8. Francis died in 1547. He has the reputation of a great prince, and would have appeared greater, but for the manifest superiority of his illustrious rival. Notwithstand.ng the wais in which France was engaged during the reign of this monarch, he left his kingdom in a flourishing and prosperous state. Literature and the arts made great progress in France under his auspices, and the French court acquired that polish and refinement in taste and manners, for which it has since been so conspicuous throughout the world.

"The fine qualities of this prince," says Millot, "his open temper, beneficence, honour, generosity, and courage, have not been able to cover his faults, rashness in his enterprises, negligence in his affairs, fickleness in his conduct, prodigality in his expenses, and excess in his pleasures. Whatever merit he was possessed of, he would have met with fewer encomiums, had he not caressed and favoured men of letters, by whose suffrages the reputation of sovereigns is fixed. He founded the royal college and printing house. At the same time that he encouraged the culture of the learned languages, he had the prudence to command that the public acts should be written in French. In the same manner, he gave life to the fine arts, built Fontainbleau, and began the Louvre. In order to polish the man ners of the court, he drew to it the most respectable women and distinguished prelates."

9. Henry II. succeeded his father in 1547. This prince, though brave and polite, was the slave of pleasure, and the dupe of favourites. He continued the war in which his father had been engaged with Charles V., and that emperor's son Philip II., of Spain. He obtained considerable advantage over Charles at the siege of Metz, but was terribly defeated by Philip, at St. Quentin. The event most glorious to his reign, was the recovery of Calais from the English, in 1557. The duke of Guise captured the place in eight days, to the surprise of all Europe.

The origin of those civil wars which distracted France during the three succeeding reigns, may be dated from this reign, or rather from that of Francis I., when the Huguenots, who were Calvinists, or Protestants, began to be persecuted. The spirit of persecution greatly increased during the reign of Henry.

§ The death of this monarch was owing to an accident which befel him at a tournament. Wishing to amuse the ladies with a tilt be tween himself and the count of Montgomery, who was esteemed the most dexterous justler of his time, he gaily entered the lists. In their rencounter both their lances were broken, and the count

thrown from his horse. In his fall, the broken trunk of the spear, still, remaning in his hand, struck the king's right eye, and produced so violent a contusion as to terminate his life.

10. His son, Francis II., was raised to the throne in 1559. He was the husband of Mary, queen of Scots, and died the next year, having reigned about seventeen months. The only important event in this reign, was the conspiracy of the Protestants against the king, and the Guises, who were five brothers, at the head of the Catholics. Two of these, the duke of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine, were conspicuous in the government. This conspiracy was detected, and 1200 of those engaged in it, were put to death.

§ The Protestants were wearied with the persecutions they had so long endured, and came to a resolution to devote their lives to the defence of their liberties. They were secretly abetted by the prince of Conde, brother to the king of Navarre. The prince, however, escaped punishment, having pleaded his cause before the king, in person.

11. Charles IX., a boy only ten years old, succeeded his brother, 1560, under the regency of Catharine de Medicis, who had been the wife of Henry, and was notorious for her profligacy and ambition. The difficulties between the Catholics and Protestants had arisen to a great height. Some of the first men of the French court, were included among the latter, particularly the prince of Conde and Admiral Coligny. Their influence was too great to be resisted; and after the conference held at Poissy, liberty was granted to the Protestants to exercise their worship without the walls of the towns. The violation, soon after, of the edict granting this liberty, occasioned the sanguinary civil war, which for a long time filled France with misery and blood.

§ The Protestant religion had spread greatly at court, as well as in the capital and the provinces, even under Francis I. The persecution of the Protestants under Henry II., only increased their number, and produced that exasperation of feeling, which ended in the conspiracy, already mentioned, under Francis II.

The celebrated conference at Poissy, was attended by the young king, the queen mother, and the whole court. Theodore Beza, an illustrious reformer, defended the Protestants, while the cardinal of Lorraine, undertook the cause of the Catholics. Both parties, as is usual on such occasions, claimed the victory. It was, however, difficult any longer to refuse certain concessions to the Protestants. Indeed, the queen mother found it politic to grant them liberty of worship, and to favour the prince of Conde, in order to counterbalance the power of the Guises.

The Protestants, in the war which ensued, were headed by Admi ral Coligny, who was assisted by 10,000 Germans from the Palatinate. The command of the Catholics was assumed by Guise and Montmorency, who were aided by Philip of Spain. The latter were always victorious, though the Protestants were too powerful to be despised; and in the conditions of peace which they obtained, was included the toleration of their religion. Murders and assassinations aggravated the horrors of civil war. The duke of Guise feti

by the hand of a religious enthusiast. And even the peace which was secured, was only a prelude to more awful scenes of atrocity and blood.

It became now the policy of the government to caress the Protestants, in order to destroy them. They received extraordinary marks of favour; even the prudence of Coligny was lulled asleep; and on the occasion of the marriage of the king of Navarre with the sister of Charles, these persecuted people were allured to court. By the order of the government, a dreadful massacre of the Protestants then took place, the horrid plan having been all previously arranged. On the night of the twenty-third of August, it being St. Bartholomew's, there perished in Paris and France, 60,000, some reckon 100,000 Protestants. The duke of Guise (Henry, son of Francis) went in person to Coligny's gate, and caused that great man to be murdered. The streets and houses in Paris floated in blood. The king barbarously fired upon his unhappy subjects, and afterwards beheld with pleasure Coligny's body insulted by the populace.

