This article analyses a specific sub-genre of epic, namely epic texts treating actual events of the French Wars of Religion in the 16th century. As an example, a detailed interpretation of Alexandre de Pontaymeri’s Cité de Montélimar (1591) is given. Pontaymeri’s epic narrator reports on the historical events around the town of Montélimar which was repeatedly the object of military contention between protestant and catholic forces, especially in the 1580s. By blending textual procedures of historiographic chronicle with the formularium of the classical epic tradition, Pontaymeri creates a complex textual hybrid in order to express, despite his sympathy for protestant positions, a fundamental criticism of the unheroic brutality of the actual military conflict, thereby positioning himself in the Lucanic line of epic texts that voice sceptical opinions about civil war.