HENRY III. (1390-1406) king of Castile, called El Doliente, the Sufferer, was the son of John I. of Castile and Leon, and of his wife Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand of Portugal. He was born in 1379. The period of minority was exceptionally anarchical, even for Castile, but as the cities, always the best supporters of the royal authority, were growing in strength, Henry was able to reduce his kingdom to obedience, and, when he took the government into his own hands after 1393, to compel his nobles with comparative ease to surrender the crown lands they had seized. The meeting of the Cortes summoned by him at Madrid in 1394 marked a great epoch in the establishment of a practically despotic royal authority, based on the consent of the commons, who looked to the crown to protect them against the excesses of the nobles. Henry strengthened his position still further by his marriage with Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt and of Constance, elder daughter of Peter the Cruel and Maria de Padilla. This union combined the rival claims of the descendants of Peter and of Henry of Trastamara. The king’s bodily weakness limited his real capacity, and his early death on the 25th of December 1406 cut short the promise of his reign.
HENRY IV. (1453-1474), king of Castile, surnamed the Impotent, or the Spendthrift, was the son of John II. of Castile and Leon, and of his wife, Mary, daughter of Ferdinand I. of Aragon and Sicily. He was born at Valladolid on the 6th of January 1425. The surnames given to this king by his subjects are of much more than usual accuracy. His personal character was one of mere weakness, bodily and mental. Henry was an undutiful son, and his reign was one long period of confusion, marked by incidents of the most ignominious kind. He divorced his first wife Blanche of Navarre in 1453 on the ground of “mutual impotence.” Yet in 1468 he married Joan of Portugal, and when she bore a daughter, first repudiated her as adulterine, and then claimed her for his own. In 1468 he was solemnly deposed in favour of his brother Alphonso, on whose death in the same year his authority was again recognized. The last years of his life were spent in vain endeavours, first to force his half-sister Isabella, afterwards queen, to marry his favourite, the Master of Santiago, and then to exclude her from the throne. Henry died at Madrid on the 12th of December 1474.
HENRY I. (1008-1060), king of France, son of King Robert and his queen, Constance of Aquitaine, and grandson of Hugh Capet, came to the throne upon the death of his father in 1031, although in 1027 he had been anointed king at Reims and associated in the government with his father. His mother, who favoured her younger son Robert, and had retired from court upon Henry’s coronation, formed a powerful league against him, and he was forced to take refuge with Robert II., duke of Normandy. In the civil war which resulted, Henry was able to break up the league of his opponents in 1032. Constance died in 1034, and the rebel brother Robert was given the duchy of Burgundy, thus founding that great collateral line which was to rival the kings of France for three centuries. Henry atoned for this by a reign marked by unceasing struggle against the great barons. From 1033 to 1043 he was involved in a life and death contest with those nobles whose territory adjoined the royal domains, especially with the great house of Blois, whose count, Odo II., had been the centre of the league of Constance, and with the counts of Champagne. Henry’s success in these wars was largely due to the help given him by Robert of Normandy, but upon the accession of Robert’s son William (the Conqueror), Normandy itself became the chief danger. From 1047 to the year of his death, Henry was almost constantly at war with William, who held his own against the king’s formidable leagues and beat back two royal invasions, in 1055 and 1058. Henry’s reign marks the height of feudalism. The Normans were independent of him, with their frontier barely 25 m. west of Paris; to the south his authority was really bounded by the Loire; in the east the count of Champagne was little more than nominally his subject, and the duchy of Burgundy was almost entirely cut off from the king. Yet Henry maintained the independence of the clergy against the pope Leo IX., and claimed Lorraine from the emperor Henry III. In an interview at Ivois, he reproached the emperor with the violation of promises, and Henry III. challenged him to a single combat. According to the German chronicle—which French historians doubt—the king of France declined the combat and fled from Ivois during the night. In 1059 he had his eldest son Philip crowned as joint king, and died the following year. Henry’s first wife was Maud, niece of the emperor Henry III., whom he married in 1043. She died childless in 1044. Historians have sometimes confused her with Maud (or Matilda), the emperor Conrad II.’s daughter, to whom Henry was affianced in 1033, but who died before the marriage. In 1051 Henry married the Russian princess Anne, daughter of Yaroslav I., grand duke of Kiev. She bore him two sons, Philip, his successor, and Hugh the great, count of Vermandois.
See the Historiae of Rudolph Glaber, edited by M. Prou (Paris, 1886); F. Sochnée, Catalogue des actes d’Henri Ier (1907); de Caiz de Saint Aymour, Anne de Russie, reine de France (1896); E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, tome ii. (1901), and the article on Henry I. in La Grande Encyclopédie by M. Prou.
