French Wars of Religion
| French Wars of Religion | ||||||||
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| Part of European wars of religion | ||||||||
 Depiction of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre by François Dubois |
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| Belligerents | ||||||||
Protestants: Huguenots England Scotland Navarre
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 Politiques
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Catholics: Catholic League Spain Duchy of Savoy
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| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
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Princes of Condé Elizabeth I James VI Jeanne d'Albret
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Catherine de Médici Charles IX Henry III † Henry IV
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House of Guise Philip II Pope Sixtus V Charles Emmanuel I
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| Casualties and losses | ||||||||
| 2,000,000—4,000,000 | ||||||||
Uneasy Catholic-Protestant truce
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.
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