Michelade

The Michelade is the name given to the Massacre from eighty to ninety Catholique S (monks, clerks) by rioters Protesting S the September 29th 1567 with Nimes, in reprisals with the oppression which they underwent (impossibility of practicing their religion freely). Michelade lies within the scope of various attempts of the Protestants to sow terror.

History

The May 22nd 1567, the delegates of the Languedoc joined together under the presidency of the bishop of Montpellier, are opposed to the installation of the captain the Grid as Sénéchal because it was Protestant, and require that the Consul S of Nimes as well as the professors of the Collège of this same city be all catholic. Under the blow of this unexpected requirement, the pact of reconciliation so laboriously elaborate a few months before breaks with crash.

The royal castle of the “Roman city” fills of troops. Let us add to that the Homeric quarrel which separates since many years the two most influential families of the city, Albenas catholics and Calvières Protestants, reached its paroxysm.

This is why, the September 29th 1567, the explosion of hatred results in what one called the drama of Michelade (on September 29th corresponding to the festival of Michelade, fair which takes place the day of the Saint-Michel to Nimes).

While passing close to the door Auguste of the city, a commercial vegetable Protestant woman is insulted by some soldiers and its vegetables are trampled. Incident which would be banal in another time, but to the cries of the young girl, the peasants and the people armed with the Protestant companies in formation run of all shares.

After exchanges of insults and threats between soldiers and Protestants, a fatal watchword circulates in crowd and electrifies suddenly it: “With the weapons… Kill the papists… new Monde. ”

The riot develops so quickly that nobody can any more stop it. The instinct of revenge overrides morals.

The first consul, a named catholic in a very disputed way, Guy Rochette traverses with courage the streets and endeavors to alleviate the demonstrators, but it is constrained to take refuge in the bishop Bernard d' Elbène.

The general Vicar like approximately eighty monks or clerks is imprisoned (according to the rioters: for their violent actions against reformed) then are removed by a band of exaggerated, are massacred and thrown in a well of the court of évêché on September 30th. The bodies will be found, piled up at the bottom of the well, during three centuries work later.

Only the bishop escapes (the first consul will be stopped) and goes during the night to Tarascon, thanks to a protesting soldier, Jacques Coussinal.

The rioters also plunder the catholic churches of the city and try to demolish the Clocher Cathédrale by sapping it at its base, without very thinking of the danger as the operation presents for them.

The catholic women on the other hand, do not undergo any evil on behalf of the Protestant rioters.

The consistory protesting is opposed highly to these actions and gives order to the troops to put an end to their violences and addresses a blame to the chiefs: Servas, Vigier and others. Fury falls abruptly as it was assembled, making place with the remorse.

For the contemporaries, these criminal acts have extenuating circumstances: the aggravation caused by impossibility of obtaining the freedom of religion and oppression; but cannot justify itself. The pastors of the time themselves condemn them.

In reprisals, the catholics support persecution most violent and set fire to in 1568 the large temple of the Calade builds only two years before with however the authorization of the king Charles IX (it was rebuilt in 1595 and destroyed again in 1686).

Also, the Parliament of Toulouse decides that “hundred household heads will be walked on a Tombereau in all the streets and crossroads of the city”, that “their goods will be confiscated” and that they will undergo “a defamatory death”. The majority of condemned emigrate then abroad.

Then comminatory ordinances arrive of Paris and prohibit in a radical way all the sermons and the simple practice of the Protestant religion in some form that it is.

This brawl has as a background the wars of religion which tore the France at the 16th century. It precedes, on a scale obviously much smaller, the massacre of the Protestants by the catholics at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre the August 24th 1572 (ten thousand Protestants killed in all France).

Thirty-six center years later in Nimes, a massacre organized by the royal troops and catholics against the Protestants will constitute one of the bloodiest episodes of the war of the religions: the Massacre of the mill of Agau.

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