His father's
death at Jarnac left him and his cousin Henry of Navarre
(the future Henry IV) as leaders of the Huguenots. After the Peace of Saint-Germain
(1570) Henri retired to Béarn and married Marie de Clèves.
She died after giving birth to his daughter Catherine (1574-93). Caught
in Paris during the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day (1572), he had been
forced to profess Catholicism. Nominally governor of Picardy, he was kept
under surveillance until, in 1574, he escaped to Alsace and began raising
troops for the Huguenots. Invading
France with a horde of mercenaries to collaborate with the Duc d'Alençon,
he was disappointed at the terms which Alençon made with the government
(1576). In the next civil wars he became rather an embarrassment to Henry
of Navarre, set himself up as chief of the most fanatical Huguenots, and
failed conspicuously in his travels abroad in search of foreign help (1580)
and in his campaign of 1585 in western France when he was driven to take
refuge in Guernsey. Returning to France, he married, in 1586, Charlotte
de La Trémoille (1565-1629), who renounced Catholicism for him and
bore him a daughter, Éléonore (1587-1619) and an heir Henri
II in 1588 after his death. He had been wounded at the Battle of Coutras
in October 1587, but it was suspected that Charlotte had poisoned him.
It was in prison that she gave birth to his only son: Henri II. |