Born in Pau in 1553 and assassinated in Paris in 1610, aged 57. He was first King of Navarre under the name of Henri III of Navarre (1572-1610), then King of France under the name of Henri IV of France and Navarre (1589-1610), which earned him the dual title of King of France and King of Navarre. But the story of Henri IV does not end with his death: it is present during the Revolution and continues until 2013 and questions remain unanswered even today.

A major inheritance from his mother

From his mother Jeanne III d’Albret, he inherited a large estate in what is now south-western France: Navarre north of the Pyrenees, Béarn, Albret, Armagnac, Foix and, further north, Périgord and the Viscounty of Limoges. When he was born, a legend spread that he had been baptised with garlic and his grandfather’s Jurançon wine, who wanted him to be brought up ‘à la béarnaise and not in a sluggish French way’.

Henri spent his childhood among the peasants of Béarn, dressed and fed like them, speaking their language, running alongside them and climbing the mountains barefoot. The future king nevertheless received an education that was not as neglected as some would claim. But he would acquire experience of the people and their direct contact, an empiricism that he would apply in war and in the choice of the men around him.

Henri IV is also a descendant of the House of Bourbon and of King Saint Louis (Louis IX)

Antoine de Bourbon, his father, was a direct male descendant of King Saint Louis (Louis IX) through his 6th and last son Robert de France, who was born around 1256 and died on 7 February 1317. He was known as the Count of Clermont, Lord of Saint-Just and Creil, Chamberlain of France. The future Henri IV was therefore a male descendant of King Saint Louis in the tenth generation.

Henri III of Navarre, the future Henri IV, became the first “Prince de Sang”

François 1er (1494-1547) had 3 sons. The eldest, François, died in 1536. The second, who became king (Henry II) in 1547, was accidentally wounded in a tournament on 30 June 1559 and died 10 days later in excruciating pain. A piece of spear pierced his eye and brain. His son became king (Francis II) but died the following year in 1560, leaving the crown to his brother Charles IX, who died childless in 1574. The crown then passed to his brother, the 4th and last living son of Henry II, who took the name Henry III (of France).

Henri III of Navarre (and future Henri IV of France) became the first “Prince de Sang” (Prince of the Blood) by virtue of his ancestry as long as Henri III had no children. According to the “Salic Law”, the 1st” prince of the blood” becomes the natural successor to the reigning King of France, if they died without legitimate male descendants. Henri III, who had no children, was assassinated on 1 August and died on 2 August 1589. Henri III (of France) was therefore the last sovereign of the Capetian House of Valois to rule France (The Valois House accession was in 1328 with Philip VI of Valois).

Henri of Navarre (his title was then Henri III of Navarre) therefore became the legitimate king of France as Henri IV.

A cascade of assassinations
On the morning of 23 December 1588, Henri III believed re-establishing his authority through a “coup de majesté”. First he had the Duke of Guise (a Catholic and leader of the League) assassinated and the following day his brother, Cardinal de Guise, judged to be just as dangerous as his brother.
Then it was Henry III’s turn to succumb to the blows of a Dominican Liguer, Jacques Clément, on 1 August 1589.
Finally and twenty years later, Henri IV died on 14 May 1610, assassinated by Ravaillac, a tormented spirit brought up to hate the Huguenots.

Henri IV: the king of two religions

Henri was born on the night of 12-13 December 1553 in Pau (south-est of France, at the Spanish border), then the capital of the sovereignty of Béarn, in the castle of his maternal grandfather, Henri d’Albret, King of Navarre. According to the tradition recounted by the chroniclers of the time, Henri, as soon as he was born, was placed in the hands of his grandfather, who rubbed his lips with a clove of garlic and made him breathe a cup of wine. This “Béarn baptism” was a common practice with newborn babies, to prevent illness. It continued in the following centuries for the baptisms of children of the House of France. Henri d’Albret gave him a tortoise shell, which is still on display in a room in the Château de Pau that, according to an uncertain tradition, was Henri IV’s “bedroom”. In accordance with the custom of the Crown of Navarre, he was given the title of Prince of Viane as the eldest son.

The future Henri IV was baptised into the Catholic faith on 6 March 1554 in the chapel of the Château de Pau, by Cardinal d’Armagnac. His godparents were the kings Henri II of France and Henri II of Navarre (hence the choice of the first name Henri), and his godmothers were the queen of France Catherine de Médicis and Isabeau d’Albret, his aunt and widow of the count of Rohan. During the ceremony, the King of France Henri II was represented by the Cardinal de Vendôme, brother of Antoine de Bourbon. But Henri de Navarre was brought up by his mother in the Reformed religion.

