THE HOUSES OF VALOIS, OF GUISE, AND OF BOURBON.
Illustrious French families.--The house of Valois.--Early condition
of France.--Clovis.--The Carlovingian dynasty.--Capet and
Philip.--Decay of the house of Valois.--House of Guise.--The dukedom
of Lorraine.--Claude of Lorraine.--Marriage of the Count of
Guise.--Francis I.--The suggestion and its results.--Bravery of
the duke.--His prominence.--Days of war.--The bloody rout.--Scene
from the castle.--Claude the Butcher.--The Cardinal of Lorraine.--The
reprimand.--Duke of Mayence.--The family of Guise.--Henry the
Eighth.--Death of Claude.--Francis, Duke of Guise.--The dreadful
wound.--Le Balafre.--Interview with the king.--Jealousy of
the king.--Arrogance of the Guises.--Power of the house of
Guise.--Appointment of Francis.--Thralldom of Henry II.--Mary, Queen
of Scots.--Francis II.--Troubles between the Protestants and
Catholics.--Admiral Coligni.--Antoinette.--Massacre by the Duke of
Guise.--The Butcher of Vassy.--Remonstrance to the queen.--Magnanimity
of the Duke of Guise.--Religious wars.--Assassination of the Duke of
Guise.--Death of the duke.--Jean Poltrot.--Anecdote.--Prediction of
Francis.--Enthusiasm of the populace.--The house of Bourbon.--The
houses united.
At this time, in France, there were three illustrious and rival
families, prominent above all others. Their origin was lost in the
remoteness of antiquity. Their renown had been accumulating for many
generations, through rank, and wealth, and power, and deeds of heroic
and semi-barbarian daring. As these three families are so blended in
all the struggles of this most warlike period, it is important to give
a brief history of their origin and condition.
1. _The House of Valois._ More than a thousand years before the birth
of Christ, we get dim glimpses of France, or, as it was then called,
Gaul. It was peopled by a barbarian race, divided into petty tribes or
clans, each with its chieftain, and each possessing undefined and
sometimes almost unlimited power. Age after age rolled on, during
which generations came and went like ocean billows, and all Gaul was
but a continued battle-field. The history of each individual of its
countless millions seems to have been, that he was born, killed as
many of his fellow-creatures as he could, and then, having acquired
thus much of glory, died.
About fifty years before the birth of Christ, Caesar, with his
conquering hosts, swept through the whole country, causing its rivers
to run red with blood, until the subjugated Gauls submitted to Roman
sway. In the decay of the Roman empire, about four hundred years after
Christ, the Franks, from Germany, a barbarian horde as ferocious as
wolves, penetrated the northern portion of Gaul, and, obtaining
permanent settlement there, gave the whole country the name of France.
Clovis was the chieftain of this warlike tribe. In the course of a few
years, France was threatened with another invasion by combined hordes
of barbarians from the north. The chiefs of the several independent
tribes in France found it necessary to unite to repel the foe. They
chose Clovis as their leader. This was the origin of the French
monarchy. He was but little elevated above the surrounding chieftains,
but by intrigue and power perpetuated his supremacy. For about three
hundred years the family of Clovis retained its precarious and
oft-contested elevation. At last, this line, enervated by luxury,
became extinct, and another family obtained the throne. This new
dynasty, under Pepin, was called the Carlovingian. The crown descended
generally from father to son for about two hundred years, when the
last of the race was poisoned by his wife. This family has been
rendered very illustrious, both by Pepin and by his son, the still
more widely renowned Charlemagne.
Hugh Capet then succeeded in grasping the sceptre, and for three
hundred years the Capets held at bay the powerful chieftains who
alternately assailed and defended the throne. Thirteen hundred years
after Christ, the last of the Capets was borne to his tomb, and the
feudal lords gave the pre-eminence to Philip of Valois. For about two
hundred years the house of Valois had reigned. At the period of which
we treat in this history, luxury and vice had brought the family near
to extinction.
Charles IX., who now occupied the throne under the rigorous rule of
his infamous mother, was feeble in body and still more feeble in mind.
