1574:The 5th War of Religion breaks out in France.

                           

The French Wars of Religion, or Huguenot Wars of the 16th century, are names for a period of civil infighting, military operations and religious war primarily fought between Roman Catholics and Huguenots (Reformed Protestants) in the Kingdom of France. It involved several pre-modern day principalities around the borders of today's France, like the Kingdom of Navarre and parts of Burgundy, and occasionally spilled beyond the French region, for instance, in the war with Spain, from 1595-1598, into northern Italy, some of the German states of the Holy Roman Empire and the Duchy of Burgundy possessions in the Low Countries.

Approximately 3,000,000 people perished as a result of violence, famine and disease in what is accounted as the second deadliest European religious war (behind the Thirty Years' War, which took 8,000,000 lives in present-day Germany).Unlike all other religious wars at the time, the French wars retained their religious character without being confounded by dynastic considerations.

The conflict involved disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, mainly the Reformed House of Condé (a branch of the House of Bourbon) and the Roman Catholic House of Guise (a branch of the House of Lorraine), and both sides received assistance from foreign sources.

Protestant England and Scotland supported the Protestant side led by the Condés and the Navarrese faction (led by Jeanne d'Albret and her son, Henry of Navarre), while Hapsburg Spain and the Duchy of Savoy supported the Roman Catholic side concentrated around the Guises.

Politiques, consisting of the French kings and their advisers, tried to balance the situation and avoid an open bloodshed between the two religious groups, generally introducing gradual concessions to Huguenots. Catherine de' Medici initially held that stance until she sided with Roman Catholics after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, a wave of violence in which Catholic mobs killed tens of thousands of Protestants throughout the entire kingdom.

At the conclusion of the conflict in 1598, Huguenots were granted substantial rights and freedoms by the Edict of Nantes, though it did not end hostility towards them. The wars weakened the authority of the monarchy, already fragile under the rule of Francis II and then Charles IX, though it later reaffirmed its role under Henry IV.

Compiled by Mr Stranger