Nancy Goldstone Quote
He rode into Vassy on March 1, 1562, accompanied by an entourage of two hundred armed knights and found the local Huguenot congregation, numbering some five or six hundred people, including many women and children, conducting its Sunday morning meeting not outside the city walls, as was specified in the Edict of Toleration, but right in town—and, worse, on his property in one of his very own buildings, which they had appropriated without his permission, an unimaginable insult. An altercation between the duke’s people and the Protestants promptly ensued. Being for the most part unarmed, the Huguenots had to improvise. Rocks were thrown. Members of the lower classes were not supposed to throw stones at their superiors from the upper classes. The duke’s soldiers retaliated by shooting and stabbing as many of the dissenters as they could (which was quite a few, as their opponents were trapped inside the building attending a church service), accompanied by rousing shouts of Kill! Kill! By God’s death kill these Huguenots! An hour later the Massacre of Vassy, as this infamous incident would later be dubbed, was over. Fifty Huguenots lay dead, another two hundred were wounded, and a flaming torch had been thrust into the tinderbox of religious controversy that would blaze up into the bonfire of the Wars of Religion.
He rode into Vassy on March 1, 1562, accompanied by an entourage of two hundred armed knights and found the local Huguenot congregation, numbering some five or six hundred people, including many women and children, conducting its Sunday morning meeting not outside the city walls, as was specified in the Edict of Toleration, but right in town—and, worse, on his property in one of his very own buildings, which they had appropriated without his permission, an unimaginable insult. An altercation between the duke’s people and the Protestants promptly ensued. Being for the most part unarmed, the Huguenots had to improvise. Rocks were thrown. Members of the lower classes were not supposed to throw stones at their superiors from the upper classes. The duke’s soldiers retaliated by shooting and stabbing as many of the dissenters as they could (which was quite a few, as their opponents were trapped inside the building attending a church service), accompanied by rousing shouts of Kill! Kill! By God’s death kill these Huguenots! An hour later the Massacre of Vassy, as this infamous incident would later be dubbed, was over. Fifty Huguenots lay dead, another two hundred were wounded, and a flaming torch had been thrust into the tinderbox of religious controversy that would blaze up into the bonfire of the Wars of Religion.