The New International Encyclopædia/Henry IV. (France)

​HENRY IV. (1553–1610). King of France from 1589 to 1610, sometimes called the Great. He was born in the Castle of Pau, Béarn, December 14, 1553, being the third son of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d’Albret, daughter and heiress of Henry II., King of Navarre and Béarn, and allied through his father with the French royal family. In 1555 his mother became Queen of Navarre, and gave her husband the title of King. Henry himself was known as Prince of Viane. His father’s death, in 1562, placed him under the sole control of his mother who was a zealous Calvinist, and was careful to select learned men holding her own tenets for his instructors. Upon the outbreak of the third Civil War in France ​the young prince and his intrepid mother joined the Huguenots at La Rochelle, and after the death of the Prince of Condé at Jarnac (March 13, 1569), Henry was proclaimed by the voice of the army chief of the Protestant cause. On account of his extreme youth, however, the actual command was vested in Coligny (q.v.). Notwithstanding the defeats which the Huguenots had experienced in this campaign, the Peace of Saint Germain-en-Laye (August 8, 1570) was apparently of great advantage to them, and was speedily followed by a contract of marriage between Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois, the sister of Charles IX. Jeanne d’Albret died suddenly a few months later (June 9, 1572), and the prospective bridegroom became King of Navarre, under the title of Henry III. After much opposition on the part of both Catholics and Protestants, the marriage with Margaret of Valois was celebrated with great pomp, August 18, 1572, followed within a week by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. It had been originally intended that Henry should share the fate of his friends and co-religionists, but his life was spared on condition of his professing himself a Catholic. For more than three years he remained at the French Court, virtually a prisoner, and continually plotting and seeking to escape; but at length, in February, 1576, he contrived to elude the vigilance of his guardians, and made his way to the camp of the Huguenots in Gascony, where he repudiated his enforced conversion and resumed the command of the army. In the Peace of Beaulieu, concluded May 6, 1576, the Huguenots obtained several distinct advantages.

The death of the Duke of Anjou (late Alençon) in 1584 made Henry presumptive heir to the crown. Some years previous to this the Catholic League had been formed, the secret purpose of which was the support of the Guise pretensions to the throne. The War of the Three Henrys (Henry III. of France, Henry of Navarre, and Henry of Guise) was terminated by the Protestant victory of Coutras, October 20, 1587. In 1588 Henry III. of France, hating and fearing the powerful Guises, who had virtually made themselves his masters, caused the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine to be murdered, and in the following year came to an understanding with Henry of Navarre. The two now proceeded to lay siege to Paris, August, 1589. The assassination of Henry III. by Clément made Henry of Navarre, as the nearest lineal male descendant of the royal house of France, rightful King of France, the House of Bourbon succeeding to that of Valois. As a Protestant, he had been excommunicated by Sixtus V. in 1585, and declared incapable of succeeding to the French crown. His religion, moreover, made him obnoxious to the greater part of the nation, and he found in addition that the dukes of Lorraine and Savoy, and Philip II. of Spain, were prepared, each on his own account, to dispute his claims. He withdrew, therefore, to Normandy until he could collect more troops and obtain reënforcements from England and Germany. His nearly hopeless cause, however, gradually gained strength through the weakness and internal dissensions of the Leaguers, who proclaimed the aged Cardinal de Bourbon King, with the Duke of Mayenne Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and thus complicated the interests of their party. After a success at Arques (September, 1589), Henry reappeared before Paris. He won а splendid victory over Mayenne at Ivry (March 14, 1590), but Spanish intervention defeated his plans, and it is probable that he would never have been generally acknowledged had he not, by the advice of his friend and Minister, De Rosny, afterwards Duke of Sully (q.v.), formally professed himself a member of the Church of Rome, in 1593. “Paris,” the light-hearted but astute monarch is reported to have said, “is well worth a mass.” His public recantation of Protestantism, before the Archbishop of Bourges, July 25, 1593, filled the Catholics with joy, and was followed by the speedy surrender of the most important cities of the kingdom, including Paris, which opened its gates to him in March, 1594. The war with the League was not, however, terminated till 1596. In 1598 peace was concluded between Spain and France by the Treaty of Vervins, which restored to the latter many important places in Picardy and was otherwise favorable to the French King. On April, 13, 1598, Henry signed the Edict of Nantes, which secured the Protestants perfect liberty of conscience and the administration of impartial justice.

Henry was now left at liberty to direct his attention to the internal improvement of the kingdom, which had been thoroughly disorganized through the long continuance of civil war. The narrow-minded policy of the preceding reigns had left the provinces greatly at the mercy of the civil governors and large landed proprietors, who arrogated almost sovereign power to themselves in raising taxes and exacting compulsory services. Such abuses Henry completely stopped. By building canals and roads, and opening all parts of his kingdom to commerce, he established new sources of wealth and prosperity for his subjects. The mainspring of these improvements was, however, the reorganization of the finances under Sully, who, in the course of ten years, reduced the national debt from 330,000,000 to 50,000,000 livres. In 1601 the districts of Bresse, Bugey, and Valromey were acquired from Savoy and added to France. For ten years France enjoyed prosperity previously unheard of. In foreign politics Henry devoted his entire energy to the formation of a powerful coalition against the House of Austria, the ancient enemy of France, against whom, since the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, the distracted country had been too weak to contend. The disputed succession to the duchies of Jülich and Cleves (qq.v.) afforded an opportunity for the opening of hostilities, and the King, who had entered into an alliance with the Protestant Union of Germany, was about to take personal command of the French army, when he was struck down by the dagger of Ravaillac, a religious fanatic, at Paris, May 14, 1610. Nineteen times before attempts had been made on his life, most of which it was thought could be traced to the agency of the Papal and Imperial courts, and in the midst of the bitter political strife Ravaillac’s crime was laid to the charge of the same influences. The most horrible vengeance was wreaked on the murderer. Henry was succeeded on the throne by Louis XIII., his son by his second wife, Maria de’ Medici (q.v.). Time has strengthened the high estimate which the people of France formed of their favorite King, for although his faults were numerous, they were eclipsed by his surpassing qualities. An inordinate passion for women was ​his greatest failing. He was without doubt the most imposing figure in France of his day, and has taken his place in history as the greatest of Bourbon kings.

Bibliography. For the history of Henry IV., consult the memoirs of the time, particularly those of the Duke de Sully (Amsterdam, 1725); also Poirson, Histoire de Henri IV. (3d ed., Paris, 1865); Jung, Henri IV. écrivain (ib., 1885); Guadet, Henri IV., sa vie, son œuvre et ses écrits (ib., 1879); Lescure, Vie de Henri IV. (ib., 1876); Barre-Duparcq, Histoire de Henri IV. (ib., 1884); Rambault, Henri IV. et son œuvre (ib., 1884); Zeller, Henri IV. et Marie de Médici (ib., 1877); Lacombe, Henri IV. et sa politique (ib., 1878). In English the following works may be consulted: Gurney, “Henry IV.,” in Chapters from French History (London, 1870); Baird, The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (New York, 1886); Jackson, The First of the Bourbons (London, 1890); Willert, Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots in France (New York, 1893).