Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre

August 24, 1572

After an assassination attempt on a Huguenot leader, Catholic Paris exploded. Mobs dragged Protestants from their beds and slaughtered them in the streets for days, with the bloodletting spreading to provincial cities. Between five thousand and thirty thousand Huguenots died. Catherine de Medici's calculation had become a national atrocity. The massacre generated resistance theory arguing subjects could resist tyrants, ideas influencing political philosophy from Locke to the American Revolution.