Their plans were discovered before being carried out and hundreds of suspected plotters executed, including du Barry. The Guise suspected Condé of involvement in the plot, and he was arrested and sentenced to death before being freed in the political chaos that followed the sudden death of Francis II, adding to the tensions of the period.
In the aftermath of the plot, the term "Huguenot" for France's Protestants came into widespread usage. Shortly afterwards, the first instances of Protestant iconoclasm or the destruction of images and statues in Catholic churches, occurred in Rouen and La Rochelle. This continued throughout 1561 in more than 20 cities and towns, sparking attacks on Protestants by Catholic mobs in Sens, Cahors, Carcassonne, Tours and elsewhere.