The First French War of Religion (2 April 1562 – 19 March 1563) was the opening civil war of the French Wars of Religion. The war began when, in response to the massacre of Wassy by the duc de Guise (duke of Guise), the prince de Condé seized Orléans on 2 April. Over the next several months negotiations would take place between the Protestant rebels (led by Condé and admiral Coligny) and the royal (largely Catholic) party led by queen Catherine, the king of Navarre, duc de Guise, marshal Saint-André and Constable Montmorency. While the main royal and rebel armies were in discussions, open fighting erupted across the kingdom, with rebel Protestants seizing many of the kingdom's principal cities, and restless Catholics massacring Protestants. Negotiations finally ended at the start of July, with the Protestant army attempting a surprise attack on the royal army.
The royal army planned a campaign to clear the Protestant held cities on the Loire before besieging Orléans, the rebel capital. To this end Navarre led the royal army in the capture of Blois, Tours and Bourges during July and August. With momentum slipping away, Condé distributed the rebel army back into the provinces, leaving only a small force in Orléans. Meanwhile, negotiations were undertaken between the Protestant rebels and the English crown, with Elizabeth I providing support in return for the surrender of Calais. Conscious of these negotiations, the royal army pivoted northwards, hoping to stem any English incursions into the kingdom. Therefore, instead of sieging Orléans, it would be Rouen that was besieged next. After almost a month of effort, the city was captured and put to the sack. During the siege, the king of Navarre was fatally wounded.
While initially planning to follow up the capture of Rouen with a march on English held Le Havre, Guise was suddenly forced to reckon with the Protestant army once more, which emerged from its stay in Orléans and made a dash for the capital. However, the Protestant army became bogged down besieging the towns and suburbs of the capital, allowing Guise to secure the city. Forced to break off from Paris, Condé and Coligny turned north and made for Normandy, hoping to secure pay from the English for their army and unify with English reinforcements. The royal army followed them and brought the rebels to battle at Dreux. The battle was a victory for the royalists, though a strongly pyrrhic one, with Constable Montmorency captured, Saint-André murdered and much of the royal gendarmerie destroyed. For the rebels, Condé was captured. Coligny withdrew from the field to Orléans with the remainder of the Protestant army. Guise now enjoyed complete ascendancy over the royal administration and determined to achieve a final victory with the capture of Orléans. Coligny slipped out of the city with the Protestant cavalry into Normandy, where he began to recapture much of the province. Guise meanwhile worked to reduce Orléans. Shortly before his siege could be finished, he was assassinated and Catherine seized the opportunity to bring the war to a negotiated settlement, achieved in the Edict of Amboise on 19 March 1563.
Prelude Background
With the death of Henri II in 1559, France was thrown into crisis. His young son François II ascended to the throne, though control of the government was put in the hands of his wife's uncles the duc de Guise and cardinal de Lorraine. The Lorraine brothers monopolised royal favour at the expense of the late king's other chief favourites, Constable de Montmorency, governor of Languedoc and commander of the French army, and Marshal Saint-André. With the young age of the new king, some felt that a regency should be in effect, and to this end looked to the princes du sang (princes of the blood – king's nearest agnatic relatives outside the family) for leadership. The senior princes du sang were the Bourbon-Vendôme, chief among them the king of Navarre and prince de Condé. While Navarre demurred from leading the opposition, Condé took up the cause. The Lorraine government continued and furthered the policy of persecution that had been undertaken under François II and thus political and Protestant opposition amalgamated. This exploded in March 1560 with the failed conspiracy of Amboise which attempted to remove the Lorraine princes from government and take control of the king. Condé's involvement in the conspiracy was suspected by the government. During the summer, he and his brother Navarre schemed, and the reverberations of Amboise continued to shake across France. After being implicated in a further conspiracy in September that attempted to seize Lyon, Navarre and Condé were summoned to court. Once there, Condé was arrested, and possibly sentenced to death. At this time, Constable Montmorency's nephew Admiral de Coligny established himself as a leader of the Protestant cause during an assembly of notables representing their petitions, much to the annoyance of Guise and Lorraine. In December an estates general was to meet. However, before it could begin, François II died. Henri II's widow Catherine de' Medici now stepped into the political centre, and asserted her right to the formal regency for her second son Charles IX. To do this she negotiated with Navarre who agreed to surrender his rights to the position in return for the release from captivity of Condé. As compensation he was established as lieutenant-general of France in early 1561, giving him supremacy over the French military, and superseding Montmorency. Catherine's government undertook conciliatory moves towards Protestantism. Aggrieved at this, and being ejected from their positions of authority, Guise, Saint-André and Montmorency undertook a reconciliation (known to history as the "Triumvirate") in April 1561, agreeing to work together during the current crisis to protect Catholicism. Further edicts were established through 1561 that they felt favoured Protestantism. During 1561, Protestantism experienced a massive growth across France and its spread was accompanied by large scale disorders, particularly in the south of the kingdom. By January 1562, Catherine had resolved that the only way to quiet the disorders was to undertake a limited legalisation of Protestantism on at least a temporary basis. This caused a break between her and the lieutenant-general Navarre, who was being courted by the Catholic "Triumvirate". Navarre rejected the edict and moved into opposition. He summoned Guise (who was at Saverne) to hurry back into the kingdom to join him in opposing toleration of Protestantism.
