![Michelade](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Michelade.jpeg)
The ''Michelade'' () is the name given to the massacre of Catholics, including 18
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
priests and monks, by
Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
coup officials in
Nîmes
Nîmes ( , ; oc, Nimes ; Latin: ''Nemausus'') is the prefecture of the Gard department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. Located between the Mediterranean Sea and Cévennes, the commune of Nîmes has an estimated population of 148,5 ...
on
Michaelmas
Michaelmas ( ; also known as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels) is a Christian festival observed in some Western liturgical calendars on 29 September, a ...
(29 September) 1567, after the outbreak of the Second
French War of Religion
The French Wars of Religion is the term which is used in reference to a period of civil war between French Catholics and Protestants, commonly called Huguenots, which lasted from 1562 to 1598. According to estimates, between two and four mil ...
after the failure of the
Surprise of Meaux
The surprise of Meaux (''La surprise de Meaux'') was a failed coup attempt by leading aristocratic Huguenots which precipitated the second French War of Religion. Dissatisfied with their lot, and under the pretext of fear of extermination, Loui ...
. The massacre represented one of the largest non-military massacres by Protestants during the civil wars.
Background
Town of Nîmes
Nîmes was a small town of around 10,000 at the time of the massacre. The occupations of the majority were largely in the wool trade or in agriculture.
In 1552, King
Henry II granted the town a
Presidial court The presidial courts (french: présidiaux; singular ) were judicial courts of the Kingdom of France set up in January 1551 by Henry II of France with jurisdiction between the ''parlement
A ''parlement'' (), under the French Ancien Régime, w ...
increasing its prominence in the area.
Présidial judges were the wealthiest and most prestigious citizens in the town and served on the court for life but could resign if they wished to pass the office to their children.
The court held a wide jurisdiction by trying many cases.
The town council was led by four consuls, with the first reserved for a lawyer, the second for a merchant, the third for an artisan and the fourth for a wealthy farmer.
Each council term was for a year, but elections were not direct, with the council selecting a short list each year and the consuls then being chosen by lot from it.
There were subsequently repeated accusations of rigging.
In 1557 to 1560, the harvest failed every year.
The town leadership tried to navigate this through buying grain to cover the shortfalls, but the task was made more difficult by the crown's imposition of forced loans and taxes during the final years of the
Italian Wars
The Italian Wars, also known as the Habsburg–Valois Wars, were a series of conflicts covering the period 1494 to 1559, fought mostly in the Italian peninsula, but later expanding into Flanders, the Rhineland and the Mediterranean Sea. The pr ...
.
In that environment, Protestantism found many converts, with the first permanent pastor sent over from
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
in 1559.
The Protestants proposed the redirection of money intended for the
Mass
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...
to poor relief to solve the harvest problem.
The elite of Nîmes began to convert in 1560 to 1551, with the town's lawyers in particular joining the ranks of the new religion.
That troubled the crown, as the town appeared to lose any zeal in fighting heresy. As a result, royal troops were sent into the town, and they arranged a Catholic-only council election.
This unconstitutional power grab further alienated the elite and pushed more into the arms of Protestantism.
Protestantism triumphs
In early 1561, the Protestants organised ''
cahiers de doléances
The Cahiers de doléances (or simply Cahiers as they were often known) were the lists of grievances drawn up by each of the three Estates in France, between January and April 1789, the year in which the French Revolution began. Their compilation w ...
'' for the town's response to the
Estates General and succeeded in pushing it through the council.
In late 1561 the Protestants, now a majority, succeeded in taking over the town's churches, with much of the clergy either fleeing or converting.
Seeing how rigged the election was, the crown relented in 1562 and allowed a Protestant slate of candidates.
By early 1562, 60% of the 26 Présidial judges had converted to Protestantism.
Catholics still made up 40% of the Présidial judges but made up a smaller percentage of the towns bourgeois and artisans by 1562.
In early 1563, the new Protestant consulate began selling off church property.
Meanwhile, the Protestant religious leadership, embodied in the consistory, remained bourgeois as opposed to aristocratic.
Catholic reaction
In mid-1563,
Charles de Montmorency-Damville
Charles de Montmorency, Duke of Damville (1537-1612) was a French nobleman, Baron, later Duke of Damville, Admiral of France.
