King Charles IX Of France : Family tree by comrade28

Joan (24 June 1556 August 1556).
o Twin of Victoria. Died in infancy.[1]

He was made a Knight of the Order of the Garter on Sunday 14 May 1564 at St George's, Windsor, along with Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford and Sir Henry Sidney. That year, Charles IX issued the Edict of Roussillon fixing 1 January as the first day of the year.

[edit] King of France
Portrait of Charles IX in 1561, shortly after he became king at age 10, by François Clouet.

After the death of his elder brother, François II, in 1560, he inherited the throne and was crowned King of France in 1560 in the cathedral at Reims. The politics of that era were greatly influenced by his mother, Catherine de' Medici, who was regent for the ten-year-old Charles, and by the power of the opposing religious faction leaders; the Protestant-leaning House of Bourbon and the ultra-Catholic House of Guise.

The first of the French Wars of Religion broke out in 156263 when armed Protestant troops seized many French cities following an attack on Protestant worshippers by retainers of the Duke of Guise. After a four-year period of peace, an attempt by Huguenot armies at Meaux to capture and control the king led to the Second War of Religion from 1567 to 1568. A third war raged chiefly in south-western France from 1568 to 1570 with foreign intervention.

[edit] Marriage
French Monarchy-
Capetian Dynasty, House of Valois
(Valois-Angoulême branch)

Francis I
Children
Francis, Dauphin of Viennois
Henry II
Magdalene, Queen of Scots
Charles of Valois
Margaret, Duchess of Savoy
Henry II
Children
Francis II
Elizabeth, Queen of Spain
Claude, Duchess of Lorraine
Charles IX
Henry III
Margaret, Queen of Navarre
François, Duke of Anjou
Joan of Valois
Victoria of Valois
Francis II
Charles IX
Henry III

On 26 November 1570 Charles married Elisabeth of Austria. They had one daughter, Marie-Elisabeth (27 October 1572 9 April 1578). Charles IX also had an illegitimate son, the duc d'Angoulême, with his mistress, Marie Touchet.

In 1572, Charles IX witnessed the massacre of thousands of Huguenots (Protestants) in and around Paris in what became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
Coin of Charles IX, 1573.

Charles IX did not long survive the Massacre. He had always been fragile, both emotionally and physically: emotionally, his moods now swung from coarse boasting about the extremity of the Massacre, to claims that the screams of the murdered Huguenots kept ringing in his ears. Frantically he blamed his mother: "Who but you is the cause of all of this? God's blood, you are the cause of it all!" The Queen-mother responded by declaring she had a lunatic for a son.[2]

Physically, Charles had never been strong, tending towards tuberculosis.

The strain following the Massacres weakened his body to the point where, by spring of 1574, the hoarse coughing turned bloody and the hemorrhages grew more violent. He became bedridden and delusional,

What blood shed! What murders! he cried to his nurse. What evil council I have followed! O my God, forgive me... I am lost! I am lost![3]

[edit] Death
Charles IX, atelier of François Clouet.

On his last day, 30 May 1574, at the Château de Vincennes, Val-de-Marne, Charles called for Henry of Navarre, embraced him, and said, "Brother, you are losing a good friend. Had I believed all that I was told, you would not be alive. But I always loved you... I trust you alone to look after my wife and daughter. Pray God for me. Farewell."[4]

Charles was not yet twenty-four years old. The crown of France now passed to his brother, Henry III.

[edit] In fiction

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