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 632 Outlines of European History Massacre of the Walden- sians, 1545 Persecution under Henry II, 1547-1559 Francis II, 1559-1560, Mary Queen of Scots, and the Guises The queen- mother, Catherine of Medici and Calvin was forced to flee to Basel, where he prepared a defense of his beliefs in his Institutes of Christianity (see above, p. 607). This is prefaced by a letter to Francis in which he pleads with him to protect the Protestants.^ Francis, before his death, became so intolerant that he ordered the massacre of three thousand defenseless peasants who dwelt on the slopes of the Alps, and whose only offense was adherence to the simple teachings of the Waldensians.^ Francis's son, Henry II (i 547-1559), swore to extirpate the Protestants, and hundreds of them were burned. Nevertheless, Henry II's religious convictions did not prevent him from will- ingly aiding the German Protestants against his enemy Charles V, especially when they agreed to hand over to him three bish- oprics which lay on the French boundary — Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Henry II was accidentally killed in a tourney and left his kingdom to three weak sons, the last scions of the house, of Valois, who succeeded in turn to the throne during a period of unprecedented civil war and public calamity. The eldest son, Francis II, a boy of sixteen, followed his father. His chief im- portance for France arose from his marriage with the daughter of King James V of Scotland, Mary Stuart, who became famous as Mary Queen of Scots. Her mother was the sister of two very ambitious French nobles, the Duke of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine. Francis II was so young that Mary's uncles, the Guises, eagerly seized the opportunity to manage his affairs for him. The duke put himself at the head of the army, and the cardinal of the government. When the king died, after reigning but a year, the Guises were naturally reluctant to surrender their power, and many of the woes of France for the next forty years were due to the machinations which they carried on in the name of the Holy Catholic religion. The new king, Charles IX (15 60-1 5 7 4), was but ten years old, so that his mother, Catherine of Medici, of the famous 1 See Readings^ II, chap, xxvii. 2 See above, p. 482.