COLIONY, GASPARD DE, born In February 1516, was the son of Gaspard de Coligny, lord of Chat'lieu-aut.-Loin and marshal of France, and of !Anise de Montmorency, sister to the famous duke and con stable of that name. Coligny served in Italy under Francis I., and was present at the battle of eerie°lea. Henri II. made him colonel general of infantry, and'afterwards in 1552 admiral of France. In the latter capacity he sent a colony to Brazil, which however was soon after driven away by the Portuguese. Coligny himself continued to serve in the army by land. Ile defended St. Quentin against Philip IL, and was made prisoner at rho surrender of the place.
Having embraced the reformed religion, Coligny became, with Louis prince of Condd, oue of the great leaders of the Protestant party against Catherine de Medici and the Guises, during the reign of Charles IX. Coligny was much respected by his party : he was prudent in his plane and cool in danger; defeat did not dishearten him, and he rose again after it as formidable as ever. After the loss of the battle of Dreux, in which Condo was taken prisoner, Coligny weed the remains of his army. The following year peace was made, but in 15G7 tho civil and religious war broke out again, and the battle of St. Denis was fought, in which the old Constable Montmorency, who commanded the royal or Catholic army, was killed. A short truce followed, but hostilities broke out again in 1569, when the battle of Jarnac was fought, in which the Prince of Conde was killed. Coligny again took the command and saved his army, which was coon after joined by the Prince of Bdarn (afterwards Henri IV.), then sixteen years of age, and Henry, the son of Condd, who was but seventeen. The Prince of Bdarn was declared the head of the Protest ants, but Coligny exercised all the functions of leader and commander.
On the 3rd of October 1569 Coligny loot tho battle of Moneontour, against the Duke of Anjou (afterwards Henri III ). Still Coligny continued the war south of the Loire, gained several advantages, and at last a peace was concluded at St. Germain iu August 1570, which was called la pain boiteuse et mad assize,' because it was concluded by the Sieur de Biron, who was lame, and by De Meames, lord of Malassise. The peace however fully deserved its nickname by the spirit in which it was concluded by the court. Tho leaders of the
Protestants, and Coligny among the rest, entertained strong suspicions on the subject; but they were lulled into security by the appareut frankness of Charles IX., and the approaching marriage of the Prince of Nam with the Princess Margaret, the king's sister. Coligny came to court, and was well received, but ou the 22nd of August 1572 he was shot at in the street by an attendant of the Duke of Guise. The wounds however did not prove dangerous. The attempt was made at the instigation of the Duchess of Nemours, whose first husband, Francis, duke of Guise, had been assassinated by a Huguenot fanatic+ at the siege of Orldana in 1563, when Coligny was unjustly suspected of having directed the blow. The Duke of Anjou and the queen-mother were parties to the attempt upon Coligny's life. On the 24th of August 1572, two days later, the massacre of 'la Sainte Barthdlemi' took place.
[Cnantes IX.] The Duke of Guise himself led the murderers to the house of the admiral, but remained in the court below, while Berme, one of his servants, went up followed by others. They found Coligny seated in an arin-chair. "Young man," said he to Beane, "you ought to respect my gray hairs; but, do what you will, you can but shorten my life by a few days." They stabbed him in several places, and threw him, still breathing, out of a window into the court, where he fell at the feet of the Duke of Guise. His body was left exposed to the fury of the populace, and at last was hung by the feet to a gibbet.
His head was cut off and sent to Catherine de' Medici. Montmoreucy, cousin to the admiral, had his body secretly buried in the vaults of the château of Chantilly, where it remained in a leaden coffin ti111786, when Blontesquieu asked for the remains of Coligny from the Duke of Luxembourg, lord of Chatillon, and transferred them to his own estate) of Maupertuis, where ho raised a sepulchral chapel and a monument to the memory of the admiral. After the revolution the mouument was transferred to the Blued° des Mouumeos Francais, and a Latin inscription was placed upon it by 3L Marron, the bead of the Protestant consistory at Paris.