![]() Montgomery hurried to kneel before the king and asked to have his head and hand cut off in punishment, but Henry magnanimously told him that it was not his fault and he had carried himself bravely and well. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador, who was watching, wrote: ‘I noted him to be very weak, and to have the sense of all his limbs almost benumbed, for being carried away, as he lay all along, he moved neither hand nor foot, but lay as one amazed.’ Bleeding profusely and almost unconscious, he was carried to his apartments in the Château des Tournelles. The king reeled in his saddle and gentlemen close by rushed to help him off his horse and out of his armour. Montgomery’s lance struck the king’s helmet and a long splinter pierced Henry’s eye and penetrated his brain. Henry, however, insisted on another contest with Montgomery, who did his best to refuse. Queen Catherine, the Duke of Savoy and other friends tried to persuade the king to leave the lists, as the day was virtually over. ![]() Yet he acquitted himself well, sporting Diane’s colours as usual, until the young Count of Montgomery, of his Scottish Guard, almost unseated him. Henry had started suffering giddiness after physical exertion and Catherine tried to persuade him not to joust. King Henry was to enter the lists before a glittering audience of lords and ladies, including Queen Catherine, Diane de Poitiers and Mary, Queen of Scots. In June 1559 a tournament lasting several days was held in Paris to celebrate a peace treaty between France and Spain. The French intended through her to acquire the Scottish throne. He succeeded his father to the French throne on his 28th birthday in 1547 and in 1558 his and Catherine’s eldest son, the stunted and sickly Francis, was married to Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been brought up in France by her mother’s family, the Guises, to keep her out of the hands of the English. ![]() Henry had other mistresses but his two other great loves were hunting and jousting. Catherine was rich but not pretty and Henry was soon in the arms of Diane de Poitiers, a beautiful, ambitious widow in her mid-thirties who became almost a queen behind the scenes. ![]() His father, King Francis I, reportedly supervised the consummation, announcing they had both shown valour in the ‘joust’. Born in 1519, the future Henry II married Catherine de Medici in 1533 when they were both 14 years old. ![]()
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