Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/107

GUISE troop of French soldiers. They soon overcame the Protestant troops and she was able to enter Edinburgh, but an English army sent by Elizabeth to the assistance of the Protestants laid siege to Edinburgh, and at this juncture Mary of Guise died.

VII. , Prince de Joinville, and in 1563 third Duke of Guise, b. 31 Dec, 1550, the son of Frangois de Guise and Anne d'Este; d. at Blois, 23 Dec, 1588. The rumours which attributed to Coligny a share in the murder of François de Guise hailed in the young Henri de Guise, then thirteen years old, the future avenger of his father and the leader of the Catholic party. While the Cardinal of Lorraine maintained the ascendancy and the numerous following of his family, the young Henri, leaving France, had no part in the patched up reconciliation at Moulins between his mother and Coligny. In July, 1566, he went to Hungary to fight in the emperor's service against the Turks. When he returned to France he took part in the second and third Huguenot wars, distinguishing himself at the battles of Saint-Denis (1567), Jarnac, Moncontour, and at the defence of Poitiers (1569) against Coligny. His pretensions (1570) to the hand of Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX, seriously offended the king, but he was restored to favour on his hastily marrying Catharine de Cleves (1548-1633), widow of the Prince de Porcien and goddaughter of Catharine de' Medici, noted for the frivolity of her youth and for the strange freedom with which she had caused her lovers to be painted in her Book of Hours as crucified.

Between 1570 and 1572 Henri de Guise was much disturbed by the ascendancy of Coligny and the Protestants in the counsels of Charles IX. To similar suspicious fears, shared by Catharine de' Medici, must be traced the St. Bartholomew massacre. Guise was accused of having given the impulse by stationing Maurevers (22 Aug., 1572) on the route taken by Coligny, and when the next day Catharine de' Medici insisted that, in order to forestall an outbreak of Protestant vengeance, Charles IX should order the death of several of their chiefs. Guise was summoned to the palace to arrange for the execution of the plan. For the massacre and the deplorable proportions it assumed, see Saint Bartholomew's Day. During the night of 24 August, Henri de Guise, with a body of armed men, went to Coligny's dwelling, and while his attendants slew Coligny he waited on horseback in the courtyard and cried; "Is he quite dead?" In repelling the repeated attacks of the Huguenots at the battle of Dornians (10 Oct., 1575) during the fifth Huguenot war, Henri de Guise received a wound on the cheek which led to his being thenceforth known, like his father, as Le Balafré. His power increased, and he was regarded as a second Judas Machabeus. His popularity was now so great that a contemporary wrote: "It is too little to say that France was in love with that man; she was bewitched by him."

King Henry III began to feel that his own safety was threatened, the powerful family was beginning to aspire to the throne. In 1576 the Holy League was organized, centred at once about the popular hero, Henri de Guise, and within a few months had at its disposal 26,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry. The object of the League was to defend the Catholic religion in France. Still earlier, at Toulouse (1563), Angers (1565), Dijon (1567), Bourges and Troyes (1568), Catholic leagues had been formed, composed of loyal and pious middle-class citizens. In 1576, however, the Holy League was established among the nobility and, accordmg to a declaration spread throughout France by Guise, this association of princes, lords, and gentlemen had a twofold purpose: (1) To establish in its fullness the law of God; to restore and maintain God's holy service according to the form and manner of the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church; to preserve King Henry III in the state of splendour, authority, duty, and obedience owed him by his subjects, but with the proviso that nothing shall be done to the prejudice of what may be enjoined by the States-General. (2) To restore to the provinces and the states of the realm, under the protection of the League, their ancient rights, pre-eminence, franchises, and liberties such as they had been from the time of Clovis, the first Christian king, and as much better and more profitable, if improvement were possible, as they could be made under the protection of the League. From the beginning, therefore, a decentralizing as well as a Catholic tendency characterized the League.

The Huguenots soon pretended to have discovered among the papers of one Jean David that the Guises had forwarded to Rome a memoir claiming that, by reason of their descent from Charlemagne, Henry III should yield them the throne of France.

The League was first organized in Picardy under the direction of the Maréchal d'Humieres, governor of Péronne, Roye, and Montdidier, then in other provinces, and finally in Paris, under the direction of the avocat, Pierre Hennequin, and the Labruyeres, father and son. Henry III, fearing to become a prisoner of the Catholic forces, immediately signed with the Protestants the Peace of Beaulieu, by which he granted them important concessions, but at the States-General of Blois (November-December, 1.576) the influence of the League was preponderant. By the edict of 1 Jan., 1577, the Court annulled the Peace of Beaulieu, and Henry III even joined the League. This was the signal for two new religious wars, during which the military talents and Catholic zeal of Henri de Guise naturally contrasted with the cowardice and wavering policy of the king. The former stood out more and more distinctly as the leader of the Catholic party, while Henry of Navarre, the future Henry IV, now posed as the champion of the Protestants.

In the meantime occurred the death of Francis of Valois (10 June, 1584), brother of Henry III and heir presumptive to the throne. It was at once obvious that the Valois dynasty would become extinct with Henry III, and that Henry of Navarre, leader of the Protestants, would be the natural heir to the throne. Henri de Guise and the League determined to provide at once against the possibility of