He had no child, and there was no probability that he would ever be
blessed with an heir. His exhausted constitution indicated that a
premature death was his inevitable destiny. His brother Henry, who
had been elected King of Poland, would then succeed to the throne; but
he had still less of manly character than Charles. An early death was
his unquestioned doom. At his death, if childless, the house of Valois
would become extinct. Who then should grasp the rich prize of the
sceptre of France? The house of Guise and the house of Bourbon were
rivals for this honor, and were mustering their strength and arraying
their forces for the anticipated conflict. Each family could bring
such vast influences into the struggle that no one could imagine in
whose favor victory would decide. Such was the condition of the house
of Valois in France in the year 1592.
2. Let us now turn to the house of Guise. No tale of fiction can
present a more fascinating collection of romantic enterprises and of
wild adventures than must be recorded by the truthful historian of the
house of Guise. On the western banks of the Rhine, between that river
and the Meuse, there was the dukedom of Lorraine. It was a state of no
inconsiderable wealth and power, extending over a territory of about
ten thousand square miles, and containing a million and a half of
inhabitants. Rene II., Duke of Lorraine, was a man of great renown,
and in all the pride and pomp of feudal power he energetically
governed his little realm. His body was scarred with the wounds he had
received in innumerable battles, and he was ever ready to head his
army of fifty thousand men, to punish any of the feudal lords around
him who trespassed upon his rights.
The wealthy old duke owned large possessions in Normandy, Picardy, and
various other of the French provinces. He had a large family. His
fifth son, Claude, was a proud-spirited boy of sixteen. Rene sent this
lad to France, and endowed him with all the fertile acres, and the
castles, and the feudal rights which, in France, pertained to the
noble house of Lorraine. Young Claude of Lorraine was presented at the
court of St. Cloud as the Count of Guise, a title derived from one of
his domains. His illustrious rank, his manly beauty, his princely
bearing, his energetic mind, and brilliant talents, immediately gave
him great prominence among the glittering throng of courtiers. Louis
XII. was much delighted with the young count, and wished to attach the
powerful and attractive stranger to his own house by an alliance with
his daughter. The heart of the proud boy was, however, captivated by
another beauty who embellished the court of the monarch, and, turning
from the princess royal, he sought the hand of Antoinette, an
exceedingly beautiful maiden of about his own age, a daughter of the
house of Bourbon. The wedding of this young pair was celebrated with
great magnificence in Paris, in the presence of the whole French
court. Claude was then but sixteen years of age.
A few days after this event the infirm old king espoused the young and
beautiful sister of Henry VIII. of England. The Count of Guise was
honored with the commission of proceeding to Boulogne with several
princes of the blood to receive the royal bride. Louis soon died, and
his son, Francis I., ascended the throne. Claude was, by marriage, his
cousin. He could bring all the influence of the proud house of Bourbon
and the powerful house of Lorraine in support of the king. His own
energetic, fearless, war-loving spirit invested him with great power
in those barbarous days of violence and blood. Francis received his
young cousin into high favor. Claude was, indeed, a young man of very
rare accomplishments. His prowess in the jousts and tournaments, then
so common, and his grace and magnificence in the drawing-room,
rendered him an object of universal admiration.
One night Claude accompanied Francis I. to the queen's circle. She had
gathered around her the most brilliant beauty of her realm. In those
days woman occupied a very inferior position in society, and seldom
made her appearance in the general assemblages of men. The gallant
young count was fascinated with the amiability and charms of those
distinguished ladies, and suggested to the king the expediency of
breaking over the restraints which long usage had imposed, and
embellishing his court with the attractions of female society and
conversation. The king immediately adopted the welcome suggestion, and
decided that, throughout the whole realm, women should be freed from
the unjust restraint to which they had so long been subject. Guise had
already gained the good-will of the nobility and of the army, and he
now became a universal favorite with the ladies, and was thus the most
popular man in France. Francis I. was at this time making preparations
for the invasion of Italy, and the Count of Guise, though but eighteen
years of age, was appointed commander-in-chief of a division of the
army consisting of twenty thousand men.
