Francis II of France

• 1. Introduction

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  Francis II of France was fifteen years old when Henry II died in a jousting accident on the 10th of July 1559. The French throne passed suddenly to a teenager who was fragile, inexperienced, and had never governed anything larger than a province. At his coronation in Reims two months later, the crown was so heavy that nobles had to hold it in place above his head. That single image captures something essential about his reign: the weight far exceeded the boy wearing it.

  Over the seventeen months that followed, France faced a public debt running to 40 million livres, the first stirrings of religious civil war, and the slow unraveling of its oldest foreign alliance. Francis stuttered, stood unusually short, and held no real political power. How a young king with so little standing of his own navigated those pressures is one of the stranger stories of the French Renaissance.

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• 2. A Childhood Arranged

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  Francis was baptised on the 10th of February 1544 at the Chapelle des Trinitaires in Fontainebleau. Among his godparents were Francis I, who knighted the infant during the ceremony itself, Pope Paul III, and his great-aunt Marguerite de Navarre. By 1546 he held the governorship of Languedoc; in 1547, when his grandfather Francis I died, the three-year-old became Dauphin of France.

  Pierre Danès, a Greek scholar originally from Naples, served as his tutor. Virgilio Bracesco taught the young dauphin dancing; Hector of Mantua taught him fencing. His governor was Jean d'Humières and his governess was Françoise d'Humières. Francis was raised primarily at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

  King Henry II arranged a betrothal between his four-year-old son and the five-year-old Mary of Scotland on the 27th of January 1548, under the Châtillon agreement. Mary had already been crowned Queen of Scotland at Stirling Castle on the 9th of September 1543, when she was just nine months old. Her grandfather Claude, Duke of Guise, was among the most influential figures at the French court. Once the agreement was ratified, Mary was sent to France to be raised alongside the young dauphin.

  Henry II later recalled their first meeting in his own words: '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.' Mary was tall for her age and eloquent.

  On the 24th of April 1558, Francis and Mary married in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The union gave the French crown a stake in the Scottish throne. Through Mary's descent from King Henry VII of England, Francis also gained a potential claim to the English throne. The marriage produced no children and may never have been consummated, possibly due to Francis's illnesses. The Scottish dimension of this union would soon draw France into a losing contest far to the north.

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• 3. The Guises Take Power

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  His coronation was conducted on the 21st of September 1559 by his wife's uncle, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. Francis took the sun as his personal emblem and adopted two Latin mottoes: Spectanda fides and Lumen rectis, which translate as 'This is how faith should be respected' and 'Light for the righteous.' The royal court moved to the Loire Valley, where the Château de Blois and its surrounding forests became the king's principal residence.

  French law placed the age of majority at fourteen, so Francis technically required no regent. But his youth, inexperience, and fragile health led him to delegate real authority to his wife's uncles from the House of Guise. Francis, Duke of Guise, took command of the army; his brother Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine, assumed control of finance, justice, and diplomacy. On his first day as king, Francis II instructed his ministers to take orders from his mother, Catherine de' Medici. Still in mourning for Henry II, she directed them instead to the House of Guise.

  Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France and the dominant military figure of the previous reign, was invited to leave court and rest at his own estates. Diane de Poitiers, the previous king's mistress and a major court power, was asked not to appear at all. Her protégé Jean Bertrand was forced to surrender the title Keeper of the Seals to the chancellor François Olivier, whom Diane had herself removed from that position years earlier.

  The king also granted the Guises the title of Grand Master of France, which had previously been held by François de Montmorency, son of the displaced Constable. The men pushed aside by this realignment, above all the princes of the House of Bourbon, would not accept it quietly. Their resentment would soon find its most dramatic expression at a castle on the Loire called Amboise.

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• 4. Conspiracy at Amboise

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  From July 1559 to February 1560, the Guises issued four more edicts against Protestants, including a provision allowing the razing of any house where a Protestant meeting occurred. Landlords who knowingly sheltered heretics faced prosecution as well. The measures failed to stop the growth of Calvinism and instead pushed opposition toward armed conspiracy.

  The seigneur de la Renaudie united two distinct strands of opposition. One was Protestant ministers such as La Roche Chandieu; the other was military men from the minor gentry such as Castelnau. Their plan was to seize the king and arrest or kill the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise. They first approached Antoine of Navarre to serve as regent for Francis II, but he showed no interest. They then turned to his brother Condé, who was more receptive.

  On the 12th of February, while the court was travelling toward Amboise, the Duke of Guise's secretary arrived at court. He brought with him a lawyer who had grown uncertain about the conspiracy. The lawyer revealed everything: the identity of La Renaudie, the details of the plan, and the suspected involvement of Condé. The Guises summoned much of the high nobility to Amboise and began fortifying the castle.

