Francis II., husband of the beautiful and unfortunate Mary Stuart, had only reached his sixteenth year when he ascended the throne (10th July, 1559).[88] On the very day of his father’s funeral he gratified his mother’s ruling passion by assuring her that all authority should be in her hands, and that she should administer the government in his name. But she had to hold her own against unscrupulous rivals; and in those rude days the spindle had very little chance against the sword, unless it were aided by dissimulation. We shall see that Catherine met force with craft, proving herself at times more than a match for all her rivals. She soon found that she had no chance with the queen-consort, who used all her influence in behalf of the house of Lorraine. In a letter to her daughter Elizabeth she says: “God has deprived me of your father, whom I loved so dearly, as you well know, and has left me with three children and in a divided kingdom. I have no one in whom I can trust: all have some private end to serve.” Mary Stuart behaved to her with all the insolence of youth and beauty, calling her a Florentine shop-keeper,[89] and Catherine returned contempt for contempt. It will be impossible to understand the stormy period upon which we are now entering, unless we know something of the parties into which France, as well as the court, was divided, and of the individuals at their head. There were in reality only two parties, but it will be more convenient to consider them as represented by the four houses of Guise, Bourbon, Montmorency, and Chatillon. The most formidable of these claimants of the government was the first--the family of Guise, to which Mary Stuart belonged on her mother’s side. The power of this house dates from the reign of Francis I. Genealogists delight to trace its origin back to Charlemagne, and even to Priam, King of Troy: with about equal truth in both cases. The chief of the family was Claude, son of that Réné, Duke of Lorraine, who defeated and slew Charles the Bold under the walls of Nancy. Being a younger son, he had gone to the French court in search of fortune, and the search was not in vain. He married Antoinette of Bourbon, a descendant of Louis IX., and dying, left six sons and four daughters, and an income of 600,000 livres, about equivalent to 160,000_l._ sterling. The eldest of his sons was Francis, Duke of Guise, now in his fortieth year, a skillful, violent, and unscrupulous soldier. He kept up an almost royal establishment; and when his steward represented to him that the best way of getting out of his pecuniary embarrassments would be to retrench his expenditure, and that he would do well to dismiss a number of poor gentlemen who lived at his expense, he replied: “It is true I do not want them, but they want me.” He was exceedingly popular in Paris, ever ready to listen to the complaints of the humblest citizen; and was beloved by his soldiers, for he never failed to recompense any remarkable exploit.