GUISE
75
GUISE
halted by the Peace of Cateau-Cambrdsis (3 April,
1559), concluded by Henry II, despite the protests of
the duke. Moreover, Henry was ou the point of dis-
gracing Frani,"ois de Guise, at the instance of Diana
of Poitiers and the Constable de Montmorency.
The accession of Francis II (10 July, 1559), however, and his consort, Mary Stuart, niece of Franrois de Guise, was a triumph for the Guise family, and the Constable de Montmorency was disgraced. Frani^ois de Guise was supreme in the royal council. "My advice", he would say, "is so and so; we must act thus." Occa- sionally lie signed public acts in the royal manner, with his baptismal name onlj'. At the instigation of Antoine de Bourbon and the Prince de Conde, La- Re- naudie, a Protestant gentleman of P(:!'rigord, organized a plot to sieze the persons of Franrois de Ciuise and his brother, the second Cardinal of Lorraine. The plot was discovered (conspiracy of Amboise, March, 1560) and violently suppressed. Cond(5 was obliged to flee the court, and the power of the Guises was increased. The discourse which Coligny, leader of the Hugue- nots, pronounced against them in the Assembly of Notables at Fon- tainebleau (Aug., 1560) did not in- fluence Francis II in the least, but resulted ra- ther in the im- prisonment of ('ondc. The king, however, died (5 December, 1560 — a year full of calamity for the Guises both in Scotland and France (see, be- low, VI. Mary ofGuise). With- in a few months their influence waxed great and waned. After the accession of Charles IX, Franf;ois de Guise lived in retirement on his estates. The regent, Catharine de' Medici, at first inclined to favour the Protestants, and to save the Cathohc party Fran(jois de CJui-se formed with his old enemy, the ( 'onstable de Montmorency, and the Marcchal de Saint-Andr<5 the so-called Tri- umvirate (April, 1561), hostile to the policy of con- cession which Catharine de' Medici attempted to inau- gurate in favour of the Protestants. The plan of the Triumvirate was to treat with Spain and the Holy See, and also to come to an imderstanding with the Lu- theran princes of Germany to induce them to abandon the idea of relieving the French Protestants. About July, 1561, Gui.se wrote to this effect to the Duke of Wiirtemberg. The Colloquy of Poissy (September and October, 1561) between theologians of the two confessions was fruitless, and the conciliation policy of Catharine de' Medici was defeated. From 15 to 18 February, 1562, Guise visited the Duke of Wiirtemberg at Saverne, and convinced him that if the conference at Poissy had failed, the fault was that of the Calvinists. As Guise passed through Vassy on his way to Paris (1 March, 1562) a massacre of Protestants took place. It is not known to what extent he was responsible for this, but it kindled the religious war. Rouen was re- taken from the Protestants by Guise after a month's siege (October); the battle of Dreux, at which Mont- morency was taken prisoner and Saint-Andr^ slain, was in the end turned by Guise to the advantage of the Catholic cause (19 December), and Conde, leader of the Huguenots, taken prisoner. Guise was about to
Fhan(,'ois de Lorraine, Second
Ddke of Guise
take Orleans from the Huguenots when (18 February,
1563) he was wounded by the Protestant Poltrot de
M^^re, and died sbi days later. " We cannot deny",
wrote the Protestant Coligny in reference to his death,
"the manifest miracles of God."
At the suggestion of Henry II Guise had married in 1549 Anne d'Este (1531-1607), daughter of Hercule II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. and of Renee of France, through her mother, granddaughter of Louis XII ; she had been on the point of becoming the wife of Sigis- mund I, King of Poland. By her Guise had si.x sons and one daughter. Anne held the Admiral de Coligny responsible for the death of her husband, and her inter- view with the admiral at Moulins was only an apparent reconciliation. She soon married James of Savoy (d. 1583), by whom she had two children. She lived to see the extinction of the house of Este by the death of Alfonso II, fifth Duke of Ferrara, and to see two of her sons, Henry, Duke of Gui.se, and the Cardinal of Ciuise (see below) slain at the chateau de Blois. " Oh, great king", she cried before the statue of her grand- father, Louis XII, "did you build this chateau that the children of your granddaughter might perish in it?" The poet Ronsard sang the praises of the wife of Fran- cois de Guise, according to the fashion of the time:
Venus la sainte en ses graces habite,
Tous les amours logent en ses regards;
Pour ce, a bon droit, telle dame merite
D'avoir <^te femme de notre Mars. IV. Charle.s de Lorraine, Cardinal of Guise, b. at Joinville, 17 Feb., 1,524 ; d. at Avignon, 26 December, 1574 ; appointed .\rchbishop of Reims in 1538, cardinal in 1547, the day after the coronation of Henry II, at W'hich he had officiated. He was known at first as the Cardinal of Guise, and as the second Cardinal of Lor- raine after the death of his uncle Jean (1550), first Cardinal of Lorraine. His protection of Rabelais and Ronsard and his generous foundation of the University of Reims (1547-49) assure him a place in the history of contemporary letters; his chief importance, however, is in political and religious history.
The efforts of this cardinal to enforce his family's pretensions to the Coimtship of Provence, and his tem- porary assumption, with this object, of the title of Cardinal of Anjou were without success. He failed also when he attempted, in 1551, to di.ssuade Henry II from imiting the Duchy of Lorraine to France. He suc- ceeded, however, in creating for his family interests certain political alliances that occasionally seemed in conflict with each other. Lie coquetted, for instance, on the one hand with the Lutheran princes of Germany, and on the other, in his interview (1558) with the Cardi- nal deCiranvelle (at Peronne), he initiated friendly rela- tions between the Guises and the royal House of Spain. Thus the man who, as Archbishop of Reims, crowned successively Henry II, Francis II, and Charles IX had a personal policy which was often at variance with that of the court. This policy rendered him at times an enigma to his contemporaries. The chronicler L'Estoile accused him of great duplicity; Brantome spoke of his "deeply stained soul, churchman though he was", accused him of scepticism, and claimed to have heard him occasionally speak half approvingly of the Confession of Augsburg. He is also often held responsible for the outbreak of the Huguenot wars, and seems now and then to have attempted to establish the Inquisition in France. Many libellous pamphlets aroused against him strong religious and political passions. From 1560 at least twenty-two were in cir- culation and fell into his hands; they damaged his reputation with posterity as well as among his contem- poraries. One of them. "La Guerre Cardinale" (1565), accuses him of seeking to restore to the Empire the three Bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which had been conquered by Henry II. A discourse attri- buted to Theodore de Beze (1566) denounced the pluralism of the cardinal in the matter of benefices.