In all the perils of the bloody battles which soon ensued, he
displayed that utter recklessness of danger which had been the
distinguishing trait of his ancestors. In the first battle, when
discomfiture and flight were spreading through his ranks, the proud
count refused to retire one step before his foes. He was surrounded,
overmatched, his horse killed from under him, and he fell, covered
with twenty-two wounds, in the midst of the piles of mangled bodies
which strewed the ground. He was afterward dragged from among the
dead, insensible and apparently lifeless, and conveyed to his tent,
where his vigorous constitution, and that energetic vitality which
seemed to characterize his race, triumphed over wounds whose severity
rendered their cure almost miraculous.
Francis I., in his report of the battle, extolled in the most glowing
terms the prodigies of valor which Guise had displayed. War,
desolating war, still ravaged wretched Europe, and Guise, with his
untiring energy, became so prominent in the court and the camp that he
was regarded rather as an ally of the King of France than as his
subject. His enormous fortune, his ancestral renown, the vast
political and military influences which were at his command, made him
almost equal to the monarch whom he served. Francis lavished honors
upon him, converted one of his counties into a dukedom, and, as _duke_
of Guise, young Claude of Lorraine had now attained the highest
position which a subject could occupy.
Years of conflagration, carnage, and woe rolled over war-deluged
Europe, during which all the energies of the human race seemed to be
expended in destruction; and in almost every scene of smouldering
cities, of ravaged valleys, of battle-fields rendered hideous with the
shouts of onset and shrieks of despair, we see the apparition of the
stalwart frame of Guise, scarred, and war-worn, and blackened with the
smoke and dust of the fray, riding upon his proud charger, wherever
peril was most imminent, as if his body were made of iron.
At one time he drove before him, in most bloody rout, a numerous army
of Germans. The fugitives, spreading over leagues of country, fled by
his own strong castle of Neufchateau. Antoinette and the ladies of her
court stood upon the battlements of the castle, gazing upon the scene,
to them so new and to them so pleasantly exciting. As they saw the
charges of the cavalry trampling the dead and the dying beneath their
feet, as they witnessed all the horrors of that most horrible scene
which earth can present--a victorious army cutting to pieces its
flying foes, with shouts of applause they animated the ardor of the
victors. The once fair-faced boy had now become a veteran. His bronzed
cheek and sinewy frame attested his life of hardship and toil. The
nobles were jealous of his power. The king was annoyed by his haughty
bearing; but he was the idol of the people. In one campaign he caused
the death of forty thousand Protestants, for he was the devoted
servant of mother Church. _Claude the Butcher_ was the not
inappropriate name by which the Protestants designated him. His
brother John attained the dignity of Cardinal of Lorraine. Claude with
his keen sword, and John with pomp, and pride, and spiritual power,
became the most relentless foes of the Reformation, and the most
valiant defenders of the Catholic faith.
The kind-heartedness of the wealthy but dissolute cardinal, and the
prodigality of his charity, rendered him almost as popular as his
warlike brother. When he went abroad, his _valet de chambre_
invariably prepared him a bag filled with gold, from which he gave to
the poor most freely. His reputation for charity was so exalted that
a poor blind mendicant, to whom he gave gold in the streets of Rome,
overjoyed at the acquisition of such a treasure, exclaimed, "Surely
thou art either Christ or the Cardinal of Lorraine."
The Duke of Guise, in his advancing years, was accompanied to the
field of battle by his son Francis, who inherited all of his father's
courtly bearing, energy, talent, and headlong valor. At the siege of
Luxemburg a musket ball shattered the ankle of young Francis, then
Count of Aumale, and about eighteen years of age. As the surgeon was
operating upon the splintered bones and quivering nerves, the sufferer
gave some slight indication of his sense of pain. His iron father
severely reprimanded him, saying,
"Persons of your rank should not feel their wounds, but, on the
contrary, should take pleasure in building up their reputation upon
the ruin of their bodies."
Others of the sons of Claude also signalized themselves in the wars
which then desolated Europe, and they received wealth and honors. The
king erected certain lands and lordships belonging to the Duke of
Guise into a marquisate, and then immediately elevated the marquisate
into a duchy, and the youngest son of the Duke of Guise, inheriting
the property, was ennobled with the title of the Duke of Mayence. Thus
there were two rich dukedoms in the same family.
