*

ed, but both retained their seats. Again the trumpets sounded, again they spurred their horses, when Montgomery's lance struck the king's helmet, knocked off the plume, and snapped in two, a splinter from the lower portion of the shaft entering his right eye. There was a loud shriek from the royal gallery, which for a moment distracted the attention of the spectators from the king, who had lost all command over his horse, and was reeling in his saddle. The attendants were hardly quick enough to save him from falling to the ground. His helmet was loosed and the splinter pulled out. It was "of a good bigness," says the English embassador, who was an eye-witness. "Nothing else was done to him upon the field; but I noted him to be very weak, and to have the feeling of all his limbs almost benumbed; for being carried away as he lay along, nothing covered but his face, he moved neither hand nor foot, but lay as one amazed. There was marvelous great lamentation made for him, and weeping of all sorts, both men and women." The wound proved more serious than Throckmorton had imagined: Henry never left his bed again. Twice he received the last sacraments of the Church, and calling for his son Francis, "commended the Church and the people to his care." After an interval of repose-for the exertion of uttering these few words was almost too great for him-he added: "Above all things, remain steadfast in the true faith."† Henry II. died on the 10th of July, leaving behind him four sons, three of whom wore the crown of France. He also left three daughters and a bastard son, Henry of Angoulême, who cruelly distinguished himself at the massacre of St. Bartholo

mew.

The Protestants were accused of rejoicing at Henry's death:

*Throckmorton to Council, 1st July, 1559; Forbes, i. 151; Lettere dei Principi (14th July, 1559), iii. 196. Montgomery escaped to England, where he embraced the Reformed doctrines.

Some authorities state that, though Henry lingered eleven days, he never recovered either speech or reason. In the Chanson de Montgommery (1574) we read that he "prononça à voix haute, Que n'avais nullement vers lui commis la faute."

they not only made songs upon it, but "offered thanks, or rather blasphemies, to God, daring to say that the Almighty had struck him under the walls of the Bastille, where he detained the innocent in prison." It is possible that there may be some foundation for this charge, for it requires a great amount of true Christian feeling to make the victims forbear from exulting at the removal of their persecutor by what seems to them the judgment of God. In his dedicatory epistle of the Psalms done into French Verse, Beza thus paints the second Henry:

Je vois un masque avec sa maigre mine

Qui fait trembler les lieux où il chemine.

But the "Lutherans" did not tremble: they bore their testimony with Christian resolution, and acted up to the noble lines in the same poem:

S'il faut servir au Seigneur de témoins,

Mourons, mourons, louans Dieu pour le moins.

Au départir de ces lieux misérables,
Pour traverser aux cieux tant désirables.

Que les tyrans soient de nous martyrer

Plutôt lassés, que nous de l'endurer.

The sincerity of Catherine's grief for the loss of her husband has been much doubted, but without sufficient cause. To a woman of her temper the change wrought in her position by widowhood must at first have been hard to bear. She certainly felt as much for her husband while living, as such selfish natures can feel, and commemorated her bereavement and regret in the ornaments of her palace of the Tuileries, where the broken mirrors, plumes reversed, and scattered jewelry carved on certain columns have been regarded as emblems of her sorrow. A garrulous contemporary (whom we shall have frequent occasion to quote), lamenting the death of Henry II., praises him particularly for the discipline he introduced into

* Mezeray, ii. 1137. Claude Haton charges the Protestants with trying to kill Henry in 1558, considering him "le tyran persécuteur de l'église de Jésus Christ."

† Gail: Tableaux chronologiques, p. 96 (8vo. Paris, 1819); also Brantome.

the army, which was such "that the peasants hardly deigned to shut the doors of their cellars, granaries, chests, or other lock-up places for fear of the soldiers, who conducted themselves most becomingly. When billeted in the villages, they would not venture to touch the hens or other poultry without first asking their host's leave and paying for them." It is a pity to spoil so Arcadian a story; but if it is true, there must have been a sad falling off in the military discipline in a few months, for Francis II. writes in 1560 to the Duke of Aumale, then in Burgundy, "to punish the men-at-arms and archers who had lived without paying."

