Everything about Gabriel De Montgomery totally explained
Gabriel, comte de Montgomery, seigneur de Lorges (c.
1530 –
June 26 1574) was a lieutenant in King
Henry II of France's
Scots Guards. He is remembered for mortally injuring Henry in a freak
jousting accident and subsequently converted to
Protestantism, the ideology that the Scottish Guard was attempting to suppress.
On
June 30 or
July 1, 1559, during a jousting match to celebrate the
Peace of Cateau Cambrésis between Henry II and his longtime enemies the
Habsburgs, a splinter of wood from Montgomery's shattered
lance pierced Henry's eye and entered his brain, mortally injuring him. From his deathbed Henry absolved Montgomery of any blame, but, finding himself disgraced, Montgomery retreated to his estates in
Normandy. There he studied
theology and converted to Protestantism, making him an enemy of the state.
In 1572, Montgomery allied himself with another Protestant convert,
Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé. He took control of
Bourges and during September and October defended
Rouen from the Royal Army. He was one of the few refugees to survive the
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre after a wounded
Huguenot swam across the
Seine to warn him that rioting had begun. A price was put on his head, but he managed to escape to
England. For the next few years
Catherine de' Medici repeatedly asked
Queen Elizabeth I for his
extradition, to which Elizabeth is reported to have replied "Tell the Queen Mother that I won't act as France's executioner."
Montgomery returned to France with a fleet in a vain attempt to relieve
La Rochelle in 1573 and the following year he attempted an insurrection in Normandy, but was captured and sentenced to death. On
June 26,
1574, as he was about to be beheaded, Montgomery was informed that a royal
edict had proclaimed that his property would be confiscated and his children deprived of their titles. Turning to his executioners, he's reported to have said "Tell my children that if they've not the ability to restore what was taken away, then I damn them from the grave."
A freely adapted version of Montgomery's life is told in
Alexandre Dumas' novel
The Two Dianas.
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