French history has been a favorite of mine since college days when the designated professor was eccentric and gave fascinating lectures. Those are fond memories. Recently, my reading list has included lots of French history, especially the sixteenth century and the Renaissance era. A certain incident in this era keeps coming up in the narrative; the massacre of Wassy, which served as a flashpoint in French reformation history.
Mary, Queen of Scots and later Queen of France, had received as a gift to enjoy during her lifetime, the chateau at Wassy and income from the lands of Wassy, Chaumont and Saint-Dizier. Following the death of her husband, King Francis II, Mary departed for Scotland, leaving the administration of her property in the vicinity to her uncle Francis, second Duke of Guise. There had been a large community of Reformers in Wassy for over a year by 1562 and they were ardent worshippers.
Dowager Queen Catherine de’Medici acted as regent for Francis II’s successor, his brother King Charles IX, and the Protestants were demanding the right to worship freely. She called a plenary royal council, and they issued in the king’s name the January Edict on January 17, 1562. This Edict proved to be very tolerant, giving the Protestants the right to gather and hold services on the outskirts of the towns and in the countryside. The Edict legally recognized the protestant faith, although only temporarily. Huguenots, for the first time, could worship in public with the caveat that it be outside town walls and they must be unarmed gatherings.
The Duke of Guise and many other Catholics opposed the enforcement of this Edict. The duke had left court, something he did occasionally. Some of the Catholic leaders, angry about the Edict, had messaged Guise, asking him to return to Paris. He did not respond immediately but later travelled to Joinville to visit his mother, Antoinette de Bourbon, and to collect his wife and children. He passed through Saint-Nicholas in Lorraine and ordered an artisan, who had just had his child baptized in the rites of the Reformed religion, to be hanged.
Reformers in Wassy had established a ‘temple’ inside the walls of the town in a barn near the parish church, contrary to the January Edict. The Bishop of Châlons, Jerome Bourgeios, a few months before, had admonished the congregation, asking them to return to Catholic worship. The pastor gave the bishop a tongue-lashing, and the worshippers forced him out of the building shouting ‘Au loup! au renard!’ (‘To the wolf! To the fox!’). The bishop complained about his treatment and the sizeable congregation of Huguenots in Wassy to the Duke of Guise.
Antoinette was indignant at the existence of what she considered a nest of heretics right on her doorstep in a town that formed a part of the dowry of her granddaughter, Mary Queen of Scots. She complained, although some of her own vassals attended services in Wassy. The duchess had warned her son Guise to either clean up the town or jeopardize permanently losing his reputation.
Guise left his manor at Comartin-le-Franc near Joinville to go to his estates at Eclaron with his family, servants, gentlemen and about two hundred armed retainers, travelling through Champagne on his way to court. On March 1, 1562, he stopped for breakfast in Brousseval, about a mile from Wassy, and planned to hear mass, intending to pass through Wassy quietly and quickly. As they dined, ringing church bells were heard even though it was not the usual time for the bells of Catholic worship.
The duke sent some men to investigate, and they brought word of about five hundred persons holding Reformed services in the barn. As these people were his own vassals, he considered it his duty to remonstrate with them for disregarding the January Edict by holding services inside the city walls. One of the duke’s equerries, a young man named La Brosse, along with some gentlemen and lackeys, entered the barn, possibly motivated by curiosity.
The presence of these intruders irritated the worshippers, and they ordered the men to leave. As the duke’s men refused, the congregation removed them by force. The Reformers barricaded the door of the barn and some of them stationed themselves on scaffolding above the entrance, where there was a stash of stones. They began throwing the stones at the newly arrived duke and his companions as they approached the barn. Several of the men were hit, and the duke received a blow on the head.
Guise lost his temper. The duke did not direct any counterattack, but he also did not restrain his entourage. They replied to the stone throwing with shots from their arquebuses, forcing the barn door open and throwing themselves on the worshippers. The men were frantic in the streets, shouting, ‘Kill! Kill! By God’s death, kill these Huguenots!’
Some of the Reformers tried to escape by the roof where they were shot down. Some who got through the door made their way through a double line of soldiers and servants who struck them fiercely. There was blood all over the posts and walls of the barn. Approximately two hours later, after the duke stopped the fighting, fifty people of both sexes were dead and three times that number were seriously wounded.
Protestants were outraged and did not believe the massacre was an accident. Catholics were overjoyed when news of the massacre spread. Parisians rejoiced and gave the Duke of Guise a hero’s welcome when he returned to the capital. Before the Wassy incident, Huguenot hatred had been directed towards the brother of the Duke of Guise, the Cardinal of Lorraine. Since the events at Wassy, most of the hatred reverted to the duke and zealots of the party dreamed of the death of the ‘tyrant’.
Wassy would be the first clash of violence that would cause years of what the French would call the ‘troubles’. In the end, it would lead to the outbreak of eight such conflicts, later known as the French Wars of Religion. After more political infighting, massacres, rape and pillaging spread throughout France. The Protestant leader, the Prince de Conde, fought back and the first war had begun.
On February 5, 1563, the Duke of Guise laid siege to Orléans. Thirteen days later, a Huguenot nobleman named Poltrot de Méré, who had infiltrated the duke’s entourage as a spy, shot him in the back. Initially, they believed the duke would survive, but he died on February 24 of complications of three bullets in his body. Before dying, he said: ‘I beg you to believe that the harm which befell those of Wassy happened contrary to my wish; for I did not go there with the intention of committing any offence against them. I was the defender, not the aggressor, and when the ardour of those who were with me, and who saw me wounded, caused them to take up arms, I did all in my power to parry their blows and to protect those people from injury’.
The death of this national hero caused outrage among French Catholics. Guise’s wife blamed the Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny for the duke’s death. All would be avenged during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre on August 23-4, 1572, when Coligny would be assassinated.
Meanwhile, back in Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots continually urged for a meeting to be scheduled with Queen Elizabeth I of England. Mary, known for her considerable personal charm, perhaps hoped to captivate Elizabeth with her presence and get her to name her as Elizabeth’s successor to the throne of England. The closest they ever came to a face-to-face encounter was a summit scheduled in 1562. They were to meet either in York or Nottingham.
As Elizabeth’s principal minister, William Cecil, worked to postpone the summit with all his might, Elizabeth commissioned a series of masques for the occasion. But the entertainments would never transpire. News reached England of a massacre of French Huguenots in the village of Wassy. Queen Elizabeth, as the foremost Protestant ruler in Europe, could never receive the Duke of Guise’s niece and the entire enterprise was cancelled.
Elizabeth wrote: ‘What hope is left for strangers when cruelty so much abounds among the household?’ She already had serious doubts about Mary’s intentions and this would not lessen, despite Mary’s pledges of sisterhood and friendship. Elizabeth promised to postpone their summit only for a year, but she never delivered on her promises. Mary tried several times to arrange an in person meeting but each time, Elizabeth refused. The two rival queens would never again come close to meeting one another in the flesh.
Further reading: “The French Religious Wars 1562-1598” by Robert J. Knecht, “France in the Sixteenth Century” by Frederic J. Baumgartner, “The False Brood of Lorraine: The History of the Ducs de Guise (1496-1588)” by H. Noel Williams, “Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power” by Leah Redmond Chang