He was the third son of Anne de Montmorency, Duke of Montmorency and Marshal of France, and Madeleine, the daughter of Re ...
was appointed governor of
Languedoc
The Province of Languedoc (; , ; oc, Lengadòc ) is a former province of France.
Most of its territory is now contained in the modern-day region of Occitanie in Southern France. Its capital city was Toulouse. It had an area of approximately ...
. He arrived in Nîmes with troops on 16 November and soon engineered a coup in favour of the Catholic party.
The new consulate would be led by des Georges, a lawyer for the cathedral chapter.
He set about re-establishing the Catholic presence in the city, with the mass being recited outside the cathedral every day.
He was not insensitive to the precarity of his minority leadership.
His council supported the removal of royal troops from the city and felt them an infraction on traditional civic liberty.
No attempt was made to compensate the sacked monastery or buy back church property.
When
Charles IX passed through on the
grand tour of France in 1564 he oversaw a second rigged election with Damville given the choice of candidate he desired for first consul.
Damville selected de Gras, another lawyer for the Cathedral chapter.
The new consulate was more radical, desiring the reclamation of church property and the removal of Protestants from the Présidial court.
The crown refused to pay for the expense of reimbursing all those Protestants who would lose their titular property and so nothing came of that.
Still on the tour in
Toulouse
Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...
, Charles IX decreed in March that benefices should be seized from churches that refused to celebrate the mass but also that Protestants should not be excluded from political office.
That had little effect in Nîmes, where the Catholics lacked the ability to compel the Protestants to hand over the benefices, and the Protestants lacked the ability to make the council let them participate.
In late 1565, another rigged election saw the more militant Catholics vent their frustration by selecting as their candidate the radical young de Rochette, a church lawyer, with the leadership of des Georges and de Gras, who, in their old age, had too many ties to the Protestant leadership to clamp down on them, being rejected.
Mass was re-established in the Cathedral, but many of the canons hired to perform it were still too fearful to turn up on the day.
In early 1567, the
Corpus Christi procession
The Feast of Corpus Christi (), also known as the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, is a Christian liturgical solemnity celebrating the Real Presence of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the elements o ...
was re-established.
The Protestants, eager for compromise, proposed giving the seneschal de Senaterre oversight on the elections and an equally-shared consular leadership, but the Catholics rejected that attempted negotiation.
On April 10, conscious of the spiralling political situation in France generally and the south of France in particular, Charles transferred policing powers to the consulate of Nîmes and several other towns, from the Présidial court, which further weakened them.
National situation
From 1565 to 1567, the national Protestant leadership began to grow increasingly discontent and suspicious of the intentions of the crown.
That started with the secret meeting between
Catherine de' Medici
Catherine de' Medici ( it, Caterina de' Medici, ; french: Catherine de Médicis, ; 13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589) was an Florentine noblewoman born into the Medici family. She was Queen of France from 1547 to 1559 by marriage to King ...
and the
Duke of Alba
Duke of Alba de Tormes ( es, Duque de Alba de Tormes), commonly known as Duke of Alba, is a title of Spanish nobility that is accompanied by the dignity of Grandee of Spain. In 1472, the title of ''Count of Alba de Tormes'', inherited by G ...
in
Bayonne
Bayonne (; eu, Baiona ; oc, label= Gascon, Baiona ; es, Bayona) is a city in Southwestern France near the Spanish border. It is a commune and one of two subprefectures in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine re ...
to discuss marriage alliances, which they interpreted as the formation of a plot to kill them. In 1567, Alba again came north via the
Spanish Road
The Spanish Road (Spanish: ''Camino Español'', German: ''Spanische Straße'') was a military road and trade route in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, linking the Duchy of Milan, the Franche-Comté and the Spanish Netherlands, ...
on his way to quell a Protestant revolt which had broken out in the
Spanish Netherlands
Spanish Netherlands (Spanish: Países Bajos Españoles; Dutch: Spaanse Nederlanden; French: Pays-Bas espagnols; German: Spanische Niederlande.) (historically in Spanish: ''Flandes'', the name "Flanders" was used as a ''pars pro toto'') was the Ha ...
. The Huguenots took that as the proof of their fears and began preparing a response.
Louis, Prince of Condé and
Gaspard II de Coligny
Gaspard de Coligny (16 February 1519 – 24 August 1572), Seigneur de Châtillon, was a French nobleman, Admiral of France, and Huguenot leader during the French Wars of Religion. He served under kings Francis I and Henry II during the It ...
then left court, which left it dominated by Catholics.
