DEATH OF HENRY THE SECOND.
On the twenty-fourth of June, the marriage of the young princess was celebrated in the church of St. Mary. King Henry gave his daughter away. The duke of Alva acted as his sovereign's proxy. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the prince of Eboli placed on the finger of the princess, as a memento from her lord, a diamond ring of inestimable value; and the beautiful Elizabeth, the destined bride of Don Carlos, became the bride of the king his father. It was an ominous union, destined, in its mysterious consequences, to supply a richer theme for the pages of romance than for those of history.
The wedding was followed by a succession of brilliant entertainments, the chief of which was the tournament,—the most splendid pageant of that spectacle-loving age. Henry was, at that time, busily occupied with the work of exterminating the Protestant heresy, which, as already noticed, had begun to gather formidable head in the capital of his dominions.[276] On the evening of the fifteenth of June, he attended a session of the parliament, and arrested some of its principal members for the boldness of their speech in his presence. He ordered them into confinement, deferring their sentence till the termination of the engrossing business of the tourney.
The king delighted in these martial exercises, in which he could display his showy person and matchless horsemanship in the presence of the assembled beauty and fashion of his court.[277] He fully maintained his reputation on this occasion, carrying off one prize after another, and bearing down all who encountered his lance. Towards evening, when the games had drawn to a close, he observed the young count of Montgomery, a Scotch noble, the captain of his guard, leaning on his lance, as yet unbroken. The king challenged the cavalier to run a course with him for his lady's sake. In vain the queen, with a melancholy boding of some disaster, besought her lord to remain content with the laurels he had already won. Henry obstinately urged his fate, and compelled the count, though extremely loth, to take the saddle. The champions met with a furious shock in the middle of the lists. Montgomery was a rude jouster. He directed his lance with such force against the helmet of his antagonist, that the bars of the visor gave way. The lance splintered; a fragment struck the king with such violence on the temple as to lay bare the eye. The unhappy monarch reeled in his saddle, and would have fallen but for the assistance of the constable, the duke of Guise, and other nobles, who bore him in their arms senseless from the lists. Henry's wound was mortal.[{120}] He lingered ten days in great agony, and expired on the ninth of July, in the forty-second year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign. It was an ill augury for the nuptials of Elizabeth.[278]
The tidings of the king's death were received with demonstrations of sorrow throughout the kingdom. He had none of those solid qualities which make either a great or a good prince. But he had the showy qualities which are perhaps more effectual to secure the affections of a people as fond of show as the nation whom Henry governed.[279] There were others in the kingdom, however,—that growing sect of the Huguenots,—who looked on the monarch's death with very different eyes,—who rejoiced in it as a deliverance from persecution. They had little cause to rejoice. The sceptre passed into the hands of a line of imbecile princes, or rather of their mother, the famous Catherine de Medicis, who reigned in their stead, and who ultimately proved herself the most merciless foe the Huguenots ever encountered.
CHAPTER IX.
LATTER DAYS OF CHARLES THE FIFTH.
Charles at Yuste.—His Mode of Life.—Interest in Public Affairs.—Celebrates his Obsequies.—Last Illness.—Death and Character.
1556-1558.