Charles IX (Charles Maximilien; 27 June 1550 – 30 May 1574) wasKing of France from 1560 until his death in 1574. He ascended the French throne upon the death of his brotherFrancis II in 1560, and as such was the penultimate monarch of theHouse of Valois.
Charles' reign saw the culmination of decades of tension betweenProtestants and Catholics.Civil and religious war broke out between the two parties after themassacre of Vassy in 1562. In 1572, following several unsuccessful attempts at brokering peace, Charlesarranged the marriage of his sisterMargaret toHenry of Navarre, a major Protestant nobleman in the line of succession to the French throne, in a last desperate bid to reconcile his people. Facing popular hostility against this policy ofappeasement and at the instigation of his motherCatherine de' Medici, Charles oversaw the massacre of numerousHuguenot leaders who gathered in Paris for the royal wedding, though his direct involvement is still debated. This event, known as theSt. Bartholomew's Day massacre, was a significant blow to the Huguenot movement, and religious civil warfare soon began anew. Charles sought to take advantage of the disarray of the Huguenots by ordering thesiege of La Rochelle, but was unable to take the Protestant stronghold.
Many of Charles' decisions were influenced by his mother, a ferventRoman Catholic who initially supported a policy of relativereligious tolerance. After the events of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, he began to support the persecution of Huguenots. However, the incident haunted Charles for the rest of his life, and historians suspect that it caused his physical and mental health to deteriorate over the next two years. Charles died oftuberculosis in 1574 without legitimate male issue, and was succeeded by his brotherHenry III, whose own death in 1589 without issue allowed for theascension of Henry of Navarre to the French throne as Henry IV, establishing theHouse of Bourbon as the new French royal dynasty.
Charles' father died in 1559,[7] and was succeeded by Charles' elder brother,King Francis II.[8] Francis II died in 1560.[9] The ten-year-old Charles was immediately proclaimed king on 5 December 1560, and the Privy Council appointed his mother,Catherine de' Medici, as governor of France (gouvernante de France), with sweeping powers, at first acting as regent for her young son.[10] On 15 May 1561, Charles was consecrated in the cathedral atReims.[11]Antoine of Bourbon, himself in line to the French throne and husband to QueenJeanne III of Navarre, was appointed Lieutenant-General of France.[12]
In 1560, a group of Huguenot nobles atAmboise had planned to try to abduct King Francis II and arrest the Catholic leadersFrancis, Duke of Guise, and his brotherCharles, Cardinal of Lorraine. The plot was discovered ahead of time, and the Guises were prepared, executing hundreds of Huguenots. This was followed by cases of Protestanticonoclasm and Catholic reprisals.[13][14]
The regent Catherine tried to foster reconciliation at theColloquy at Poissy and, after that failed, made several concessions to the Huguenots in theEdict of Saint-Germain in January 1562.[15] Nonetheless, theMassacre of Vassy, perpetrated on 1 March 1562, when theDuke of Guise and his troops attacked and killed or wounded over 100 Huguenot worshipers and citizens, brought France spiralling towards civil war.
The massacre lit the fuse that sparked theFrench Wars of Religion.Louis of Bourbon, Prince of Condé, brother of the Lieutenant-General and the suspected architect of theAmboise conspiracy, had already prepared for war and, taking Wassy as the pretext, assumed the role of a protector of Protestantism and began to seize and garrison strategic towns along theLoire Valley. In response, the monarchy revoked the concessions given to the Huguenots. After the military leaders of both sides were either killed or captured in battles atRouen,Dreux, andOrléans, the regent mediated a truce and issued theEdict of Amboise (1563).[16]
The war was followed by four years of an uneasy "armed peace", during which time Catherine united the factions in the successful effort to recaptureLe 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 fromFontainebleau on agrand tour of France. Their tour spanned two years and brought them through Bar,Lyon,Salon-de-Provence (where they visitedNostradamus),Carcassonne,Toulouse (where the King and his younger brother Henry wereconfirmed),Bayonne,La Rochelle, andMoulins. During this trip, Charles IX issued theEdict of Roussillon, which standardised 1 January as the first day of the year throughout France.
War again broke out in 1567 after Charles added 6,000 Swiss mercenaries to his personal guards.[19] Huguenots, fearing a Catholic attack was imminent, tried to abduct the king atMeaux,[19] seized various cities, and massacred Catholics atNîmes in an action known as theMichelade. TheBattle of Saint-Denis resulted in a Huguenot defeat and the death ofAnne de Montmorency, the royal commander-in-chief, and the short war ended in 1568 with thePeace of Longjumeau.[20] The privileges granted to Protestants were widely opposed, however, leading to their cancellation and the resumption of war. TheDutch Republic, England and Navarre intervened on the Protestant side, while Spain, Tuscany andPope Pius V supported the Catholics. Finally, the royal debt and the King's desire to seek a peaceful solution led to yet another truce, thePeace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in August 1570, which again granted concessions to the Huguenots.[21]
After the conclusion of the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1570, the king increasingly came under the influence of AdmiralGaspard de Coligny, who had succeeded the slain Prince of Condé as leader of Huguenots after theBattle of Jarnac in 1569. Catherine, however, became increasingly fearful of Coligny's unchecked power, especially since he was pursuing an alliance with England and the Dutch. Coligny was also hated by Henry, Duke of Guise, who accused the Admiral of having ordered the assassination of his fatherFrancis of Guise during the siege of Orléans in 1563.
During the peace settlement, a marriage was arranged between Charles' sisterMargaret 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 theSt. 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 theEdict 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]
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 towardstuberculosis, deteriorated to the point where, by spring of 1574, his hoarse coughing turned bloody and his hemorrhages grew more violent.
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]
Jouanna, Arlette; Boucher, Jacqueline; Biloghi, Dominique; Thiec, Guy (1998).Histoire et dictionnaire des Guerres de religion (in French). Collection Bouquins. Paris: Laffont.ISBN2221074254.
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