Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And when we
Speaker 1: left Katherine de Medici in our previous podcast, she was
Speaker 1: a grieving widow. Her husband had just been killed in
Speaker 1: a jousting accident, a terrible jousting accident which I'm going
Speaker 1: to take the opportunity to relive one more time. He
Speaker 1: receives a lance in the eye through the brain and
Speaker 1: it takes him ten agonizing days to die. So that's
Speaker 1: where we left off, and it's where we're gonna pick
Speaker 1: up again. I can see why you want to relivet up, Sarah.
Speaker 1: She's left as regent for her sickly weak minded fifteen
Speaker 1: year old son, Francis the second, who ended up married
Speaker 1: to Mary, Queen of Scott's which connects our Medici series
Speaker 1: to our Tutor Stewart series, Which that's the key, that's
Speaker 1: why this is a super series which you've been so
Speaker 1: excited about. Um. But Catherine replaces her cheery personal symbol
Speaker 1: of a rainbow with that of a broken lance. She
Speaker 1: starts wearing exclusively black morning attire, usually with a white
Speaker 1: ruff to set it all off for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life, for the rest of her life. And and
Speaker 1: she gets to work, and she effectively rules France through
Speaker 1: three successive sons who are a king until she dies
Speaker 1: just shy of seventy years old. But don't think there
Speaker 1: wasn't any trouble, because there definitely was. The first son, Francis,
Speaker 1: didn't live very long at all. He died at sixteen,
Speaker 1: and he was succeeded by his ten year old brother,
Speaker 1: who became Charles the ninth. And Catherine took this opportunity
Speaker 1: to seize full control of the regency, using her very
Speaker 1: excellent scheming skills to remain in control of her kid
Speaker 1: amid these jostling factions in France. Yeah, and she promotes
Speaker 1: them to majority at age thirteen, which is a year
Speaker 1: earlier than normal. But she she wanted a real king
Speaker 1: of France because these factions were so contentious at this time.
Speaker 1: And she takes them on a grand progress of the
Speaker 1: country and it's a big deal. It's twenty eight months
Speaker 1: of traveling, moving between chateau and tents and taking barges
Speaker 1: and horses and having all these elaborate festivals and banquets,
Speaker 1: and Catherine is kind of an elaborate lady. Anyways, we
Speaker 1: learned in Leonie Frieda's book, Um Catherine de Medici, Renaissance
Speaker 1: Queen of France, that she keeps bears in her retinue.
Speaker 1: And you know how much Katie and I love bears,
Speaker 1: but a woman after these are kind of sad bears
Speaker 1: though they have pierced noses and their their chain to
Speaker 1: her leader, but they follow her around. I mean, how
Speaker 1: crazy is that She's also got a monkey, a parent,
Speaker 1: and an entire household of dwarves who wear brocades and
Speaker 1: fur and have their own footman and tutors, which they
Speaker 1: all hang out with her constantly. But the point of
Speaker 1: this tour is is not just to to show off
Speaker 1: and show off how magnificent the crown is, but to
Speaker 1: have the king meet and mingle with his people, and
Speaker 1: to keep the nobles entertained, keep them away from their
Speaker 1: their country houses where they could, I don't know, cook
Speaker 1: up plans against the monarchy and um just try to
Speaker 1: bring the country back together. And she's hoping that everyone
Speaker 1: will ultimately rally around the king and rally together for France.
Speaker 1: And this is something the country really needs at the time, right,
Speaker 1: because when Henry the Second died, he'd had the personal
Speaker 1: loyalty of all of their nobles, and once he was gone,
Speaker 1: the country is split again by feuding noble factions. Each
Speaker 1: of them wants control of this young king. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: loyal to the crown still, but they don't have that
Speaker 1: personal loyalty that they had to the to Charles and
Speaker 1: Frances before him, to their father. So the principal nobles
Speaker 1: were going to keep an eye on. Here are the
Speaker 1: Geese family and they are the ultra Catholics, and then
Speaker 1: there's the Bourbon family, who are Princess of the Blood,
Speaker 1: which makes them, uh, the second family in France after
Speaker 1: the royal family itself, and the Bourbons are Protestant. So
Speaker 1: just remember those two sides throughout this whole thing, and
Speaker 1: the issues between these two groups of nobles are also
Speaker 1: representative of religious issues in the country as a whole.
