From 1560 until his death in 1574, Charles IX (Charles Maximilien; 27 June 1550 – 30 May 1574) King of France. Following the death of his brother Francis II in 1560, he ascended the French throne and so became the penultimate House of Valois king.

Religious Turmoil, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and Charles IX’s Legacy

Decades of conflict between Catholics and Protestants reached a climax during Charles’ rule. Following the Vassy mass murder in 1562, civil and religious war erupted between the two sides. In a last-ditch effort to unite his people, Charles planned the marriage of his sister Margaret to Henry of Navarre, a prominent Protestant lord in the line of succession to the French throne. In 1572 after numerous failed attempts at broking peace. Though his actual participation is still under dispute, Charles oversaw the slaughter of many Huguenot leaders who arrived in Paris for the royal wedding in response to popular anger against this policy of conciliation and at the encouragement of his mother Catherine de’ Medici.

The Huguenot movement suffered greatly from this tragedy, sometimes referred to as the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and religious civil war soon started once more. Ordering the siege of La Rochelle, Charles aimed to profit on the chaos among the Huguenots, but he unable seize the Protestant stronghold.

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Charles’ mother, a passionate Roman Catholic who first backed a policy of relative religious tolerance, had a big impact on many of his choices. Following the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, he started to back Huguenot persecution. But the event tormented Charles for the rest of his life. Its experts believe it led to his mental and physical health to worsen over the next two years. Charles died of TB in 1574 without a valid male heir. His brother Henry III succeeded him and established the House of Bourbon as the new French royal dynasty with his own death in 1589 without issue allowing Henry of Navarre to ascend to the French throne as Henry IV.

Born in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 27 June 1550, Charles Maximilien of France. Third son of King Henry II of France,Of 10 children born to the royal couple. He was the fifth.Born Duke of Angoulême, he was created Duke of Orléans upon the death of his second son. Louis whose death in infancy on October 24, 1550, had occurred under style. Under the direction of Diane de Poitiers, the governor and governess of the royal children. Claude d’Urfé and Françoise d’Humières nurtured the royal children.

Henry Carey handed Charles the Garter Order on May 14, 1564.

Charles’ elder brother, King Francis II, succeeded his father in 1559.1560 saw the death of Francis II. Originally acting as regent for her young son, the ten-year-old Charles was instantly crowned king on December 5, 1560. The Privy Council named his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, governor of France (gouvernante de France), with broad powers. Charles was consecrated in the Reims cathedral in May 1561. Appointed Lieutenant-General of France, Antoine of Bourbon was husband to Queen Jeanne III of Navarre and himself in line to the French throne.

A group of Huguenot lords at Amboise had intended in 1560 to attempt to kidnap King Francis II and capture the Catholic leaders Francis, Duke of Guise, and brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. Ahead of time, the conspiracy was revealed; the Guises were ready and carried out hundreds of Huguenots. Case of Protestant iconoclasm and Catholic reprisals came next.

The regent Catherine tried to foster reconciliation at the Colloquy at Poissy and, after that failed, made several concessions to the Huguenots in the Edict of Saint-Germain in January 1562. Nonetheless, the Massacre of Vassy, perpetrated on 1 March 1562. When the Duke 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 the French Wars of Religion. Louis of Bourbon, Prince of Condé, brother of the Lieutenant-General and the suspected architect of the Amboise 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 the Loire 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 at Rouen, Dreux, and Orléans, the regent mediated a truce and issued the Edict of Amboise (1563).

Four years of an unstable “armed peace” followed the war, during which Catherine brought the factions together for the effective attempt to recover Le Havre from the English.Following this triumph. Charles announced his legal majority in August 1563, therefore formally terminating the regency. Still Catherine kept playing a major political role and often dominated her son. The King and his mother started their great tour of France from Fontainebleau in March 1564. Their two-year trip took them via Bar, Lyon, Salon-de- Provence (where they visited Nostradamus). Carcassonne, Tulouse (where the King and his younger brother Henry were confirmed), Bayonne, La Rochelle, and Mouls. Charles IX issued the Edict of Roussillon on this journey, standardising 1 January as France’s first day of the year.

