in French port through which trade was conducted with Brasil, principally for the import of cloth dyes. By 1500 ten printing presses had been installed in the town following the installation of the first one sixteen years earlier.
The Wars of Religion
In the years following 1530, part of the population of Rouen embraced Calvinism. The members of the Reformed Church who represented a quarter to a third of the total population thus found themselves in a minority. From 1560 onwards tensions rose between the Protestant and Catholic communities. The massacre of Wassy set off the first war of religion. On 15 April 1562 the Protestants entered the town hall and ejected the kings personal representative. In May there was an outbreak of statue smashing. On 10 May the Catholic members of the town council left Rouen. The Catholics captured the fort of Saint Catherine which overlooked the town. Both sides resorted to terror tactics. At this juncture the town authorities requested help from the Queen of England. In accordance with the Hampton Court Treaty which they had signed with Condé on 20 September 1562, the English sent troops to support the Protestants, and these occupied Le Havre. On 26 October 1562 French royalist troops captured Rouen and pillaged it for three days. The news of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve reached Rouen at the end of August 1572. Hennequier tried to avoid a massacre of the Protestants by shutting them up in various prisons. But between 17 and 20 September the crowds forced the gates of the prisons and murdered the Protestants that they found inside. The town was attacked on several occasions by Henry IV, but it resisted, notably during the siege of December 1591 to May 1592, with the help of a Spanish army led by the Duke of Parma.
The Classical Age
The permanent exchequer of Normandy, which had been installed in Rouen in 1499 by George of Amboise, was transformed into a regional administrative
