In August 1348, Paris faced a terrible disease that spared neither women, children, nobles nor the poor. Within 4 years, the Black Death epidemic would decimate a third of the Parisian population.
On August 24, 1572, 4,000 Huguenots were brutally murdered in Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the culmination of the Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants.
