HENRY II. -IV. OF FRANCE 



C53 



frit-lid, Clement III., took Mantua, and wan 

 rapidly sulxluing the Uuulphic princes and their 

 nope, "Urban II., second successor to Gregory, who 

 nail died in 1085, when he learned that his son 

 Conrad had joined his enemies and been crowned 

 king at Muii/, i. The wearied monarch, disheart- 

 ened by this adverse blow, retired to one of his 

 Lombard castles, and abandoned himself to despair. 

 lint at length rousing himself from his lethargy, 

 he returneu ( 1097 ) to Germany. His second son, 

 Henry, was elected king of the Germans and heir 

 to the empire. This prince, however, was induced 

 to rise against his father by Pope Pascal II. ; he 

 took the einperor prisoner, and compelled him to 

 a 1 11 1 irate. 1 he emperor escaped from his prison, 

 and found friends and safety at Liege, where he 

 died, August 7, 1106. Henry deserved praise for 

 the endurance and tenacity with which he struggled 

 against the tremendous odds arrayed in opposition 

 to him. That he was able to stand his ground at 

 all, considering the magnitude of the task he took 

 in hand to break the overweening power of the 

 great feudal nobles of Germany and to withstand 

 papal aggressiveness incorporated in the person of 

 a Gregory VII. must be reckoned success of no 

 mean character. See Floto, Heinrich IV. und sein 

 Zeitalter (2 vols. 1855-57); Giesebrecht, Geschichte 

 tier Deiitschen Kaiserzeit (vol. iii. 4th ed. 1876); 

 ami Minckwitz, Die Biisse Heinrichs des IVten 

 (2d ed. 1875). 



Henry II., king of France, was born at St 

 Germain on 31st March 1519, was married to 

 Catharine de' Medici in 1533, and succeeded his 

 father, Francis I., in 1547. Although an ambitious 

 and stout-hearted prince, Henry suffered himself 

 to be influenced oy favourites, women mostly 

 (such as Diana of Poitiers, q.v. ). Immediately 

 after his accession he proclaimed himself of the 

 Catholic party, and proceeded to oppress his 

 Protestant subjects. Through the influence of 

 the Guises, whose sister, the dowager-queen of 

 James V. of Scotland, sought the aid of I 1 ranee to 

 support her against the English government, Henry 

 formed an alliance with Scotland, arid declared war 

 against England, which ended in 1558 with the 

 taking of Calais, after that city had been 210 years 

 in the hands of the English. In spite of his Catho- 

 lic proclivities, ambition made him renew the duel 

 with the empire that his father had begun. In 

 1532 he concluded treaties of alliance with the 

 < i< mi an Reformers, and sent an army to aid Maurice 

 of Saxony against the emperor. His troops cap- 

 tured Toul and Verdun, while Montmorency seized 

 upon Metz. After a lull in the hostilities war was 

 renewed in 1556. In the following year Guise's 

 design to conquer Naples was frustrated by the 

 generalship of Alva, whilst in the Low Countries 

 the French under Montmorency sustained a crush- 

 ing defeat at St Quentin. These reverses were 

 followed by the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis 

 ( 1559 ). Shortly afterwards Henry was accidentally 

 wounded in a tournament by Montgomery, a Scot- 

 tish nobleman and captain of his guard. He died 

 from the wound on 10th July 1559. See works 

 cited at FRANCE and CATHARINE DE' MEDICI. 



