In Domestic War, Beware the Rabble

On August 24, 1572, a fragile peace between Catholics and Huguenots in Paris came to an end.

Following the wedding of Catholic princess Margaret of Valois to Protestant leader Henry of Navarre, a failed assassination attempt on the Huguenot Admiral Gaspard de Coligny panicked the royal court. Fearing a Protestant reprisal, King Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de' Medici, ordered a preemptive strike against Huguenot leaders in Paris. This strike spread into days of mob killings in the capital and weeks of copycat massacres across France, with a total death toll estimated between 5,000 and 30,000. The event was seen as an emblem of Catholic treachery in Europe and catalyzed radical theories of resistance to tyranny among Huguenot writers.

Only one year earlier, Michel de Montaigne retired from public office to begin writing his Essays.

Montaigne, who was Catholic, never mentions the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in the Essays.

He decided to postpone publication of his friend Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude to await a "less unpleasant season." He practiced the discretion of the politiques—the moderate faction that sought peace above confessional victory—by adhering to the official policy of "forgetting" the event. He maintained his cross-confessional relationships, accepting a post as Gentleman of the Chamber from the Catholic King Charles IX in 1573 and the same honor from the Henry of Navarre in 1577, whom he later hosted at his château.

Though never commenting on the massacre, his work is not politically disengaged or unconcerned with the civil wars of his time (he lived through seven civil wars). He reflects on cruelty. He notes the auto-escalating quality of "domestic wars," observing in "Cowardice the Mother of Cruelty" (Book 2, Ch. 27) that the worst slaughter in civil conflict is often the work of the rabble after a victory.

The worst violence comes when crowds of commoners wade in after some initial act of violence, after the way has been cleared and it’s safer to unload on an already defeated group. Citing Ovid, he likens the violent rabble “wolves and bears and baser beasts” who descend upon the dying.

In Montaigne’s personal daybook, the Ephemeris Historica, the page for August 24 is present but blank. The leaves covering early October, when the killings reached his region of Bordeaux, are missing altogether.