As outside events added fuel to the flames of sectarian hatred, tensions continued to simmer in Toulouse between the Catholics and Reformed Church members. The
capitouls tried to prevent violence by controlling the traffic of weapons into the city, but found it impossible. As historian Mark Greengrass writes, "Monasteries, priests, as well as scholars in the university, maintained caches of small arms and continued to do so, despite the truce. Judges kept garrisons within their private houses and some bourgeois 'monopolisseurs', such as the wealthy Pierre Delpuech, already involved in the arms trade, profited from the additional business that the alarm in the city brought them." Theodore Beza accompanying Condé in Orleans sent out a letter to the Protestants across the provinces asking for money and arms for their troops. Toulouse responded to the letter by sending funds (though just as in other regions, the amount was not as much as the leadership had hoped). Prince Condé (a convert to the Reformed Church of France and the brother of King Antoine of Navarre) had become the champion of resistance to the domination of the Crown by the staunchly Catholic Guise family. He was seen as a protector of Protestants and had begun to seize and garrison strategic towns along the
Loire. Condé told the
capitoul to capture Toulouse for the Protestants. The plan was to copy the keys to all the gates of the city's defensive walls and capture the city using the Protestant soldiers already being secretly housed in Toulouse along with troops levied by Lanta from his properties east of the city in Lauragais. The plan would go into effect on May 17 with one of the goals being the strategic seizure of the Hôtel de Ville. Whether Lanta was ever able to coordinate with Reformed Church members within Toulouse remains unknown, but he did begin to levy troops throughout the villages around his country estate (including Blagnac, Colomiers, and Seilh). Lanata's return and his suspicious activities did not go unnoticed by agents of
Blaise de Lasseran-Massencôme, seigneur de Montluc the Catholic military lieutenant in Gascony. Montluc forwarded his suspicions to Mansencal, president of the
Parlement of Toulouse, saying that he believed Lanta was set to take the city with 1,200 troops on Pentecost (April 18). The
Parlement immediately met in emergency session. Thirty-seven '''' signed a document charging over twenty of their colleagues with heresy. Some were viewed as unacceptably moderate (
Politiques or
Nicodemites), some for being
humanists, others on suspicion of Protestant sympathies (not for being Protestants themselves but for allowing their wives or family members to attend Protestant services), still others were viewed as convinced Calvinists. Fully purged, the Parlement issued decrees to counter the planned insurrection by requesting additional military assistance from
Anne de Joyeuse to garrison strategic locations in the city including fortifying the Hôtel de Ville. They also discussed how to ban Reformed Church services within the walls of Toulouse. Becoming aware of
Parlement's discussions, the consistory and other notable Reformed Church members of Toulouse quickly held their own meeting. The consistory made up of city notables urged caution hoping to prevent armed strife. The captains wanted to consider practical and realistic objectives given their situation. It was the zeal of Minister Barrelles that carried the day, determining that as troops were already secretly in the city and more were waiting outside that the time to act was upon them. It was judged that Parlement's actions had forced the conspirators hand and an immediate coup was attempted that night – May 12, 1562. Led by some of their
capitouls, Reformed Church members at nine p.m. let Captain Saux and some of the Protestant militia in from the suburbs outside the walls through the Porte Villeneuve gate. These troops captured the Hôtel de Ville and took three
capitouls prisoner. Protestant forces also captured the three universities and threw up barricades made of dirt filled barrels across the streets leading into the quartiers that they had captured. All of this took place before the dawn of May 13 with little opposition and no bloodshed.
