The Tuileries, before incendiarism under the Commune rendered it a very imperfect building, had as a palace led a very imperfect life. Catherine de Médicis had ordered the destruction of the Palais des Tournelles, where, by a fatal accident Montgomery had pierced the eye and brain of Henri II. in the celebrated tournament, and had gone to live with her children at the Louvre. These children were Francis II., the husband of Marie Stuart; Charles IX., whose memory, like that of his mother, is indelibly associated with the massacre of St. Bartholomew; Henri III., who for his sins was elected King of Poland; and Francis d'Anjou, who gained the famous battle of Jarnac, and who on his death was succeeded by Henri IV., first King of France and of Navarre. The ancient fortress of the Louvre was not suited to the pomp of a Médicis, and Catherine ordered a new palace to be built for her own special convenience in the _Tuileries_, or tile yards, where the mother of Francis I. had bought a country house, but where Francis I. would never reside, preferring to his Parisian residence the castles of Fontainebleau, Amboise, and Chambord. According to the plan of Philibert Delorme, the new Palace of the Tuileries was to be a true palace of the French kings, with a royal façade, the most beautiful gardens, and the most magnificent courtyards. Philibert Delorme never got beyond the façade, which, however, was enough to stamp him as an architect of the first order. Henri IV.--or rather Androuet Ducerceaux acting upon his orders--continued the work of Philibert Delorme. Ducerceaux made many changes, and among others constructed a dome where Philibert Delorme had meant only to build a cupola.