Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the St Bartholomew atrocities and their spread to the provinces.
Passage A
Historians are now generally agreed that the series of massacres that took place throughout France in August and September 1572 were not the product of a pre-meditated royal scheme to exterminate the Huguenots. Even when Charles IX succumbed to his mother’s brow-beating on the night of August 23rd and ordered the murder of the leading Protestant noblemen gathered at court for the marriage, he neither expected nor desired the general massacre which ensued. The king’s orders for a selective strike were distorted into a call for a general massacre by ultra Catholic elements at court and in the municipal government. What developed in Paris and spread to a dozen provincial cities were mass religious riots, essentially similar in motivation to the numerous disorders which had already punctured the country’s tranquillity.
In many provincial cities, the violence was sparked by the arrival of couriers bearing reports that the king wished the Protestants exterminated. Perhaps, the arrival of such reports precipitated Rouen’s massacre. Perhaps, a group of hardened Catholics simply decided, after waiting in vain for such a royal command, that they had better strike. All that is known for sure is that on the day Catholic zealots gained control of the city, they locked the gates to prevent Calvinists from escaping, broke into the jail where they were being detained and systematically butchered them. The mob then gave themselves over to an organised campaign of looting and violence which lasted four days.
Adapted from: P. Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion, published in 1981.
Passage B
The queen mother [Catherine de Medici] came to view with alarm Coligny’s growing influence at court, the more so in the light of her obsessive fear of Spanish arms. She also resented the personal arrogance of the Huguenot leader. Though Catherine had so often been compelled to work with the Guise, her attitude hitherto had deserved respect because she had sincerely aimed at the restoration of national unity and order under the crown. Yet, in August 1572, she determined to take a short cut and plotted with Anjou and Guise to assassinate Coligny. In the event, Coligny was merely wounded, and the conspirators decided, probably on the spur of the moment, to cover their traces by organising a greater crime and committing the nation to a new war against the Protestants. Inventing the Huguenot plot, they prevailed upon the hysterical king to authorise a general attack upon the Huguenot leaders. In other places [outside Paris], the action depended on local circumstances: in one city a massacre was perpetrated by command of the City council; in another, attempts to protect the Huguenots were prevented by popular revolt. The total number of victims throughout France cannot be closely computed, but it is generally thought to have exceeded 10 000.
Adapted from: A.G. Dickens, The Age of Humanism and Reformation, published in 1977.
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Answer