The crown was concerned by that movement itself and hired several thousand Swiss mercenaries to watch over it, which only further escalated the Protestants' paranoia.
The readmission of
Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine
Charles de Lorraine (c. 1525 – 26 December 1574), Duke of Chevreuse, was a French Cardinal, a member of the powerful House of Guise. He was known at first as the Cardinal of Guise, and then as the second Cardinal of Lorraine, after the death o ...
onto the council in August and proposals to modify the
Edict of Amboise
The Edict of Amboise, also known as the Edict of Pacification, was signed at the Château of Amboise on 19 March 1563 by Catherine de' Medici, acting as regent for her son Charles IX of France. The Edict ended the first stage of the French War ...
were only further proof to them.
As such, they began preparing a coup of their own, sending word out to Protestants across France to be ready to seize their towns and mustering cavalry to nearby Meaux, where they intended to seize the King.
The assault on the King failed, as he was spirited away by his Swiss guards, but the uprising at
Nîmes
Nîmes ( , ; oc, Nimes ; Latin: ''Nemausus'') is the prefecture of the Gard department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. Located between the Mediterranean Sea and Cévennes, the commune of Nîmes has an estimated population of 148,5 ...
would proceed as planned.
Coup
Preparations
The council became increasingly insecure about its situation in the preceding months and appealed to the local commander
Guillaume de Joyeuse
Guillaume de Joyeuse (1520–1592) was a French military commander during the French Wars of Religion. Originally destined for the church, he assumed the office of ''vicomte de Joyeuse'' upon the death of his elder brother in 1554. He was subsequen ...
for aid but found none forthcoming.
Further making the situation dangerous were a concurrent surge in the grain price and a dispute in the military command of the town between Captain Bolhargues and Captain La Garde.
The council sought to win Bolhargues' favour, courted him at the expense of La Garde and tried to get the latter to quit, a decision they would come to regret.
Bolhargues, despite being Catholic, had worked with the Protestants during their leadership in 1562-3. On September 27,
Jacques de Crussol passed through the town to spread word of the upcoming planned national uprising and met with Pavée in the town.
He in turn reached out to Leblanc, a longtime friend of Bolhargues, and taskied Leblanc with bringing Bolhargues over into their camp.
With his defection, only the troops of the Chateau would be available to the consuls.
Action
Beginning the uprising on 29 September, Michelade Day, the Protestant leadership of the town formed a provisional governing committee in which almost all Protestant Présidial judges featured but very little religious Protestant leadership. Indeed, the Protestant consistory would condemn the uprising.
To start out, the Protestants marched the streets and intended to intimidate the Catholics into line and gain access to the keys of the gate, and so formed many companies, most lacking military experience.
Witnesses record them crying "kill kill kill the papists."
The keys were in the possession of Rochette, who fled to his stepfather's house.
A company under de Passaco knocked on the door, but his mother told it that he was absent.
Not content with that, Rochette put on his finest robes and made his way to the bishop's palace. He broke down in front of the bishop and said that he did not know what to do.
They decided to pray together, where they were discovered when Bolhargues arrived with up to 200 men to arrest them.
Their arrest would not be a secure one, and the bishop and his servants would escape through a hole in the wall into the house of a friendly Protestant, de Bruegs.
When the Protestant forces came to de Bruegs' house seeking the bishop, he negotiated a ransom for the bishop and several servants, of 60 écus and lesser amounts respectively, and they were dumped outside the town walls.
L'Hermide went with a company of men to the house of de Gras and told him that they needed to have a conversation. He complied and came with the company.
Of the 16 who had served as consuls from 1564-1567, eight would be targeted for arrest and of the nine Catholic Présidial judges, seven would be targeted similarly.
The prisoners were kept in the town hall and Calviere and L'Hermite's house.
Some of the prisoners were kept unfed for a day in an abattoir in an attempt to intimidate them.
Massacre
On the night of September 30, groups of soldiers removed some of the prisoners from their various holding places, in accordance with lists that had been drawn by the leadership of the committee.
Among those to be executed was de Gras and de Rochette.
The assorted prisoners were taken to the courtyard of the bishop's palace in which a well was situated
and were killed there with swords, daggers and pistols, with some of their bloodied bodies dumped in the well.