He abjured Protestantism in 1572, just after his marriage to Marguerite de Valois (Catholic) and during the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. He returned to Protestantism in 1576 after managing to flee the French court.

Henri III of Navarre finally solemnly converted back to Catholicism on 25 July 1593, at a ceremony in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, which enabled him to be crowned King of France in 1594, not in Reims but in Chartres. History has it that he said on this occasion: “Paris is worth a mass” – although many historians consider it unlikely that he was the one to utter such a controversial phrase in the tense context of the time.

Henri de Navarre in his early childhood

During his early childhood in the countryside of his native Béarn at the Château de Coarraze, Henri spent time with the peasants during his hunting trips, and acquired the nickname of ‘Barbaste miller’. Faithful to the spirit of Calvinism, his mother Jeanne d’Albret took care to educate him in strict morality, according to the precepts of the Reformation.

When King Charles IX came to power in 1561, his father Antoine de Bourbon brought his 8-year-old son Henri to live at the French court. There he rubbed shoulders with the king and the princes of the royal household who were his own age. His parents disagreed over the choice of religion, his mother wishing to continue educating him in Calvinism and his father in Catholicism.

Wars of religion and the accession to the French throne

Between 1562 and 1598, 8 Wars of Religion took place in the Kingdom of France. They pitted supporters of Catholicism against supporters of Protestantism (the ‘Huguenots’) in military operations. The Catholics were generally supported by the royal power and its army, but both sides had their own military forces, with the French nobility divided between the two faiths, including the high nobility.

The Eighth War of Religion was particularly long and violent. As early as 1584 (5 years before the assassination of Henri III of France), the Catholic faction, which had become a party (the Catholic League), tried to prevent Henri of Navarre, leader of the Protestant faction, from becoming King of France on the death of Henri III, who had no children. King Henri III and Henri de Navarre join forces to fight the Catholic Leagues).

However, after the assassination of King Henri III of France in 1589 by a beggar brother, the Protestant King Henri IV ascended the throne with the support of some of the Catholic nobility. However, it was only after his conversion to Catholicism (1593) and after nine years of fighting that the last rebels surrendered: defeating the Duke of Mercœur entrenched in Nantes on 28 March 1598, Henri IV promulgated the eighth Edict of Toleration, the Edict of Nantes, in April, which was respected this time.

Henri III de Navarre during the first Wars of Religion (1562 – 1571)

During the First War of Religion (1562), Henri was placed in Montargis under the protection of Renée de France, a princess committed to Protestant reform. He was only 11 years.

After the First Religion War and the death of his father (1562), Henri of Navarre (who became Henri III of Navarre on 9 June 1572 and then Henri IV of France on 2 August 1589) was retained at the French Court as guarantor of the entente between the French monarchy and his mother, Jeanne d’Albret, the Queen of Navarre and huguenotte. The latter obtained from Catherine de Médicis (the Regent of France) control over her son’s education.

From 1564 to 1566, Henri de Navarre even accompanied the royal family on its grand tour of France, during which he met up with his mother Jeanne d’Albret, whom he had not seen for two years. In 1567, Jeanne d’Albret brought him back to live with her in Béarn.

When the Third War of Religion broke out in 1568, Henri, aged 15, took part as an observer in his first military campaign in Navarre. He then continued his military apprenticeship. Under the tutelage of Admiral de Coligny (Hugunot), he took part in the battles of Jarnac, La Roche-l’Abeille and Moncontour. He fought for the very first time in 1570 – when he was just 17 – at the battle of Arnay-le-Duc.

Following the Huguenot defeat of 16 March 1569 at the Battle of Jarnac, Jeanne d’Albret’s brother-in-law, Louis I de Bourbon-Condé, was captured and then murdered. Gaspard de Coligny assumed command of the Huguenot forces. Contrary to expectations, the Huguenot party held firm. A Catholic attack on Béarn was thwarted (Battle of Orthez in August 1569) and even after the defeat at Moncontour in October, Jeanne d’Albret refused to surrender. But in early 1570, she had to bow to her co-religionists’ willingness to negotiate. She left La Rochelle (Protestant’s town) in August 1571 to return to her homeland.

Henri III de Navarre’s arranged marriage to end the Wars of Religion

The marriage agreement

Jeanne d’Albret was the main architect of the negotiation of the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (near Paris), which put an end to the third war in August 1570 after the Catholic army had run out of money.

That same year, as part of the conditions set out in the peace treaty, a marriage of convenience, which Jeanne reluctantly accepted, was arranged between her son Henri of Navarre and the sister of King Charles IX, Marguerite of France (1553-1615), the third daughter of Catherine de Médicis. In exchange Huguenots got the right of holding public office in France, a privilege previously denied to them.