Street fighting In light of this treason, the councilors of
Parlement passed a sentence of arrest on the magistrates who were taking part. They unilaterally deposed all the
capitouls and ordered their property seized. This action was taken, even though only two
capitouls were known Reformed members, two had no known previous association with Protestantism (though it is always possible that they converted on the job), and the others were viewed as firm Catholics (but ones who favored moderation and peace). The Parlement bypassed the normal election procedure and appointed a new slate of
capitouls, all of whom were staunchly Catholic and at least two of which were members of Toulouse's Catholic
syndicat. While the Hôtel de Ville was held by Reformed Church members, the Catholic faction was led from the nearby seat of
Parlement, the
Palais de Justice. They turned the chancery of into an operations room, with the rest of the structure serving as a barracks for the Catholic forces. From here they sent forth military commands, such as ordering all removable shop awnings to be taken down to prevent them from being used as Protestant sniper hides. They also commanded all captains and gentlemen in the nearby areas to come and give military assistance. With both camps entrenched,
Parlement quickly had the gunpowder stored in
Bazacle Mills seized and requisitioned the King's treasury and any silver within the city. President Mansencal also established a war fund to which all the judges were required to make a contribution. Out in the streets both sides threw up more barricades which soon led to bitter fighting between denominations. Appearing on the streets of Toulouse in their red robes the councilors of
Parlement commanded the populace to take up arms against the members of the Reformed Church. Five or six of their number were dispatched to proclaim to the Catholic citizenry that they should "Pillage, kill boldly, with the approval of the pope, of the king, and of the court." These also gave out "a white cross as a mark of distinction for their persons and houses" to those that answered their call. The Parlement ordered all Catholic combatants to display these crosses on themselves and their homes and decreed that all other Catholics must place a display of lighted candles in their windows. Any qualms that Catholics may have had over killing their neighbors were met with the declaration that such actions were part of a "holy war" and clergy loyal to the Parlement offered
dispensation in advance to those who agreed to kill heretics. Between 3,000 and 8,000 Catholics answered the call and joined in the street fighting. These included the town guard, a supplementary militia of around 400, private troops garrisoned in wealthy homes, and the Catholic knights and their retinues that had responded to the
arrière-ban. They were met by around 2,000 Protestants which included the secret levies of militia and bands of students. The Protestants, while woefully outnumbered, were far better armed, having been successfully sneaking weapons and ammunition into the city since the burial riot. They had also confiscated the arsenal at the Hôtel de Ville which included a great number of pikes, armor, arquebuses and cannon. Urban warfare gripped Toulouse and events quickly descended into chaos. Protestants made use of buildings with overhangs as platforms for musketeers and stone-throwers, they also used their own homes to connect their forces between streets. Catholics often negated these tactical advantages by burning these homes to the ground. On the 14th,
Parlement ordered a purge of its militia forces. Though records do not explain why, two captains professing to be Catholic were slain and two more wounded in the courtyard outside the
Palais de Justice. After this purge, their militia focused solely on apprehending people that Parlement suspected of Protestantism. On the Catholic side all Protestants were viewed in the same light as those holed up in the Hôtel de Ville - being viewed as not only heretics but open traitors. Those not in the Hôtel de Ville were seized in their homes, thrown from windows, or dragged to the
Garonne River and thrown in. Even Protestants being taken to prison by town constables were massacred by mobs of angry Catholics. Still the majority of those arrested did make it to prison and the arrests of Protestants were so numerous that those in jail for merely criminal charges but who were not charged with heresy were released to make more room for captured Reformed Church members. Arriving at jail Protestants were stripped, beaten, and males had their beards torn off. When the prisons were filled to capacity, those arrested on suspicion of Protestantism were stripped naked and thrown into the river – those attempting to swim were shot with arquebuses. As the great number of Reformed Church members in Toulouse were from the higher classes, the hysteria was so out of control that any well-dressed passenger was viewed as a Protestant, taken from the vehicle and slain. The Reformed Church members focused on Catholic churches and monasteries. In total they captured ten of these types of Catholic buildings, including large monasteries belonging to the Dominican and Franciscan Observantists orders. Monks captured in these raids were taken to the Hôtel de Ville and held prisoner. Among the fiercest fighters were university students of either denomination. The students were well prepared for guerrilla tactics and street fighting. They were more deadly than even the nobility's armored mounted cavalry forces whose horse-mounted tactics did not transfer well to the narrow streets of Toulouse and whose armor became cumbersome. Much of the violence, especially that performed by members of the Reformed Church took on a ritualistic tone. Catholic churches were ransacked, with statues and other images destroyed. A band of drunken Protestants broke into the parish church of Saint-Georges and destroyed any Catholic statues, paintings, or other imagery. Other Protestants at Saint-Orens mocking the doctrine of
