Scottish Affairs and the Treaty of Edinburgh

Through his marriage to Mary Stuart, Francis II was also king consort of Scotland — a kingdom France believed for a time it could permanently attach to its crown, before losing all influence there within eighteen months, in an episode entirely absent from the chronological account of the reign yet one that mobilised a considerable share of its military and financial resources.

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👑 Mary Stuart, queen from the cradle

Born on 8 December 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, Mary Stuart became queen of Scotland at barely six days old, upon the death of her father James V. Entrusted from 1548, at age five, to the education of the French court, she married Francis II there on 24 April 1558 in Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. The marriage contract included a secret clause providing for the outright union of Scotland with the French crown should the couple die without heirs; through her grandmother Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, Mary Stuart also claimed rights to the English throne, then held by her cousin Elizabeth I — a claim that would poison relations between the two kingdoms for years to come.

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⚔️ The Protestant revolt and the French intervention

Since 1554, Scotland had been governed in her daughter’s name by Mary of Guise, sister of Francis of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine, whose pro-French, Catholic policy met with growing opposition. In May 1559, a coalition of Protestant nobles, the Lords of the Congregation, led by the reformer John Knox — back from Geneva that same year —, rose up and drove the regent out of Edinburgh. France responded by sending troops under the command of Henri Cleutin, lord of Oisel, who managed to restore the situation by late 1559. But England soon intervened in turn: in January 1560, its fleet blockaded the port of Leith, turned into a French military base, before an expeditionary force of roughly six thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry laid siege to it in April. For want of reinforcements and funds — the royal treasury already strained by the debt inherited from Henry II —, the French position at Leith became untenable. Mary of Guise died on 11 June 1560, besieged in Edinburgh Castle, depriving France of its last regional support.

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📜 The Treaty of Edinburgh

The negotiations that followed her death, in July 1560, brought together the bishop of Valence Jean de Monluc and Charles de La Rochefoucauld, lord of Randan, envoys of Francis II, facing the English representatives and the Scottish Lords — under conditions so unfavourable that the French negotiators were treated almost as prisoners. The Treaty of Edinburgh, signed on 6 July 1560, imposed the total withdrawal of French and English troops from Scotland, recognition of Elizabeth I as the legitimate queen of England, and the discontinuation, by Francis II and Mary Stuart, of bearing the English and Irish coats of arms. Outraged by terms negotiated without their consent, the French sovereigns refused to ratify the treaty — it never was, officially — but this did not prevent its de facto application: the Scottish Parliament promptly established the reformed church as the state religion, sealing the break with France and ending the centuries-old alliance known as the Auld Alliance.

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🧠 Key Takeaways

• 24 April 1558: marriage of Francis II and Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland since the age of six days
• May 1559: Protestant revolt of the Lords of the Congregation, led by John Knox, against regent Mary of Guise
• French military intervention, then English siege of Leith from April 1560
• 11 June 1560: death of Mary of Guise at Edinburgh, collapse of the French position
• 6 July 1560: Treaty of Edinburgh, never ratified by France but applied de facto — end of the Auld Alliance and establishment of Protestantism in Scotland

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Next zoom: The Edict of Romorantin, an Impossible Compromise.