When the church bells rang out in Paris on Saint Bartholomew's Day, 24 August 1572, they heralded a massacre.
At dawn, on royal orders, the Catholic civic militia assassinated the admiral Gaspard de Coligny and other Protestant leaders. Their cry that “the king wills it!” preceded thousands of killings of Protestants in cities across France during the month that followed. These deaths reignited the Wars of Religion that a royal wedding a few days earlier—between the Catholic Marguerite de Valois and the Protestant Henri de Navarre—had hoped to extinguish.
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