We pass on to the close of the short reign of Francis II., which extended over barely seventeen months. His death occurred on the 5th December 1560. The 10th of the same month was to have witnessed the execution of the Prince of Condé, condemned as traitor and heretic. But when a sudden swoon at vespers, succeeded by violent pains in the head, indicated the probable dissolution of the sickly monarch, whose constitution was already undermined by disease, Catherine de Medicis, unwilling to lose Condé, who served her as a counterpoise to the power of the Guise, took measures to delay his doom, and opened negotiations with the King of Navarre. This prince signed an agreement guaranteeing the regency to Catherine during the minority of Charles IX. She and her council were to have the sole direction of political affairs; whilst Anthony de Bourbon, with the title of lieutenant-general, was to be military chief of the kingdom. On the other hand, Catherine brought about his reconciliation with the Guises; inducing Francis II. to declare on his death-bed that the prosecution of Condé emanated not from them, but from his will alone. At the very moment she rendered this service to the princes of Lorraine, she was plotting with Bourbon their banishment from court. It were bewildering, and indeed impossible, in a brief essay on that busy period, to trace the tortuous policy and seemingly contradictory intrigues of the Queen-mother. It suffices to state her aim, then and for long afterwards. By pitting one faction against the other, and alternately supporting both, she secured for herself a larger share of power than she would have obtained by assisting in the final triumph of either.
The death of their niece's royal husband was a great shock to the Guises, who in his name had exercised absolute authority. It was subject of rejoicing to the Protestants, who deemed it "a stroke of heavenly mercy"--a mystical expression of satisfaction, which made some suspect poison to be the cause of the King's death. For this there seems to have been no foundation. But such suspicions were the fashion of the time. Beside the bed of Francis stood Coligny, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and many other nobles. When the monarch breathed his last, "Gentlemen," said the Admiral, with his habitual earnest gravity, "the King is dead; 'tis a lesson for us how to live." He returned home with one of his intimates, named Fontaines, and fell into a profound reverie, his tooth-pick in his mouth and his feet to the fire. He did not observe that his boots were burning, until Fontaines called his attention to the fact. "Ah, Fontaines!" then replied the Admiral, "not a week ago you and I would each have given a leg for things to take this turn, and now, we get off with a pair of boots; it is cheap." Not one of the six brothers Guise followed the funeral of Francis II., whose loss they had such reason to deplore. In cutting allusion to this indecent neglect, an unknown hand affixed to the black velvet that covered the royal bier the following inscription--"_Where is Tanneguy Duchâtel? But he was a Frenchman!_" This was a chamberlain of Charles VII., who, although unjustly banished from court, had mourned his master's death, and had provided magnificently for his interment, sacrilegiously neglected by that king's own son. The inscription bore a double sting, for it both condemned the conduct of the Guises, and stigmatised them as foreigners. In vain did they strive to justify themselves, alleging the necessity of their presence at court. And they were equally unable to refute the charge of having appropriated, during the illness of Francis, a considerable sum that remained in the royal treasury. This was done with the connivance of Catherine.