Coligni, Gaspard de

ko-len-ye, Gaspard de (1517-1572), a French admiral. His life fell in the troublous times of the civil war between the Protestant Huguenots and the Catholics. A brilliant career in the wars with Spain raised him to the rank of admiral. He became the leader of the Huguenot party. In an age of the foulest treachery and assassination, and the concealment of ambitious designs behind the veil of religion, Coligni appears to have been the one eminent man of character. Catharine de Medici favored the admiral until she found that he had more influence with her son, King Charles IX, than she relished. She then incited the weak king to authorize a wholesale massacre of all Huguenots on the night of St. Bartholomew. At the appointed hour, when the Paris mob fell upon the unsuspecting Huguenots, the Duke of Guise, leader of the Catholic party, hurried with armed men to the house of the aged admiral. His followers burst into Coligni's bedchamber, thrust him through with their swords, and threw his body out of an upper window into the street below. In 1562 a Huguenot colony under encouragement from Coligni founded the first white colony on the mainland of North America at Port Royal, South Carolina. The settlers named the country Carolina in honor of the same miserable Charles IX, but they lost the fort and supplies by fire and returned to France. See Huguenots; Catharine De Medici