War again broke out in 1567 after Charles added 6,000 Swiss mercenaries to his personal guards. Huguenots, fearing a Catholic attack was imminent, tried to abduct the king at Meaux, seized various cities, and massacred Catholics at Nîmes in an action known as the Michelade. The Battle of Saint-Denis resulted in a Huguenot defeat and the death of Anne de Montmorency. The royal commander-in-chief, and the short war ended in 1568 with the Peace of Longjumeau. The privileges granted to Protestants were widely opposed, however, leading to their cancellation and the resumption of war. The Dutch Republic, England and Navarre intervened on the Protestant side, while Spain, Tuscany and Pope Pius V supported the Catholics. Finally, the royal debt and the King’s desire to seek a peaceful solution led to yet another truce. The Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in August 1570, which again granted concessions to the Huguenots.

Charles wed Elisabeth of Austria on November 26, 1570; he had one daughter, Marie Elisabeth. With his mistress, Marie Touchet, Charles fathered an illegitimate son called Charles, Duke of Angoulême in 1573.

Following the end of the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1570. The monarch came under more and more the influence of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. Who had replaced the dead Prince of Condé as Huguenot commander following the Battle of Jarnac in 1569. But Catherine grew more and more terrified of Coligny’s unbridled authority, particularly given he was negotiating an alliance with England and the Netherlands. Henry, Duke of Guise, likewise despised Coligny since he claimed the Admiral had ordered the murder of his father, Francis of Guise, at the siege of Orléans in 1563.

A marriage between Charles’ sister Margaret of Valois and Henry of Navarre, the future King Henry IV. Who was at that time heir to the kingdom of Navarre and one of the most prominent Huguenots, was planned during the peace settlement. For the wedding, which was scheduled for August 18, 1572, many Huguenot nobles—including Admiral de Coligny. Thubbed into Paris A unsuccessful attempt on Coligny’s life on August 22 caused anxiety in the city since both visiting Huguenots and Parisian Catholics were afraid of an attack by the other side.

Under similar circumstances, the Duke of Guise killed Coligny at his apartments in early morning on August 24, 1572, seeking revenge for his father. Parisians disfigured Coligny’s body when it was tossed onto the street. Then the mob activity turned into the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, a methodical killing of Huguenots scheduled for five days. Henry of Navarre promised to become Catholic, therefore escaping execution. The unrest crept into several French cities over the next few weeks. All told, Paris and the provinces claimed up to 10,000 Huguenots dead.

Though the atrocities undermined Huguenot authority, they also stoked war, which only stopped until the Edict of Boulogne in 1573, therefore granting Huguenot pardon and limited religious freedom. But the year 1574 witnessed successful Huguenot uprisings in Normandy, Poitou, the Rhône valley. Saint-Germain as well as a failed Huguenot coup that prepared the stage for still another cycle of war.

The king’s brittle mental and physical constitution suffered greatly following the tragedy. His emotions went from pride in the scope of the massacre to exclamations that the dead Huguenots’ screams continued to ring in his ears. Frantically, he blamed alternately himself – “What blood shed! What murders?” he asked his nurse. “What terrible advise I have followed? God, pardon me; I am lost! Lost!” – or his mother – “Who but you is the source of all of this? God’s blood; you are the reason for all!” Catherine said she had a madman for a son.

Charles’s physical state, leaning towards tuberculosis, worsened to the point that his hoarse coughing turned bloody by spring of 1574 and his haemorrhages grew more severe.

Age 23, Charles IX passed away at the Château de Vincennes on May 30, 1574. Their mother Catherine resumed the regency until Henry, Duke of Anjou, returned from Poland. Henry having lately been chosen King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and was abroad from France.

Long after his death, in 1625, Charles’s hunting book La Chasse Royale was published. For anyone fascinated in hound and hunting history, it is a priceless source.