FRANCIS DE LORRAINE DUKE OF GUISE
1519-1563 VALOIS/ROMAN CATHOLIC
Francis was a fervent Catholic and an important military figure. He had served at Boulogne in 1545 and, in 1551 was made Grand Chamberlain of France winning battles against the Holy Roman Emperor and the English. He became a military hero especially after capturing Calais from the English in 1558.
Guise opposed the conciliatory policies of Catherine de Medici towards the Huguenots, and, together with powerful allies, he sought to strengthen the Catholic cause. In 1562 Francis instigated a massacre of Huguenots at Vassy on 1 March. This event marked the beginning of the French Wars of Religion and ignited the religious tensions into armed conflict. The first major battle was at Dreux in December 1562 where Francis swept the Huguenot infantry from the field and then withstood a final Protestant counterattack.
At the siege of Orleans in early 1563, Francis was mortally wounded by a shot fired by a Huguenot assassin. Francis died six days later, actually bleeding to death under the knives of his surgeons. His assassin was tortured and implicated the Huguenot commander, the Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. The Guise family thereafter continued a personal feud with Coligny which exacerbated the religious conflict and culminated in Coligny’s assassination in 1572 as part of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
The Duke of Guise’s assassination (rather than death in combat) was a sign of the deep-seated religious hatred at the heart of the conflict. The imbalance the assassination led to the Treaty of Amboise and an end to the ‘first war’.
The treaty was hastily drawn up and dissatisfactory to all sides. It led to an ‘armed peace’ where both sides continued an armed buildup until the outbreak of the ‘second war’ in 1567 when a group of Huguenots attempted to capture Charles IX in late September.