Transubstantiation took hold of
Sacramental bread prepared for the Catholic
Eucharist and defiled it. One account records a Protestant woman at the Église du Taur church defecating on either the Catholic baptismal font, while another source speaks of a woman doing the same upon the altar to show her contempt for the Catholic's sacrifice of the Mass. Catholic items in these churches that they could not manage to destroy (such as the relics/remains of Thomas Aquinas) along with other expensive objects were taken to the Hôtel de Ville. Likewise some of the Catholic actions seem ritualistic as well, with corpses of those deemed heretics denied any sense of a holy burial by being cast in the Garrone River or "mutilated in a systematic fashion." As the riots continued these ritualistic elements faded in the name of efficiency; historian Greengrass describes the scene: "Once the violence became more organized, the ritualistic elements were submerged beneath the familiar elements of civil war...Bodies were dumped in the river Garonne, sewers in the city were scoured out, quartiers were set alight, not as ritual cleansings and purification of the city but as a natural recourse in the strategy of urban warfare when the prisons were full and the sewers offered some refuge. The greater violence perpetrated by the Catholics was not necessarily an expression of their outrage at the desecration of their religious symbols and their failure to find Protestant ritual objects to attack in return; it was the inevitable result of a sectarian conflict in a confined space in which Catholics outnumbered Protestants and had the assistance of professional soldiers to whom killing came easily." As most of the Catholics in the mob were illiterate and viewed books as a means that spread Protestantism, they were quick to support
Parlement's edict to raid booksellers' shops (regardless if they sold Protestant works or not), arrest the bookseller, and then remove all their books and set them on fire in the public gathering places. As events escalated some in the mobs took advantage of the situation to settle personal scores. Both sides engaged in pillaging homes of their opponents. With even judges, court officials, medical doctors, and lawyers having their homes ransacked. While most of these homes were owned by people suspected of being in the Reformed Church, in some cases the wealthy had their property pillaged even if they were not believed to be Protestants. One such case was Jean de Bernuy who as an ethnic Jew, had come to Toulouse to escape the
Spanish Inquisition and made a fortune selling
Isatis tinctoria. His elegant townhome was ransacked by a Catholic mob under the baron de Clermont and both of his daughters were raped without anyone ever charging him of Protestantism. His neighbor Mathieu Chauvet was captured and held for ransom. Foreigners and temporary residents were also robbed. Most of the damage to Toulouse was due to this ransacking pillage, with the conservative total estimate being 20,000 écus. Throughout May 13–14 areas engulfed in street fighting spread to a wider and wider area, moving from around the Place Saint-Georges, to the Place Saint-Sernin, the Porte du Bazâcle, and the streets leading to the cathedral. Greengrass postulates that this closeness to the cathedral and the attacks on the monasteries may be why "the Catholic clergy appeared muted or paralyzed" during these riots, unlike the previous one. By May 15 the Catholics brought four thick oaken mobile defense structures onto the streets that acted as mobile shields. These structures were mounted on two wheels and were rather large for the streets. By pushing these in front of them the Catholics were able to get close to the enemy with the structure absorbing any weapon's fire. These were successful though the Protestants were able to capture one of them. Reformed Church members began to utilize the cannons they had won with their capture of the Hôtel de Ville. One was dragged to the Three Pigeons inn and around barricades to halt a Catholic mobile shield, two smaller cannons were moved to the top of the tower in the Collège de Périgord in hopes that they could destroy the spire of the Saint-Sernin (a famous site of Catholic pilgrimage) and thereby control the whole quarter. A last cannon was taken to the top of the Hôtel de Ville itself to shore up defenses. Also on May 15, Reformed Church members began using the ancient Roman sewer that ran to the Garonne river to move around or to find shelter. Catholics flushed the system with a large amount of water and capturing twenty five Protestants threw them from a bridge into the Garonne river where they drowned. In the beginning of the riots the Protestants had focused on Catholic ritual objects to vent their anger upon and followed a policy of trying to avoid committing violence on their opponents. Prisoners were treated with consideration, banished rather than executed, and great attempts to convert them to what they deemed true Christianity were made. But as events continued and the situation grew more desperate for them, Protestant policy shifted towards more killing. The Catholic policy remained the same throughout the riots; they deemed Protestants both heretics and traitors who must be exterminated in the name of "holy war". This explains their slaughter of unarmed Protestant prisoners held in the conciergerie and
Parlement's prison, and their willingness to hold other Protestants under water till they drowned or watch them burn to death inside their homes. It is estimated that at least 200 people viewed as Protestants were slain in this street fighting, though some historians (such as
Greengrass) hold that such a figure is far too low.
