Catherine de Medici (Catharine de Medici) was the wife of Henry II, King of France. She was born in 1519 at Florence and died in 1589. She was the only daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, duke of Urbino, and the niece of Pope Clement VII. She was married to the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Henry II, in 1533, but had little or no influence at the French court either during the reign of her husband, who was under the influence of his mistress Diana de Poitiers, or during the reign of her eldest son, Francis II, who, in consequence of his marriage with Mary Stuart, was devoted to the party of the Guises. The death of Francis II placed the reins of government, during the minority of her son Charles IX, in her hands. Wavering between the Guises on one side, who had put themselves at the head of the Catholics, and Conde and Coligny on the other, who had become very powerful by the aid of the Protestants, she played off one faction against the other in the hope of increasing her own power; and the thirty years of civil war which followed were mainly due to her. Her influence with Charles IX was throughout of the worst kind, and the massacre of St Bartholomew's Day was largely her work. After the death of Charles IX, in 1574, her third son succeeded as Henry III, and her mischievous influence continued. She died in 1589, shortly before the assassination of Henry III. Of her two daughters, Elizabeth married Philip II of Spain, and Margaret of Valois married Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. Research Catherine de Medici
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