Henri III 1551-89
King of France

Born in Fontainbleau, the third son of Henri II and Catherine de M�dicis, he commanded the royal army as Duke of Anjou during the reign of his brother Charles IX, and won victories over the Huguenots at Jarnac and Moncontour (1569). With his mother he was responsible for instigating the slaughter of Parisian Huguenots known as the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572). He was elected King of Poland (1573), but had to return to France soon after his coronation in 1574, to ascend the French throne at his brother's death, and was deposed by his Polish subjects (1575). He was intelligent, but extravagant and unstable, and his reign in France was marked throughout by civil war between the Huguenots and Catholics, and between the sons of Catherine de M�dicis. His brother Fran�ois, Duke of Alen�on, placed himself at the head of the Huguenots, while Henri aligned himself with the extreme Catholic League headed by Henri, Duke of Guise. After the death of Fran�ois (1584), Henri joined forces with his brother-in-law, the Huguenot Henri of Navarre (the future Henri IV), heir presumptive to the throne, but had to capitulate to the Catholic rebels at Nemours in 1585. Caught amid the rivalry between Henri of Guise and Henri of Navarre, he was besieged in Paris (1588) by Henri of Guise (the Day of the Barricades), but managed to escape, and engineered the assassination of Guise (1589), which enraged the Catholic League. In 1589, soon after the death of his mother, he was assassinated by a fanatical priest, and with his death the Valois line of kings ended.

Bibliography: A Lynn Martin, Henry III and the Jesuit Politicians (1973)