Burning of Saint-Georges The Catholics responded to the tactic of Reformed Church members using homes to connect Protestant troops in different streets or as firing platforms by setting those homes on fire. The members of the Reformed Church throughout the city had around 1,000 troops and "the allegiance of at least one student nation", but promised reinforcements from Protestant noblemen in the region never arrived. In contrast Catholic aristocrat warriors (such as
Anne de Joyeuse,
Antoine de Lomagne the sieur de Terride, and Monluc) sent troops into the city. In addition every Catholic church within five or six leagues of the town rang out their tocsins, rallying bands of peasantry into the fray. These superior numbers did not always equate with easy success and more desperate tactics had to be used.
Greengrass writes: "Catholics had particular difficulty in the rue des Couteliers and towards the Daurade church, an artisan quarter where Huguenot support was strong. There, Catholics instituted a campaign of terror, sectarian murder, pillage and imprisonment which remind the historian of some of the events [during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre] in the Quartier Latin in Paris ten years later." Despite the growing opposition, the Reformed Church members within the Hôtel de Ville were, due to force of arms (which included a cannon), able to hold off the growing opposition. On Friday, May 15, frustrated by the standoff, the Catholic leadership attempted to both dislodge the Reformed Church members, remove cover for any escape route, and end street fighting in that area by setting fire to all Protestant homes in the Saint-Georges quarter (where the Hôtel de Ville was located). The
Parlement declared anyone attempting to extinguish the flames would be guilty of a
capital offense, which resulted in some Catholic homes burning as well. In the end, more than 200 homes were burnt to the ground. The Reformed Church members within the Hôtel de Ville continued to hold their position from Monday through Saturday. All talk of truce had been rejected by the zealous minister Barrelles whom had turned the town hall into a Reformed temple. Protestant sources describe him as "courageous and zealous, but very thoughtless and not always inspired by the spirit of God". Even in the midst of the siege he had a vicious argument with a Protestant captain over ransoming captured notables back to the enemy. In the end he had the captain thrown into the Hôtel de Ville prison as well. Still, with the city around him ablaze, even he could not long ignore the reality of their military situation.
Truce As the riots continued throughout the week some of the city's notables sought to avoid the conflict or find a way to end it as peacefully as possible. Several of Toulouse's magistrates were determined to remain neutral while both sides descended into bloodshed. Many left the city or moved to quieter areas within it (occasionally sending out attempts to see if Reformed friends or family members and their homes were safe), other notables stayed within their properties protected by a heavy guard. Those under their own guard were viewed with suspicion by the Catholic faction, and proposals to invoke their aid where rejected by the Catholic
syndicat. The
viguier (a type of judge) named Jean Portal attempted to remain neutral on his garrisoned property near the
Palais de Justice, but his doors where torn down and he was seized by a Catholic mob who suspected him of Protestantism. On the Catholic side, many of the nobles, who had responded to the
ban and
arrière-ban, were appalled at the cost the Protestant resistance and their tactics of urban warfare was having on their armored troops. Catholic Captain Ricaud was so devastated at the loss of so many of his troops within just two days of fighting that he withdrew to an Augustinian monastery, refused all food and drink, and wailed about the great loss of
gens de bien (good/honest folk). The nobles were also dismayed that the Protestants had no respect for the status of their bloodlines and casualties among the gentry were high. One Catholic noble was even thrown by Protestant townsfolk into the river weighted down by his gilded armor. Among the Protestants, Captain Sauxenes grew ever more dismayed at the carnage. He began to release some of the Catholic notables that had been taken prisoner (especially the women and children). For these actions he was accused of treason by the zealous Minister Barrelles. On May 14, private contacts between factions led to an attempt at negotiations over the barricades at Saint-Rome between Captain Saux and Pierre Delpuech but they fell flat. Nothing was achieved until Saturday May 16, after six hours of early morning fighting and parlement judge Antoine de Resseguier using his skills as a mediator. The Reformed's Captain Saux reached an agreement with the captain of the Catholic troops and Catholic nobleman Raymond de Pavia baron de Fourquevaux of Narbonne. A truce lasting until Sunday night would be called allowing the Protestants to leave Toulouse, never to return. Nothing was laid out about the Protestants' possessions or their worship. Toulouse's
capitouls joined a number of Catholic notables after Saturday evening Mass at a Carmelite Church to hastily ratify the terms. News of the terms spread and situational details were negotiated over each barricade. ==Massacre==