Ancestral Trails 2016 » Henri de FRANCE IV (1553-1610)

Personal data Henri de FRANCE IV 

• He was born on December 13, 1553 in Pau, Navarre, France.
• Title: King of France 1589-1610
• Title: King of Navarre 1572-1610
• (Nickname) : Good King Henry.
• He died on May 14, 1610 in Paris, Seine, Île-de-France, France, he was 56 years old.
• A child of Antoine de BOURBON and Jeanne de NAVARRE

Household of Henri de FRANCE IV

(1) He is married to Gabrielle d'ESTREES.

They got married

Child(ren):

1. Alexandre de VENDOME  1598-1629
2. César de BOURBON  1594-1665 
3. Catherine Henriette de BOURBON  1596-1663 

(2) He is married to Marie de MEDICI.

They got married on October 5, 1600, he was 46 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Christine Marie de FRANCE  1606-1663 
2. Henrietta Maria de FRANCE  1609-1669 
3. Elizabeth de FRANCE  1602-1644 
4. Gaston Jean Baptiste d'ORLEANS  1608-1660 
5. Louis de FRANCE  1601-1643 

(3) He is married to Marguerite de VALOIS.

They got married on August 18, 1572 at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France, he was 18 years old.

Notes about Henri de FRANCE IV

Henry IV (French: Henri IV, read as Henri-Quatre; 13 December 1553 - 14 May 1610), also known by the epithet "Good King Henry", was King of Navarre (as Henry III) from 1572 to 1610 and King of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first French monarch of the House of Bourbon, a branch of the Capetian dynasty.

Baptised as a Catholic but raised in the Protestant faith by his mother Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, he inherited the throne of Navarre in 1572 on the death of his mother. As a Huguenot, Henry was involved in the French Wars of Religion, barely escaping assassination in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, and later led Protestant forces against the royal army.

Henry, as Head of the House of Bourbon, was a direct male-line descendant of Louis IX of France, and "first prince of the blood". Upon the death of his brother-in-law and distant cousin Henry III of France in 1589, Henry was called to the French succession by the Salic law. He initially kept the Protestant faith and had to fight against the Catholic League, which denied that he could wear France's crown as a Protestant. To obtain mastery over his kingdom, after four years of stalemate, he found it prudent to abjure the Calvinist faith. As a pragmatic politician (in the parlance of the time, a politique), he displayed an unusual religious tolerance for the era. Notably, he promulgated the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants, thereby effectively ending the Wars of Religion. He was assassinated in 1610 by François Ravaillac, a fanatical Catholic, and was succeeded by his son Louis XIII.

Henry was born in Pau, the capital of the joint Kingdom of Navarre with the sovereign principality of Béarn. His parents were Queen Joan III of Navarre (Jeanne d'Albret) and her consort, Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, King of Navarre. Although baptised as a Roman Catholic, Henry was raised as a Protestant by his mother, who had 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 his mother's death, he became King of Navarre.

First marriage and Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre
At Queen Joan's death, it was arranged for Henry to marry Margaret of Valois, daughter of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici. The wedding took place in Paris on 18 August 1572
on the parvis of Notre Dame Cathedral. On 24 August, the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre began in Paris. Several thousand Protestants who had come to Paris for Henry's wedding were killed, as well as thousands more throughout the country in the days that followed. Henry narrowly escaped death thanks to the help of his wife and his promise to convert to Catholicism. He was made to live at the court of France, but he escaped in early 1576. On 5 February of that year, he formally abjured Catholicism at Tours and rejoined the Protestant forces in the military conflict.

Henry's first marriage was not a happy one, and the couple remained childless. Henry and Margaret separated even before Henry acceded to the throne in August 1589, and Margaret lived for many years in the Château d'Usson in the Auvergne. After Henry became king of France, it was of the utmost importance that he provide an heir to the crown to avoid the problem of a disputed succession. Henry favoured the idea of obtaining an annulment of his marriage to Margaret and taking Gabrielle d'Estrées as his bride; after all, she had already borne him three children. Henry's councillors 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 to a premature and stillborn son. His marriage to Margaret was annulled in 1599, and he then married Marie de' Medici in 1600.

Henry was the subject of attempts on his life by Pierre Barrière in August 1593 and Jean Châtel in December 1594. In the third assassination attempt, King Henry IV was killed in Paris on 14 May 1610 by a Catholic fanatic, François Ravaillac, who stabbed him in the Rue de la Ferronnerie. Henry's coach was stopped by traffic congestion related to the Queen's coronation ceremony, as depicted in the engraving by Gaspar Bouttats. Hercule de Rohan, duc de Montbazon, was with him when he was killed; Montbazon was wounded, but survived. Henry was buried at the Saint Denis Basilica.

His widow, Marie de' Medici, served as regent for their nine-year-old son, Louis XIII, until 1617.
SOURCE: Wikipedia

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Timeline Henri de FRANCE IV

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