Note 1 — Chapter I

The Court was staying at the Château of la Roche-Guyon, not far from Mantes. As there had been a heavy fall of snow, François I. suggested that the younger members of the Court should organize a snowball-fight. Sides were accordingly formed; one led by the Dauphin and François de Lorraine, afterwards Duc de Guise, defending a house; the other, led by Enghien, besieging it. “During the combat,” says Martin du Bellay, “some ill-advised person threw a linen-chest out of the window, which fell on the Sieur d’Enghien’s head, and inflicted such injuries that he died a few days later.” Du Bellay does not give the name of the “ill-advised person,” but certain writers, less reticent, name François de Guise, and have even gone so far as to assert that he acted by orders of the Dauphin, who was jealous of Enghien’s military fame, while others say that he was a certain Conte di Bentivoglio, an Italian noble in the service of the Guises, whom they accuse of having instigated the deed. It is probable, however, that the death of Enghien was due merely to one of those acts of brutal horse-play so common at this epoch, and that the culprit, whoever he may have been, was innocent of any homicidal intention. See on this matter the author’s “Henri II.: his Court and Times” (London, Methuen; New York, Scribner, 1910).