kamillamacaulay: History meme - CATHERINE DE MEDICI (1547-1559) was queen of France and mother
kamillamacaulay: History meme - CATHERINE DE MEDICI (1547-1559) was queen of France and mother of the last three Valois kings of France. Catherine was born in 1519, in Florence, the daughter of the Florentine ruler Lorenzo the Magnificent. In 1533 she married the duc d’Orléans, who became king of France in 1547 as Henry II. She had little power during the reign of her husband and that of her first son, Francis II, but on Francis’s death in 1560 the government fell entirely into her hands. She ruled as regent for her second son, Charles IX, until he reached his majority in 1563, and she continued to dominate him for the duration of his reign. In her determination to preserve royal power at any cost, Catherine devoted her energy to maintaining a balance between the Protestant group known as the Huguenots, led by the French military leader Gaspard de Coligny, and the Roman Catholics, led by the powerful house of Guise. During the religious civil wars that began in 1562, Catherine supported the Catholics; sometimes, political expediency led her to switch her support to the Huguenots. In 1572 Catherine arranged the marriage of her daughter, Margaret of Valois, to the Protestant king Henry of Navarre, who later became Henry IV of France. Later in 1572 she found the growing Huguenot influence over her son Charles IX (who was king at the time) frightening. Accordingly, she instigated the plot to assassinate the Protestant leader Coligny that led to his death and the deaths of an estimated 50,000 other Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572). Apart from her political role, Catherine was also a patron of the arts. Her personal library, containing numerous rare manuscripts, was renowned in Renaissance France. She died in Blois in 1589. -- source link