Speaker 1: So we're going to give you a little background on
Speaker 1: that to make it easier to understand. Yeah, the Reformation,
Speaker 1: of course, got its start in fifteen seventeen, two years
Speaker 1: before Catherine was even born. Um when Luther posted his
Speaker 1: ninety theses and then the zealous Protestant John Calvin is
Speaker 1: largely responsible for spreading the new religion in France. Um
Speaker 1: and just to get a scale of how quickly things
Speaker 1: happen here, by the fifteen fifties we have the first
Speaker 1: French Reformed churches, so this takes off from forty years
Speaker 1: for the whole thing. And Catherine's husband, Henry the Second,
Speaker 1: who as we learned in our previous podcast, was obsessed
Speaker 1: with his foreign war, was a little bit too distracted
Speaker 1: to deal adequately with these religious fractures, and he also
Speaker 1: underestimated them and their power. And then you know, right
Speaker 1: after he made his foreign peace, he died with a
Speaker 1: lance in his eyes. So that cut that short anyways, definitely.
Speaker 1: So we're left with these weak child kings and Catherine
Speaker 1: trying to patch everything up, patch up these feuding nobles
Speaker 1: and country split by religious differences, and she's trying to
Speaker 1: protect her children's throne, she's trying to defend her own religion,
Speaker 1: she's a Catholic, of course, and deal with the factions,
Speaker 1: and she can't please everyone. Nobody can juggle all of that.
Speaker 1: And contrary to Catherine's later reputation as this crazed ultra
Speaker 1: Catholic whose intent on spilling Protestant blood. Would like to
Speaker 1: do a little myth busting here, because she really strived
Speaker 1: for moderation whenever she could, and she granted freedom of
Speaker 1: conscience and limited access to worship, which was a big,
Speaker 1: big It's basically separating sedition from heresy, and no one
Speaker 1: is happy. Still. The Catholics think she's capitulating or maybe
Speaker 1: she'll even become a Protestant horror of horrors, and the
Speaker 1: Huguenots think that it's still not enough. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: weird though, because this piece that she tries to establish
Speaker 1: the freedom of conscience and the limited access to worship
Speaker 1: is what we end up with decades later, after nine
Speaker 1: civil wars of religion. Um, you end up with the
Speaker 1: same thing. It's crazy. But that's not to say that
Speaker 1: her reputation for Florentine tactics, which by we mean murdering
Speaker 1: people and interest in the occult, wasn't deserved because even
Speaker 1: though she was a devout Catholic, she relied heavily on medici, astrologers, magic,
Speaker 1: and her own dream visions another podcast theme. She had
Speaker 1: consultations with no stra Damis, but her main astrologers were
Speaker 1: the Florentine Ruggieri brothers, who were magicians, necromancers and men
Speaker 1: who are known for being very skilled in the black arts.
Speaker 1: And just this weird magic mirror story about Catherine. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: shortly after her husband died, she um she consults one
Speaker 1: of the Riggieri brothers. Um wants to have him foretell
Speaker 1: her son's futures, and in this mirror he pulls out
Speaker 1: she sees her son's faces circling by, and Ruggieri tells
Speaker 1: her that each circle they make will stand for how
Speaker 1: many years they'll rule the kingdom. She sees Francis go
Speaker 1: by once, her second son, Charles the ninth, goes by
Speaker 1: fourteen times, and then her third son, who is later
Speaker 1: Henry the Third, goes by fifteen times. In the final
Speaker 1: faith she sees is Henry, Prince of Navarre. So it's
Speaker 1: really spooky and kind of a bad uh, a bad
Speaker 1: omen for Catherine. She also had a guy in her life,
Speaker 1: Metro Renee, who mixed up potions for her and supposedly
Speaker 1: poison gloves and poison rude. And although it's likely that
Speaker 1: Catherine had people taken out, you know, had her own
Speaker 1: little hit list, she probably didn't poison any fellow queens
Speaker 1: with poisoned gloves. But this is the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that earns her her nickname the Black Queen, and that
Speaker 1: massacre were about to discuss. Yeah, that's a really big
Speaker 1: part of it. So we're gonna set the stage for
Speaker 1: the massacre. While there are eventually nine mores of religion
Speaker 1: in France at the time of the massacre, which is
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventy two, we've only had three so far,
Speaker 1: and the wars have polished off the main Bourbon Protestant leaders,
Speaker 1: leaving two young princess figureheads, and that's the Prince de
Speaker 1: Colonde and Henry of Navarre, who we've already mentioned. Um
Speaker 1: and Catherine has just arranged a peacemaking marriage kind of
Speaker 1: I think, uh the Yorks and the Lancasters sort of
Speaker 1: like that, between Henry of Navarre and her daughter Margaret,
Speaker 1: who's known as Margot. And this marriage is going to
Speaker 1: unite the Valwa family, the royal family with the Bourbons,
Speaker 1: So that's uniting the senior in the junior branches of
Speaker 1: the royal line, and it's also going to unite the
Speaker 1: Catholics and the Protestants because of course Margot is a Catholic.
