Henry M. Baird · 94 of 379

CHAPTER VIII · Charles, Cardinal of Guise, and afterward of Lorraine.

But the second generation of the Guises was destined to exert, during the reign of Henry the Second, an influence more controlling than the brothers Claude and John had exerted during his father's reign. The six sons of Claude—all displaying the grasping disposition of the house from which they sprang, all aiming at the acquisition of position and wealth, each of them insatiable, yet never exhibiting a rivalry that might prove detrimental to their common expectations—throw into obscurity the surprising success of their father and uncle, by their own marvellous prosperity. Scarcely had a third part of Henry's reign gone by, before foreign ambassadors wrote home glowing accounts of the influence of the younger favorites. "The credit of the house of Guise in this court," said one, "passeth all others. For albeit the constable hath the outward administration of all things, being for that service such a man as hard it were to find the like, yet have they so much credit as he with whom he is constrained to sail, and many times to take that course that he liketh never a whit." Francis, the eldest son, known until his father's death as the Count of Aumale, and afterward succeeding him as Duke of Guise, entered the inviting profession of arms. The second son, Charles, chose the life of an ecclesiastic, and soon assumed with respect to his brothers a commanding position similar to that which John had occupied. At an early age he had been elevated to the Archbishopric of Rheims, voluntarily ceded to him by his uncle. Henry, soon after his accession, obtained from the pontiff a place in the consistory for the young ecclesiastic, who then became known as the Cardinal of Guise, and, after his uncle's death, in 1550, as Cardinal of Lorraine. The four younger brothers respectively figured in subsequent years as the Duke of Aumale, the Cardinal of Guise, the Marquis of Elbeuf, and the Grand Prior of France.