Finally, the two women reached an agreement. Jeanne took leave of Catherine de Médicis following the signing of the marriage contract between Henri and Marguerite on 11 April 1572. The wedding was due to take place on 18 August 1572. Jeanne arrived in Paris on 16 May and took up residence at the Hôtel Guillard, made available to her by the Prince of Condé, to prepare for the wedding.

THe death of his mother Jeanne d’Albret before the mariage

On 4 June 1572, two months before the planned wedding date, Jeanne returned home from one of her outings feeling ill. The next morning, she woke up with a fever and complained of pain in the upper right side of her body. She died five days later.

The marriage of Henri de Navarre and Marguerite de Valois took place on 18 August 1572. Marguerite, a Catholic, could only marry in front of a priest, while Henri de Navarre could not enter a church, so their wedding was celebrated separately. The bridegroom remained on the forecourt of Notre-Dame.

A grandiose wedding in a poisonous climate

The wedding, celebrated on 18 August 1572, was the occasion for grandiose festivities to which all the great and good of the kingdom were invited, including the Protestants, in a spirit of concord and reconciliation.

A large number of Protestant gentlemen came to escort their prince. But Paris proved to be a fiercely anti-Huguenot city, and the Parisians, Catholics in the extreme, did not accept their presence. As a result of the preachers, Capuchins and Dominicans in particular, the marriage of a daughter of France to a Protestant, even a prince of the blood, was abhorrent to them. What’s more, the people of Paris were very unhappy: the harvests had been poor; the rise in prices and the luxury on display at the royal wedding had heightened their anger.

Rivalries between the great families also reappeared. The Guises were not ready to give way to the Montmorencies. François, Duke of Montmorency and Governor of Paris, was unable to control the urban unrest. Giving in to the danger in Paris, he preferred to leave the city a few days after the wedding.

A 5-day respite before the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre and the resumption of civil war

The attempted assassination of the Huguenot Coligny

The attempted assassination of the Huguenot Coligny was the event that triggered the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Four days after the wedding, shortly before noon on 22 August 1572, an arquebus attack attributed to a certain Maurevert was carried out on Gaspard de Coligny (leader of the Huguenots) as he left the Louvre on his way to his hotel on rue Béthizy.

The admiral escaped with the index finger of his right hand torn off and his left arm ploughed by a bullet that remained embedded in it. Suspicions quickly turned to people close to the Guise family (Catholic party) and the complicity of the Queen Mother, Catherine de Médicis, was named (probably wrongly). Why was this attack carried out? Perhaps to sabotage the peace process. But the most exalted saw it as divine punishment…

The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre

On the evening of August 23, 1572, the king held a meeting with his advisors (the “narrow council”) to decide on the course of action to be taken. In attendance were the Duc d’Anjou, the Garde des Sceaux René de Birague, the Maréchal de Tavannes, the Baron de Retz and the Duc de Nevers.

It was most probably this council that decided to carry out “extraordinary justice” and eliminate the Protestant leaders (although there are no documents to confirm with certainty that this decision was taken at this meeting). The idea was to assassinate the Protestant war captains, while deciding to spare the young princes of the blood, namely the King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé.

On the night of August 23, 1572, the massacre of Protestant leaders began.

Sunday August 24: the situation gets out of hand. The massacre of all Protestants began, regardless of age, sex or social rank. The slaughter lasted several days, despite the King’s attempts to stop it.

Tuesday August 26: Charles IX makes a statement before the Paris parliament. He took responsibility for the assassination of the Protestant leaders. He declares that he wanted to: “prevent the execution of an unfortunate and detestable conspiracy made by the said admiral [Coligny], leader and author of the same, and his adherents and accomplices in the person of the said lord king and against his State, the queen his mother, Messrs. his brothers, the king of Navarre, princes and lords being near them.”

Provincial towns unleashed their own massacres. On August 25, the slaughter reached Orléans (where some 1,000 people are thought to have died) and Meaux; on August 26, La Charité-sur-Loire; on August 28 and 29, Saumur and Angers; on August 31, Lyon, and so on.

Henri of Navarre and Saint Bartholomew’s Day

Spared from the slaughter by his status as a prince, Henri was forced to convert to Catholicism a few weeks later. Under house arrest at the French court, he became politically involved with the king’s brother François d’Alençon, and took part against the Huguenot in the siege of La Rochelle (1573).

After taking part in the Malcontents* plots, he was held prisoner with the Duc d’Alençon at the Vincennes dungeon (April 1574). Duc d’Alençon was the king’s brother, who died prematurely of tuberculosis in 1584, making at his death Henri de Navarre the official heir to the French crown. On the accession of Henri III, he received a new pardon from the king in Lyon and took part in the coronation ceremony of Henri III in Reims on February 13, 1575, which spared him the death penalty, but he remained detained at court.

