On this date in 1574, nobleman Joseph Boniface de La Mole was beheaded in Paris for a supposed plot against the king. As the year would imply, La Mole was a casualty of France’s decades-long Wars of Religion. Two years prior, in an attempt to cement an unsteady peace, the king’s sister Marguerite de Valois had been married off to the Protestant Henri of Navarre. As Paris teemed with Huguenots in town to celebrate the nuptials, the Catholic party sprang the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. As if things weren’t awkward enough with the in-laws, Henri was now made to...
