RELIGIOUS WARS OF FRANCE
The early and unexpected death of Henry II of France (1559) had left the
throne to one after another of his young and feeble sons. The first of
these, Francis II, the husband of Mary Stuart, ruled only a year. He was
completely under the control of the great Catholic family, the Guises,
who began a vigorous attempt to suppress the Protestants of France, the
Huguenots as they were called. But these Huguenots included many of the
highest and ablest of the French nobility and did not yield easily to
suppression. Francis II died, and the Queen-mother, Catherine de'
Medici, became regent for her second son, Charles IX. At first Catherine
feared the power of the Guises and encouraged the Huguenots; but Philip
of Spain interfered here as everywhere in the Catholic behalf. A civil
war broke out in 1562; and for over a generation France, divided against
herself, became the theatre of repeated conflicts and savage massacres.
She had no thought to give to other lands.
The first of her chiefs to be assassinated was Francis of Guise, the
great Catholic leader and general, shot by a Huguenot. Next the
Catholics attempted the murder of Coligny. They failed at first, and
Catherine de' Medici, who by this time had embraced fully the Catholic
cause, planned the awful massacre of St.
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