GUISE, a celebrated French ducal family deriving its title from the town of Guise in Aisne.

GUISE, CHARLES, CARDINAL OF LORRAINE, DUKE OF, son of the succeeding, and considered the ablest of the Guise family; was archbishop of Rheims in 1538, and cardinal of Lorraine in 1547; was prominent at the Council of Trent, and in conjunction with his brother fiercely opposed Protestantism (1527-1574).

GUISE, CLAUDE OF LORRAINE, first Duke of, fifth son of Rene II., Duke of Lorraine; distinguished himself in the service of Francis I., who conferred on him the dukedom of Guise; was the grandfather of Mary, Queen of Scots, through his daughter Marie, wife of James V. of Scotland (1496-1550).

GUISE, FRANCIS, second Duke of, and son of preceding; rose, to the highest eminence as a soldier, winning, besides many others, the great victory of Metz (1552) over the Germans, and capturing Calais from the English in 1558; along with his brother CHARLES (q. v.) he was virtual ruler of France during the feeble rule of Francis II., and these two set themselves to crush the rise of Protestantism; he was murdered by a Huguenot at the siege of Orleans (1519-1563).

GUISE, HENRY I., third Duke of, son of Francis; the murder of his father added fresh zeal to his inborn hatred of the Protestants, and throughout his life he persecuted them with merciless rigour; he was a party to the massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572); his ambitious designs on the crown of France brought about his assassination (1550-1588).

GUISE, HENRY II., fifth Duke of, grandson of preceding; at 15 he became archbishop of Rheims, but the death of his brother placed him in the dukedom (1640); he opposed Richelieu, was condemned to death, but fled to Flanders; with Masaniello he made a fruitless attempt to seize the kingdom of Naples, and eventually settled in Paris, becoming grand-chamberlain to Louis XIV. (1614-1664).

GUIZOT, FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME, a celebrated French historian and statesman, born at Nimes; his boyhood was spent at Geneva, and in 1805 he came to Paris to study law, but he soon took to writing, and in his twenty-fourth year had published several works and translated Gibbon’s great history; in 1812 he was appointed to the chair of History in the Sorbonne; on the second restoration (1814) became Secretary-General of the Ministry of the Interior; the return of Napoleon drove him from office, but on the downfall of the Corsican he received the post of Secretary to the Ministry of Justice; in 1830 he threw in his lot with Louis Philippe, became Minister of Public Instruction, Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister; his political career practically closed with the downfall of Louis Philippe; his voluminous historical works, executed between his terms of office and in his closing years, display wide learning and a great faculty of generalisation; the best known are “The History of the English Revolution” and “The History of Civilisation”; as a statesman he was honest, patriotic, but short-sighted (1787-1874).