The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: How an Intercepted Letter Exposed the Cover-up of the Slaughter and Reshaped Elizabeth I’s England
- Dorothea Dickerman
- Sep 9
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 10
In August 1572, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre left over 10,000 Huguenots dead in Paris alone. France’s King Charles IX and its Queen Mother Catherine de Medici had turned their sister’s and daughter’s royal wedding into a death trap.
The news shook Elizabeth I’s Protestant England to its core. One intercepted letter reshaped it.
🌹From Kenilworth to Woodstock: Elizabeth I’s Court Before the News Broke
While flirtations had bloomed like late summer roses at Kenilworth and Warwick Castles, Queen Elizabeth and her court had been unaware that the bodies of thousands of Protestant wedding guests lay naked and mutilated on the streets of Paris. Elizabeth’s progress rolled south into the sweetly scented countryside, anticipating a hunt at Woodstock Palace – now the site of Blenheim Palace. Hounds bayed and nosed under the first fallen leaves. Courtiers traded barbs and fanned themselves in the afternoon heat.
Elizabeth and her court were pursuing roe deer in the greenwood when two letters from Paris were delivered simultaneously. Almost a week in transit, they arrived from different senders and carried different perspectives on the same staggering events.
The first was addressed to Elizabeth from Sir Francis Walsingham. The second had been intercepted and expertly unsealed. Elizabeth read every word before it reached its intended recipient. That single intercepted letter reshaped England’s European and domestic policy.
🏹 The Woodstock Hunt Comes to a Dead Halt
In Walsingham’s letter, Elizabeth learned that in the dark hours before dawn on August 24, Paris had become a butcher’s yard. Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the most respected Protestant in France, had been murdered in the bed where he was recovering from a prior botched attempted assassination. His body had been hurled from a window into the street where it had been beheaded and emasculated.
As church bells tolled the secret signal, Protestant families, including women and children, invited as guests to Catholic Marguerite of Valois’ wedding to the Protestant Prince of Navarre — a union trumpeted as healing the rift of the French Wars of Religion – had been hunted down by soldiers and mobs. Among the dead were three English subjects. The Seine ran red and choked up bodies. Death toll estimates rose from 10,000 in the first days to 70,000 as the killing spread to Lyon, Bordeaux, Orléans, and beyond.
And at the heart of it all: the bride’s brother, King Charles IX of France, and Catherine de Medici, Queen Mother of France and of the bride. For years Catherine and Elizabeth had circled each other like rival chess masters, alternately flattering and deceiving, dangling alliances and marriages. Catherine had tolerated Coligny’s influence over Charles until she convinced herself and him that Coligny was dragging France into war with Spain. The French crown’s solution was as brutal as it was effective — strike first to obliterate the Protestant leadership while they were in Paris celebrating the royal family wedding, and blame it on a conspiracy that did not include themselves. The Guise brothers, Duke Francis and Archbishop of Reims Charles, - uncles of Mary Queen of Scots - weren’t exactly guiltless either. Complicating matters, Mary’s first marriage, to Charles’ elder brother (and Catherine’s eldest son), Francis II, had briefly made Mary Queen of France before Francis died.
📨The Letter Elizabeth Was Never Supposed to See
Inside the second letter were Charles’ private instructions to his ambassador, Bertrand de la Mothe-Fenelon, then accompanying the English court on a mission to woo Elizabeth for Charles’ youngest brother (and Catherine’s youngest son), Hercule Francois, the Duke de Alencon. The French King’s instructions to de la Mothe: assure Elizabeth that the killings were nothing to worry about; convince the English that the events in Paris had not been about religion, but rather a swift blow to “conspirators”; and spin up Charles’ personal efforts to stop the violence, when in fact, he had been participating in and celebrating it.
But Elizabeth and her councilors read French perfectly. Charles’ secret letter confirmed that the French royal family, not the Huguenots, were the conspirators. De la Mothe would try his witty and charming best to keep the Alencon marriage diplomacy alive, but the secret instigation of the massacre by the King of France and his mother was no longer secret.
Later letters revealed that Alencon himself had encouraged the killings in his brother’s name, even as de la Mothe pressed Elizabeth to marry him to secure an English-French alliance.
And King Philip of Spain, England’s most feared Catholic enemy? History reports that when he heard the news, Philip laughed out loud – perhaps for the one and only time in his life. Philip was not a party kind of guy.
Charles’ secret letter was eventually delivered to de la Mothe. At Woodstock, the court went into deep mourning. Elizabeth refused to dance or watch entertainments for the rest of the progress. Meanwhile, Huguenot refugees, carrying more details of atrocities, poured into London.
Dressed in black, Elizabeth received de la Mothe formally to hear his explanation of what had occurred in Paris. But she already knew what he was going to say. She listened gravely and let de la Mothe do his best to try to leave the English court with the false impression that Charles had done all he could to stop the massacre.
🌊 England Reacts: Fear, Propaganda and Diplomatic Fallout
But underneath the diplomatic niceties, the intercepted secret letter had already done its work. A new and very real fear rose in England: if Catherine and her son could lure French Protestant nobles into Paris under the guise (sorry, that was a bad pun) of peace to slaughter them, then France was unsafe for any Protestant, and Elizabeth’s marriage into their family was out of the question.
“England is left destitute of friends on every side, amazed and divided at home.”
- Robert Beale, Privy Councilor
Shocked, shaken and all too aware of standing alone, Elizabeth and her government continued to play the cat-and-mouse game with the French crown in the long shadows of the continuing French Wars of Religion.
By the time Elizabeth resumed pretending and re-entered what would become the decade-long marriage dance with Alencon, anti-Catholic sentiment in England had sharpened into something darker, less forgiving. Friendships between English and French courtiers had cooled. Travel to France without royal permission had become suspect and violators were stopped at the ports. English Catholic courtiers were eyed as potential fifth columnists, no matter their personal loyalty to Elizabeth.
🗡️ The Long Shadow of the Massacre
The peek into the French playbook through Charles’ intercepted letter not only shaped England’s foreign policy, it formed Elizabeth’s resolve to resist marriage alliances from Catholic courts. She had long known that a monarch’s smile could hide a dagger. Now she knew that the one who smiled last, survived.
Step back into halcyon days before the tidal wave of French duplicity hit English shores and watch the fun as Oxford’s fireworks dampen Leicester’s prospects for the throne: 👉 Let’s Party Like It’s 1572: Elizabeth I’s Summer Progress and the Fireworks That Set off the Dudley-de Vere Rivalry 🎇
Want to read more secrets hiding in letters from Queen Elizabeth’s court?
👉 ❤️🔥 Join my insider list here.
If you liked this post, use the buttons below to share!
