Editing Catherine de' Medici (section)

===Reign of Charles IX===
[[File:Bemberg Fondation Toulouse - Portrait de Charles IX - François Clouet - Inv.1012.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Charles IX of France]], after [[François Clouet]], c.&nbsp;1565. The Venetian ambassador Giovanni Michiel described Charles as "an admirable child, with fine eyes, gracious movements, though he is not robust. He favours physical exercise that is too violent for his health, for he suffers from shortness of breath".]]

Charles IX was ten years old at the time of his royal consecration, during which he cried. At first Catherine kept him very close to her, and even slept in his chamber. She presided over his council, decided policy, and controlled state business and patronage. However, she was never in a position to control the country as a whole, which was on the brink of civil war. In many parts of France the rule of nobles held sway rather than that of the crown. The challenges Catherine faced were complex and, in some ways, difficult for her to comprehend as a foreigner.<ref>Sutherland, ''Ancien Régime'', 28.</ref>

She summoned church leaders from both sides to attempt to solve their doctrinal differences. Despite her optimism, the resulting [[Colloquy of Poissy]] ended in failure on 13 October 1561, dissolving itself without her permission.<ref>Manetsch, 22.</ref> Catherine failed because she saw the religious divide only in political terms. In the words of historian R. J. Knecht, "she underestimated the strength of religious conviction, imagining that all would be well if only she could get the party leaders to agree".<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 80.</ref> In January 1562, Catherine issued the tolerant [[Edict of Saint-Germain]] in a further attempt to build bridges with the Protestants.<ref>Knecht, ''Renaissance France'', 311; Sutherland, ''Ancien Régime'', 11–12. The edict, also known as the Edict of Toleration and the Edict of January, was significant for effectively recognising the existence of Protestant churches and permitting their worship outside city walls.</ref> On 1 March 1562, however, in an incident known as the [[Massacre of Vassy]], the Duke of Guise and his men attacked worshipping Huguenots in a barn at [[Wassy|Vassy]], killing 74 and wounding 104.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 87.</ref> Guise, who called the massacre "a regrettable accident", was cheered as a hero in the streets of Paris while the Huguenots called for revenge. The massacre lit the fuse that sparked the [[French Wars of Religion]]. For the next thirty years, France found itself in a state of either civil war or armed truce.<ref>Sutherland, ''Secretaries of State'', 140.</ref>

Within a month [[Louis, Prince of Condé (1530–1569)|Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé]], and [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Admiral Gaspard de Coligny]] had raised an army of 1,800. They formed an alliance with England and seized town after town in France. Catherine met Coligny, but he refused to back down. She therefore told him: "Since you rely on your forces, we will show you ours".<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 89.</ref> The royal army struck back quickly and laid siege to Huguenot-held [[Rouen]]. Catherine visited the deathbed of [[Antoine of Navarre|Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre]], after he was fatally wounded by an [[arquebus]] shot. Catherine insisted on visiting the field herself and when warned of the dangers laughed, "My courage is as great as yours".<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 90.</ref> The Catholics took Rouen, but their triumph was short-lived. On 18 February 1563, a spy called [[Jean de Poltrot|Poltrot de Méré]] fired an arquebus into the back of the [[Francis, Duke of Guise|Duke of Guise]], at the siege of Orléans. The murder triggered an aristocratic [[feud|blood feud]] that complicated the French civil wars for years to come.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 91; Carroll, 126; Sutherland, ''Ancien Régime'', 17.</ref> Catherine, however, was delighted with the death of her ally. "If Monsieur de Guise had perished sooner", she told the Venetian ambassador, "peace would have been achieved more quickly".<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 91–92.</ref> On 19 March 1563, the [[Edict of Amboise]], also known as the Edict of Pacification, ended the war. Catherine now rallied both Huguenot and Catholic forces to retake [[Le Havre]] from the English.