Witnesses claimed that d'Estenet and L'Hermite were among those who did the work of killing and that men of lower class than the aristocratic judicial leadership that had drawn up the kill orders.
The majority of the 37 known victims would be priests, at 18 executions, with only 2 of the 8 arrested consuls executed, and 1 of the 7 arrested Présidial judges, after he had tried to flee prior.
6 artisans would be executed, and 6 lesser lawyers.
It can be fairly confident stated by the numbers that the violence was in large part this violence was within the elite, which made it likely that all of the victims had names that would have been recollected by witnesses later and notable enough to receive attention from the investigators.
Also notable was the fact that only adult men were targeted for execution although several prominent women were arrested during the coup.
Performance of the mass appears to have been the act most likely to result in death, as was in line with Protestant killings elsewhere, which tended to target priests.
Aftermath
Despite the confidence of the coup plotters that the people would obey them, they were keen to avoid putting their deeds in writing and performed the massacre secretly in the night.
The killing was ultimately counterproductive to their goals by delaying their assault on the chateau, and thus losing any semblance of surprise they might have had.
As such the chateau was able to hold out for six weeks, with la Garde commanding inside.
With relief not forthcoming from
Tarascon
Tarascon (; ), sometimes referred to as Tarascon-sur-Rhône, is a commune situated at the extreme west of the Bouches-du-Rhône department of France in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Inhabitants are referred to as Tarasconnais or Tarasc ...
, the situation became dire, with Calviere overseeing Catholics digging trenches outside the Chateau for besieging.
On Nov 10 with food too low, a surrender was negotiated.
The captain and his 9 soldiers could depart the city under arms, the rest of the soldiers would be restricted to possession of daggers.
All sheltering Catholics would be allowed to live in safety, or leave the town as they desired.
While the siege was ongoing, the Messieurs who led the coup set about remaking the sacred geography of the town, all churches with the exception of Saint-Eugenie were destroyed, and the furniture in them burned.
Extortionate taxes were levelled, both generally on the population and specifically on the Catholics alongside looting of several Catholic residences.
In the days following the massacre many of the rest of the prisoners, suitably intimidated, were released back to their homes,
due to a lack of interest in killing them, and a desire to have them as taxable subjects.
In June 1568, royal troops re-entered the town as the second civil war ended.
In March 1569 the Parlement of Toulouse, having conducted an investigation into what transpired with Catholic witnesses/survivors, condemned 100 Protestants to death, including many only tangentially related to the coup and some who had even sheltered Catholics in their home like de Bruegs.
The order proved difficult to enforce. After most of the accused fled, only four were caught and killed, including one prominent coup leader, Rozel.
Long-term consequences
On 15 November 1569 during the third French War of Religion, the Protestants of Nîmes would again execute a coup followed by a massacre, with this time perhaps 100-150 killed.
The much larger massacre is, however, much more poorly recorded and less known, as it would not be followed by a reconquest and investigation since the Protestants would instead control Nîmes for the next 100 years, until the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Nantes () was signed in April 1598 by King Henry IV and granted the Calvinist Protestants of France, also known as Huguenots, substantial rights in the nation, which was in essence completely Catholic. In the edict, Henry aimed pr ...
.
Thus they had little need or desire to publicise their own crimes.
The Michelade in Nimes has fed into the historiography concerning the nature of popular violence during the French Wars of Religion. In Natalie Zemon-Davis' thesis, popular Protestant violence was largely directed against profane objects and places, and popular Catholic violence was directed against pollutant heretics. Tulchin argues that the examples of La Rochelle and Nimes suggest it was more of a numbers game and that in the rare towns in which Protestants held overwhelming numbers, they were just as likely to do mass killings as Catholics. The murders in La Rochelle and Nimes were conducted by officials and largely targeted priests and high political officials, in contrast to massacres such as that at
Sens
Sens () is a Communes of France, commune in the Yonne Departments of France, department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in north-central France, 120 km from Paris.
Sens is a Subprefectures in France, sub-prefecture and the second city of the d ...
or on
St. Bartholomew's Day, which were more indiscriminate and spontaneous.
References
{{Reflist
External links
Nemausensis The Protestant Michelade at Nîmes in 1567.
1567 in France
French Wars of Religion
Nîmes
Massacres in France
Anti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholicism in France
Conflicts in 1567