Claude had six sons, all young men of imperious spirit and magnificent
bearing. They were allied by marriage with the most illustrious
families in France, several of them being connected with princes of
the blood royal. The war-worn duke, covered with wounds which he
deemed his most glorious ornaments, often appeared at court
accompanied by his sons. They occupied the following posts of rank and
power: Francis, the eldest, Count of Aumale, was the heir of the
titles and the estates of the noble house. Claude was Marquis of
Mayence; Charles was Archbishop of Rheims, the richest benefice in
France, and he soon attained one of the highest dignities of the
Church by the reception of a cardinal's hat; Louis was Bishop of
Troyes, and Francis, the youngest, Chevalier of Lorraine and Duke of
Mayence, was general of the galleys of France. One of the daughters
was married to the King of Scotland, and the others had formed most
illustrious connections. Thus the house of Guise towered proudly and
sublimely from among the noble families in the midst of whom it had so
recently been implanted.
Henry VIII. of England, inflamed by the report of the exceeding beauty
of Mary, daughter of the Duke of Guise, had solicited her hand; but
Claude was unwilling to surrender his daughter to England's burly and
brutal old tyrant, and declined the regal alliance. The exasperated
monarch, in revenge, declared war against France. Years of violence
and blood lingered away. At last Claude, aged and infirm, surrendered
to that king of terrors before whom all must bow. In his strong castle
of Joinville, on the twelfth of April, 1550, the illustrious,
magnanimous, blood-stained duke, after a whole lifetime spent in
slaughter, breathed his last. His children and his grandchildren were
gathered around the bed of the dying chieftain. In the darkness of
that age, he felt that he had been contending, with divine approval,
for Christ and his Church. With prayers and thanksgivings, and
language expressive of meekness and humility before God, he ascended
to that tribunal of final judgment where there is no difference
between the peasant and the prince.
The chivalrous and warlike Francis inherited his father's titles,
wealth, and power; and now the house of Guise was so influential that
the king trembled in view of its rivalry. It was but the kingly office
alone which rendered the house of Valois superior to the house of
Guise. In illustration of the character of those times, and the
hardihood and sufferings through which the renown of these chieftains
was obtained, the following anecdote may be narrated.
Francis, Duke of Guise, in one of the skirmishes with the English
invaders, received a wound which is described as the most severe from
which any one ever recovered. The lance of an English officer "entered
above the right eye, declining toward the nose, and piercing through
on the other side, between the nape and the ear." The weapon, having
thus penetrated the head more than half a foot, was broken off by the
violence of the blow, the lance-iron and two fingers' breadth of the
staff remaining in the dreadful wound. The surgeons of the army,
stupefied by the magnitude of the injury, declined to attempt the
extraction of the splinter, saying that it would only expose him to
dreadful and unavailing suffering, as he must inevitably die. The king
immediately sent his surgeon, with orders to spare no possible
efforts to save the life of the hero. The lance-head was broken off so
short that it was impossible to grasp it with the hand. The surgeon
took the heavy pincers of a blacksmith, and asked the sufferer if he
would allow him to make use of so rude an instrument, and would also
permit him to place his foot upon his face.
"You may do any thing you consider necessary," said the duke.
The officers standing around looked on with horror as the king's
surgeon, aided by an experienced practitioner, tore out thus violently
the barbed iron, fracturing the bones, and tearing nerves, veins, and
arteries. The hardy soldier bore the anguish without the contraction
of a muscle, and was only heard gently to exclaim to himself, "Oh my
God!" The sufferer recovered, and ever after regarded the frightful
scar which was left as a signal badge of honor. He hence bore the
common name of Le Balafre, or _The Scarred_.
As the duke returned to court, the king hurried forth from his chamber
to meet him, embraced him warmly, and said,
"It is fair that I should come out to meet my old friend, who, on his
part, is ever so ready to meet my enemies."
Gradually, however, Francis, the king, became very jealous of the
boundless popularity and enormous power acquired by this ambitious
house. Upon his dying bed he warned his son of the dangerous rivalry
to which the Guises had attained, and enjoined it upon him to curb
their ambition by admitting none of the princes of that house to a
share in the government; but as soon as King Francis was consigned to
his tomb, Henry II., his son and successor, rallied the members of
this family around him, and made the duke almost the partner of his
throne. He needed the support of the strong arm and of the
inexhaustible purse of the princes of Lorraine.
