Francis II of France

Francis II (french: François II; 19 January 1544 – 5 December 1560) was King of France from 1559 to 1560. He was also King consort of Scotland as a result of his marriage to Mary, Queen of Scots, from 1558 until his death in 1560.

He ascended the throne of France at age 15 after the accidental death of his father, Henry II, in 1559. His short reign was dominated by the first stirrings of the French Wars of Religion.

Although the royal age of majority was 14, his mother, Catherine de' Medici, entrusted the reins of government to his wife Mary's uncles from the House of Guise, staunch supporters of the Catholic cause. They were unable to help Catholics in Scotland against the progressing Scottish Reformation, however, and the Auld Alliance was dissolved.

Francis was succeeded by two of his brothers in turn, both of whom were also unable to reduce tensions between Protestants and Catholics.

Childhood and education (1544–1559)

Francis was born 11 years after his parents' wedding. The long delay in producing an heir may have been due to his father's repudiation of his mother in favour of his mistress Diane de Poitiers, but this repudiation was mitigated by Diane's insistence that Henry spend his nights with Catherine. Francis was at first raised at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He was baptised on 10 February 1544 at the Chapelle des Trinitaires in Fontainebleau. His godparents were Francis I (who knighted him during the ceremony), Pope Paul III, and his great-aunt Marguerite de Navarre. He became governor of Languedoc in 1546 and Dauphin of France in 1547, when his grandfather Francis I died.

Francis's governor and governess were Jean d'Humières and Françoise d'Humières, and his tutor was Pierre Danès, a Greek scholar originally from Naples. He learned dancing from Virgilio Bracesco and fencing from Hector of Mantua.

King Henry II, his father, arranged a remarkable betrothal for his son to the five year old Mary, Queen of Scots, in the Châtillon agreement of 27 January 1548, when Francis was only four years old. Mary had been crowned Queen of Scotland in Stirling Castle on 9 September 1543 at the age of nine months, following the death of her father James V. Mary was a granddaughter of Claude, Duke of Guise, a very influential figure at the court of France. Once the marriage agreement was formally ratified, the five-year-old Mary was sent to France to be raised at court until the marriage. She was tall for her age and eloquent, and Francis was unusually short and stuttered. Henry II said, "from the very first day they met, my son and she got on as well together as if they had known each other for a long time".

On 24 April 1558, Francis and Mary married in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It was a union that could have given the future kings of France the throne of Scotland and also a claim to the throne of England through Mary's great-grandfather, King Henry VII of England. As a result of the marriage, Francis became king consort in Scotland until his death. The marriage produced no children, and may never even have been consummated, possibly due to Francis's illnesses or undescended testicles.

Becoming king

A little over a year after his marriage, on 10 July 1559, Francis became king at age 15 upon the death of Henry II, who had been killed in a jousting accident. On 21 September 1559, Francis II was crowned king in Reims by his uncle Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. The crown was so heavy that nobles had to hold it in place for him. The court then moved to the Loire Valley, where the Château de Blois and the surrounding forests were the new king's home. Francis II took the sun for his emblem and for his mottoes ''Spectanda fides'' (This is how faith should be respected) and ''Lumen rectis'' (Light for the righteous).

According to French law, Francis was an adult who did not need a regent but since he was young, inexperienced, and in fragile health, he delegated his power to his wife's uncles from the noble House of Guise: Francis, Duke of Guise, and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. His mother, Catherine de' Medici, agreed to this delegation. On the first day of his reign, Francis II instructed his four ministers to take orders from his mother, but since she was still in mourning for her husband, she directed them to the House of Guise.

The two eldest brothers of the House of Guise had already had major roles in the reign of Henry II. Francis, Duke of Guise, was one of the most famous military commanders in the royal army, and the Cardinal of Lorraine had participated in the most important negotiations and matters of the kingdom. After Francis II ascended the throne, the two brothers split the custody of the kingdom: Duke Francis became head of the army and Charles the head of finance, justice, and diplomacy.

