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| 1539 |
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| Royal ordinance (issued by Council) placed all of France under the jurisdiction of the royal courts with French the language of the courts; this law had a strongly centralizing effect. | 1 |
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| 1547–59 |
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| HENRY II, son of Francis. Growing power of the house of Guise (Francis, duke of Guise, and Charles, cardinal of Lorraine). Persecution of the Protestants in France; assistance to German Protestants with goal of keeping Germany divided and weak. | 2 |
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| 1547 |
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| Final union of Brittany with the French crown. | 3 |
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| 1548 |
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| Massive peasant revolt in Aquitaine, where they refused to pay the Gabelle, tax on salt. | 4 |
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| 1552–59 |
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| Intermittent War with Spain. The French were defeated by the Spaniards, who were supported by the English, in the Battle of St. Quentin (1557) and by Egmont at Gravelines (1558). | 5 |
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| 1558 |
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| Calais, the last English possession in France, was captured by the duke of Guise. | 6 |
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| 1559, April 3 |
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| PEACE OF CATEAU-CAMBRESIS, which ended the Habsburg-Valois wars. Henry II, who died of a wound received in a tournament, succeeded by his son. | 7 |
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| 1559–60 |
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| FRANCIS II, the first husband of Mary Stuart of Scotland, who was a niece of the Guises. Measures against the Protestants (chambres ardentes). The king's mother, Catherine de' Medici (1519–89), struggled for power and influence against the Bourbon princes: Anthony (king of Navarre) and Louis de Condé, who were descended from Louis IX. The Guises, at first rivals of the queen-mother and then in alliance with her, conducted the affairs of state and surpassed in influence their opponents, the Catholic constable, Montmorency, and his nephews, the three Châtillon brothers: Gaspard, Admiral de Coligny; François d'Andelot, and Cardinal Châtillon, later leaders of the Huguenots. Death of Francis II. | 8 |
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| 1560–74 |
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| CHARLES IX (ten years old), the brother of Francis. He was wholly under the influence of his mother. Weak monarchy and civil war characterized the latter part of the century. | 9 |
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| 1562–98 |
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| THE RELIGIOUS WARS. Persecution compelled the Huguenots (as the French Protestants were called—derivation uncertain) to take up arms. At the same time they formed a political party. Taking advantage of monarchial weakness, between two-fifths and one-half of the nobility at one time or another adopted the reformed religion as a cloak for political independence; the struggles thus constituted a civil, as well as a religious, war. Many new capitalists and artisans also turned Protestant. Save in the southwest, very few peasants became Protestants. Paris and the northeast remained Catholic throughout. | 10 |
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| 1569 |
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| TEMPORARY PEACE after Protestant losses at battles of Dreux (1562), Jarnac (1569), Moncontour (1569). | 11 |
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| 1572, Aug. 23–24 |
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| MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. Murder of Coligny and general massacre of Protestants in Paris and in the provinces, on the occasion of the marriage of Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, and the sister of Charles IX, Margaret of Valois. Henry of Navarre saved his life by a pretended conversion to Catholicism. The massacre led to | 12 |
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