arriage made her position not only unpleasant but precarious,
but the birth of her first son made her unassailable. In rapid
succession she bore ten children, seven of whom survived childhood.
Though she had little influence on affairs of state during her
husband's reign, she acquired self-confidence and at last began to talk
and act as queen.

[Sidenote: Diana of Poitiers]

At the age of seventeen Henry fell in love with a woman of thirty-six,
Diana de Poitiers, to whom his devotion never wavered until his death,
when she was sixty. Notwithstanding her absolute ascendancy over her
lover she meddled little with affairs of state.

[Sidenote: Admiral Coligny, 1519-72]

The direction of French policy at this time fell largely into the hands
of two powerful families. The first was that of Coligny. Of three
brothers the ablest was Gaspard, Admiral of France, a firm friend of
Henry's as well as a statesman and warrior. Still more powerful was
the family of Guise, the children of Claude, Duke of Guise, who died in
1527. [Sidenote: Francis of Guise] The eldest son, Francis, Duke of
Guise, was a great soldier. His brother, Charles, Cardinal of
Lorraine, won a high place in the councils of state, and his sister
Mary, by her marriage with James V of Scotland, brought added prestige
to the family. The great power wielded by this house owed much to the
position of their estates, part of which were fiefs of the French king
and part subject to the Empire. As suited their convenience they could
act either as Frenchmen or as foreign nobles.

[Sidenote: Expansion]

Under Henry France enjoyed a period of expansion such as she had not
had for many years. The {200} perpetual failures of Francis were at
last turned into substantial successes. This was due in large part to
the civil war in Germany and to the weakness of England's rulers,
Edward VI and Mary. It was due in part to the irrepressible energy of
the French bourgeois and gentlemen, in part to the genius of Francis of
Guise. The co-operation of France and Turkey, rather an identity of
interests than a formal alliance, a policy equally blamed by
contemporaries and praised by historians, continued. But the successes
achieved were due most of all to the definite abandonment of the hope
of Italian conquests and to the turning of French arms to regions more
suitable for incorporation under her government.

War having been declared on Charles, the French seized the T