25 Most Horrific Massacres in History

One of the earliest recorded large-scale massacres in world history happened in the year 390 when Roman Emperor Theodosius I sent troops to Thessalonica in order to quell some civil unrest. Apparently he was very angry when he gave them their initial instructions because he almost immediately dispatched a messenger telling the troops to disregard his previous orders. The messenger, however, arrived too late and 7,000 innocent men, women, and children had already been murdered.

On December 30, 1066 Muslim mobs stormed the royal palace where Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela had sought refuge and crucified him. In the ensuing massacre of the Jewish population, many of the Jews of Granada were murdered. The massacre was apparently started by a rumor that Joseph was going to have the Muslim king assassinated.

The Massacre of the Latins was a large-scale massacre of the Roman Catholic or “Latin” inhabitants of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, by the Eastern Orthodox population of the city in May 1182. The Roman Catholics of Constantinople at that time dominated the city’s maritime trade and financial sector. Although precise numbers are unavailable, the bulk of the Latin community, estimated at over 60,000 at the time, was wiped out or forced to flee.

The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants), during the French Wars of Religion. Modern estimates for the number of dead vary widely from 5,000 to 30,000.

Also known as the “Storming of Bolton,” this was an episode in the English Civil War when Royalist forces led by Prince Rupert of the Rhine stormed and captured the Parliamentarian town of Bolton on May 28, 1644. A staple in the Parliamentarian propaganda, it resulted in the death of 1,600 defenders and innocent inhabitants.