Speaker 1: Henry of Navar is a Protestant. So it's this great
Speaker 1: um symbol of peace and goodwill, and thousands of people
Speaker 1: are going to come into Paris, nobles, regular people of
Speaker 1: both religions to see the nuptials. And we have another
Speaker 1: important player in this setup. Since the Bourbon Huguenot leaders
Speaker 1: are dead, we have a guy named Admiral gast Bar,
Speaker 1: the second Coligni, at the head of our movement. He
Speaker 1: had just returned to court about a year earlier and
Speaker 1: had begun currying favor with the king, and his uncle
Speaker 1: had been a great trusted adviser to Henry the second,
Speaker 1: so Lansking. Yes, so guess Far's idea is that maybe
Speaker 1: he can take on a similar role with Charles the Ninth, who,
Speaker 1: as a young man, is you know, starting to get
Speaker 1: ready to take on more responsibility, take over some of
Speaker 1: it from his mom and upstage his younger brother's glamorous
Speaker 1: military reputation. So Gaspard has a plan and he's hoping
Speaker 1: that it will bring him personally closer to the king,
Speaker 1: but he's also hoping that it will give the Huguenots
Speaker 1: more recognition, more rights, more respect in France, and the
Speaker 1: plan is to take French Catholics and French Huguenots and
Speaker 1: together fight the Spanish in the Netherlands. And the wedding
Speaker 1: ceremonies that are going on in Paris offer the perfect
Speaker 1: opportunity for Gaspard to discuss this plan with Charles and
Speaker 1: to try to get his approval. But unfortunately for him,
Speaker 1: Coligni is very unpopular with the other members of the court.
Speaker 1: The very Catholic Gee family doesn't want war with Spain
Speaker 1: and they hate Collini because they consider him responsible for
Speaker 1: a murder in their family, the murder of Francois de
Speaker 1: Guise ten years earlier. And Catherine doesn't want more with
Speaker 1: Spain either. She thinks it could be disastrous and she
Speaker 1: doesn't like Collini's influence on her son. So this isn't
Speaker 1: just a religious issue. It's a it's a mixture of
Speaker 1: personal vendettas and political problems. But going into this, we
Speaker 1: have two things happening, this big marriage between Margo and
Speaker 1: Henry and the arrival of Colin. You to attend the
Speaker 1: wedding and discussed the plans for the war against Spain.
Speaker 1: So Catherine had long banned the geezes from enacting their
Speaker 1: revenge on Collini for this murder. He may not even
Speaker 1: have been involved by the way his name got roped
Speaker 1: into it, and yeah, he probably didn't have much to
Speaker 1: do with it. But then she lifts this band so
Speaker 1: he's basically back on a possible hit list, and approves
Speaker 1: the plan to assassinate him the day after the wedding
Speaker 1: ceremonies end. So we have a brief interlude here of
Speaker 1: the happy peacemaking wedding. On August eighteen, fifteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: Margot and Henry Nvar marry outside of Notre Dame, and
Speaker 1: then she has a mass inside with her brother by
Speaker 1: proxy because of course Henry, as a Protestant, cannot take
Speaker 1: part in a mass, and she wears an ermine trimmed
Speaker 1: crown and a coat with a thirty foot train. We
Speaker 1: just thought we'd throw in a few we like fashion
Speaker 1: details before things get really bloody here, and the fistivities
Speaker 1: go on for days, you know, kind of like the
Speaker 1: wedding we talked about earlier of Henry the Second and
Speaker 1: Catherine Um just grand festivities, days and days of them.
