The duke of
Guise remained a stanch Catholic, and his brother, called the Cardinal
of Lorraine, was head of as many as twelve bishoprics, which gave him
an enormous revenue and made him the most conspicuous churchman in
France. During the reign of Henry II (1547-1559) the Guises were
especially influential. They fought valiantly in foreign wars. They
spurred on the king to a great persecution of the Huguenots. They
increased their own landed estates. And they married one of their
relatives--Mary, queen of Scots--to the heir to the throne. But after
the brief reign of Mary's husband, Francis II (1559-1560), the Guise
family encountered not only the active opposition of their chief noble
rivals, the Bourbons, with their Huguenot allies, but likewise the
jealousy and crafty intrigues of Catherine de' Medici.
[Sidenote: Religious Wars in France]
Catherine feared both the ambition of the powerful Guise family and the
disruptive tendencies of Protestantism. The result was a long series of
confused civil wars between the ardent followers, respectively
Catholic and Protestant, of the Guise and Bourbon families, in which
the queen-mother gave support first to one side and then to the other.
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