The Massacre of Vassy () was the murder of Huguenot worshippers and citizens in an armed action by troops of Francis, Duke of Guise, in Wassy, France, on 1 March 1562. The massacre is identified as the first major event in the French Wars of Religion. The series of battles that followed concluded in the signing of the Peace of Amboise (or Pacification Treaty of Amboise) the next year, on 19 March 1563.
The events surrounding the Massacre of Vassy were famously depicted in a series of forty engravings published in Geneva seven years later.
Background
Religious politics
Beginning in the reign of Francis I, Protestants who followed the teachings of John Calvin, known as Huguenots, faced state-backed persecution in France. This persecution continued under his two successors, Henry II and Francis II, the latter of whom died young in 1560. Catherine de' Medici, regent of Charles IX, proposed the Edict of January (or Edict of Saint-Germain) with the hopes that providing a measure of toleration to Calvinism would help France avoid further chaos of the kind that had engulfed the south-west of the country. Because the Parlement of Paris resisted registration of the edict until 6 March 1562, it was not in force at the time of the Duke's entry into Wassy.
Wassy and the Guise
Feudal overlords
The town of Wassy at the time of the massacre was home to a population of roughly 3000 and was a royal town. Despite being royal it possessed feudal ties to the House of Guise, having been the Dower of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Duke of Guise's niece. The Guise family also possessed part of the town in the form of the castle district overseen by the Captain Claude Tondeur, in which the Protestant meeting house where the massacre occurred was located. The region at large was the family's power base, with their princely title coming from the seat of Joinville which was located only a few miles away from Wassy. These connections would play a role in Guise's justification for his actions after the fact.
The growth of Protestantism
Despite its small size, the town saw strong Huguenot activity beginning early. In 1533 Antoinette of Bourbon, the Duke of Guise's mother who managed his estates, oversaw the burning of a man caught preaching in the town. Despite persecution, the community grew, aided by the sister church at Troyes with whom the town had many economic links. In 1561 the community held their first officiated service inside the town in the house of a draper, with an attendance of around 120. As the community continued to grow beyond 500, the pastor of Troyes, Gravelles, performed the town's first baptism on 13 December. The Christmas service was attended by 900, making the town a Huguenot stronghold, with a higher percentage of Huguenots there than in Troyes or any other town in the region. In January 1562, Gravelles departed the town to return to his home, with a dedicated preacher named Léonard Morel being sent out for the town from Calvin's base of Geneva.
Attempts at repression
This growth was not however uncontested. News of public preaching reached Guise in November, and he despatched several gendarmes to the area to snuff out the heresy, with little success. The town Curé Claude le Sain voiced his concerns about the public preaching to Antoinette, however, she was unwilling to take action without the support of the Duke and the region's provincial governor, Francis I, Duke of Nevers, who was a Protestant. In the wake of Gravelle's open baptism, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, the Duke of Guise's brother intervened, sending a delegation under his client the bishop Jerôme Bourgeois to bring the community back into the Catholic fold. His attempt to break up the Protestant service however ended in humiliation. He was chased out of the meeting house under insult, which only increased the size of the community by the time of their Christmas service.
Massacre
Prelude
In the opening months of 1562, France slipped increasingly close to civil war. Conscious of this and anxious to avoid a coalition of German princes in favour of the Huguenot Louis, Prince of Condé should war break out, the Duke of Guise met with Christoph, Duke of Württemberg promising to promote the confession of Augsburg in France in return for the Duke of Württemberg's neutrality. This achieved, Guise began the return to Paris to which he had been called on 28 February by the Lieutenant-General Antoine of Navarre to aid him in opposing Catherine's Edict of January.