Catherine de’ Medici summary

Catherine de’ Medici, orig. Caterina de’ Medici, (born April 13, 1519, Florence—died Jan. 5, 1589, Blois, France), Queen consort of Henry II (1547–59), mother of Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III, and regent of France (1560–74). A member of the Medici family, she married Henry in 1533 and bore him 10 children. She became queen when Henry inherited the crown in 1547, and she greatly mourned his accidental death in 1559. After their son Francis became king, she began a long struggle with members of the Guise family, extremists who sought to dominate the crown. After Francis’s premature death in 1560, she became regent for Charles IX until 1563 and dominated the rest of his reign until 1574. She attempted to settle the Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. She has traditionally been blamed for the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, but, though she authorized the assassination of Gaspard II de Coligny and his principal followers, it appears that she did not authorize the massacre that followed.