HENRY II. (1519-1559), king of France, the second son of Francis I. and Claude, succeeded to the throne in 1547. When only seven years old he was sent by his father, with his brother the dauphin Francis, as a hostage to Spain in 1526, whence they returned after the conclusion of the peace of Cambrai in 1530. Henry was too young to have carried away any abiding impressions, yet throughout his life his character, dress and bearing were far more Spanish than French. In 1533 his father married him to Catherine de’ Medici, from which match, as he said, Francis hoped to gain great advantage, even though it might be somewhat of a misalliance. In 1536 Henry, hitherto duke of Orleans, became dauphin by the death of his elder brother Francis. From that time he was under the influence of two personages, who dominated him completely for the remainder of his life—Diane de Poitiers, his mistress, and Anne de Montmorency, his mentor. Moreover, his younger brother, Charles of Orleans, who was of a more sprightly temperament, was his father’s favourite; and the rivalry of Diane and the duchesse d’Étampes helped to make still wider the breach between the king and the dauphin. Henry supported the constable Montmorency when he was disgraced in 1541; protested against the treaty of Crépy in 1544; and at the end of the reign held himself completely aloof. His accession in 1547 gave rise to a veritable revolution at the court. Diane, Montmorency and the Guises were all-powerful, and dismissed Cardinal de Tournon, de Longueval, the duchesse d’Étampes and all the late king’s friends and officials. At that time Henry was twenty-eight years old. He was a robust man, and inherited his father’s love of violent exercise; but his character was weak and his intelligence mediocre, and he had none of the superficial and brilliant gifts of Francis I. He was cold, haughty, melancholy and dull. He was a bigoted Catholic, and showed to the Protestants even less mercy than his father. During his reign the royal authority became more severe and more absolute than ever. Resistance to the financial extortions of the government was cruelly chastised, and the “Chambre Ardente” was instituted against the Reformers. Abroad, the struggle was continued against Charles V. and Philip II., which ended in the much-discussed treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. Some weeks afterwards high feast was held on the occasion of the double marriage of the king’s daughter Elizabeth with the king of Spain, and of his sister Margaret with the duke of Savoy. On the 30th of June 1559, when tilting with the count of Montgomery, Henry was wounded in the temple by a lance. In spite of the attentions of Ambroise Paré he died on the 10th of July. By his wife Catherine de’ Medici he had seven children living: Elizabeth, queen of Spain; Claude, duchess of Lorraine; Francis (II), Charles (IX.) and Henry (III.), all of whom came to the throne; Marguerite, who became queen of Navarre in 1572; and Francis, duke of Alençon and afterwards of Anjou, who died in 1584.
The bulk of the documents for the reign of Henry II. are unpublished, and are in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Of the published documents, see especially the correspondence of Catherine de’ Medici (ed. by de la Ferrière, Paris, 1880), of Diane de Poitiers (ed. by Guiffrey, Paris, 1866), of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d’Albret (ed. by Rochambeau, Paris, 1877), of Odet de Selve, ambassador to England (ed. by Lefèvre-Pontalis, Paris, 1888) and of Dominique du Gabre, ambassador to Venice (ed. by Vitalis, Paris, 1903); Ribier, Lettres et mémoires d’estat (Paris, 1666); Relations des ambassadeurs vénitiens, &c. Of the contemporary memoirs and histories, see Brantôme (ed. by Lalanne, Paris, 1864-1882), François de Lorraine (ed. by Michaud and Poujoulat, Paris, 1839), Montluc (ed. by de Ruble, Paris, 1864), F. de Boyvin du Villars (Michaud and Poujoulat), F. de Rabutin (Panthéon littéraire, Paris, 1836). See also de Thou, Historia sui temporis ... (London, 1733); Decrue, Anne de Montmorency (Paris, 1889); H. Forneron, Les Ducs de Guise et leur époque, vol. i. (Paris, 1877); and H. Lemonnier, “La France sous Henri II” (Paris, 1904), in the Histoire de France, by E. Lavisse, which contains a fuller bibliography of the subject.
HENRY III. (1551-1589), king of France, third son of Henry II. and Catherine de’ Medici, was born at Fontainebleau on the 19th of September 1551, and succeeded to the throne of France on the death of his brother Charles IX. in 1574. In his youth, as duke of Anjou, he was warmly attached to the Huguenot opinions, as we learn from his sister Marguerite de Valois; but his unstable character soon gave way before his mother’s will, and both Henry and Marguerite remained choice ornaments of the Catholic Church. Henry won, under the direction of Marshal de Tavannes, two brilliant victories at Jarnac and Moncontour (1569). He was the favourite son of his mother, and took part with her in organizing the massacre of St Bartholomew. In 1573 Catherine procured his election to the throne of Poland. Passionately enamoured of the princess of Condé, he set out reluctantly to Warsaw, but, on the death of his brother Charles IX. in 1574, he escaped from his Polish subjects, who endeavoured to retain him by force, came back to France and assumed the crown. He returned to a wretched kingdom, torn with civil war. In spite of his good intentions, he was incapable of governing, and abandoned the power to his mother and his favourites. Yet he was no dullard. He was a man of keen intelligence and cultivated mind, and deserves as much as Francis I. the title of patron of letters and art. But his incurable indolence and love of pleasure prevented him from taking any active part in affairs. Surrounded by his mignons, he scandalized the people by his effeminate manners. He dressed himself in women’s clothes, made a collection of little dogs and hid in the cellars when it thundered. The disgust aroused by the vices and effeminacy of the king increased the popularity of Henry of Guise. After the “day of the barricades” (the 12th of May 1588), the king, perceiving that his influence was lost, resolved to rid himself of Guise by assassination; and on the 23rd of December 1588 his faithful bodyguard, the “forty-five,” carried out his design at the château of Blois. But the fanatical preachers of the League clamoured furiously for vengeance, and on the 1st of August 1589, while Henry III. was investing Paris with Henry of Navarre, Jacques Clement, a Dominican friar, was introduced into his presence on false letters of recommendation, and plunged a knife into the lower part of his body. He died a few hours afterwards with great fortitude. By his wife Louise of Lorraine, daughter of the count of Vaudémont, he had no children, and on his deathbed he recognized Henry of Navarre as his successor.