*The Conjuration des Malcontents was a failed plot to break François d’Alençon (brother of the king) and Henri de Navarre (future King Henri IV) out of the French court. It was carried out on two occasions in late February and early April 1574 by a group of Catholic and Protestant nobles dissatisfied with government policy.
The conspirators’ aim was to take power away from Catherine de Médicis, overthrow the government and make François d’Alençon heir to the French throne in place of his elder brother Henri d’Anjou, who had become King of Poland the previous year (and would eventually become King of France under the name Henri III).The conspiracy followed on from the outcry over the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and marked the start of the Fifth War of Religion (1574-1576).

Henri III of Navarre’s escape from the French court

After spending more than three years as a hostage at the French Court, he took advantage of the unrest of the Fifth War of Religion to flee on February 5, 1576. Having rejoined his supporters, he returned to Protestantism, this time abjuring Catholicism on June 13.

The court of Nérac

In 1577, he timidly took part in the sixth War of Religion led by his cousin the Prince de Condé (Huguenot).

Henri was now confronted with the distrust of Protestants, who reproached him for his lack of religious sincerity. He stayed away from Béarn, which was firmly under Calvinist control. Henri faced even greater hostility from Catholics. In December 1576, he almost died in a trap set up in the town of Eauze. Bordeaux, the capital of his government, refused to open its doors to him. Henri settled along the Garonne in Agen and Lectoure, which had the advantage of being not far from his château in Nérac. His court was made up of gentlemen from both religions. His advisors were mainly Protestants, such as Duplessis-Mornay and Jean de Lacvivier.

From October 1578 to May 1579, Queen Mother Catherine de Médicis visited him to complete the pacification of the kingdom. Hoping to make it easier for him to remain obedient, she brought back his wife Marguerite.

For several months, the Navarre couple lived in style at Château de Nérac. The court indulged in hunting, games and dancing, to the bitter complaint of the protestant pastors. Henri himself indulges in the pleasures of seduction – he falls in love with two of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting in turn: Mlle Rebours and Françoise de Montmorency-Fosseux.

Events between 1580 and 1590 – Henri de Navarre becomes king Henri III’s heir

This period was full of unforeseen events and decisions for Henri de Navarre.

Henri then took part in the seventh War of Religion, revived by his co-religionists. At the occasion of the capture of Cahors by his army in May 1580, he managed to avoid pillage and massacre despite five days of street fighting. It earned him great prestige both for his courage and his humanity.

On the personal side, between 1582 and 1590, Henri de Navarre had a relationship with the Catholic Diane d’Andoins, to whom he promised marriage. The king’s feminine adventures created discord within his couple, who were still childless. Marguerite’s departure for Paris (1585) consummated their definitive split.

In 1584, Henri III king of France’s younger brother, François d’Anjou et d’Alençon, died without an heir. Having no heir of his own, King Henri III considered confirming Henri of Navarre as his legitimate heir. He sent the Duc d’Épernon to invite him, in vain, to convert and return to court.

But a few months later, Henri III is forced to sign the Treaty of Nemours as a pledge to the Holy League, he declared war on it and outlawed all Protestants. Rumor has it that, overnight, half of the future Henri IV’s moustache turned white.

Relapsed, Henri was again excommunicated by the Pope, then had to face the royal army, which he defeated at the battle of Coutras in 1587.

A chain of murders after 1588

There were a number of reversals in 1588. On March 5, 1588, the sudden death of Prince Henri de Condé clearly positioned the King of Navarre at the head of the Huguenots.

On December 23, 1588, in a “coup de majesté”, the King of France had Duke Henri de Guise (leader of the anti-Protestant League which became too powerful) assassinated, along with the latter’s brother, Cardinal Louis, the following day. The change in the political situation prompted the sovereigns of France and Navarre to reconcile with a treaty on April 30, 1589. Allied against the Catholic League, which controlled Paris and most of the French kingdom, they succeeded in laying siege to Paris in July of the same year – but they could not take the city.

On August 1, 1589, King Henri III was assassinated by Jacques Clément, a fanatical Catholic monk. Before dying the next day from a wound to the lower abdomen, he formally recognized his brother-in-law, King Henri III of Navarre, as his legitimate successor, who became King Henri IV of France. On his deathbed, Henri III advised him to convert to the religion of the majority of French people.

King of France and Navarre, a king without a kingdom

Henri IV’s long reconquest of the kingdom began, as three-quarters of the French population did not recognize a Protestant nobleman as king. On the other hand, the Catholics of the League refused to recognize the legitimacy of the succession.