To crown this horrid act, the king declared that every thing was done by his command; the parliament ordered an annual procession to celebrate the deliverance of the kingdom; a medal was struck with this legend, piety put the sword into the hands of justice and at Rome and in Spain, the massacre was made a subject of public rejoicings.

Calvinism was not at all crushed by this infernal plot, infernally executed. It only became more formidable through despair, and now both of the Bourbons,—the king of Navarre as well as the prince of Conde, were enlisted in the Protestant cause. It was found necessary again to grant them liberty of conscience. Charles died soon after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, at the age of twentyfour years.

12. The successor of Charles IX., was Henry III., duke of Anjou, who had just been elected king of Poland, 1574. He was a weak and worthless prince, joining to the utmost depravity of manners, the external observances of the lowest superstition. He became the scorn of his subjects, and the dupe of the contending factions. It was in his reign, that the Catholics, incensed on account of the privileges conferred on the Huguenots, formed the famous league for the purpose of extirpating them, having the duke of Guise at its head. § This league was nominally for the defence of the state and its

religion, but in reality, besides the extirpation of the Protestant faith, it had in view the usurpation of all the powers of government. The king, with the weakest policy, united himself to this league, and thus became the avowed enemy of a large portion of his subjects. But in carrying on his military operations against the Protestants, he found himself thwarted at every step, by the duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. To dispel the fears which he entertained from these men, he put them to death, by the hands of assassins. After a reign of fifteen years, the king himself was assassinated, 1589, by a fanatic monk.

13. On the death of Henry III., who died without children, the sceptre of France passed to the house of Bourbon, represented at this time by Henry III., of Navarre. As king of France, he is known by the name of Henry IV., afterwards surnamed the Great.

As his reign extends into the next period, the following particulars only, will be mentioned at present. He had been educated in the reformed religion by his mother, who avowed herself its protector. At the age of sixteen, he had been declared head of the party of the Huguenots. When invited to Paris at the peace of 1572, to marry the sister of Charles IX., he narrowly escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew, but remained three years a prisoner. Although his first military enterprises were unsuccessful, yet, when on the death of Charles, he again took the field against the army of the league, he defeated it in the battle of Coutras, 1587, and still more signally in that of Argues, 1589. After the death of Henry III., he won the celebrated battle of Ivry, against the army of the League, then commanded by the duke of Mayenne, who had proclaimed the cardinal of Bourbon, king, under the title of Charles X. As a protestant, however, he was environed with difficulties; a large portion of the people refused to submit to him; and influenced by the earnest entreaties of the duke of Sully, as well as by views of policy, he renounced protestantism, and became a catholic, 1594. In 1596, the duke of Mayenne submitted to Henry, and the whole kingdom acknowledged him as its sovereign.

ENGLAND.

Branch of York. House of Tudor.

14. Henry VI., had been on the throne of England since the year 1422; but the wars which now commenced between

his house and that of York, rendered his situation most insecure, and, at length, hurled him from his throne. Justice was on the side of Richard, duke of York, as he was a descendant from the second son of Edward III., while Henry was a descendant from Edward's third son. The whole nation took the side of one or the other, and each party was distin guished by a particular symbol. That of the Lancastrians was the red rose, and that of the Yorkites the white rose Hence, this contention was known by the name of the “quarrel of the two roses." Hostilities commenced in 1455.

§ The principal battles which were fought, previous to the accession of Edward IV., were, that of St. Albans, in which Henry was defeated and taken prisoner, and Richard assumed the title of Protector--that which was fought on Bloreheath, in Staffordshire, and which terminated in favour of Richard-that of Northampton, in which Henry was defeated and again taken prisoner, by the Earl of Warwick-and that of Wakefield, in which Henry's queen, Margaret of Anjou, gained a complete victory over Richard, who, together with his second son, was slain.

Upon the death of the duke of York, the earl of Warwick, known by the name of King Maker, from the conspicuous part he bore in the contentions of the times, took command of the forces belonging to that party.

15. Upon the death of Richard, the young duke of York, his son and successor, entered London at the head of a numerous army, amidst the greetings of the citizens, and assumed the powers of government. He did not, however, fully consider himself as king, until he had obtained, (1461,) at Towton, a signal victory over the adherents of Henry, of whom 36,000 were killed. His title was that of Edward IV. After various turns of fortune, in which he was once deposed, and Henry re-instated on the throne, he finally triumphed over the Lancastrians, in the desperate battle of Tewkes bury, in which Margaret, and her son, the Prince of Wales, were taken prisoners. The latter was assassinated, and king Henry, who had been confined in the tower, was found dead a few days afterwards. Margaret, whose ambition had kindled the desolating war, was punished only with imprisonment. She was afterwards ransomed by the king of France, and died in that country.

§ It is said that the young prince, when brought before the king, and asked in an insulting tone, by the latter, how he dared to invade nis dominion, replied, with a spirit congenial to his high birth, that he came thither to claim his just inheritance. The ungenerous Ed.