It may shock and startle some but protestantism always coincided with violence when it was implemented by the protestants. Those parts are rarely mentioned.
Protestantism arose with the support of State and immediately, where it began, siezed lands, plundered churches and monestaries, and persecuted Catholics.
This is a fact of historical record whether one believes protestants were right or wrong.
The fundamental issue in France was simple politics ~ who would be second to the king. They tested the process with newly developed lightweight personal firearms.
Very quickly the French found that an awful lot of people of all ranks and stations could end up dead with these items, and fired up with a little bit of ideological ferver, even more folks could end up dead.
That was stage one. Stage two was an uneasy peace under the Edict of Nantes. Stage three was a resumption of state persection of Huguenots.
Well over 150,000 well to do Huguenots are known to have emigrated from France during that period, and up to 1.5 million others probably emigrated. Civil records were not good during that period.
Our family castle was finally dismantled and scattered about as a "lesson to us" ~ so many of the remaining family members fled to Sweden where one of their number became the third ranking noble in the Vasa King's new nobility. He eventually conquered most of Europe, even brought the French in as allies (all was not well in the top ranks of French government at any time), founded Nieuwe Sweden, and scattered descendants all over the globe in every country. I think some of them still live in Scandinavia, and almost unbelievably, some of them managed to creep back to France.
The carnage in the royal family and noble ranks was so bad that it creates many difficult to handle genealogical blocks ~ just impossible to tell who had which kids, when, where and how.