Gaspard de Coligny

Timeline

1. 1519–1552Châtillon-Coligny · Centre-Val de LoireBorn into a prominent noble family at Châtillon-Coligny, he entered court and the army in his youth. Distinguished in the Italian Wars, he was made lieutenant general in 1547, and in 1552 Henry II appointed him Admiral of France, making him the kingdom's supreme naval commander, at which point he still belonged to the Catholic camp.
2. 1559–1570France · FranceAround 1559 he openly converted to Calvinism and, alongside the Prince of Condé, became one of the supreme leaders of the Huguenots. He commanded coalition forces in the first through third Wars of Religion, was captured after the Battle of Saint-Quentin in 1557 and later released, and after the Battle of Jarnac in 1569 became the Huguenots' effective commander, advocating the pursuit of religious toleration by military means.
3. 1551–1560Picardy and Paris · PicardyAfter becoming admiral in 1552 he reorganized the fleet and took part in the war against England. Commanding the French at the Battle of Saint-Quentin in 1557, he was defeated and captured, and held prisoner in the Netherlands for two years. After the death of Henry II and the accession of Francis II in 1559, religious tensions intensified; Coligny gradually turned toward the Huguenot camp, and by the Amboise conspiracy of 1560 he was already a central figure of the reformist party.
4. 1570–1572Paris · Île-de-FranceAfter the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1570 he entered Paris for the wedding of Henry of Navarre, advocating colonization of Spanish territories and religious reconciliation. Shot and wounded on August 22, he was murdered on the 24th when the massacre broke out: agents of the Duke of Guise broke into his lodgings, stabbed him to death, and threw his body from the window, triggering a nationwide religious slaughter and marking the entry of the French Wars of Religion into a more brutal phase.