The arrogance of the Guises, or the princes of Lorraine, as they were
frequently called, in consequence of their descent from Claude of
Lorraine, reached such a pitch that on the occasion of a proud
pageant, when Henry II. was on a visit of inspection to one of his
frontier fortresses, the Duke of Guise claimed equal rank with Henry
of Navarre, who was not only King of Navarre, but, as the Duke of
Vendome, was also first prince of the blood in France. An angry
dispute immediately arose. The king settled it in favor of the
audacious Guise, for he was intimidated by the power of that arrogant
house. He thus exasperated Henry of Navarre, and also nurtured the
pride of a dangerous rival.
All classes were now courting the Duke of Guise. The first nobles of
the land sought his protection and support by flattering letters and
costly presents. "From all quarters," says an ancient manuscript, "he
received offerings of wine, fruit, confections, ortolans, horses,
dogs, hawks, and gerfalcons. The letters accompanying these often
contained a second paragraph petitioning for pensions or grants from
the king, or for places, even down to that of apothecary or of barber
to the Dauphin." The monarchs of foreign countries often wrote to him
soliciting his aid. The duke, in the enjoyment of this immense wealth,
influence, and power, assumed the splendors of royalty, and his court
was hardly inferior to that of the monarch. The King of Poland and the
Duke of Guise were rivals for the hand of Anne, the beautiful daughter
of the Duke of Ferrara, and Guise was the successful suitor.
Francis of Lorraine was now appointed lieutenant general of the French
armies, and the king addressed to all the provincial authorities
special injunction to render as prompt and absolute obedience to the
orders of the Duke of Guise as if they emanated from himself. "And
truly," says one of the writers of those times, "never had monarch in
France been obeyed more punctually or with greater zeal." In fact,
Guise was now the head of the government, and all the great interests
of the nation were ordered by his mind. Henry was a feeble prince,
with neither vigor of body nor energy of intellect to resist the
encroachments of so imperial a spirit. He gave many indications of
uneasiness in view of his own thralldom, but he was entirely unable to
dispense with the aid of his sagacious ally.
It will be remembered that one of the daughters of Claude, and a
sister of Francis, the second duke of Guise, married the King of
Scotland. Her daughter, the niece of Francis, was the celebrated Mary,
Queen of Scots. She had been sent to France for her education, and she
was married, when very young, to her cousin Francis, son of Henry II.
and of the infamous Catharine de Medici. He was heir of the French
throne. This wedding was celebrated with the utmost magnificence, and
the Guises moved on the occasion through the palaces of royalty with
the pride of monarchs. Henry II. was accidentally killed in a
tournament; and Francis, his son, under the title of Francis II., with
his young and beautiful bride, the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots,
ascended the throne. Francis was a feeble-minded, consumptive youth of
16, whose thoughts were all centred in his lovely wife. Mary, who was
but fifteen years of age, was fascinating in the extreme, and entirely
devoted to pleasure. She gladly transferred all the power of the realm
to her uncles, the Guises.
About this time the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants
began to grow more violent. The Catholics drew the sword for the
extirpation of heresy; the Protestants grasped their arms to defend
themselves. The Guises consecrated all their energies to the support
of the Papal Church and to the suppression of the Reformation. The
feeble boy, Francis II., sat languidly upon his throne but seventeen
months, when he died, on the 5th of December, 1560, and his brother,
Charles IX., equally enervated in mind and with far less moral worth,
succeeded to the crown. The death of Francis II. was a heavy blow to
the Guises. The Admiral Coligni, one of the most illustrious of the
Protestants, and the bosom friend of Henry of Navarre, was standing,
with many other nobles, at the bedside of the monarch as he breathed
his last.
"Gentlemen," said the admiral, with that gravity which was in
accordance with his character and his religious principles, "the king
is dead. It is a lesson to teach us all how to live."
