Although baptized 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.
On
18 August 1572, Henry married
Marguerite de Valois, sister of King
Charles IX. Henri's marriage was believed by most to be an effort to bring religious peace to the kingdom. However, leading Catholics (possibly including
Catherine de' Medici, mother of the bride) secretly planned a massacre of Protestants gathered in Paris for the wedding, which served as the lure. In the resulting
Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, on
24 August, several thousand Protestants were killed in Paris and thousands more in the countryside. Henry narrowly escaped death by pretending to convert to Roman Catholicism. He was kept in confinement, 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.
Henri 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 Henri III, who had succeeded
Charles IX in
1574. Since Henry of Navarre was a descendant of King
Louis IX, King Henry III had no choice but to recognize 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 Henri,
Duke Henri of Guise, pushed for complete suppression of the Huguenots, and had much support among Catholic extremists. This set off a series of campaigns and counter-campaigns culminating in the
battle of Coutras In December
1588 Henri III had Henry of Guise murdered, along with his brother, Louis Cardinal de Guise. This increased the tension further, and Henri III was assassinated shortly thereafter by a fanatic monk.
On the death of Henri III in
1589, Henri 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. Henri 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 Elisabeth had been the eldest daughter of
Henri 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 Henri declared that
Paris vaut bien une messe ("Paris is well worth a Mass") and permanently renounced Protestantism, thus earning the resentment of his former ally Queen Elizabeth. However, 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. The two had separated, even before Henri had succeeded to the throne, in August, 1589 and
Marguerite de Valois lived for many years in the chateau of Usson in
Auvergne. After Henry had become king, various advisers impressed upon him the desirability of providing an heir to the French Crown, in order to avoid the problem of a disputed succession. Henri himself favored the idea of obtaining an annulment of his first marriage, and taking
Gabrielle d'Estrées as a bride, who had already borne him three children. Henry's councillors strongly opposed this idea, but the matter was resolved unexpectedly by Gabrielle d'Estrées' sudden death in 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 Médicis in
1600.
Henri IV proved to be a man of vision and courage. Instead of waging costly wars to suppress opposing nobles, Henri 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:
*
Si Dieu me prête vie, je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon royaume qui n’ait les moyens d’avoir le dimanche une poule dans son pot!
*
God willing, every working man in my kingdom will have a chicken in the pot every Sunday, at the least!
This egalitarian statement epitomizes 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.
Henri's forthright manner, physical courage and military success also contrasted dramatically with the sickly, effete langour 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, Henri IV worked through his right-hand man, the faithful
Maximilien de Bethune, duc de Sully (1560-1641), to regularize state finance, promote agriculture, drain swamps to create productive crop lands, undertake many public works, and encourage education, as with the creation of the College Royal Louis-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 1200m canal built in the park at the
Royal Chateau 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 River Seine to connect the
Right and
Left Banks of the city. Henri 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 meters long and thirty-five meters 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 Henri IV, a promoter of the arts by all classes of peoples, 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 has since become known as the
Henri IV style.
King Henri'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.