====Huguenots====
On 17 August 1563, Charles IX was declared of age at the [[Parlement]] of Rouen, but he was never able to rule on his own and showed little interest in government.<ref name="Sutherland, Ancien Régime, 20"/> Catherine decided to launch a drive to enforce the [[Edict of Amboise]] and revive loyalty to the crown. To this end, she set out with Charles and the court on a [[royal entry|progress]] around France that lasted from January 1564 until May 1565.<ref>Sutherland, ''Ancien Régime'', 15.</ref> Catherine held talks with [[Jeanne d'Albret]], the Protestant queen regnant of Navarre (and the wife of [[Antoine de Bourbon]]) at [[Mâcon]] and [[Nérac]]. She also met her daughter [[Elisabeth of Valois|Elisabeth]] at [[Bayonne]] near the Spanish border, amidst lavish [[Catherine de' Medici's court festivals|court festivities]]. [[Philip II of Spain|Philip&nbsp;II]] excused himself from the occasion. He sent the [[Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba|Duke of Alba]] to tell Catherine to scrap the Edict of Amboise and to find punitive solutions to the problem of heresy.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 104, 107–108.</ref>

In 1566, through the ambassador to the [[Ottoman Empire]], [[Guillaume de Grandchamp de Grantrie]], and because of a long-standing [[Franco-Ottoman alliance]], Charles and Catherine proposed to the Ottoman Court a plan to resettle French [[Huguenots]] and French and German [[Lutherans]] in Ottoman-controlled [[Moldavia]], in order to create a military colony and a buffer against the [[Habsburg]]. This plan also had the added advantage of removing the Huguenots from France, but it failed to interest the Ottomans.<ref name="Faroqhi">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-m8mind_TVIC&pg=PA37|title=The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it|first=Suraiya|last=Faroqhi|page=37|date=2006|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|isbn=978-1845111229 |via=Google Books}}</ref>

On 27 September 1567, in a swoop known as the [[Surprise of Meaux]], Huguenot forces attempted to ambush the king, triggering renewed civil war.<ref>Wood, 17.</ref> Taken unawares, the court fled to Paris in disarray.<ref>Sutherland, ''Secretaries of State'', 147.</ref> The war was ended by the [[Peace of Longjumeau]] of 22–23 March 1568, but civil unrest and bloodshed continued.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 118.</ref> The Surprise of Meaux marked a turning point in Catherine's policy towards the Huguenots. From that moment, she abandoned compromise for a policy of repression.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 120.</ref> She told the Venetian ambassador in June 1568 that all one could expect from Huguenots was deceit, and she praised the Duke of Alba's reign of terror in the Netherlands, where [[Calvinist]]s and rebels were put to death in the thousands.

[[File:Jeanne-albret-navarre.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Jeanne d'Albret]], Queen of Navarre, by [[François Clouet]], 1570. She wrote to her son, Henry, in 1572: "All she [Catherine] does is mock me, and afterwards tells others exactly the opposite of what I have said&nbsp;... she denies everything, laughing in my face&nbsp;... she treats me so shamefully that the patience I manage to maintain surpasses that of [[Griselda (folklore)|Griselda]]".<ref>Quoted by Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 149.</ref>]]

The Huguenots retreated to the fortified stronghold of [[La Rochelle]] on the west coast, where Jeanne d'Albret and her fifteen-year-old son, [[Henry IV of France|Henry of Bourbon]], joined them.<ref>Bryson, 204.</ref> "We have come to the determination to die, all of us", Jeanne wrote to Catherine, "rather than abandon our God, and our religion."<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 132.</ref> Catherine called Jeanne, whose decision to rebel posed a dynastic threat to the Valois, "the most shameless woman in the world". Nevertheless, the [[Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye]], signed on 8 August 1570 because the royal army ran out of cash, conceded wider toleration to the Huguenots than ever before.<ref>Wood, 28.</ref>

Catherine looked to further Valois interests by grand dynastic marriages. In 1570, Charles IX married [[Elisabeth of Austria (1554-1592)|Elisabeth of Austria]], daughter of [[Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor]]. Catherine was also eager for a match between one of her two youngest sons and [[Elizabeth I of England]].<ref>Holt, 77.</ref> After Catherine's daughter Elisabeth died in childbirth in 1568, she had touted her youngest daughter [[Margaret of Valois|Margaret]] as a bride for [[Philip II of Spain]]. Now she sought a marriage between Margaret and [[Henry III of Navarre]], Jeanne's son, with the aim of uniting Valois and Bourbon interests. Margaret, however, was secretly involved with [[Henry I, Duke of Guise|Henry of Guise]], the son of the late Duke of Guise. When Catherine found this out, she had her daughter brought from her bed. Catherine and the king then beat her, ripping her nightclothes and pulling out handfuls of her hair.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 135.</ref>