Speaker 1: And Colleeney himself isn't a big party or so he's
Speaker 1: not really taking part in a lot of his celebration,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't even really want to be there. In fact,
Speaker 1: his wife's just had a baby. But he's hanging around
Speaker 1: so that he can talk to the King about this
Speaker 1: Spanish expedition he'd like to get going. And he's becoming
Speaker 1: increasingly angry because Charles keeps putting him off and putting
Speaker 1: him off, and eventually he warns him that they might
Speaker 1: soon be discussing civil war rather in foreign war if
Speaker 1: he doesn't get his meeting. And he also hears the
Speaker 1: plot might be hashing. I mean, you know, word is
Speaker 1: going to spread in these times, but it doesn't bother
Speaker 1: him too much. He's gonna stick around in Paris because
Speaker 1: he really wants to talk to Charles. So Friday, Augusty,
Speaker 1: the celebrations end and Colony is out on a walk
Speaker 1: when the Geese assassin strikes and it's a shot from
Speaker 1: a window above the street, but right at that moment,
Speaker 1: Colony bends down to adjust his shoe, so the shot
Speaker 1: misses him. It just strikes his arm, breaks it and
Speaker 1: almost shoots off his finger, but he's not killed. There's
Speaker 1: a lesson there, maybe to always tie your shoe. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but the Huguenots, of course, are enraged by
Speaker 1: this incident, and Charles, who didn't know about it, promises
Speaker 1: that he'll find the party's involved, not realizing of course,
Speaker 1: that his mother is behind it. And remarkably, Coligny stays
Speaker 1: in town instead of leaving, which I would have done,
Speaker 1: because he trusts Charles and trusts that he'll figure this
Speaker 1: out and set things right. He believes them well, and
Speaker 1: fleeing would have been a huge insult to the king
Speaker 1: once he asked him to stay. And by this point too,
Speaker 1: things are starting to get kind of scary in Paris.
Speaker 1: The Huguenots are obviously furious that their leader has had
Speaker 1: this assassination attempt, and the Catholic Parisians are starting to
Speaker 1: get kind of angry too. I think they're tired of
Speaker 1: the Huguenots being around. This party has gone on too
Speaker 1: long by this point, but Catherine's involvement in this failed
Speaker 1: assassination attempt cannot be found out, so she meets with
Speaker 1: Nobles secretly to determine what to do next, and their
Speaker 1: decision is to kill all of the Huguenot Nobles and
Speaker 1: captains who are still in Paris, which makes you wonder
Speaker 1: how they came to such a radical decision. And this
Speaker 1: is where things get a little bit dicey. Historically, Suppo
Speaker 1: Lee the royalists, you know, Catherine and her nobles had
Speaker 1: heard that the Huguenots were about to attack them, so
Speaker 1: in order to avoid a coup, they decide, okay, well
Speaker 1: will attack first. But later historians have said that it's
Speaker 1: probably unlikely there was a major Protestant coup in the
Speaker 1: works at this time, although I watched an interesting video
Speaker 1: from historian Barbara at Diefendorff at Boston University, and she
Speaker 1: said it didn't really matter if the Protestants were actually
Speaker 1: going to stage a coup or not. Just the fact
Speaker 1: that Catherine and the other nobles thought it might happen
Speaker 1: was enough to to warrant their strike in their eyes
Speaker 1: at least. And this is there. Let me think about it.
Speaker 1: You have all of the powerful Huguenots in your own capital,
Speaker 1: some of them them are staying in your own palace
Speaker 1: to love, and in a few days they're all going
Speaker 1: to go home, back to their own palaces, maybe raised
Speaker 1: their own armies. If they're planning a coup. It's the
Speaker 1: time to strike. This is reminiscent of the Pozzi conspiracory reminiscing. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they've made their decision, but they need the King's
Speaker 1: approval to go through with it, and they break to
Speaker 1: him that actually they were behind the plot the whole
Speaker 1: time and convince him that the Huguenots are about to
Speaker 1: try to pull this coup, and he's basically bullied into
Speaker 1: giving his assent to execute a select list of people
Speaker 1: to kill, and he supposedly says kill them all, kill
Speaker 1: them all, or maybe one of the geezes says that
Speaker 1: later as a direct quote of the king, but um,
Speaker 1: we should emphasize that his ascent is to kill the
Speaker 1: people on the list, and just the people on the
Speaker 1: it's not consent to the masker that ends up happening.
Speaker 1: The killings are planned for the early morning on St.
