Wassy

The Wassy Massacre was a violent attack on a Protestant (Huguenot) church service on March 1, 1562. During a Protestant gathering in a barn in or near Wassy, Duke François de Guise and his armed entourage appeared. A dispute arose over the (illegal) gathering within the city walls, after which the troops violently dispersed the service: dozens of Huguenots, including women and children, were killed and many more wounded. The background was the Edict of January 1562, which limited Protestants' ability to assemble outside the city walls, a fact that met with considerable resistance from hardline Catholics like the Guise faction. The attack in Wassy was considered by contemporaries to be the first major massacre of the French Wars of Religion and was seen by the Huguenots as deliberate, exemplary terror, which immediately led to uprising and the outbreak of the First French Religious War.

Dromos