Catherine pressed Jeanne d'Albret to attend court. Writing that she wanted to see Jeanne's children, she promised not to harm them. Jeanne replied: "Pardon me if, reading that, I want to laugh, because you want to relieve me of a fear that I've never had. I've never thought that, as they say, you eat little children."<ref>Bryson, 282.</ref> When Jeanne did come to court, Catherine pressured her hard,<ref>Jeanne d'Albret wrote to her son, Henry: "I am not free to talk with either the King or Madame, only the Queen Mother, who goads me [''me traite á la fourche'']&nbsp;... You have doubtless realized that their main object, my son, is to separate you from God, and from me." Quoted by Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 148–149.</ref> playing on Jeanne's hopes for her beloved son. Jeanne finally agreed to the marriage between her son and Margaret, so long as Henry could remain a Huguenot. When Jeanne arrived in Paris to buy clothes for the wedding, she was taken ill and died on 9 June 1572, aged forty-three. Huguenot writers later accused Catherine of murdering her with poisoned gloves.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 151. An autopsy revealed tuberculosis and an abscess.</ref> The wedding took place on 18 August 1572 at [[Notre-Dame de Paris|Notre-Dame]], Paris.

====St. Bartholomew's Day massacre====
Three days later, [[Gaspard II de Coligny|Admiral Coligny]] was walking back to his rooms from the Louvre when a shot rang out from a house and wounded him in the hand and arm.<ref>Sutherland, ''Massacre of St Bartholomew'', 313.</ref> A smoking arquebus was discovered in a window, but the culprit had made his escape from the rear of the building on a waiting horse.<ref>Holt, 83. The investigators traced the house and horse to the Guises and claimed to have found evidence that the would-be killer was [[Charles de Louviers de Maurevert]].</ref> Coligny was carried to his lodgings at the Hôtel de Béthisy, where the surgeon [[Ambroise Paré]] removed a bullet from his elbow and amputated a damaged finger with a pair of scissors. Catherine, who was said to have received the news without emotion, made a tearful visit to Coligny and promised to punish his attacker. Many historians have blamed Catherine for the attack on Coligny. Others point to the Guise family or a Spanish-papal plot to end Coligny's influence on the king.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 154–157. Coligny was lobbying the king to intervene against the empire in the Netherlands.<br />• The Duke of Anjou was later reported as saying that he and Catherine had planned the assassination with Anne d'Este, who longed to avenge her husband, [[Francis, Duke of Guise]].<br />• For an overview of historians' various interpretations, see Holt, 83–84.</ref> Whatever the truth, the bloodbath that followed was soon beyond the control of Catherine or any other leader.<ref>Pettegree, 159–160.</ref>

The [[St. Bartholomew's Day massacre]], which began two days later, has stained Catherine's reputation ever since.<ref name="Pettegree, 154"/> There is reason to believe she was party to the decision when on 23 August Charles IX is said to have ordered, "Then kill them all! Kill them all!"<ref>Holt, 84.<br />• The memoirs of [[Gaspard de Saulx|Marshal Tavannes]], edited by his son and published around 1620 (Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 122, 158), state that Catherine had summoned a war council in the [[Tuileries Palace|Tuileries Gardens]] (so as not to be overheard) to plan the next move: "Because the attempt on the Admiral would cause a war, she, and the rest of us, agreed that it would be advisable to bring battle in Paris". It is almost certain, however, that when Charles gave the order "Kill them all!", he meant those drawn up on a list by Catherine, and not, as has often been claimed, all Huguenots.</ref> Historians have suggested that Catherine and her advisers expected a Huguenot uprising to avenge the attack on Coligny. They chose therefore to strike first and wipe out the Huguenot leaders while they were still in Paris after the wedding.<ref>Holt, 84.</ref>

The slaughter in Paris lasted for almost a week. It spread to many parts of France, where it persisted into the autumn. In the words of historian [[Jules Michelet]], "St Bartholomew was not a day, but a season".<ref>Quoted by Morris, 252.</ref> On 29 September, when Navarre knelt before the altar as a Roman Catholic, having converted to avoid being killed, Catherine turned to the ambassadors and laughed. From this time dates the legend of the wicked Italian queen. Huguenot writers branded Catherine a scheming Italian, who had acted on [[Niccolò Machiavelli|Machiavelli]]'s principles to kill all enemies in one blow.<ref>Knecht, ''Catherine de' Medici'', 163–164; Heller, 117; Manetsch, 60–61. The [[misogyny]] and anti-Italianism in Huguenot "histories" proved seductive not only to Protestants but to Catholics seeking a [[scapegoat]] for France's woes.</ref>