The rise of the House of Guise worked to the detriment of its old rival, Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France. At the new king's suggestion, he left the court for his estates to get some rest. Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of the previous king, was asked not to appear at court. Her protégé Jean Bertrand had to surrender his title Keeper of the Seals of France to chancellor François Olivier, whom Diane had removed from this position a few years earlier. It was a palace revolution.

The transition has been described as brutal, but while it no doubt caused the Constable considerable frustration, there were no confrontations or reprisals. Montmorency remained tied to power. As soon as the day after the death of the king, he was present at the council meeting and was also at the coronation. Later he supported the repression of the Amboise conspiracy of 1560, notably by going to the Parlement to communicate to its members the measures taken by the king. In July 1560 he came back to court and to the council, although in a much less flamboyant manner than before. The Guises were now the new masters of the court. The king granted them numerous favours and privileges, one of the most significant being the title of Grand Master of France, a title until then held by the son of the Constable, François de Montmorency.

Reign (1559–1560)

Domestic policy

Kingdom on the death of Henri II

With the
peace of Cateau Cambresis in 1559, the crown had been left on the cusp of bankruptcy. The public deficit stood at 40 million livres, of which 19 million was owed immediately. The interest rates on these loans were not insignificant, as lenders had grown wary of the crowns inability to pay over the years and this lack of confidence would only be furthered with Henry II's death. Henri's religious policy had also proved ineffective, his persecutory edicts failing to stop the growth of Calvinism in France. Religious violence was increasing, with attacks in Paris, first in response to the loss at the Battle of Saint-Quentin (1557) and then around the trial of the heretic ''parlementaire'' Anne du Bourg.

Guise administration

From the beginning of their assumption of government, the Guises faced opposition from several factions. Their rise to dominance had come at the expense of Anne de Montmorency and the House of Bourbon who resented their total ascendency to varying degrees.

The political decisions of the government were also contested. To try and set about fixing the realms finances, they embarked upon an aggressive campaign of cost cutting, scaling down the size of the army from its height in the wars, and deferring payments to the troops, who angrily protested against the Guises. This would not however be enough, so they were moved to raise forced loans from the provinces, such as 800,000 livres from Normandy, to cover shortfalls. They further suppressed Venal office.

Forced loans would continue into 1560, with 100,000 crowns being demanded of the Parlement and merchants of Paris in October 1560, shortly after the convoking of the estates had taken place.

In religion, the Guises initially continued the repression of Protestantism started by King Henry II. From July 1559 to February 1560 they would pass four more persecutory edicts, including such provisions as the razing of any house which a Protestant meeting occurred in, and the prosecution of landlords who knowingly harboured heretics as tenants.

Amboise conspiracy

Opposition to the Guise administration which had been bubbling under the surface during Francis II's reign, coalesced around two primary axes. Firstly there was religious opposition from Protestants such as La Roche Chandieu, secondly there was opposition from military men of the minor gentry, such as Castlenau; these groups came together under the leadership of the seigneur de la Renaudie to form a conspiracy to seize the king and arrest or kill the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duke de Guise. The group planned to push for Antoine of Navarre to lead them, and become a 'regent' for Francis II. When he proved uninterested in their plot, they moved to the more dubious claim of his brother Condé. He was more receptive to the plan.

As details of the conspiracy were finalised and arms raised for the day, rumours began to leak out to the court of what was happening. Finally on 12 February while the court was travelling to Amboise, the Duke's secretary arrived, bringing a lawyer who had got cold feet about the direction of the conspiracy. The secretary revealed all the details to the Guise and Francis, including the name of the leader, La Renaudie.

With this knowledge to hand, and suspecting the involvement of Condé, the Guise summoned much of the high nobility to Amboise, and began fortifying the castle in preparation. In March the court struck, arresting a band of the conspirators who had assembled to discuss the delivery of money for the operation. Several days later a larger host of soldiers were bloodily repulsed from Amboise. On 17 March, Francis II made the duke of Guise the Lieutenant General of the kingdom, giving him final authority for all military matters. Realising the motley nature of the conspiracy, a mixture of fairly harmless heretics and hardened military men, an amnesty was declared on 17 March for those who laid down their arms and went home within 48 hours. Operations would continue as the court began to fan out troops into the countryside to mop up stragglers.