  In March, the court moved against the conspirators. A band who had gathered to coordinate the transfer of funds was arrested. A larger armed force was bloodily repulsed from the castle some days later. On the 17th of March, Francis II made the Duke of Guise Lieutenant General of the kingdom, giving him full authority over all military matters. That same day an amnesty was declared for any conspirator who laid down arms and went home within forty-eight hours.

  For those who remained under arms, there was little mercy. Many were executed in the following days and their bodies hung from the battlements as a warning. Among them were men of good birth, including the Baron de Castelnau, which shocked many at court. As early as the 8th of March, before the conspiracy had been fully crushed, the Edict of Amboise was issued. It offered a retroactive amnesty for those convicted of heresy, on condition they live thereafter as good Catholics. This marked the beginning of a formal legal distinction between heresy as a religious offence and sedition as a political crime. Under Henry II, the two had been treated as a single charge.

  In April 1560, Michel de l'Hôpital replaced the ailing François Olivier as Lord Chancellor of France. A humanist Catholic with little appetite for persecution, he pushed for a more moderate approach. He worked alongside the Cardinal of Lorraine, Catherine de' Medici, and Admiral Coligny to advance the new policy. In May 1560 this produced the Edict of Romorantin, transferring heresy trials from the Parlements to the ecclesiastical courts. Since those courts lacked the power to impose death sentences, the edict amounted to a de facto abolition of the death penalty for heresy.

  Admiral Coligny brought underlying tensions to a head at the subsequent Assembly of Notables, presenting a petition from the Norman church seeking the right to establish Protestant temples. The Duke of Guise responded that if two religions were tolerated in the kingdom, 'his sword would not remain sheathed for long.' The assembly called the Estates General to consider a package of tax reforms. In October, Condé was summoned to attend and was promptly arrested on arrival. He was eventually found guilty and given an indeterminate sentence, likely imprisonment at the château of Loches. The Estates General would never complete its work.

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• 5. Scotland Lost

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  A secret clause signed by Mary Stuart before her marriage provided that Scotland would become part of France if the couple died without children. Mary's mother, Marie of Guise, was already serving as regent in Edinburgh. In May 1559 a congregation of Scottish lords organised an uprising and drove the regent and her French councils out of the capital. Taking refuge in the fortress of Dunbar, Marie of Guise appealed for French help, and Francis II and Mary Stuart sent troops at once. By the end of 1559, France had regained control of Scotland.

  Queen Elizabeth I had been offended from the outset of the reign. Francis II and Mary Stuart had added England's arms to their own coat of arms, asserting Mary's claim to the English throne. In January 1560 the English fleet blockaded the port of Leith, which French troops had fortified as a military base. That April, six thousand soldiers and three thousand horsemen arrived from England to support the Scottish lords and began besieging the city.

  France's poor finances and its domestic turmoil meant no reinforcements could be sent north. The king dispatched the Bishop of Valence and Charles de La Rochefoucault, sieur of Randan, to negotiate. They arrived to find themselves treated almost as prisoners. With Marie of Guise shut up in Edinburgh Castle, the French delegates had no realistic alternative. On the 6th of July 1560, they signed the Treaty of Edinburgh, ending French occupation of Scotland. Francis II and Mary Stuart were outraged when presented with the terms and refused to ratify the treaty. They also challenged the legitimacy of the Scottish parliament's decision, made a few weeks later, to establish Protestantism as the state religion of Scotland.

  When Francis II died, France also withdrew from Brazil, Corsica, Tuscany, Savoy, and most of Piedmont. These were positions France had built over four decades of war. Mary Stuart, now a widow, would return to a Protestant Scotland she had never truly governed.

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• 6. Death at Orléans

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  The king's health deteriorated sharply in November 1560, and on the 16th he fainted. Francis II died on the 5th of December 1560 in Orléans, in the department of Loiret, from an ear condition. Physicians later debated whether the underlying cause was mastoiditis, meningitis, or otitis that had progressed into an abscess. Ambroise Paré, the royal surgeon, had considered performing a trepanation. Some Catholics suspected Protestants of having poisoned the king, though the charge was never proved.

  Francis II died childless. His younger brother Charles, then ten years old, succeeded him. On the 21st of December, the royal council named Catherine de' Medici Regent of France. The Guises left the court. Louis, Prince of Condé, who had been jailed and awaiting execution, was freed after negotiations with Catherine.

  On the 23rd of December 1560, Francis II's body was interred in the Basilica of Saint-Denis by the Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon. His two younger brothers, Charles and Henry, each became King of France in turn. Both would prove unable to reduce the tensions between Protestants and Catholics that had defined Francis's reign. Francis himself has since been portrayed on screen by Toby Regbo in the CW drama Reign. George Jaques later took the role in the television series The Serpent Queen.

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