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.