The court was left with a tricky situation as to how to deal with those captured alive. Interrogations began, attempting to prove a connection between Condé and the conspiracy. Condé denounced accusations thrown at him as the work of 'scum' and more pressingly for honour in aristocratic circles, propagated by 'liars.' The Queen mother assured him that no one doubted his innocence. However on 18 April his chambers were raided while he was attending the kings levée. Unable to find proof however, he was allowed to leave court. Condé hurried south, uniting with his brother Antoine in the south-west.

For the military conspirators who had remained under arms there would be little mercy, many would be executed in the following days, and hanged from the battlements as a warning. To the shock of members of the court, this included men of 'good birth' such as the baron de Castlenau. Nevertheless the court was conscious its religious policy had been a failure, and as early as 8 March, the Edict of Amboise was propagated, offering a retroactive amnesty for those convicted of heresy, on the condition they live as good Catholics. This began the distinction between the crimes of heresy and the crime of sedition, which had during the reign of Henri II been treated as a unified crime.

Amboise in the provinces

Whilst the rebellion outside the castle of Amboise may have been crushed, the situation was deteriorating in the provinces. Troops raised for the conspiracy in Dauphine, Provence, and the Lyonnais were left without central direction, creating the nucleus of guerrilla armies that caused chaos in their localities. Beyond the planned regional elements of Amboise, many Protestants began seizing churches independently, and engaging in acts of unauthorised iconoclasm, as in Rouen and Provence. During the summer, this rebellious movement gained intensity; several cities in southern France were by now engulfed in revolt.

The climax of the regional disorder came in the early Autumn, where on 4 September in Lyon, a large stockpile of weapons was discovered in the city of Lyon by the authorities, after a brief firefight with a group of Protestants the weapons were seized, narrowly foiling a planned coup in the city by several days. The narrow foiling of this conspiracy only further enraged the king and his administration who suspected the involvement of Condé in this affair. This was confirmed when an agent of his carrying papers that implicated him was intercepted.

The king's reaction was fierce and determined: he mobilised his troops, sent the army to the rebellious areas to quell the sedition, and ordered governors to return to their positions. To isolate the renegade prince's of the blood further the administration created two super-governorships giving one to Charles, Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon and the other to Louis, Duke of Montpensier, thus divorcing their interests from those of their cousins. Heavily outnumbered Condé and Navarre decided making a stand and fighting would be pointless, and they departed their southern regional powerbase at the kings request to attend the forthcoming Estates General.

Romorantin and the Estates General

This distinction between heresy and sedition, represented a new religious policy for the monarchy of France. While there was to be no allowance for heretical worship, it was hoped this would avoid needless bloodshed, and reunify the kingdom around the crown. This changing of the political winds was furthered when in April the former Guise client Michel de l'Hôpital became Lord Chancellor of France replacing the ailing François Olivier. This edict denounced the spread of heresy in the kingdom, but also noted the failure of the policies on the 1550s. The edict proposed that going forth trial for heresy would be handled by the ecclesiastical courts instead of the Parlement. This was significant as the ecclesiastical courts lacked the ability to provide death sentences, and while they could technically still refer cases to the Parlements for sentencing, this acted as a de facto abolition of the death penalty for heresy. For more 'seditious' offences, such as heretical preaching, pamphlet producing and services, the ''Présidaux'' courts would have jurisdiction.

Conscious that the financial and religious problems of the crown had not yet gone away, and desiring to create a more definitive solution, the Guise oversaw the calling of an Assembly of Notables. Conscious that they were liable to be arrested, Condé and Navarre were not among the leading nobility who attended. Lorraine intended to guide the assembly towards his proposed idea of a national religious council, to reunify the two faiths peacefully, this was however taken off course by Coligny, who presented a petition from the Norman church seeking the right to establish temples. The duke of Guise was infuriated by this proposal, suggesting if two religions were tolerated 'his sword would not remain sheathed for long.' The assembly drew up a reform package of tax ideas, and closed by convening the Estates General to whom this package would be presented. It was initially intended to host this at Meaux before a location change to Orléans