Charles IX of France
| Charles IX | |||||
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Basilica of St Denis , France | |||||
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Valois-Angoulême | |||||
| Father | Henry II of France | ||||
| Mother | Catherine de' Medici | ||||
| Religion | Catholicism | ||||
| Signature |  | ||||
Charles IX (Charles Maximilien; 27 June 1550 – 30 May 1574) was King of France from 1560 until his death in 1574. He ascended the French throne upon the death of his brother Francis II in 1560, and as such was the penultimate monarch of the House of Valois.
Charles' reign saw the culmination of decades of tension between
Many of Charles' decisions were influenced by his mother, a fervent
Biography
Birth and childhood
Charles Maximilien of France,[1] third son of King Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici,[2] was born on 27 June 1550 at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.[3] He was the fifth of ten children born to the royal couple.[4] Styled since birth as Duke of Angoulême, he was created Duke of Orléans after the death of his elder brother Louis, his parents' second son, who had died in infancy on 24 October 1550. The royal children were raised under the supervision of the governor and governess of the royal children, Claude d'Urfé and Françoise d'Humières, under the orders of Diane de Poitiers.[5]
On 14 May 1564, Charles was presented the Order of the Garter by Henry Carey.[6]
Accession
Charles' father died in 1559,
First war of religion
Relations with the Huguenots
In 1560, a group of Huguenot nobles at
The regent Catherine tried to foster reconciliation at the
The massacre lit the fuse that sparked the
Armed peace
The war was followed by four years of an uneasy "armed peace", during which time Catherine united the factions in the successful effort to recapture Le Havre from the English.[17] After this victory, Charles declared his legal majority in August 1563, formally ending the regency.[18] However, Catherine continued to play a principal role in politics, and often dominated her son. In March 1564, the King and his mother set out from Fontainebleau on a grand tour of France. Their tour spanned two years and brought them through Bar, Lyon, Salon-de-Provence (where they visited Nostradamus), Carcassonne, Toulouse (where the King and his younger brother Henry were confirmed), Bayonne, La Rochelle, and Moulins. During this trip, Charles IX issued the Edict of Roussillon, which standardised 1 January as the first day of the year throughout France.
Second and third war of religion
War again broke out in 1567 after Charles added 6,000 Swiss mercenaries to his personal guards.
Marriage and children
On 26 November 1570, Charles married
Coligny's ascendancy and the massacre
After the conclusion of the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1570, the king increasingly came under the influence of Admiral
During the peace settlement, a marriage was arranged between Charles' sister Margaret of Valois and Henry of Navarre, the future King Henry IV, who was at that time heir to the throne of Navarre and one of the leading Huguenots. Many Huguenot nobles, including Admiral de Coligny, thronged into Paris for the wedding, which was set for 18 August 1572. On 22 August, a failed attempt on Coligny's life put the city in a state of apprehension, as both visiting Huguenots and Parisian Catholics feared an attack by the other side.
In this situation, in the early morning of 24 August 1572, the Duke of Guise moved to avenge his father and murdered Coligny in his lodgings. As Coligny's body was thrown into the street, Parisians mutilated the body. The mob action then erupted into the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, a systematic slaughter of Huguenots that was to last five days. Henry of Navarre managed to avoid death by pledging to convert to Catholicism. Over the next few weeks, the disorder spread to more cities across France. In all, up to 10,000 Huguenots were killed in Paris and the provinces.[25]
Though the massacres weakened Huguenot power, they also reignited war, which only ceased after the Edict of Boulogne in 1573 granted Huguenots amnesty and limited religious freedom. However, the year 1574 saw a failed Huguenot coup at Saint-Germain and successful Huguenot uprisings in Normandy, Poitou and the Rhône valley, setting the stage for another round of war.[26]
Decline and death
In the aftermath of the massacre, the king's fragile mental and physical constitution weakened drastically. His moods swung from boasting about the extremity of the massacre to exclamations that the screams of the murdered Huguenots kept ringing in his ears. Frantically, he blamed alternately himself – "What blood shed! What murders!", he cried to his nurse. "What evil counsel I have followed! O my God, forgive me... I am lost! I am lost!" – or his mother – "Who but you is the cause of all of this? God's blood, you are the cause of it all!" Catherine responded by declaring she had a lunatic for a son.[27]
Charles' physical condition, tending towards tuberculosis, deteriorated to the point where, by spring of 1574, his hoarse coughing turned bloody and his hemorrhages grew more violent.
