Page "Noble savage" Paragraph 4

During the late 16th and 17th centuries the figure of the indigene or " savage ", and later, increasingly, the " good savage ", was held up as a reproach to European civilization, then in the throes of the French Wars of Religion and Thirty Years War.

During one event, the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew ( 1572 ), some ten to twenty thousand men, women, and children were massacred by Catholic mobs, chiefly in Paris, but also throughout France.

This horrifying breakdown of civil control was deeply disturbing to thoughtful people on both sides of the religious divide.