933 



FRANCIS II. (OF FRANCE.) 



FRANCIS II. (OF GERMANY.) 



904 



In reviewing the position of Francis during his whole struggle with 

 the emperor, we are struck with the euormous force against which he 

 had to contend. France, in his reign, sustained the same character 

 in which she appeared again in the following century. As in the 

 time of the thirty yearn" war, she, a Catholic power, aided the 

 Protestant cause; so in the early part of the 16th century, when 

 the danger was the more imminent, from the whole strength being 

 concentrated in the hands of Cliarles V., the Freuch king was the 

 only efficient hindrance to the universal monarchy of the house of 

 Austria. It was Francis I. who favoured the revolt of Geneva from 

 tlie Duke of Savoy, and enabled that city to found an independence 

 which was afterwards to become one of the main props of the 

 reformed faith. While however he fostered religious rebellion in 

 Germany, he proved his orthodoxy in Paris by tlie utmost cruelty to 

 the heretics. The gallant manner in which he struggled against his 

 formidable rival, and grappled with him again and again after the 

 heaviest blows, excites our sympathy in his favour : his personal 

 courage was undoubted, and his generosity on the two occasions in 

 which Charles put himself in hia power, more chivalrous than his 

 conduct with reference to the treaty of Madrid. "If it was perjury, 

 every Frenchman was his accomplice." This conduct has indeed 

 been defended by French writers ; but the hard nature of the con- 

 ditions cannot j ustify an open and deliberate oath, accompanied by 

 a secret protest as its antidote. Francis is said to have requested 

 knighthood from the sword of Bayard, and his usual mode of affirming 

 what he said was "Foi de Gentilhomme." In his family Francis 

 was far from happy : by hia first wife Claude of France, daughter of 

 Louis XII., he ha-1 three sons and four daughters ; his eldest, the 

 Dauphin, was said to have been poisoned by his cup-bearer, Honte- 

 cuculi : whether such was the fact is very doubtful, aud there is 

 certainly no reason to suppose that the crime was instigated by 

 Charles V. The second soa succeeded to the throne by the title of 

 Heury II. His second wife, Eleanor of Portugal, bore him no children. 

 Ilia private lit'e is not entitled to much praise. Madame de Chateau- 

 briand, sister of Lautrec, the Duchesse d'Etauipea, aud la belle 

 Fcronicre, were successively his mistresses : to vengeance on the part 

 of the husband of the last he is said to have owed his death. In his 

 reign ladies for the first time became constant attendants at the 

 Freuch court, and the foundation was laid for those profligate 

 manners so fully developed in the succeeding reigns. 



As the patron of art and literature, Francis I. ranks deservedly 

 high. He reigned at the moment when sounder learning and higher 

 principles of art were spreading from Italy to the rest of Europe. 

 liud(5, LascarU, Erasmus, the Stephens, and Marot, were enabled to 

 boast of hit countenance to letters : he is well known as the patron 

 of Priuiaticcio aud Cellini; while a greater mau than either, Leonardo 

 da Vinci, is said to have died in his arma. 



(Robertson, Charle* V.; Pere Daniel, H'utoirt de France; Bayle, 

 KcMnnatre; JHographie Universelle ; Leopold Rauke, O'eichichte 

 der Papile.) 



FRANCIS II. of France, born in 1543, was the eldest son of 

 Henri II. aud of Catherine de' Medici. Ue married, iu 1558, Mary 

 Stuart, only daughter of Jauit-s V. of Scotland. On the death of his 

 father, 10th of July 1559, Francis became king, being then sixteen 

 years of age. He entrusted the government to Francis duke of Uuise 

 aud his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine, uncles of Mary Stuart 

 This was the beginning of the civil aud religious wars which desolated 

 France for hull a century. Anthony of Bourbon, king of Navarre, 

 and Louis his brother, prince of (.'undo, with the other princes of the 

 blood, aud the great officers of the state, being indignant at seeing 

 all the power of the state in the bauds of two strangers, conspired 

 against the Guises, aud joined the Protestants for that purpose, as the 

 Guises were the zealous supporters of Catholicism. In March 1560, 

 the Guises having been informed of a conspiracy against them, 

 removed the king aud court to the castle of Amboise ; the king 

 named the Duke of Guise lieutenant-general of the kingdom, aud a 

 number of persons were arrested and executed. Soon after, the edict 

 of Kouiorautin was issued, which constituted the bishops judges of 

 heresy, and took the cognisance of this offence from the parliaments. 

 It was said that the chancellor De 1'Hopital consented to this edict iu 

 order to avoid a greater evil, namely, the establishment of the Inqui- 

 sition in Frauc", which was proposed by the Cardinal de Lorraine. 

 Ijj a former edict, issued at Escouen by Henri II. in June 1559, all 

 the Lutherans were declared punishable by death. The name of 

 Huguenots, to denote the Calvinists as a distinct sect, was intro- 

 duced soon after. The Admiral de Coligni having presented to 

 the king a memorial in their favour, it was resolved, at the sug- 

 gestion of the chancellor De 1'Hdpital, to leave them in peace, until 

 the general council should decide, and that if the pope did not 

 assemble a general council, a national council should be convoked in 

 France. The king assembled the states-general at Orleans, when the 

 prince of Coude', on his arrival, was arrested on the charge of a con- 

 spiracy, aud condemned to lose his head ; but he was saved by the 

 death of the king, 5th December 1560, after a reign of only seventeen 

 months. He was succeeded by hU brother Charles IX., then a minor. 

 Francis II. died of an abscess in his ear; and the rumours of poiaon 

 v.lii h were spread at the time seem, according to De Thou and other 

 historians, without foundation. 



