📅 On This Day in Military History

March 1

1 event across history

⚔️📍 Vassy, France1562

Massacre at Vassy — French Wars of Religion Begin

Catholic troops under the Duke of Guise attacked a Huguenot congregation assembled in a barn, killing over 60 worshippers and wounding 200 more. The massacre was the opening atrocity of the French Wars of Religion.

The Massacre at Vassy ignited 36 years of intermittent religious civil war in France that killed hundreds of thousands and destabilized the kingdom until the Edict of Nantes in 1598.

Outcome

French Wars of Religion begin; 74 killed