* This discipline was in reality the work of Coligny.
† Claude Haton.

Aubespine: Doc. Hist. François II., tom. ii. p. 428.

CHAPTER II.

REIGN OF FRANCIS II.

[1550-1560.]

Catherine de Medicis-The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of LorraineSt. André-Anthony of Navarre and Condé-Coligny and AndelotDisgrace of Montmorency-Persecuting Edicts-Execution of Du Bourg -Discontent in France-Edict of Chambord-La Renaudie-The Meeting at Nantes-Tumult of Amboise-Bloody Reprisals-Castelnau's Trial and Execution-The Duke's Viands-Aubigné and his Son-Grace of Amboise-Regnier de la Planche-Renewal of Persecutions-L'Hopital made Chancellor-Edict of Romorantin-Religious and Political Malcontents-Abuse of the Pulpit-The Tiger-General Lawlessness-Huguenot Violence-Demand for a Council-Montbrun and MouvansL'Hopital's Inaugural Address-Les Politiques-The Notables at Fontainebleau-Montluc and Marillac-Meeting at Nerac-Address presented to Anthony-The Court at Orleans-Arrest and Trial of CondéDeath of Francis II.

FRANCIS II., husband of the beautiful and unfortunate Mary Stuart, had only reached his sixteenth year when he ascended the throne (10th July, 1559).* On the very day of his father's funeral he gratified his mother's ruling passion by assuring her that all authority should be in her hands, and that she should administer the government in his name. But she had to hold her own against unscrupulous rivals; and in those rude days the spindle had very little chance against the sword, unless it were aided by dissimulation. We shall see that Catherine met force with craft, proving herself at times more than a match for all her rivals. She soon found that she had no

* Born 20th January, 1544, N.S. The medals say he was crowned on the 17th, Mezeray the 19th, and De Thou the 20th Sept., 1559. Such are the discrepancies continually to be met with even in trivial matters.

chance with the queen-consort, who used all her, influence in behalf of the house of Lorraine. In a letter to her daughter Elizabeth she says: "God has deprived me of your father, whom I loved so dearly, as you well know, and has left me with three children and in a divided kingdom. I have no one in whom I can trust: all have some private end to serve." Mary Stuart behaved to her with all the insolence of youth and beauty, calling her a Florentine shop-keeper,* and Catherine returned contempt for contempt.

It will be impossible to understand the stormy period upon which we are now entering, unless we know something of the parties into which France, as well as the court, was divided, and of the individuals at their head. There were in reality only two parties, but it will be more convenient to consider them as represented by the four houses of Guise, Bourbon, Montmorency, and Chatillon. The most formidable of these claimants of the government was the first-the family of Guise, to which Mary Stuart belonged on her mother's side. The power of this house dates from the reign of Francis I. Genealogists delight to trace its origin back to Charlemagne, and even to Priam, King of Troy: with about equal truth in both The chief of the family was Claude, son of that Réné, Duke of Lorraine, who defeated and slew Charles the Bold under the walls of Narcy. Being a younger son, he had gone to the French court in search of fortune, and the search was not in vain. He married Antoinette of Bourbon, a descendant of Louis IX., and dying, left six sons and four daughters, and an income of 600,000 livres, about equivalent to 160,000l. sterling. The eldest of his sons was Francis, Duke of Guise, now in his fortieth year, a skillful, violent, and unscrupulous soldier. He kept up an almost royal establishment; and when his steward represented to him that the best way of getting out of his pecuniary embarrassments would be to retrench his expenditure, and that he would do well to dismiss a number

cases.

*Card. Santa Croce writes: "La Regina di Scotia un giorno gli disse che non sarebbe mai altro che figlia di un mercante."