The Michelade is the name given to the massacre of Catholics, including 24 Catholic priests and monks, by Protestant rioters in Nîmes on Michaelmas (29 September) 1567, following their failure to abduct the king and queen mother in the so-called Surprise of Meaux the previous day and in retaliation for the suppression of their Huguenot beliefs. With Meaux, it helped trigger the Second War of Religion which was a prolonged period of war and popular unrest between Catholics and Huguenots (Reformed/Calvinist Protestants) in the Kingdom of France between 1562 and 1598.

It is estimated that three million people perished in this period from violence, famine, or disease in what is considered the second deadliest religious war in European history (surpassed only by the Thirty Years' War, which took eight million lives).

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