The Massacre of Wassy, 1 March 1562

This engraving by Jacques Tortorel and Jean Perrissin, published in Geneva around 1570 in their collection of Forty Tableaux devoted to the Wars of Religion, depicts the massacre carried out at Wassy on 1 March 1562. That day, Duke Francis of Guise, passing through with his armed escort, discovered an assembly of about two hundred Protestants gathered for worship in a barn inside the town; the ensuing clash left about fifty dead and up to two hundred wounded among the worshippers. Interpreted by Protestants as a deliberate act of aggression, this episode immediately triggered the first of the Wars of Religion that would tear France apart for more than three decades. Distributed in thousands of copies throughout Protestant Europe, this print is among the earliest attempts at a chronological, documentary representation of contemporary events in France.