The Protestants could not but rejoice that the Guises had thus lost
the peculiar influence which they had secured from their near
relationship to the queen. Admiral Coligni retired from the death-bed
of the monarch to his own mansion, and, sitting down by the fire,
became lost in the most profound reverie. He did not observe that his
boots were burning until one of his friends called his attention to
the fact.
"Ah!" he replied, "not a week ago, you and I would each have given a
leg to have things take this turn, and now we get off with a pair of
boots."
Antoinette, the widow of Claude of Lorraine, and the mother of
Francis, the then Duke of Guise, was still living. She was so
rancorous in her hostility to the Protestants that she was designated
by them "_Mother of the tyrants and enemies of the Gospel_." Greatly
to her annoyance, a large number of Protestants conducted their
worship in the little town of Vassy, just on the frontier of the
domains of the Duke of Guise. She was incessantly imploring her son to
drive off these obnoxious neighbors. The duke was at one time
journeying with his wife. Their route lay through the town of Vassy.
His suite consisted of two hundred and sixty men at arms, all showing
the warlike temper of their chief, and even far surpassing him in
bigoted hatred of the Protestants.
On arriving at Vassy, the duke entered the church to hear high mass.
It is said that while engaged in this act of devotion his ears were
annoyed by the psalms of the Protestants, who were assembled in the
vicinity. He sent an imperious message for the minister and the
leading members of the congregation immediately to appear before him.
The young men fulfilled their mission in a manner so taunting and
insulting that a quarrel ensued, shots were exchanged, and immediately
all the vassals of the duke, who were ripe for a fray, commenced an
indiscriminate massacre. The Protestants valiantly but unavailingly
defended themselves with sticks and stones; but the bullets of their
enemies reached them everywhere, in the houses, on the roofs, in the
streets. For an hour the carnage continued unchecked, and sixty men
and women were killed and two hundred wounded. One only of the men of
the duke was killed. Francis was ashamed of this slaughter of the
defenseless, and declared that it was a sudden outbreak, for which he
was not responsible, and which he had done every thing in his power to
check; but ever after this he was called by the Protestants "_The
Butcher of Vassy_."
When the news of this massacre reached Paris, Theodore de Beza was
deputed by the Protestants to demand of Catharine, their regent,
severe justice on the Duke of Guise; but Catharine feared the princes
of Lorraine, and said to Beza,
"Whoever touches so much as the finger-tip of the Duke of Guise,
touches me in the middle of my heart."
Beza meekly but courageously replied, "It assuredly behooves that
Church of God, in whose name I speak, to endure blows and not to
strike them; but may it please your majesty also to remember that it
is an anvil which has worn out many hammers."
At the siege of Rouen the Duke of Guise was informed that an assassin
had been arrested who had entered the camp with the intention of
taking his life. He ordered the man to be brought before him, and
calmly inquired,
"Have you not come hither to kill me?"
The intrepid but misguided young man openly avowed his intention.
"And what motive," inquired the duke, "impelled you to such a deed?
Have I done you any wrong?"
"No," he replied; "but in removing you from the world I should promote
the best interests of the Protestant religion, which I profess."
"My religion, then," generously replied the duke, "is better than
yours, for it commands me to pardon, of my own accord, you who are
convicted of guilt." And, by his orders, the assassin was safely
conducted out of camp.
"A fine example," exclaims his historian, "of truly religious
sentiments and magnanimous proselytism very natural to the Duke of
Guise, the most moderate and humane of the chiefs of the Catholic
army, and whose brilliant generosity had been but temporarily obscured
by the occurrence at Vassy."
The war between the Catholics and Protestants was now raging with
implacable fury, and Guise, victorious in many battles, had acquired
from the Catholic party the name of "Savior of his Country." The duke
was now upon the very loftiest summits of power which a subject can
attain. In great exaltation of spirits, he one morning left the army
over which he was commander-in-chief to visit the duchess, who had
come to meet him at the neighboring castle of Corney. The duke very
imprudently took with him merely one general officer and a page. It
was a beautiful morning in February. As he crossed, in a boat, the
mirrored surface of the Loiret, the vegetation of returning spring and
the songs of the rejoicing birds strikingly contrasted with the blood,
desolation, and misery with which the hateful spirit of war was
desolating France. The duke was silent, apparently lost in painful
reveries. His companions disturbed not his thoughts. Having crossed
the stream, he was slowly walking his horse, with the reins hanging
listlessly upon his mane, when a pistol was discharged at him from
behind a hedge, at a distance of but six or seven paces. Two bullets
pierced his side. On feeling himself wounded, he calmly said,
"They have long had this shot in reserve for me. I deserve it for my
want of precaution."