Henry III., king of France, the third son of 

 Henry II. and Catharine de' Medici, was born at 

 Fontainebleau on 19th September 1551. On the 

 death of Constable Montmorency he received the 

 chief command of the army, and in 1569 gained t\vo 

 decisive victories over the Protestants at Jarnac 

 and Moncontour. He showed his zeal for the 

 Catholic cause by taking an active share in the 

 massacre of St Bartholomew. In 1573 the intrigues 

 of the queen-regent secured his election to the 

 throne of Poland. But on receiving the tidings of 

 the death of his brother, Charles IX., he fled by 



night from Cracow and came home to Franc* to 

 succeed Charles OH king (1575). His reign wan a 

 period of almoHt ince**ant civil war between the 

 Huguenot* and the Catholics. The party of the 

 latter, supported by the king's mother, ami headed 

 by Henry of Guise, formed the Holy League, the 

 object of which was not merely to assert the un- 

 divided supremacy of Catholicism, but also to secure 

 the reversion of the throne to the family of the 

 Guises. Henry was quite unfitted to cope with the 

 crisis. He showed both fickleness and want of 

 courage in his public conduct ; and in private life 

 his days and nights were spent in an alternation of 

 dissolute excesses and wild outbreaks of religious 

 fanaticism. His favourite companions were a band 

 of young men (the 'Mignons') as vicious as him- 

 self. At length in 1588 the assassination of the 

 Duke of Guise in the king's antechamber, and of 

 the Duke of Lorraine in prison, fairly roused the 

 Catholic part of the nation to the utmost pitch of 

 exasperation. The distracted king threw himself 

 into the arms of Henry of Navarre, and the two 

 sovereigns marched upon Paris at the head of a 

 Huguenot army. But on 1st August 1589 Henry 

 of * ranee was stabbed by a fanatical Dominican 

 named Jacques Clement ; he died on the following 

 day, nominating Henry of Navarre as his suc- 

 cessor. With this king the male line of the house 

 of Valois became extinct. See M. W. Freer, Henry 

 III., his Court and Times (3 vols. 1858). 



Henry IV., king of France and Navarre, sur- 

 named 'the Great,' find ' the Good,' was bom at Pan, 

 13th Dec. 1553. He was the third son of Antoine 

 de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret, daughter and 

 heiress of Henry, king of Navarre and Beam. His 

 father's death placed him under the sole control of 

 his mother and grandfather, at whose court he was 

 trained to the practice of knightly and athletic 

 exercises, and inured to the active habits and rude 

 fare common to the Bearnais mountaineers. His 

 mother, who was a zealous Calvinist, was careful 

 to select learned men holding her own tenets for 

 his instructors ; and having discovered that a plot 

 was on foot to remove him to Spain by force, to 

 train him in the Catholic faith, she conducted him, 

 in 1569, to La Rochelle, and presented him to the 

 assembled Huguenot army, at whose head he 

 fought at the battle of Jarnac. Henry was now 

 chosen chief of the Protestant party although, on 

 account of his youth, the principal command was 

 vested in Coligny (q.v.) and the third of the 

 Huguenot wars began. Notwithstanding the de- 

 feats which the Huguenots had experienced in the 

 next campaign, the peace of St Germain which 

 concluded it was apparently most advantageous 

 to their cause, and was speedily followed by a con- 

 tract of marriage between Henry and Margaret of 

 Valois, the sister of Charles IX. After much 

 opposition on the part of both Catholics and Pro- 

 testants, the marriage was celebrated with great 

 pomp in 1572, two months after the sudden death 

 of the Queen Jeanne, which was probably due to 

 poison, and within less than a week of the massacre 

 of St Bartholomew. It had been originally intended 

 that Henry was to share the fate of his friends and 

 co-religionists ; but his life was spared on condition 

 of his professing himself a Catholic. Three years he 

 remained at the French court, virtually a prisoner ; 

 but at length, in l.~>76, lie contrived to elude the 

 vigilance of the queen-mother, and escaped to the 

 canm of the Huguenots in Alen^on. There, having 

 revoked his compulsory conversion, he resumed the 

 command of the army, and by his address gained 

 several signal advantages, which constrained the 

 king to consent to a peace highly favourable to the 

 cause of the Reformers. 



The death of the Duke of Anjpu (late Alencon) 

 gave Henry the rank, as first prince of the blood 