King of France and Navarre, but alone against the League

In 1589, aware of his weaknesses, Henri IV first had to win people over. Catholic royalists demanded that he recant his Protestantism, having already changed his religion three times by the age of nineteen. He refused, but in a declaration published on August 4 (3 days after the assassination of Henri III), he indicated that he would respect the Catholic religion. Many were reluctant to follow him, with Protestants like La Trémoille even leaving the army, which was reduced from 40,000 to 20,000 men.

Weakened, Henri IV had to abandon the siege of Paris as the lords returned home, unwilling to serve a Protestant. However, Henri IV was victorious over Charles de Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne, on September 29, 1589 at the Battle of Arques. The King’s 10,000 men had defeated 35,000 League fighters, drawing an analogy with David’s victory over Goliath.

In addition to the support of the nobles, Huguenots and politicians reassured by this solid, humane war leader, there was the support of Conti and Montpensier (princes of the blood), Longueville, Luxembourg and Rohan-Montbazon, dukes and peers, Marshals Biron and d’Aumont, and a fair number of nobles (Champagne, Picardy, Île-de-France).

He subsequently failed to retake Paris, but stormed the town of Vendôme. Here too, he ensured that the churches remained intact, and that the inhabitants did not suffer from the passage of his army. Thanks to this example, all the towns between Tours and Le Mans surrendered without a fight. He defeated the Ligueurs and Spaniards again at Ivry on March 14, 1590, where the myth of the white plume was born. According to Agrippa d’Aubigné, Henri IV shouted: “Rally to my white plume, you will find it on the path to victory and honor”.

Religion is back at full gallop

Protestants criticized him for not granting them freedom of worship. In July 1591, with the Edict of Mantes (not to be confused with the Edict of Nantes of 1598), he reinstated the provisions of the Edict of Poitiers (1577), which had given them very limited freedom of worship.

The Duke of Mayenne, then at war with Henri IV, convened the Estates General in January 1593, with the aim of electing a new king to replace Henri IV. But he was foiled: the Estates negotiated with the Henri IV’s party, obtained a truce and then his conversion.

Encouraged by the love of his life, Gabrielle d’Estrées, and keenly aware of the exhaustion of the forces at work, both morally and financially, Henri IV, a shrewd politician, chose to abjure his Calvinist faith. On April 4, 1592, in a declaration known as the “expédient”, Henri IV announced his intention to be instructed in the Catholic religion.

Henri IV solemnly abjured Protestantism on July 25, 1593 in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, where he was baptized by Jacques Davy du Perron. He is wrongly credited with saying that “Paris is worth a mass” (1593), even if the substance of this words seems to make a lot of sense.

Abjuration et sacre du roi

To speed up the rallying of towns and provinces (and their governors), he multiplied promises and gifts, for a total of 25 million livres. The resulting increase in taxes (a 2.7-fold increase in the taille taxe) provoked a revolt by the provinces most loyal to the king, Poitou, Saintonge, Limousin and Périgord.

In early 1594, Henri IV successfully laid siege to Dreux, before being crowned king in Chartres cathedral on February 27, 1594. He was one of only three kings of France to be crowned outside Reims and Paris, town then held by the League army. However he entered into Paris on March 22, 1594, where he distributed bills expressing his royal pardon, and finally got the absolution granted by Pope Clement VIII on September 17, 1595. The entire nobility and the rest of the population, gradually rally Henri IV – with a few exceptions, such as Jean Châtel, who attempted to assassinate the king on December 27, 1594 at the Hôtel du Bouchage near the Louvre.

He definitively defeated the League army at Fontaine-Française.

Henri IV finally a full-fledged king

The war against Spain and Savoy

In 1595, Henri IV officially declared war on Spain. The last french League members, financially supported by Philip II of Spain, become then “traitors”.

But Henri IV found it extremely difficult to repel the Spanish attacks in Picardy. The capture of Amiens by the Spanish and the landing of Hispanic troops in Brittany, where Governor Philippe Emmanuel de Lorraine, Duc de Mercœur, still did not recognize Henri IV as king, left him in a perilous situation. He was a cousin of the Guise family and brother-in-law of the late King Henri III.

An other difficulty. Following in the footsteps of La Trémoille and Bouillon, the Protestant nobility refrained from appearing in battle, shocked by Henri IV conversion to catholicism. The Protestants, in total disarray, blamed the king for abandoning them. They met regularly in assembly to reactivate their political organization. They even seize the royal tax for themselves.

But Henri IV takes over again. After subduing French Brittany, ravaging Franche-Comté and retaking Amiens from the Spaniards, Henri IV signed the Edict of Nantes in April 1598, establishing a peace between Protestants and Catholics.
Nantes was the seat of the governor of Brittany the Duc de Mercœur. He was also the last of the rebels. In all, the noble rallies cost 35 million livres tournois.