[Illustration: THE ASSASSINATION OF FRANCIS, DUKE OF GUISE.]
He immediately fell upon his horse's neck, and was caught in the arms
of his friends. They conveyed him to the castle, where the duchess
received him with cries of anguish. He embraced her tenderly,
minutely described the circumstances of his assassination, and
expressed himself grieved in view of the stain which such a crime
would inflict upon the honor of France. He exhorted his wife to bow in
submission to the will of Heaven, and kissing his son Henry, the Duke
of Joinville, who was weeping by his side, gently said to him,
"God grant thee grace, my son, to be a good man."
Thus died Francis, the second Duke of Guise, on the twenty-fourth of
February, 1563. His murderer was a young Protestant noble, Jean
Poltrot, twenty-four years of age. Poltrot, from being an ardent
Catholic, had embraced the Protestant faith. This exposed him to
persecution, and he was driven from France with the loss of his
estates. He was compelled to support himself by manual labor. Soured
in disposition, exasperated and half maddened, he insanely felt that
he would be doing God service by the assassination of the _Butcher of
Vassy_, the most formidable foe of the Protestant religion. It was a
day of general darkness, and of the confusion of all correct ideas of
morals.
Henry, the eldest son of the Duke of Guise, a lad of but thirteen
years of age, now inherited the titles and the renown which his bold
ancestors had accumulated. This was the Duke of Guise who was the
bandit chieftain in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
One day Henry II. was holding his little daughter Marguerite, who
afterward became the wife of Henry of Navarre, in his lap, when Henry
of Guise, then Prince of Joinville, and the Marquis of Beaupreau, were
playing together upon the floor, the one being but seven years of age,
and the other but nine.
"Which of the two do you like the best?" inquired the king of his
child.
"I prefer the marquis," she promptly replied.
"Yes; but the Prince of Joinville is the handsomest," the king
rejoined.
"Oh," retorted Marguerite, "he is always in mischief, and he will be
master every where."
Francis, the Duke of Guise, had fully apprehended the ambitious,
impetuous, and reckless character of his son. He is said to have
predicted that Henry, intoxicated by popularity, would perish in the
attempt to seat himself upon the throne of France.
"Henry," says a writer of those times, "surpassed all the princes of
his house in certain natural gifts, in certain talents, which procured
him the respect of the court, the affection of the people, but which,
nevertheless, were tarnished by a singular alloy of great faults and
unlimited ambition."
"France was mad about that man," writes another, "for it is too little
to say that she was in love with him. Her passion approached idolatry.
There were persons who invoked him in their prayers. His portrait was
every where. Some ran after him in the streets to touch his mantle
with their rosaries. One day that he entered Paris on his return from
a journey, the multitude not only cried '_Vive Guise!_' but many sang,
on his passage, '_Hosanna to the son of David!_'"
3. _The House of Bourbon._ The origin of this family fades away in the
remoteness of antiquity. Some bold chieftain, far remote in barbarian
ages, emerged from obscurity and laid the foundations of the
illustrious house. Generation after generation passed away, as the son
succeeded the father in baronial pomp, and pride, and power, till the
light of history, with its steadily-increasing brilliancy, illumined
Europe. The family had often been connected in marriage both with the
house of Guise and the royal line, the house of Valois. Antony of
Bourbon, a sturdy soldier, united the houses of Bourbon and Navarre
by marrying Jeanne d'Albret, the only child of the King of Navarre.
Henry came from the union, an only son; and he, by marrying
Marguerite, the daughter of the King of France, united the houses of
Bourbon, Navarre, and Valois, and became heir to the throne of France
should the sons of Henry II. die without issue.
This episode in reference to the condition of France at the time of
which we write seems necessary to enable the reader fully to
understand the succeeding chapters.