The Edict of Amboise is signed, ending the first phase of the French Wars of Religion and granting certain freedoms to the Huguenots.
The peace treaty was signed in a royal château while Catherine de Medici's 13-year-old son Charles IX sat on the throne, barely old enough to understand he'd just granted French Protestants the right to worship—but only in private homes and select towns outside Paris. The Edict of Amboise didn't end the religious wars; it just hit pause. Within four years, France would explode into violence again, and again, cycling through eight separate wars over the next three decades. Catherine thought she was buying time to let her boy-king grow up. Instead, she'd created a template for temporary truces that made permanent peace impossible.
March 19, 1563
463 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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