He sat firm in his saddle, and rode back unassisted to his tent; and when the surgeon thought he would die of pain, when the iron was extracted, 'he bore it as easily as if it had been but the plucking of a hair out of his head.'

He won international renown in 1552 when he successfully defended the city of Metz from the forces of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and defeated the imperial troops again at the Battle of Renty in 1554. but the Truce of Vaucelles temporarily curtailed his military activity.

He led an army into Italy in 1557 to aid Pope Paul IV, operating in conjunction with Brissac to capture Valenza.

Taking the field, he captured Calais from the English on 7 January 1558[8]—an enormous propaganda victory for France—then Thionville and Arlon that summer, and was preparing to advance into Luxembourg when the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was signed.

In reaction to the dominating power at court of the ultra-Catholic Guises, La Renaudie, a Protestant gentleman of Périgord, perhaps with the indirect encouragement of Louis of Bourbon, Prince of Condé, organized a palace coup, the conspiracy of Amboise, to seize the person of the Duke of Guise and his brother Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine.

The discourse which Coligny, leader of the Huguenots, pronounced against les Guises in the Assembly of Notables at Fontainebleau (August 1560), did not influence King Francis II in the least, but resulted rather in the imprisonment of Condé, at Charles's behest.

[12] The plan of the Triumvirate was to treat with Habsburg Spain and the Holy See, and also to come to an understanding with the Lutheran princes of Germany to induce them to abandon the idea of covertly backing the French Protestants.

The Colloquy at Poissy (September and October 1561) between theologians of the two confessions was fruitless, and the conciliation policy of Catherine de' Medici was defeated.

From 15 to 18 February 1562, Guise visited the Duke of Württemberg at Saverne, and convinced him that if the conference at Poissy had failed, the fault was that of the Calvinists.

The siege of Bourges in September was the opening episode, then Rouen was retaken from the Protestants by Guise after a month's siege (October);[14] the Battle of Dreux (19 December), at which Montmorency was taken prisoner and Saint-André slain,[14] was in the end turned by Guise to the advantage of the Catholic cause, and Condé, leader of the Huguenots, was taken prisoner.

A hunting accident—Guise had been appointed Grand Veneur of France in 1556—had been planned, as Sir Nicholas Throckmorton informed Queen Elizabeth I of England in May 1560, but the plot was divulged by one of the conspirators who lost their nerve and his five co-conspirators fled.