There were no fewer than eight of these sanguinary conflicts, each one
ending with the grant of slight concessions to the Huguenots and the
maintenance of the weak kings upon the throne. The massacre of Saint
Bartholomew's Day (1572) was a horrible incident of Catherine's policy
of "trimming." Fearing the undue influence over the king of Admiral de
Coligny, an upright and able Huguenot leader, the queen-mother, with
the aid of the Guises, prevailed upon the weak-minded Charles IX to
authorize the wholesale assassination of Protestants. The signal was
given by the ringing of a Parisian church-bell at two o'clock in the
morning of 24 August, 1572, and the slaughter went on throughout the
day in the capital and for several weeks in the provinces. Coligny was
murdered; even women and children were not spared. It is estimated that
in all at least three thousand--perhaps ten thousand--lost their lives.
[Sidenote: The "Politiques"]
The massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day did not destroy French
Protestantism or render the Huguenot leaders more timid in
asserting their claims.
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