Strange Sounds From the Sky: 1572

In recent years, there have been countless stories of strange sounds coming from the skies. 

Reports vary, with some people reporting a noise like great trumpets, others say there hear weird moaning noises, or something akin to massive machinery.  There are no visible manifestations to indicate what may be causing these strange sounds but most people report that the experience is unnerving.

Those who hold to a biblical perspective interpret these sounds as another sign of the end times, the very sounds of heavenly battles, trumpets of the angles, or approaching forces of light, or darkness, or perhaps both.

Indeed, some people find the sounds so terrifying that they believe some evil force is pushing its way onto the planet. 

The sounds have been called omens and portents of greater disasters to come and despite the countless accounts, no reasonable explanation has been found to explain the occurrences.

But is this in fact a new phenomena, or has this occurred before?
Digging through some historical records, it becomes clear that such things do have roots in the past. 

Take for instance a case from 1572, reported by none other than the Lieutenant-Governor of Paris.  The Marquis Cristobal Juvenal filed his dramatic report after a night spent at the Louvre.  In his own words:

"The 31st of August, 1572, some six or eight days after the assassinations, so called, of St. Bartholomew, I had supped at the Louvre with Mme. Fiesque.  It being considerably warm weather, we went to a little balcony by the river to get the fresh breeze, when suddenly we heard in the air  a horrible screaming, tumultuous voices, mingling cries of rage and fury.  We were immovable, fixed to the spot in terror, and gazing at each other speechless.  This noise, I believe, continued for nearly half an hour.  It is certain that the king, (Charles IX) heard it and was dismayed.  He could not sleep the rest of the night.  Two hours after he retired he leaped from his bed in affright, summoned his household and sent them to listen and seek out the great noise and the groans that filled the air.  These cries were so distant that the king thought it possible the enemies of the Montmorencies and their partisans had surprised and were attacking them, and he sent a detachment of his guards to repulse them but they returned with the report that Paris was tranquil and that the noise proceeded from the air."

The mention of the "assassinations...of St. Bartholomew" is a reference to what has come to be known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.  The massacre was a period when the king of France ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of Huguenots.  At least three thousand were killed in Paris alone, and an estimated seventy thousand across all of France.  The massacre reignited religious civil war in France.

Were the strange sounds heard in the skies a residual energy from the massacre, or something else, an omen perhaps of the coming days of strife?

Another historical puzzle to consider as we try to decipher the meaning behind the modern phenomena of sky sounds.