With both armies exhausted, the Peace of Vervins between France and Spain was signed on May 2, 1598. After decades of civil war, France was finally at peace.

But it was not the end for Henri IV. He led a “battle of the edict of Nantes” to get the various parliaments of the kingdom to accept the Edict. The last of these was the Parliament of Rouen in 1609.

However, the article in the Peace of Vervins concerning the Duke of Savoy became the cause of a new war. On December 20, 1599, Henri IV received Charles-Emmanuel I of Savoy at Fontainebleau to settle the dispute.
In March 1600, the Duke of Savoy asked for a three-month period of reflection, and returned to his States. When the three-month period had elapsed, Henri IV summoned Charles-Emmanuel to declare his intentions. The prince replied that war would be less damaging to him than a peace such as the one being offered. Henri IV immediately declared war on him, on August 11, 1600 which led to the Treaty of Lyon* in 1601.

*Treaty of Lyon, January 17, 1601.
This was a territorial exchange between Henri IV and Charles-Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy: the Duke ceded to France Bresse, Bugey, the Pays de Gex and Valromey, possessions of the Duchy of Savoy for several centuries, but was granted control of the Marquisate of Saluces in Italy.

Henri IV marriage to Marie de Médicis

In 1599, Henri IV was approaching fifty and still had no legitimate heir. For several years, Gabrielle d’Estrées had shared his life, but as she did not belong to a ruling family, she could hardly claim to be queen. Her sudden death on the night of April 9-10, 1599, probably from puerperal eclampsia, enabled the king to consider taking a new wife worthy of his rank.

In October 1599, he had his marriage to Queen Marguerite annulled, and on December 17, 1600, he married Marie de Médicis, daughter of François I de Médicis and Jeanne d’Autriche, and niece of Ferdinand I, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The marriage was a double blessing, as the dowry wiped out a whole year’s debts, and Marie de Médicis gave birth to the dauphin Louis (future Louis XIII) on September 26, 1601, thus ensuring the future of the Bourbon dynasty.

Henri IV and his other mistresses

But Henri IV is Henri IV. He jeopardizes his marriage and crown with his extramarital affairs. First, Henriette d’Entragues, an ambitious young woman, blackmailed the king to legitimize the children she had by his side. When her requests were turned down, Henriette d’Entragues repeatedly plotted against her royal lover. In 1602, when Henri IV came to present his god-daughter, Louise de Gondi, at the Prieuré Saint-Louis de Poissy, where she would become prioress in 1623, he noticed the beauty of Louise de Maupeou, whom he was courting.

In 1609, after several other flings, Henri fell in love with the young Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency. That year, she entered the service of Queen Marie de Médicis, wife of Henri IV. It was while rehearsing a ballet that she seduced the 56 years old king. She was just 14. In May 1609, Henri IV broke off Charlotte’s engagement to the Marquis de Bassompierre and married her to a prince of the blood, Henri II de Bourbon-Condé. Henri IV counted on the complaisance of his cousin, who was reputed to prefer men. Her husband, on the other hand, couldn’t stand her foolish eagerness and left the court with her. Henri IV followed them to the provinces, and tried to approach her under various disguises. To escape, Condé took his wife to Brussels, capital of the Spanish Netherlands.

Was the war Henri IV had planned to start on May 17, 1610 a pretext for “liberating” Charlotte? Or was it the other way around?

Reconstruction and pacification of the kingdom

Following the Wars of Religion, France began rebuilding. By 1610, agricultural production returned to 1560 levels. A widespread desire for peace helped economic revival, especially in the Languedoc and northern regions.

• Henry IV and his minister Sully saw the arts as key to economic recovery:
  • Tapestry workshops were established to reduce costly Flemish imports—this led to the creation of what would become the Gobelins Manufactory.
  • Artists and artisans were housed at the Louvre, turned into an artistic hub.

• Silk Industry Expansion : With support from figures like Laffemas and Traucat, inspired by agronomist Olivier de Serres, millions of mulberry trees were planted in the Cévennes and other regions to boost silk production.

• Major Infrastructure Projects : The Briare Canal, linking the Seine and Loire, was France’s first major inland waterway connecting two rivers. Designed by Hugues Cosnier in 1604, it served as a model for later canals, including the Panama Canal.

• Symbol of Prosperity: The Chicken in the Pot. Henry IV became known for his ideal that every peasant should have a chicken in the pot on Sundays—symbolizing prosperity and well-being.

• Financial Reforms :
  • Sully reduced national debt by declaring partial bankruptcies and renegotiating terms (e.g., Swiss debts cut from 36M to 16M livres).
  • The “paulette” tax (1604) made government offices hereditary by annual payment.
  • A crackdown on fake nobles began in 1598.