Speaker 1: Bartholomew's Day, August, and they're to be carried out by
Speaker 1: the King's royal bodyguards and GE's troops. At the same time,
Speaker 1: militia men would be guarding the city's gates and barges
Speaker 1: would block the sun, so they're shutting off the city
Speaker 1: and the signal would be the three am bell of
Speaker 1: the Palais de Justice. But the massacre starts a minute
Speaker 1: earlier when a bell rings out from a different church,
Speaker 1: and the first one to be killed is COLLEENI, one
Speaker 1: of the first major major leaders, and he's very disdainful
Speaker 1: of his Geese guard assassin. He says, I should at
Speaker 1: least be killed by a gentleman and not by this boar.
Speaker 1: And then he's run through with the sword, thrown out
Speaker 1: the window, alive and later beheaded. And at the loop
Speaker 1: there's all out slaughter going on. Henry of Navarre had
Speaker 1: woken up early, you couldn't sleep, decides to play a
Speaker 1: little game of tennis with his friends while he waits
Speaker 1: for Charles to wake up, and on the way to
Speaker 1: the tennis courts, he and his friends are stopped by
Speaker 1: the King's men and separated. His companions are probably all
Speaker 1: taken away and killed immediately, but Navarre is locked up
Speaker 1: with his cousin, the Prince of Conde. First safety. These
Speaker 1: two are going to be spared. They're not going to
Speaker 1: be killed in this massacre of Protestants. The Huguenots staying
Speaker 1: in the palace are dragged from their beds and have
Speaker 1: their throats slit. Some try to hide some time to
Speaker 1: run in the courtyard, but they're shot down by archers
Speaker 1: or pushed toward the line of Swiss guards. And a
Speaker 1: sad note about katherine daughters Margo Um, she's now, of course,
Speaker 1: the wife of a Huguenot and she's in the middle
Speaker 1: of all of it. Yeah, her sister had tried to
Speaker 1: warn her if something was going on, didn't give her
Speaker 1: details of the plot, but had begged her mother to
Speaker 1: let Margot stay with them for the night, and Catherine
Speaker 1: wouldn't allow it because she figured if her if her
Speaker 1: daughter didn't return to the Huguenot apartments, Um, the Protestants
Speaker 1: might realize something was up. So yeah, Margot is in
Speaker 1: the middle of all this. She's actually in bed when
Speaker 1: one of her husband's men comes running in covered in
Speaker 1: blood and clings to her for dear life, being pursued
Speaker 1: you know, by an assassin right behind him. The guy
Speaker 1: actually spares his life, and Margot personally petitions for a
Speaker 1: couple more of her husband's men. But by five am,
Speaker 1: nearly all of the major French Protestants have been killed,
Speaker 1: so the list has been killed by five By five am,
Speaker 1: but the killing doesn't stop with the list. The rest
Speaker 1: of the populace gets involved. Lots of French Protestants have
Speaker 1: brought their families into town for the wedding and they
Speaker 1: can't escape. Their homes are rated, their children are killed,
Speaker 1: their bodies are thrown in the river, and personal issues
Speaker 1: that have absolutely nothing to do with religion were also
Speaker 1: settled in the chaos. Because if everyone's getting killed, who's
Speaker 1: going to know? If you kill your creditor or your
Speaker 1: enemy or your wife, it's a good time to take
Speaker 1: care of things. Nobody will notice. Um. So Charles obviously
Speaker 1: was not intending for this level of bloodshed to happen,
Speaker 1: and he asks the people of Paris to please stop,
Speaker 1: and they don't. It goes on for three days, and
Speaker 1: then it spreads to the provinces, where it goes on
Speaker 1: until October. And Katie and I were talking about what
Speaker 1: sort of message would that be. You have a guy
Speaker 1: rides out and says they're killing everyone in Paris, you
Speaker 1: should do that where you are. We're not sure how
Speaker 1: that works. The final tally is a bit up in
Speaker 1: the air. A Catholic apologist puts it at only two thousand.
Speaker 1: A Huguenot puts it at seventy thousand, but it's likely
Speaker 1: that there were at least three thousand people killed in
Speaker 1: Paris alone, and a few senior Huguenots do manage to escape.
Speaker 1: A few people have decided that they might want to
Speaker 1: move their quarters across the river, you know, just in
Speaker 1: case trouble broke out between all the Catholics and all
Speaker 1: the Huguenots that were in Paris at once, and a
Speaker 1: few of them ended up being able to escape, and uh,
Speaker 1: they were the seeds for new rebellion. So the aftermath
Speaker 1: is that the Valvois cannot get their story straight about
Speaker 1: what happened. Charles is telling contradictory tales. To the Protestants.
