Another lance injury to the eye

Many thanks to Anonymous, who responded to my post about Gregor Baci with a notation that Henry II (of France) was similarly wounded - but did not recover from the injury:

As a result of [Nostradamus'] gift for prophecy, he became Catherine de Medici's court consultant in the occult. The famous quatrain he composed, which presumably prophesied the death of King Henry II, reads:

The Lion shall overcome the old
on the field of war in a single combat (duelle);
He will pierce his eyes in a cage of gold
This is the first of two lappings, then he dies a cruel death.(16)

As predicted by the quatrain, the King was mortally wounded. His younger opponent's wooden lance pierced the King's headgear, shattered into fragments, blinded him in the right eye, and penetrated his right orbit and temple. The King was obtunded. Noting contemporary observers, Andreas Vesalius wrote, "Upon receiving the wound, the King appeared about to fall first from one side and then from the other, but eventually, by his own effort, he managed to keep his saddle. After he had dismounted and was surrounded by spectators running forward from the crowd he showed loss of consciousness, although he later ascended the steps to his chamber with hardly a totter."

The King was immediately treated by the court physicians with the prevalent remedies of the time and was attended by the most famous surgeon of France, Master Surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510-1590). Upon hearing the news, King Philip II dispatched from Brussels one of his personal physicians, the great anatomist Belgian-born Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564. Vesalius arrived for consultation on July 3, 1559. It is said that Vesalius examined the King, performed a crude neck flexion maneuver which elicited meningismus, and determined that the patient would not recover. Wasting no time, Queen Catherine, in a desperate attempt to help determine the nature of the injury and find a cure for her husband, "had four criminals beheaded and broken truncheons thrust into the eyes of the corpses at the appropriate angle of penetration."

According to Norwich, "from the fourth day after the injury until his death, the King had a fever. Before death, his left arm and leg became paralyzed and a convulsion of long duration was observed on the right side of the body. Towards the end, respiration was very difficult and death occurred on the eleventh day."

Image credit.

And more re jousting HERE and HERE.