Catharine de' Medici, the wife of one king of France, and the mother of three, was the daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, and was born at Florence in 1519. In her fourteenth year she was brought to France, and married to Henry, the second son of Francis I. The marriage was a part of the political schemes of her uncle, Pope Clement VII., but as he died soon after, she found herself friendless and neglected at the French court. In these circumstances she conducted herself with a submission which seemed even to indicate a want of proper spirit, but which gained her the favour of the old king, and in some measure also of her husband. The accession of the latter to the throne of France, however, made very little difference in her situation. It was not till the accession of her eldest son, Francis II., in 1559, that she found some scope for her ambition. The Guises at this time possessed a power which seemed dangerous to that of the throne, and Catharine entered into a secret alliance with the Huguenots to oppose them. On the death of Francis II. in 1560, and accession of her second son, Charles IX., the government fell entirely into her hands. Caring little for religion in itself, although she was very prone to superstition, she disliked the Protestants, chiefly because their principles were opposed to the absolute despotism which she desired to maintain. Yet she sought to rally the Protestant leaders around the throne in order to serve as a counterpoise to the Guises. This attempt having failed, and the civil war which ensued having ended in the peace of Amboise, highly favourable to the Protestants, she became alarmed at the increase of their power, and entered into a secret treaty with Spain for the extirpation of heretics; and subsequently into a plot with the Guises, which resulted in the fearful massacre of St Bartholomew's Day. This event brought the whole power of the state into the hands of the queen-mother, who boasted of the deed to Roman Catholic governments, and excused it to Protestant ones, for she now managed all the correspondence of the court. About this time she succeeded, by gold and intrigues, in getting her third son, afterwards Henry III., elected to the Polish throne. But her arbitrary and tyrannical administration roused the opposition of a Roman Catholic party, at the head of which was her own fourth son, the Duke of Alençon. It was very generally believed that she was privy to the machinations that led to his death. When, after the death of Charles IX., Henry III. returned from Poland to be king of France, his mother still ruled the court, and had the principal share in all the intrigues, treacheries, and political transactions of that wretched time. Having betrayed all who trusted them, she and her son found themselves at last forsaken and abhorred by all. The League and the Guises had no more confidence in them than had the Protestants and Henry of Navarre. Vexation on this account preyed on the proud heart of the queen-mother in her last days; and amidst the confusion and strife of parties, she died at Blois on 5th January 1589, unheeded and unlamented. Catharine de' Medici may fairly be regarded as a representative woman of an age when the first principles of human conduct were hopelessly confounded by religious strife and the intrigues and corruptions of courts. Virtue had given place to luxury, extravagance, cunning sensuality, and cruelty. She was only a prominent example of qualities which the prevailing conditions of the time tended to develop. See Reumont's Jugend Caterinas de' Medici (Berlin, 1854), T. A. Trollope's Girlhood of Catharine de' Medici (1856), Capefigue's Catherine de Médicis (Paris, 1856), and La Ferrière's Lettres de Catherine de Médicis (4 vols. Paris, 1880-92).