• Persistent Social Violence
  • Dismissed soldiers formed militant gangs, raiding rural areas.
  • Noble violence remained high: 4,000 deaths from duels were recorded in 1607.
  • Abductions of marriageable young women triggered private wars requiring royal intervention.

To govern, Henri IV relied on competent ministers and advisors such as Baron de Rosny, the future Duc de Sully, the Catholic Villeroy and the economist Barthélemy de Laffemas.

The years of peace bolstered the coffers. Henri IV had the great gallery of the Louvre built, linking the palace to the Tuileries. He launched several campaigns to enlarge and decorate the great royal châteaux at Fontainebleau and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, calling on a number of talented sculptors (Pierre Biard l’Aîné, Pierre Franqueville, Mathieu Jacquet, Barthélemy Prieur, Jean Mansart) and French and Flemish painters (Toussaint Dubreuil, Ambroise Dubois, Jacob Bunel, Martin Fréminet).

He implemented a modern urban planning policy. He continued the construction of the Pont Neuf, begun under his predecessor. He built two new squares in Paris, Place Royale (today Place des Vosges) and Place Dauphine, on the Île de la Cité. He also planned to create a semicircular “Place de France” north of the Marais district, but this was never built.

To reassure the former supporters of the League, Henri IV also favored the entry into France of the Jesuits who, during the war, had called for the king’s assassination, and created a “caisse des conversions” in 1598. He reconciled with Charles III, Duke of Lorraine, and married his sister Catherine de Bourbon to the latter’s son. Henri IV was a fervent Catholic – though not a devout one – and encouraged his sister and his minister Sully to convert, but neither of them did.

Assassination of King Henry IV and succession

Henri IV, believing his army ready to resume the conflict that had ended ten years earlier, allied himself with the German Protestants of the Evangelical Union. On April 25, 1610, François de Bonne de Lesdiguières, representative of Henri IV of France in the castle of Bruzolo in the Susa Valley, signed the Treaty of Bruzolo with Charles-Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy.

The outbreak of a European war appealed neither to the Pope, concerned about peace between Christian princes, nor to French subjects, worried about their own peace and quiet. Unable to accept an alliance with Protestant princes against a Catholic ruler, some priests are stirring up the tempers of the former Ligueurs with their sermons. Henri IV also saw a party opposing his policies within the queen’s own entourage. The King was in a fragile position, and not just because of the Catholics, since the Protestants were seeking to maintain their political privileges under the Edict of Nantes.

A war that won’t take place

The end of Henri IV’s reign was marked by tensions with the Habsburgs families and the resumption of hostilities against Spain. Henri IV intervened in the succession dispute between the Catholic emperor and the Protestant German princes, whom he supported, in the succession of Cleves and Juliers. On April 25, 1610, François de Bonne de Lesdiguières, representative of Henri IV of France in the castle of Bruzolo in the Susa Valley, signed the Treaty of Bruzolo with Charles-Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy.

The tensions between Henri IV and the first prince of the blood Henri II de Condé (he married to Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency), which saw the latter take refuge in Brussels to protect his wife from the pressing court of Henri IV. These tensions were a means of pressure and a potential pretext for external intervention by the King of France, vis-à-vis Spain (Habsburg family) in control of Brussels.

Finally, the campaign was scheduled to start on May 17, and as the king intended to leave with his troops, he decided to have his wife Marie de Médicis crowned.

The coronation of Marie de Médicis and the assassination of Henri IV

To ensure the stability of the government during his absence, Henri IV had Marie de Médicis officially crowned at Saint Denis on May 13, 1610. The following day, May 14, Sully was unwell, so the king decided to cross Paris to visit him at the Arsenal (near the Bastille). As the royal carriage passed 8-10 rue de la Ferronnerie, the king was stabbed three times by François Ravaillac, a fanatical Catholic. King Henri IV was rushed back to the Louvre palace, where he died of his wounds. He was in his 57th years. The investigation concluded that it was the isolated action of a madman. The Flanders campaign against the Habsburgs is cancelled.

Ravaillac is sentenced to death by the Paris Parliament for murdering the king. He was drawn and quartered on May 27, 1610 in the Place de Grève, Paris. Disemboweling was the punishment reserved for regicides.

After an autopsy and embalming of the deceased king, who had promised his royal relic to the Jesuit college in La Flèche, his heart was placed in a lead urn contained in a silver reliquary sent to the Saint-Louis church in La Flèche. His body was then displayed in a parade room in the Louvre, followed by his effigy in the Salle des Cariatides.

Henri IV was buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis on July 1, 1610, after several weeks of funeral ceremonies that had already begun to give rise to the legend of the good King Henri. During the lit de justice held on May 15, 1610, his nine-year-old eldest son, King Louis XIII, proclaimed the regency of Queen Marie de Médicis, Henri IV’s widow.

