The third son of Claude, Duke of Guise and Antoinette de Bourbon he was destined from a young age for a church career.

While he lacked much interest in spiritual matters and was renowned for his drinking, he built up a considerable empire of abbeys during his life, which he passed on to his nephew Claude, chevalier d'Aumale.

He crowned Henri III in 1575, and continued to advocate for committed prosecution of the civil wars in his final years, before dying in 1578.

[2] While Cardinal Guise could not claim the same number of benefices as his older brother, he was not without many abbeys, and together they formed a large ecclesiastical empire.

Guise for his part controlled the abbey of Notre Dame des Trois Fontaines, Saint-Pierre and Saint-Thierri in Champagne alone.

[6] Cardinal Guise acquired in his lifetime the derisive moniker of 'cardinal des bouteilles' due to his reputed fondness for drinking.

He maintained this pension through the next three bishops that succeeded him to the post, at the end of his life in 1578 Giulio de Medici was fruitlessly trying to get the Pope to cancel it.

[15] By 1558, the Guise rival for political authority was a prisoner of the Spanish, and they enjoyed the fruits, a marriage secured between their niece and the dauphin.

At the festivities, the Cardinals Bourbon, Lorraine, Guise, Sens, Meudon and Lenoncourt proceeded the dauphin who was brought forth by Navarre.

[16] Cardinal Guise was relieved of his authority over Albi in 1561, as it was felt that he lacked the energy to sufficiently prosecute a war against heresy in his diocese.

He was replaced by Lorenzo Strozzi, who had called royal troops in to crush suspected heretics in his previous residence at Béziers.

During Cardinal Guise's tenure as Archbishop of Sens, the Protestants of the town were massacred by militant elements of the populace in April 1562.

However the initiative of the meeting would be destroyed on the duke of Guise's return to France, his troops massacring a Protestant service as they passed through Wassy.

He and his brother Lorraine (after his return) represented the hardline Catholic position in the court, alongside the Duke of Montpensier and Nevers.

[31] At a council meeting in May 1568, the majority of the councillors present pre-occupied themselves with how best to ensure that the recent Peace of Longjumeau was properly enforced, proposing various methods by which the king could make his authority on the matter clear.

They spent the meeting discussing how it was important for the Protestants to be brought back to Catholicism, and that until such time as that could be achieved, they must be kept under armed guard.

[12] That same month, he and Lorraine travelled to Étampes in the company of the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the king's brother, Anjou who had set out to campaign against the Protestants.

Nevers counselled Anjou that Cardinal Guise was a dullard, who had no place on the conseil privé due to lacking the intelligence for matters of state.

[38] In early 1576, the Italian ambassador Morosini reported that Cardinal Guise had joined a faction of nobles, determined to resist any attempts to bring the fifth war of religion to a close without a total victory.