French Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion were a series of civil conflicts between French Catholics and Protestant Huguenots fought from 1562 to 1598, killing between two and four million people through combat, famine and disease and badly weakening the French monarchy. Tension had built since the 1530s from religious division and rivalry among noble factions, and when Henry II died unexpectedly in July 1559 his widow Catherine de Medici and rival houses, the strongly Catholic Guise and Montmorency families against the Protestant-leaning Conde and Navarre families, competed for power, with Spain and Savoy backing the Catholics and England and the Dutch Republic aiding the Protestants. The wars ended in 1598 when Henry of Navarre, who had converted to Catholicism in 1593 to become King Henry IV, issued the Edict of Nantes granting the Huguenots substantial rights, though Catholic opposition to Henry persisted until his assassination in 1610 and further Huguenot rebellions followed in the 1620s.