Henri IV after his death: still relevant over the centuries

L’ouverture à Saint-Denis des sépultures royales de 1793

The proposal to decide the fate of the royal tombs and bodies at Saint-Denis was made during the Terror at the July 31, 1793 session of the National Convention, by Barère, to celebrate the capture of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792, and to attack the “impure ashes” of tyrants under the pretext of recovering lead from coffins.

This desecration took place in August, September and October 1793 – and ended on January 18, 1794. The revolutionaries threw the ashes of forty-two kings, thirty-two queens, sixty-three princes, ten servants of the realm, as well as some thirty abbots and various religious, “between beds of lime”, into mass graves in the former monks’ cemetery then located to the north of the basilica.

On October 12, 1793, Henri IV’s oak coffin was broken with a hammer, and his lead coffin opened with a chisel. According to witnesses: “His body was well preserved, and his facial features perfectly recognizable. He remained in the passageway of the lower chapels, wrapped in his equally well-preserved shroud. Everyone was free to see him until Monday morning, October 14, when he was carried into the choir at the bottom of the sanctuary steps, where he remained until two o’clock in the afternoon, when he was buried in the Valois cemetery.
Several people took small “relics” (a fingernail, a lock of beard). The rumor that a delegate of the Commune took a plaster impression of his face, the template for the king’s future death masks, is undoubtedly a legend. Similarly, there is no document or archive to confirm that the king’s head was cut off and stolen. On the contrary, all witnesses speak of Henri IV’s body being thrown whole into a mass grave, then covered by those of his descendants.

La Réparation de Louis XVIII

Under the Second Restoration, Louis XVIII (brother of Louis XVI) had the remains of his predecessors brought back from the pits on January 19, 1817, after a week of searching. They were found on January 18, thanks to the marble worker François-Joseph Scellier. These remains were placed all together (as the lime prevented their individual identification, except for “three bodies found without their upper parts”, as noted by the commissioners) in an ossuary in the crypt of the Basilica of Saint Denis, comprising some ten chests, sealed with marble plaques inscribed with the names of the monarchs.
The king also had the remains of his brother Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette recovered from the Madeleine cemetery, and reburied at Saint-Denis during a grand funeral celebration on January 21, 1815 (the anniversary of Louis XVI’s death).

Controversy surrounding the skull of Henri IV (2010-2013)

In 2010 and 2012, a team of scientists led by forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier succeeded in authenticating the king’s mummified head, which had apparently been separated from his body during the French Revolution – although there are no archival records to support this. Henri IV’s body was exhibited to the public for two days, and then disposed of, along with those of the other kings, in a mass grave. At the beginning of the 20th century, a collector claimed to possess the king’s mummified head. It was not until the quadri-centenary of the king’s assassination in 2010 that scientific analyses were carried out on the alleged relic.

An initial study found thirty points of concordance confirming that the identity of the embalmed head was indeed that of King Henri IV, with, according to the authors of this study, “99.99% certainty”. This conclusion was confirmed in 2012 by a second study at Barcelona’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology, which succeeded in extracting DNA and comparing it with the presumed DNA of Louis XVI (from a handkerchief said to have been dipped in the king’s blood on the day of his execution). When the results were announced, an image of the royal face created virtually in 3D was presented to the public.

This authentication is disputed by a number of historians, geneticists, forensic scientists, archaeologists, paleoanthropologists and journalists, including Joël Cornette, Jean-Jacques Cassiman, Maarten Larmuseau, Geoffroy Lorin de la Grandmaison, Yves de Kisch, Franck Ferrand, Gino Fornaciari and Philippe Delorme.

In December 2010, Prince Louis de Bourbon approached President Nicolas Sarkozy to request the reburial of his grandfather’s presumed head in the royal necropolis of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. According to Jean-Pierre Babelon, Nicolas Sarkozy initially planned a ceremony for May 2012. However, the controversy surrounding the relic and the presidential campaign postponed the date of the celebration, and the project was subsequently abandoned by François Hollande, who became President of the Republic in place of Nicolas Sarkozy.

On October 9, 2013, a scientific article published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, co-authored by geneticists Maarten Larmuseau and Jean-Jacques Cassiman of the Catholic University of Louvain, as well as several historians, showed that the Y chromosome of three currently living princes of the House of Bourbon differed radically from the DNA signature found in both the head and blood analyzed during the 2012 study. The article speculates that the samples may have been contaminated, and that a Y chromosome analysis of the heart of Louis XVII, son of Louis XVI, already identified, could clear up any doubts. But no one has taken any steps in this direction.