King Henri IV
King Henri IV was born
at Pau in Bearn
on December 13, 1553. Raised by his mother, Jeane d’Albret
(Queen of
Navarre), Henri was brought up in a remote castle in the Pyrenees. He
grew up
amongst the peasant children of that area and raised on a diet of
bread,
cheese, and garlic. As a youngster Henri was brought up in the
Protestant faith,
which was the opposite of his father’s wishes. As result,
Henri was taken to
Paris on his father’s orders and given a Catholic
tutor. However, he
stubbornly refused to attend Mass. Consequently, after the
death of his father,
Henri was once again instructed by a Protestant
tutor. By the age of ten, Henri
had already changed religions twice.
Remaining in Paris, Henri attended classes
at the College de Navarre.
Gradually he learned to speak and write fluent Latin
and Greek, and he had
managed to attain some Spanish and Italian. In 1567 Henri
reestablished
himself in Pau, reuniting with his mother and sister Catherine.
His
education was continued, this time including fencing and military arts.
Five
years later, after an outbreak of several religious wars, the marriage
between
Henri and the reining king’s sister, Marguerite de Valois (a
Catholic), was
arranged so as to bring temporary peace to France. After
Henri’s mother’s
death, the wedding took place. The two were wed on August
18, 1572 at
Notre-Dame. Little did the new king know, that day would mark
the prelude of a
great tragedy. During the wedding, Catherine de Medici
consented to the
assassination of Admiral de Coligny. On August 22 he was
shot at from a window
but was merely injured. The Huguenots (French
Protestants) were enraged. Queen
Medici finally agreed that a general
massacre was the only solution to terminate
Admiral de Coligny. Before
dawn on Sunday, August 24, 1572, the Duc de Guise’s
swordsmen broke into the
Admirals bedroom. He was brutally skewered with a pike,
then his corpse was
thrown out of a window and hanged by the ankles from the
public gibbet. The
signal was given and the Paris mob was unleashed. The mob was
totally
merciless, savagely slitting the throats of all possible Protestants
without
the willing pity unto children and pregnant women. The Louvre was
transformed
into a slaughterhouse; the bodies of dead and tortured Huguenot
bodies
gathered along staircases and piled up against walls. Henri and his
cousin
Conde were spared only for the sake that they beheld royal blood within
their
vanes. After that, Henri was forced to change his religion for a third
time.
In addition, he remained prisoner at court for four years. After the death
of
King Charles IX, Henry of Navarre’s cousin, Henri III became king.
King
Henry made peace with the Huguenots. After being defeated multiple
times by
superior Catholic armies, King Henri III turned to Henri of Navarre
for help.
The help of Henri of Navarre made it once again possible for
Henri III to
recover his lost powers. Together the pair soon controlled the
entire area
between the Loire and the Seine. On July 30 he besieged Paris
with an army of
40,000. On the peak of this achievement, the king was
stabbed by Dominican
friar, Jacques Clement. Henry III died that night after
ordering his followers
to take an oath of allegiance to Henri of Navarre. As
result, Henri by name
became king of France. However, Henri was refused
loyalty by most of his
subjects on account that he had been excommunicated
and that he was Catholic.
Only a mere sixth of France supported Henri.
His only source of the
reconciliation of loyalty, he soon found, would to be
to appeal to those who
preferred peace rather than religious war. After
victoring numerous accounts of
battle with Catholics, Henry IV eventually
managed to besiege Paris with 15000
men in May. Unfortunately, Paris remained
totally Catholic. Henri then decided
to starve the city into submission
rather than cause war. By July Paris was
pathetically hungry. Cannibalism was
a common case—children could be seen
chased through the streets by starving
elders. People resorted to eating dead
dogs (including the skin), rats,
garbage, and flour made from bones (those who
ate the flour died). Thirteen
thousand French died of starvation. Paris did not
give up. They were by far
too proud to surrender to a heretic king. That
September Paris was saved
by the Duke of Parma who shipped food across the Sine
to the city. Henri
revoked as winter drew near. In the summer of 1591 Henri was
reinforced with
English troops. This brought up the spirits of Henri and the
rest of his
army. In November, Henri’s troops besieged Rouen. Taking action to
the rumor
that Parma was on his way to the rescue, Henri set off with 7000
calvary to
stop him. On February 3, 1592, he unexpectedly met with the Spaniards
and had
to hastily retreat after being injured in the leg by a bullet. He had to
be
carried around in a litter for many days. Parma relieved Rouen in
April.
However, he was trapped by Henri. When all seemed lost, Parma
surprisingly
evacuated his troops over the Seine by night. That same year,
Henri, convinced
by his followers, reconverted into Catholicism. As result,
he was crowned and
accepted as king in Chartres Cathedral on February 25,
1594. Although he had
earned the loyalty of some Catholics by converting,
there were still some who
disagreed with the monarchy. Among these was a
young scholar named Jean Chastel.
Early 1595 he attacked Henri with a
knife. In 1598, Henri began to take
procedure into ensuring peace at home. In
this, he promoted peace by proclaiming
the Edict of Nantes, which was a
decree giving partial religious freedom to the
Protestants. The Edict of
Nantes promoted peace because it gave the Huguenots
equal rights to those of
Catholics which discouraged rebellion. The Edict of
Nantes granted the
Protestants the following: the right to build churches, the
right to hold
services is specified villages, suburbs of and cities besides
episcopal and
archiepiscopal cities, royal residences and within a five-mile
radius of
Paris, the right for nobles to hold services in their homes, and the
right to
hold official positions. The Huguenots were also granted four schools
to be
Huguenot (Montauban, Montpellier, Sedan, and Saumur). In
addition,
Protestant pastors were government paid, and 100 fortified
cities were given to
the Huguenots for eight years. Unfortunately, the
promised provisions were never
fully carried out. Henry IV was now fully
accepted as king of France. He now had
to work at rebuilding his ruined
kingdom. Henri’s first concern was to tame
the nobility. Then he paid off the
national debt by redeeming mortgaged crown
revenues and increasing the yield
from taxation. Next, he encouraged
agriculture, for he knew that it was where
France prospered. By 1608, France was
exporting grain. Also, waterways and
canals were dug, and roads were repaired.
In 1601 a Chamber of Commerce
was founded, which encouraged horse breeding,
linen manufacture, ship
building, glass blowing, etc. Mineral resources were
scientifically
investigated, and Henry created the office of Grand Master of the
Mines.
Meanwhile, a treaty was with Turkey was managed which obtained
valuable
facilities in the Levant for French merchants, while there were
commercial
treaties with England and the German Hansa. Henri had five
children with Marie
de Medici. They were:Louis, Elisabeth, Christine, Gaston,
and Henriette.
Although he divorced Queen Marguerite, she was still good
company and his
children had become so close to he that they called her Aunt.
By 1610 it seemed
that "everyone wanted to kill the king". Just so, an out of
work
school master, Francois Ravaillac, dreamt that he had been summoned by
God to
kill Henri. As Henri drove away in his carriage Ravaillac jumped up
from the
road and stabbed the king to death with a broken fork. He was truly
demented. In
conclusion, King Henri IV was one of the greatest rulers that
French monarchy
ever saw. King Henri worked for the rights of the citizens.
He took
responsibility and stood up for himself throughout his life. As Mme
de Stael
wrote, "He was the most French of all French kings."