Charles IX of France

Charles was the son of Catherine de’ Medici and had come to the throne as a minor (Marguerite de Valois, Memoirs letter 4). When Gaspard de Coligny was shot on 22 August 1572, an English correspondent in Paris wrote that the king took it “very grievously”, offered the admiral his own guards and had the gates of the city kept (Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth, vol. 10, no. 538).

His sister Marguerite says that he esteemed Coligny and other Huguenot captains, wished to punish the duke of Guise for the attack, and gave his consent to the massacre only when persuaded that his own life and the safety of the kingdom depended on it (Marguerite de Valois, Memoirs letter 4) (Marguerite de Valois, Memoirs letter 5). De Thou reports that the killers were told they acted by the king’s command (De Thou, History of His Own Time extract in Robinson, Readings, vol. 2, pp. 180–183). An English report of September says that when the governor of Rouen asked whether the Protestants there were to be killed too, the king swore that it was his mind, though he would give no written order, and that he rode to Montfaucon to see the admiral’s body on the gibbet (Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth, vol. 10, no. 584). See the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.