St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in the context of "Henry IV of France"

The French Wars of Religion were a series of civil wars between French Catholics and Protestants (called Huguenots) from 1562 to 1598. Between two and four million people died from violence, famine or disease directly caused by the conflict, and it severely damaged the power of the French monarchy. One of its most notorious episodes was the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. The fighting ended with a compromise in 1598, when Henry of Navarre, who converted to Catholicism in 1593, was proclaimed King Henry IV of France and issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted substantial rights and freedoms to the Huguenots. However, Catholics continued to disapprove of Protestants and of Henry, and his assassination in 1610 triggered a fresh round of Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s.

Tensions between the two religions had been building since the 1530s, exacerbating existing regional divisions, and quests for power among the nobles. The sudden accidental death of Henry II of France in July 1559 initiated a prolonged struggle for power between his widow Catherine de' Medici and powerful nobles. These included a fervently Catholic faction led by the Guise and Montmorency families, and Protestants headed by the House of Condé and the Navarrese queen, Jeanne d'Albret. Both sides received assistance from external powers, with Spain and Savoy supporting the Catholics, and England and the Dutch Republic backing the Protestants.

The Huguenots (/ˈhjuːɡənɒts/ HEW-gə-nots, UK also /-noʊz/ -⁠nohz; French: [yɡ(ə)no]) are a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Besançon Hugues, was in common use by the mid-16th century. Huguenot was frequently used in reference to those of the Reformed Church of France from the time of the Protestant Reformation. By contrast, the Protestant populations of eastern France, in Alsace, Moselle, and Montbéliard, were mainly Lutherans.

In his Encyclopedia of Protestantism, Hans Hillerbrand wrote that on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, the Huguenot community made up as much as 10% of the French population. By 1600, it declined to 7–8%, and was reduced further late in the century after the return of persecution under Louis XIV, who instituted the Dragonnades to forcibly convert Protestants, and then finally revoked all Protestant rights in his Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685. In 1686, the Protestant population sat at 1% of the population.

Protestantism in France has existed in its various forms, starting with Calvinism and Lutheranism since the Protestant Reformation. John Calvin was a Frenchman, as were numerous other Protestant Reformers including William Farel, Pierre Viret and Theodore Beza, who was Calvin's successor in Geneva. Peter Waldo (Pierre Vaudes/de Vaux) was a merchant from Lyon, who founded a pre-Protestant group, the Waldensians. Martin Bucer was born a German in Alsace, which historically belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, but now belongs to France.

Hans J. Hillerbrand in his Encyclopedia of Protestantism claims the Huguenots reached as much as 15% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, declining to 10-12% by the end of the 16th century, and further after heavy persecution began once again with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV.

Charles IX (Charles Maximilien; 27 June 1550 – 30 May 1574) was King of France from 1560 until his death in 1574. He ascended the French throne upon the death of his brother Francis II in 1560, and as such was the penultimate monarch of the House of Valois.

Charles's reign saw the culmination of decades of tension between Protestants and Catholics. Civil and religious war broke out between the two parties after the massacre of Vassy in 1562. In 1572, following several unsuccessful attempts at brokering peace, Charles arranged the marriage of his sister Margaret to Henry of Navarre, a major Protestant nobleman in the line of succession to the French throne, in a last desperate bid to reconcile his people. Facing popular hostility against this policy of appeasement and at the instigation of his mother Catherine de' Medici, Charles oversaw the massacre of numerous Huguenot leaders who gathered in Paris for the royal wedding, though his direct involvement is still debated. This event, known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, was a significant blow to the Huguenot movement, and religious civil warfare soon began anew. Charles sought to take advantage of the disarray of the Huguenots by ordering the siege of La Rochelle, but was unable to take the Protestant stronghold.

Intolerance is a 1916 American anthology silent film directed by D. W. Griffith. Subtitled as Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages and A Sun-Play of the Ages, the three-and-a-half-hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines, each separated by several centuries: first, a contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; second, a Biblical story: Christ's mission and death; third, a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572; and fourth, a Babylonian story: the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC. Each story had its own distinctive color tint in the original print. The scenes are linked by shots of a figure representing Eternal Motherhood, rocking a cradle.

Griffith chose to explore the theme of intolerance partly in response to his previous film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), being derided by the NAACP and others for perpetuating and supporting racial stereotypes and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. Intolerance was not, however, an apology, as Griffith felt he had nothing to apologize for; in numerous interviews, he made clear that the film was intended as a rebuttal to his critics, whom he believed were themselves intolerant. In the years following its release, Intolerance strongly influenced European film movements and is regarded by critics as one of the most influential films of the silent era and one of the greatest films ever made. In 1958, the film was voted number seven in the World Expo film poll. In 1989, it was among the first films selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Margaret of Valois (French: Marguerite, 14 May 1553 – 27 March 1615), popularly known as Queen Margot (La Reine Margot), was Queen of Navarre from 1572 to 1599 and Queen of France from 1589 to 1599 as the consort of Henry IV of France and III of Navarre.

Margaret was the daughter of King Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici and the sister of Kings Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Her union with Henry of Navarre, intended to contribute to the reconciliation of Catholics and Huguenots in France, was tarnished six days after the marriage ceremony by the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and the resumption of the French Wars of Religion. In the conflict between Henry III of France and the Malcontents, she took the side of Francis, Duke of Anjou, her younger brother, which caused Henry to have a deep aversion towards her.