Sixty-three Huguenots are massacred in Wassy, France, marking the start of the French Wars of Religion.

The Huguenots are a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of burgomaster Besançon Hugues, who defended Geneva from Catholic Savoy but then let it fall to Protestantism, was in common use by…