Histoire De France 1547-1572 (volume 11/19)

This is history written with the soul of a poet. Jules Michelet, the 19th century's most electrifying historian, turns his gaze to a quarter-century that broke France: the reign of Henri II and the eruption of religious war that would consume the nation for decades. Here is the story of Admiral Coligny, the Protestant admiral who dared to challenge the Catholic throne, and of Catherine de Medici, the queen mother who maneuvered through faction and betrayal with cold calculation. Michelet traces the mounting tensions between faith and power, the court's poisonous intrigues, and the catastrophic momentum that builds toward one of history's most notorious massacres. But this is not mere chronicle. Michelet writes as a moral philosopher grappling with how a civilization turns on itself, asking what survives whenzealotry and realpolitikt collide. The preface, meditation on art's diminishing place amid greater moral dramas, sets the tone: this is history meant to wound and awaken the present.