Charles de Lorraine-Guise, Duke of Mayenne (* 26 March 1554, † 4 October 1611) was a younger brother of the Duke of Guise. He was not in Paris during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. He accompanied Anjou to Poland and after his return fought successfully against the Huguenots. Mayenne sent Henri III information in December 1588 that Guise was the head of a conspiracy that would seek the king’s life, for which Henri III thanked him in a letter after Guise’s assassination.1 Mayenne did not side with the king, however, but took over the leadership of the Catholic League. In 1593, his attempt to persuade the Estates General to give the throne either to him or to the Spanish Infanta (a daughter of Philip II of Spain and Elizabeth de Valois, the eldest daughter of Henri II and Caterina de' Medici) failed. Two years later, he surrendered to Henri IV.
The Massacre at Paris
Mayenne is present in [Scene 4] planning the massacre, but has no text. In [Scene 6] he takes an oath with Anjou, Gonzague, and Retz before Guise to murder all Huguenots, and in [Scene 10], after the murder of Ramée, he proposes to shoot Huguenots with arrows from a bridge. All this is invented by Marlowe, since Mayenne was not in Paris at the time. Henri III orders in [Scene 21] the Governor of Orléans to kill Mayenne. Such an order was never issued, and besides, the duke was in Lyon at the time. In [Scene 24], Mayenne mourns the death of Guise and learns from a monk that his other brother Louis de Lorraine-Guise has also been murdered. The monk offers to assassinate Henri III, about which Mayenne wants to know more. Jacques Clément was a member of the League, which certainly supported him in his plan, but whether Mayenne was actually the driving force is unproven.
- Wilkinson (2004)↩︎