Speaker 1: He says that it was a popular uprising organized by
Speaker 1: the Geese, just a personal vendetta, y'all. And then to
Speaker 1: the Catholics, he says it was something that he specifically
Speaker 1: ordered to prevent a conspiracy against the crown. But of
Speaker 1: course some Catholics, like Philip the Second in Spain and
Speaker 1: the Pope in Rome, see it initially as oh, Great
Speaker 1: France has finally started a religious war, and they're really happy.
Speaker 1: Philip even does a little jig supposedly, which seems very
Speaker 1: unlike him. Um. But they realized pretty quickly that no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a religious for it was politically motivated, and
Speaker 1: stop being so congratulatory. And many Protestants had been sticking
Speaker 1: to the line that they were loyal to the king,
Speaker 1: thinking that he just had bad advisors, that it wasn't him.
Speaker 1: But now they decide that they can't be loyal to
Speaker 1: the man who accepts responsibility for the massacre understandably, and
Speaker 1: the Huguenots throw off Calvin's views towards royal allegiance, which
Speaker 1: makes rebellion justifiable. Now, So we have this pamphlet battle
Speaker 1: that begins too, and this is probably most of the
Speaker 1: engravings you've seen. Maybe Catherine standing there in black over
Speaker 1: piles of dead babies, this is from this time period,
Speaker 1: and Charles is depicted as a maniacal king who laughed
Speaker 1: when he watched his people killed from his window. Or
Speaker 1: maybe he's this emotionally disturbed man who is manipulated by
Speaker 1: his foreign mother, who's the Black Queen, and who is
Speaker 1: not just foreign, she's Italian, which makes it doubly bad.
Speaker 1: So ultimately we just have these caricatures of these people
Speaker 1: instead of who they really were, and Catherine de Medici
Speaker 1: has retained this reputation throughout much of history. Charles was
Speaker 1: haunted by the massacre, actually and chronically ill. He died
Speaker 1: soon afterward, and his brother became Henry the Third, and Catherine,
Speaker 1: always involved in her children's lives, continues to promote her
Speaker 1: son's throne. This is her favorite son too, by the way,
Speaker 1: and mainly her role for him, since he is a
Speaker 1: full grown man, is to rein him in from his
Speaker 1: kind of dangerous inclinations sometimes. But she dies in fifteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, and eight months later he's murdered by uh
Speaker 1: deranged friar and he dies without children, So the crown
Speaker 1: goes to a junior branch of the family, the Bourbons,
Speaker 1: and his cousin Henry of Navarre. Henry the Fourth, he
Speaker 1: was the groom at the pre massacre wedding festivities, who's
Speaker 1: married to Margot Valvois. But Margot and Henry, who were
Speaker 1: never interested in each other in the first place, to
Speaker 1: be honest, ultimately annull their marriage, which allows Henry to
Speaker 1: make a new match, and with this new wife, he
Speaker 1: goes on to found the Bourbon line of Kings that
Speaker 1: ends nearly two hundred years later with Louis the sixteenth
Speaker 1: and the friend Revolution and who is his wife, Marie
Speaker 1: de Medici of course, So we're so pleased with this
Speaker 1: little bit of historical symmetry, and it wraps up our
Speaker 1: series in the Medici that started with the murder at
Speaker 1: the Duomo, but it also sets up another series that
Speaker 1: we could do someday. So Bourbon King's anybody let us
Speaker 1: know what you think. You can follow us on Twitter
Speaker 1: at misst in History. We also have a Facebook fan
Speaker 1: page and you can give us your suggestions there. One
Speaker 1: more little note on Catherine, though, for all of her splendor,
Speaker 1: she liked to keep her personal quarters very personal. She
Speaker 1: decorated them with all these family portraits, the her Medici ancestors,
Speaker 1: the Vala family, her kids, her grandkids, her nieces and nephews.
Speaker 1: So think of it kind of like a grandmother's cluttered
Speaker 1: table of little photographs. Um. She also likes games, and
Speaker 1: she keeps lots of them on hand, many billiards and chess,
Speaker 1: and huge library of books that is devoted to game strategy. Um.
Speaker 1: So we think that she probably would have liked a
Speaker 1: couple of articles here at how stuff Works, how chess Works,
Speaker 1: or perhaps even how Yazi Works, which you can find
Speaker 1: if you search on our homepage at www dot how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: be sure to check out the stuff you missed in
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Speaker 1: home page