Their descent, to be sure,
was from Saint Louis, king in the thirteenth century, and they were
now, therefore, only distant cousins of the reigning kings, but as the
latter died off, one after another, leaving no direct successors, the
Bourbons by the French law of strict male succession became heirs to
the royal family. The head of the Bourbons, a certain Anthony, had
married the queen of Navarre and had become thereby king of Navarre,
although the greater part of that country--the region south of the
Pyrenees--had been annexed to Spain in 1512. Anthony's brother Louis,
prince of Conde, had a reputation for bravery, loyalty, and ability.
Both Conde and the king of Navarre were Protestants.
[Sidenote: The Guise Family]
The Guise family was descended from a duke of Lorraine who had attached
himself to the court of Francis I. It was really a foreign family,
inasmuch as Lorraine was then a dependency of the Holy Roman Empire,
but the patriotic exploits of the head of the family in defending Metz
against the Emperor Charles V and in capturing Calais from the English
endeared the Guises to a goodly part of the French nation.
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