Henry IV of France: Wedding Massacre Survivor Who Founded the Bourbons

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Henry of Navarre was born in 1553, baptized Catholic but raised a strict Calvinist by his mother, Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. His father was killed when he was 10, and by 16, in 1569, he was nominal leader of the Protestant Huguenots. In 1572 Catherine de' Medici arranged his marriage to her daughter Margaret of Valois as a peace gesture, and Huguenot nobles came to Paris unarmed. The wedding instead triggered the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and Henry survived only by converting on the spot. He lived as a virtual prisoner at court for four years, escaped and returned to Protestantism. In 1584 he became heir to the throne, setting off the War of the Three Henrys; Henry III had Henry of Guise assassinated, then was killed by a monk in 1589, leaving Henry IV as the first Bourbon king.

The Spanish-backed Catholic League still held Paris, so in 1593 he converted to Catholicism again and was crowned in 1594. The 1598 Edict of Nantes kept Catholicism as the state religion while giving Huguenots public worship, public office and fortified towns, and the Treaty of Vervins ended Spanish interference. With the Duke of Sully he cut the taille on peasants, built roads and the first French canal, and launched luxury manufacturing at the Gobelins works. He annulled his childless marriage, wed Marie de' Medici and had a son, Louis, in 1601, before a Catholic zealot killed him in his carriage in 1610.

• Cardinal Richelieu's intendants stripped the nobility of local power under Louis XIII.
• Louis XIV reigned 72 years and revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, driving out skilled Protestants.
• Versailles kept nobles spending on etiquette and fashion until they could not afford rebellion.
• A Bourbon, Felipe VI, still reigns in Spain, and the Bourbon-Parma line rules Luxembourg.
• Research by Prince Michael of Greece supports the claim of Balthazar Napoleon IV de Bourbon of Bhopal, India, to descend from a Bourbon noble.