French religious wars
| 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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 France
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Catholics: Catholic League Spain Savoy
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| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
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Henry of Navarre (until 1589) Princes of Condé Elizabeth I James VI Jeanne d'Albret
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Catherine de Médici Charles IX Henry III † Henry IV (after 1589) |
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. The conflict involved several independent principalities: the Duchy of Lorraine, the Duchy of Savoy, the Kingdom of Navarre, and parts of Burgundy which have since been incorporated into France. And it 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). Although the war was religious in nature, it was undergirded by feuds among immensely rich and powerful noble families of France and its surrounding principalities: the ambitious and fervently Roman Catholic House of Guise (a branch of the House of Lorraine) and their ally Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France (i.e., commander in chief of the French armed forces) versus the less wealthy House of Condé (a branch of the House of Bourbon), who were in the direct line of succession to the French throne and sympathetic to Calvinism. Foreign governments also provided financing and other assistance to both sides, with Hapsburg Spain and the Duchy of Savoy supporting the Guises, and England supporting the Protestant side led by the Condés and by the Protestant Jeanne d'Albret, wife of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, and her son, Henry of Navarre.
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