CATHARFNE DE' ME'DICI was the daughter of Lorenzo do' Medici, duke of Urbino, the son of Piero, and grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and nephew of Leo X. Her mother Magdeleina de Boulogne, of the royal house of France, died in giving birth to Catharine, her only child, in 1519. Her father died soon after, and Catharine was brought up under the care of her great uncle Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII. She was remarkably handsome, clever, and accomplished, but crafty, proud, and unprin cipled. In 1533 oho was married to Henri, second sou of Francis I. of France. It was a political marriage, contracted betweeu the pope and the king, who met at Marseille on that occasion. In 1547, Henri having ascauded the throne upon the death of his father and elder brother, Catharine became queen of France. Her influence at court was not very great during the reign of her husband, it being checked by that of his mistrees, Diana of Poitiers, and that of the powerful family of the Guises. Catharine bad by her husband five eons, of whom three reigned successively over France—Francis 11., Charles IX., and Henri III. During the short reign of Francis II., who succeeded Henri II. ire 1547, the chief influence at court was in the hands of the Ouises, whose niece Mary Stuart had married Francis II. But when by the premature death of this young prince in 1560, his brother Charles IX., then a minor, ascended the throne, Catharine as regent became the real ruler of France, and remained its ruler after her son had attained his majority. She is therefore accountable for all the mismanagement, corruption, and atrocities of that calamitous reign, and, above all, for the treacherous massacre of the Protestants in August 1572, which is known by the name of La Sainte Barthdlemi, because it was perpetrated on tho day dedicated to that saint by the Roman calendar. The king of Navarre (afterwards Henri IV.) luckily escaped, and the Protestants defended themselves in several parts of the kingdom, so that the civil war raged again as fiercely as ever. Charles IX. died in 1574, leaving the state in dreadful confusion.
His brother, Henry of Valois, was then in Poland, where he had been elected king by the Diet. As soon as he heard of his brother's death, he left Poland in secret, and returned to France, where he was crowned in 1575. Henri III. was, like his brother, a weak and corrupt prince. Catharine had brought up her sons purposely in licentious ness and effeminacy, in order that she might more easily govern them. The reign of Henri III. was distracted by the intrigues of his favourites, of the queen-mother, and of the Guises ; by the civil wars between Protestants and Catholics, and by the war between France and Spain. Catharine, according to her usual policy, favoured some times one party and sometimes tire other, for fear that any one of them should become too powerful for her to manage. At last assassination was resorted to again in order to get rid of the, Guises. The Duke of Guise and the cardinal his brother were murdered at Blois in December 1588, by order of the kin. On the 5th of January 1589, Catharine herself died at Blois, an object of aversion to all parties. She was one of the worst sovereigns that ruled over Franco since the times of the Merovingian dynasty. Even her ambition was not of an enlarged kind ; it was narrow, wavering, treacherous, and undecided, and it led to no final result. The country was iu a state, of greater confusion at her death than it had been at any time during her sway ; the monarchy was near its dissolution, and it required all the address and the brilliant qualities of Henri IV. to rescue it from total ruin. Catharine bad only one redeeming quality—her love far the arts and literature, which berms to have been hereditary in the family of Medici. Flo collected rideable mantiscripta, she an counted artists, and else began the palace of the Tuileries. She was ;cud gal in her espentliture, and died much in debt. (De Thou,Solly, Itrantame, and the other French historians and biographers.?