Charles IX died at the Château de Vincennes on 30 May 1574, aged 23.[2] Given that his younger brother Henry, Duke of Anjou, had recently been elected King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and was away from France, their mother Catherine resumed the regency until Henry's return from Poland.[28]
In 1625, long after his death, a book Charles wrote on hunting, La Chasse Royale, was published. It is a valuable source for those interested in the history of hounds and hunting.[29]
Ancestors
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See also
References
- ^ Anselme 1726, p. 134.
- ^ a b Chisholm 1911, p. 921.
- ^ Paranque 2019, p. 115.
- PMID 19364432.
- ^ Édouard 2009, p. 24.
- ^ Manley & MacLean 2014, p. 18.
- ^ Baumgartner 1988, p. 252.
- ^ Knecht 1998, p. 57.
- ^ Bryson 1999, p. 109.
- ^ Knecht 1998, p. 73.
- ^ Knecht 1998, p. 76.
- ^ Meere 2021, p. 136.
- ^ Salmon 1975, p. 124–137.
- ^ Sutherland 1962, p. 111–138.
- ^ Knecht 2000, p. 78–79.
- ^ Knecht 2000, p. 86.
- ^ Knecht 1998, p. 93.
- ^ Knecht 2000, p. 118.
- ^ a b Holt 1995, p. 63–64.
- ^ Holt 1995, p. 64–65.
- ^ Knecht 2000, p. 151.
- ^ Knecht 1998, p. 138.
- ^ Cuerva 2021, p. 168.
- ^ Knecht 2016, p. 295.
- ^ Jouanna et al., 196–204.
- ^ Knecht 2000, p. 181.
- ^ Durant, p. 355.
- ^ Knecht 2000, p. 190.
- ^ Charles IX, La Chasse Royale (1625).
- ^ a b Anselme 1726, pp. 131–132.
- ^ a b c d Whale 1914, p. 43.
- ^ a b Anselme 1726, pp. 210–211.
- ^ a b Anselme 1726, pp. 126–128.
- ^ a b Tomas 2003, p. 7.
Works cited
- Anselme de Sainte-Marie, Père (1726). Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France [Genealogical and chronological history of the royal house of France] (in French). Vol. 1 (3rd ed.). Paris: La compagnie des libraires.
- Baumgartner, Frederic J (1988). Henry II, King of France, 1547–1559. ISBN 978-0822307952.
- Bryson, David (1999). Queen Jeanne and the Promised Land: Dynasty, Homeland, Religion and Violence in Sixteenth-Century France. Brill.
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 921.
- Cuerva, Rubén González (2021). Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress (1528–1603): Dynastic Networker. Routledge.
- Édouard, Sylvène (2009). Le Corps d'une reine: Histoire singulière d'Élisabeth de Valois (1546–1568) (in French). Presses universitaires de Rennes.
- Holt, Mack P. (1995). The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629. Cambridge University Press.
- Knecht, R.J. (1998). Catherine de Medici. Longman.
- Knecht, Robert J. (2000). The French Civil Wars. Modern Wars in Perspective. Harlow: Longman. ISBN 0582095492.
- Knecht, Robert J. (2016). Hero or Tyrant? Henry III, King of France, 1574–89. Routledge.
- Manley, Lawrence; MacLean, Sally-Beth (2014). Lord Strange's Men and Their Plays. Yale University Press.
- Meere, Michael (2021). Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy: Performance, Ethics, Poetics. Oxford University Press.
- Paranque, Estelle (2019). Remembering Queens and Kings of Early Modern England and France: Reputation, Reinterpretation, and Reincarnation. Springer. ISBN 978-3030223441.
- Salmon, J. H. M. (1975). Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century. London: Methuen. ISBN 0416730507.
- Sutherland, N. M. (1962). "Calvinism and the conspiracy of Amboise". .
- Tomas, Natalie R. (2003). The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. ISBN 0754607771.
- Whale, Winifred Stephens (1914). The La Trémoille family. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 43.
Further reading
- Belleval, René (1900). Les derniers Valois: François II, Charles IX, Henri III. Paris, H. Vixen.
- Jouanna, Arlette; Boucher, Jacqueline; Biloghi, Dominique; Thiec, Guy (1998). Histoire et dictionnaire des Guerres de religion (in French). Collection Bouquins. Paris: Laffont. ISBN 2221074254.
- Mérimée, Prosper (1829). Chronique du règne de Charles IX. F.S. Holby.
External links
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