Wassy
On 1 March, the duc de Guise was in Wassy, on the road back to Paris from Saverne with a force of soldiers. He intended to make his way to Éclaron, before going on to the capital. It is possible he had only come to the town at the recommendation of the bishop Jérôme de Bourges, who had in the previous December confronted the Protestant congregation of the town and received insults. Théodore de Bèze alleges that Bourges complained to Guise, which spurred the duc to investigate the town. Wassy was home to one of the largest Protestant communities in Champagne. While in the town, he discovered a Protestant service being conducted, with around 600 worshippers present in a barn. He dispatched a few of his number to the barn, who attempted to gain entry but were refused. An exchange of insults between the worshippers and his soldiers quickly escalated. Stones were thrown by those inside the barn and pistols were fired by those outside. His soldiers, enraged, massacred between twenty five and fifty Protestant worshippers who tried to flee the barn, with around another 150 left injured by the incident. Houses were sacked, with Guise claiming to have found a cache of weapons in one of them. The Protestant preacher of Wassy was arrested and then deported to Saint-Dizier. Guise had seigneurial prerogatives over the town as it was part of his niece Marie Stuart's dowry, and in his reckoning the presence of Protestantism challenged his authority and the maintenance of order in his government.
In Protestant retellings of the events, Guise was accused of having instigated the massacre intentionally. Guise would maintain until his death that he had not incited the massacre. In Guise's telling, it was the Protestant congregation that had started the violence, wounding him in the cheek. The exact sequence of events is hard to reconstruct given the partisan nature of the accounts. Durot argues Guise's intention was to have the preacher arrested, so that the congregation, freed of the pernicious influence, could be brought back into the Catholic fold. Guise wrote to the duke of Württemberg, apologising for the killings and telling him he did not want this incident to sour relations between his family and the Lutherans. He also wrote to his lieutenant-general in Dauphiné, urging him to see to the arrest of Protestant pastors, but to make sure he arrested them when they were separated from their congregations, so as to avoid bloodbaths. Nevertheless, the fault for the massacre, in Guise's mind, lay not with himself but rather with the Protestants whose "law breaking bravado" and "religious error" caused the deaths. By the former Guise meant that the service was in contravention of the edict of January. He also felt there was an element of "divine justice" in the affair. While there had been more severe massacres in the past, such as that at Cahors in 1561, the involvement of Guise in this massacre, pre-meditated or otherwise, elevated its importance significantly. For contemporary Protestants, it was the first act of the war.
Once united with the royal party, the establishment of Guise's innocence and the fault of the Protestants for the massacre became a political priority. On 22 April it was declared by letters patent that Guise had been attacked by the Protestants. The constable de Montmorency supported Guise before the parlement (sovereign French court) in their hearing, which concluded in May that Guise had acted justly and in accordance with his rights. Three weeks after the massacre, Guise held an interview with the English ambassador in which he explained the massacre entirely without reference to religion, describing the incident as a case of impudent vassals who had challenged his seigneurial authority. According to Guise, the seditious rabble's behaviour contrasted with his aristocratic stoicism.
The massacre of Wassy was the final rupture of any possibility of coexistence between the Catholics and Protestants. In the cities of Sens, Cahors, Tours, Auxerre, Carcassonne and Avignon Catholics responded to news of the massacre by emulating it against their own Protestant communities. Guise was praised as a new "Jehu" whose actions had avenged the lord. In most cases, the massacres were instigated by men in authority, be they preachers, the town governor or a captain. In Angers, the Bourbon duc de Montpensier presided over executions of Protestants. Protestants, for their part, killed priests and monks, but generally focused their violence against the physical manifestations of Catholicism: relics, statues, churches, art. Wood argues that long before March many local conflicts in the kingdom had already developed the character of armed confrontations. Nicoll states that historians now look to provincial tensions as opposed to courtly aristocratic strife as the origin point of the wars.