Guise Family

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GUISE FAMILY

GUISE FAMILY. The Guise lineage was the product of the dynastic convolutions of the Houses of Lorraine and Anjou in the fifteenth century. René II, duke of Lorraine (1451–1508), passed his lands in the kingdom of France to his second son, Claude I, count of Guise (1496–1550), who was naturalized French in 1506, but the Guise never forgot their dynastic claims to Scotland, Provence, and Naples. Claude made a good marriage in 1513 to Antoinette de Bourbon, eldest daughter of François de Bourbon-Vendôme. Although he was not an intimate of King Francis I (1494–1547), he was rewarded with the elevation of the county of Guise to a duchy in 1526; his credit peaked around 1538 when he married his eldest daughter, Marie (1515–1560), to James V, king of Scotland (1512–1542). Control of ecclesiastical patronage was at the heart of Guise power throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was under René's third son, Jean (1498–1550), that the foundations of a formidable ecclesiastical empire were laid. Jean possessed six abbeys and six dioceses, including the archbishopric of Reims, the most prestigious in France, which was held by various members of the family from 1533 until 1641.

On his death, Claude I de Guise left ten children to be provided for, and the favored position enjoyed by his brother in the French church was exploited to the full in order to prevent the fragmentation of the patrimony. The eldest son, François (1519–1563), became duke of Guise and shared the temporal inheritance with his younger brothers, Claude II, duke of Aumale (1526–1573), and René, marquis of Elbeuf (1536–1566), each of whom founded important lineages. The remaining sons and daughters were designated for the church at an early age; Charles (1525–1574), the second son, inherited the benefices of his uncle Jean, and the fourth son, Louis (1527–1578), became bishop of Troyes in 1545 and later cardinal of Guise.

François de Guise and his brother Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, were well provided for in the palace revolution that marked the accession of Henry II. Although both were admitted to the privy council, they did not achieve the intimacy that marked the relationship between Henry and Constable Anne de Montmorency. The king's mistress, Diane de Poitiers, sought to counterbalance her lover's dependency on Montmorency by patronizing the Guise. Rivalry between the factions was at its most bitter over control of foreign policy. François's military reputation, first signaled at the siege of Metz (1552) and crowned by his capture of Calais (1558), was complemented by Charles's skills as a financier—he was reputed to be the richest man in France—and diplomat. Guise influence reached its height with the marriage of their niece Mary Stuart to the dauphin in 1558. When he ascended to the throne as Francis II a year later, the Guise dominated power. However, their authority was challenged by the opposition of the Bourbon princes of the blood, the spread of heresy, and the collapse of royal finances. When Francis II died in December 1560, the Guise were disgraced. Their reaction to heresy was mixed: the cardinal of Lorraine was a Catholic moderate interested in concord, but his brother, François, was more hard-line, and his retinue's massacre of Protestants at Wassy in March 1562 signaled the start of the Wars of Religion. François's own assassination by a Huguenot in 1563 hardened the family's attitude to the Protestants and began a vendetta with the Montmorency clan that dominated the politics of the 1560s, ending with the murder of Admiral Coligny by François's son, Henri (1550–1588), an act that sparked the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Financial difficulties and growing estrangement from Henry III led the Guise into alliance with Spain in the 1570s. When the heir to the throne died in 1584, Henri de Guise resurrected the Catholic League with Spanish money to combat the claim of Henry of Navarre to the throne. Henri de Guise mobilized a popular urban power base and took control of large parts of France, but he and his brother Louis II, cardinal of Guise (1555–1588), were murdered by the king at the height of their power. The Catholic League, now headed by the surviving Guise brother, Charles, duke of Mayenne (1554–1611), was weakened after initial success by war weariness and polarization between radical and moderate factions. Mayenne, unable to find a suitable Catholic candidate to replace Henry III, who had been murdered in 1589, compromised with Navarre in 1595, signaling the end of the league. The dynasty continued to be important in the seventeenth century but suffered through its conspiracies against Cardinal Richelieu, resulting in the exile of Charles, duke of Guise (1572–1640), in the 1630s and of his son Henri, the archbishop of Reims (1614–1664), in the 1640s.

See also Catholic League (France) ; Coligny Family ; France ; Lorraine, Duchy of ; Richelieu, Armand-Jean Du Plessis, cardinal ; St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre ; Wars of Religion, French .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergin, Joseph. "The Decline and Fall of the House of Guise as an Ecclesiastical Dynasty." Historical Journal 25 (1982): 781–803.

——. "The Guises and their Benefices, 1588–1641." English Historical Review 99 (1984): 34–58.

Carroll, Stuart. "The Revolt of Paris, 1588: Aristocratic Insurgency and the Mobilization of Popular Support." French Historical Studies 23 (2000): 301–337.

——. Noble Power during the Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1998.