FRANCIS I., emperor of Germany, born iu 1708, was the sou of 

 Leopold duke of Lorraine, who was the son of Charles V. of Lorraine, 

 aud of Eleonora Maria, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand III. 

 Francis's mother was the Princess of Orleans, niece of Louis XIV. 

 On the death of his father in 1729, Francis succeeded him as duke of 

 Lorraine and Bar. In consequence of the war of the Polish succession, 

 Lorraine was ceded to Stanislaus Leczinski, father-in-law of Louis XV., 

 to revert after his death to the crown of France, and Francis received 

 Tuscany in exchange, which duchy became vacant by the extinction 

 of the house of Medici. Francis married in 1736 Maria Theresa of 

 Austria, the only daughter and heiress of the emperor Charles VI. 

 In January 1739, he went to reside at Florence with his consort. Iu 

 1740 Charles VI. died, and Maria Theresa succeeding him in the 

 hereditary dominions of the house of Austria, she made her husband 

 coregent with herself, but gave him little share in the administration. 

 He however commanded her armies iu the war which she had to 

 sustain in order to secure her inheritance. [MARIA THERESA.] After 

 the death of the emperor Charles VII. in 1745, Francis was elected 

 his successor on the imperial throne. Iu 1748 the peace of Aix-la- 

 Chapelle restored peace to Germany and to Europe; but in 1756 a 

 new war broke out between Prussia and Austria, kuown by the name 

 of the Seven Years' War, which was terminated by the peace of 

 Hubertsbur(.', in February 1763. The following year Joseph, tho 

 eldest son of Francis, was elected king of tho Romans, and in 1765 

 Francis died at Innsbruck, and Joseph succeeded him as emperor of 

 Germany ; his mother retaining in her hands the sovereignty of the 

 Austrian dominions till her death. Asemperorof Germany and grand- 

 duke of Tuscany, Francis left behind him the reputation of a good 

 prince, though he was involved iu loug wars against his inclination. 



FRANCIS II., emperor of Germany, aud I. of Austria, the eldest 

 sou of Leopold II. aud of Maria Louisa of Spain, was born at Florence 

 in February 1768. At an early age he was sent to Vienna to bo 

 brought up under the eyes of his uncle, Joseph II., who gave him the 

 best preceptors in that capital. He was well instructed in the art of 

 administration, aud he made himself master of all its details. He was 

 also engaged in several campaigns against the Turks, and was present 

 at the taking of Belgrade, by General Laudon, in 1789. When 

 Joseph II. died, iu 1790, Francis took the direction of the government 

 till the arrival of his father from Floreuce. Two years afterwards 

 Leopold himself died, in 1792, and Francia, who succeeded to his vast 

 dominions, was likewise elected his successor to the imperial crown. 

 He came to the throne at a very anxious moment. The rash or pre- 

 mature, though well-meant reforms of Joseph II., had sown deep dis- 

 content in several parts of the hereditary states of Austria, which the 

 conciliatory measures of Leopold had not had time to allay : the Bel- 

 gians were iu open revolt, and Francis himself was on the eve of a 

 war with France. In April 1792, Louis XVI. was obliged, by the 

 legislative assembly, to declare war against him. The Austrian armies 

 on the lihiue carried on the war for some years with varied success, 

 and without any definite result; but the successes of Bonaparte in 

 Italy, in 1796-97, decided the fate of the war. [BONAPAHTK.] By the 

 treaty of Campoformio, Frauds gave up Belgium and the duchy of 

 Milan, receiving in exchange Venice and Dalmatia. In 171*9 a new 

 coalition took place between Austria, Russia, aud England, aud the 

 allied armies were eminently successful, both in Italy and Germany ; 

 but a misunderstanding between the Austrian and Russian com- 

 manders led to the defeat of the Russians iu Switzerland. In 1800, 



French under Moreau having gained the battle of Hohenlinden, advanced 

 towards Vienna, when Francis proposed peace, and the treaty of Lune- 

 ville fohowed in 1801, by which Ferdinand, the emperor's brother, 

 was obliged to give up Tuscany, and his uncle to renounce Modena. 

 In December 1804, while Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France 

 at Paris, Francis foreseeing the approaching dissolution of the German 

 empire, declared himself hereditary emperor of Austria. In 1805, 

 feeling jealous of the new encroachments of Napoleon I. in Italy and 

 Holland, the Austrian cabinet formed a new coalition with Russia and 

 England. The campaign was unfavourable to Austria, the French 

 entered Vienna, and the battle of Austerlitz finished the war. By the 

 following peace of Presburg, December 1805, Austria gave up the 

 Venetian states and the Tyrol The old German empire was now 

 dissolved after a thousand years' duration : and iu August 1806, Francis 

 renounced the title of emperor of Germany, and assumed that of 

 Francis I., emperor of Austria, king of Bohemia aud Hungary, &c. 

 He now availed himself of some years of peace to repair the cala- 

 mities of the former wars, to make reductions, enforce a strict 

 economy, and support the credit of the state. In the war of Napo- 

 leon I. against Prussia, 1806-7, Austria maintained a strict neutrality. 

 After the peace of Tilsit and the conferences of Erfurt between 

 Napoleon I. and Alexander, the occupation of North Germany by the 

 Freuch, and the invasion of Spain, the emperor Francis felt alarmed, 

 and prepared for a fresh struggle, which he saw must take place 

 sooner or later for the independence of his crown. Availing himself 

 of Napoleon's embarrassments iu Spain, at the beginning of 1809, he 

 begau alone a fourth war against France, with a force of 400,000 men. 

 The archduke Charles commanded the army of Germany, aud the arch- 



