This story does seem to be unlikely, not least because a small amount of arsenic touching the lips would not have had such a dramatic effect. He was seized with nausea and a burning sensation in his mouth and throat, and he died within a few hours. However, before the book could be presented to Henry, Charles inadvertently handled it and got arsenic on his fingers, which then touched his lips. She was supposed to have presented her Protestant son-in-law Henry of Navarre with a book on falconry, but to have sprinkled arsenic on its pages.

One story concerning Charles’s death was that he was accidentally poisoned by Catherine de Medici. He started to have terrible nightmares and his health began a terminal decline. Things came to a head on 1572 when Charles agreed to his mother’s plan to wreak terrible vengeance on the Huguenots in what became known as the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people – the exact number is not known – throughout France over a 7-day period.Ĭharles felt intense guilt at what happened, especially after he saw a flock of crows perch on the roof of the Louvre in Paris and imagined their cawing to be the cries of dying Huguenots.

The real power behind the throne right through Charles’s reign was Queen Catherine, who used her position to further the cause of Catholicism in France, at the expense of the Protestants who were generally known as Huguenots.

With Henry’s second son having died in infancy, this left Charles as the new king, aged only 10. Henry died in 1559, leaving the throne to his eldest son Francis, who died the following year at the age of 16. However, the stories that arose shortly after that time painted a much more sinister picture, with his death being attributed, one way or another, to his mother, the scheming regent Catherine de Medici.Ĭharles was born on 27th June 1550, the third son of King Henry II. King Charles IX of France died on 30th May 1574 at the age of 23, probably from tuberculosis.

King charles