Charles IX

Charles IX, second son of Henry II and of Catharine de Medici, was born at St. Germain-en-Laye June 27, 1550, and on December 5, 1560, succeeded his brother, Francis II. "His character was a compound of passion, acuteness, heartlessness, and cunninz. Although only twenty-four years of age when he died, so well had his detestable mother trained him to a love of perfidy and cruelty, that he found time, with her assistance and that of the Guises, to perpetrate an act so hideously diabolical that all civilized Europe still shudders at the recollection. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's (q.v.), Aug. 24, 1572, was the culmination of a series of treacheries toward the Huguenots which disgraced his reign. The result was that civil war broke out anew, and assumed a very threatening character, as political malcontents associated themselves with the Protestants. Charles died May 30, 1574. "Chambers, Encyclopaedia, s.v.; and a good article, with an account of the massacre of St. B., in the English Cyclopaedia, s.v. Charles IX. See FRANCE, REFORMED CHURCH OF.