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As complaisant royal consort and then as Regent of France, Marie de Médicis was called upon to play a role resembling that of her distant cousin

Ferdinando, who renounced his cardinalate to assume the ducal dignity, reversed his brother’s policies, and invested his ducats in the struggle of Henry IV, the Bourbon King of France, against the Spanish-supported Catholic League

Negotiations for marriage with a number of Italian and German suitors of princely rank were inconclusive, and, as the financial obligations of the French monarchy to Florentine creditors increased, so, too, did the probability of a French husband for Marie de Médicis

A more promising expedient to recover or reduce a bad debt seemed to be the marriage of his niece with the French King

Papal authority was needed to annul Henry IV’s marriage with Marguerite de Valois, the wayward daughter of Catherine de Médicis

the marriage contract was signed in Tuscany

The kingdom that received Marie de Médicis as its Queen had been torn by four decades of civil war.

The imposition of peace in itself had created the conditions for economic recovery, but the monarchy appreciated that it had a positive task to heal and to restore.

Sully had served his master when he had been no more than a petty King of Navarre, had fought beside him in a score of engagements, and, though a Huguenot

Some of the weaknesses shown by Marie de Médicis may be condoned in the light of her husband’s conduct. The King treated her with courtesy and, intermittently, with a familiar affection

Henry IV’s domestic life was likened to that of the Grand Turk. He expected his Queen and his mistresses to live in harmony

Her half-brother, Charles d’Auvergne, the natural son of the Valois King, Charles IX, and her father, Francois de Balzac d’Entragues

Her marriage with Henry IV, the prelude to the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, had been as farcical in later years as it had been tragic in its origin

Henry IV allied himself with Savoy against Spain, and proposed to intervene against the Catholic Emperor

Regency by declaring the tearful Queen-Mother sole Regent in the minority of Louis XIII

France turned towards alliance with Henry IV’s Spanish enemies

Marie de Médicis, lacking the authority of Henry IV, had now to contend with the ambitions he had held in check. She could no longer afford the peevish indolence she had affected as Queen: she had to devote all her energy to conciliating and balancing the forces that threatened to curtail her power

A proposal to affirm the Spanish alliance by the dual marriage of the King and his sister, Elizabeth, with the Spanish Haps-burgs provoked this response

Conflicts between the three orders enabled Marie de Médicis and her Ministers to survive these challenges

In the following year a desultory campaign against Nevers was complicated by a war between Spain and Savoy, in which, despite the insistence of the government upon the sincerity of the Spanish alliance, a French army under the command of Henry IV’s old general, Lesdiguieres, marched into Italy against the Hapsburgs

The Queen Mother was placed under arrest and exiled to Blois. Her confidante, Leonora Galigaï, was put on trial for peculation and sorcery, and condemned to death on both counts

the princess Elizabeth crossed the Bidassoa and, in exchange, Anne of Austria became the bride of Louis XIII

If her roles as Queen and Regent had resembled those of Catherine de Médicis, her actions after her fall seemed bent upon the destruction of all that her predecessor had represented

It was her tragedy that she failed to identify her personal ambitions with the symbolic meaning of the crown she wore

This organization was ultimately headed by Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé, who assumed the title of protector general of the churches of France, thus putting all the prestige of the house of Bourbon behind the Huguenot cause. By doing so, he added a new dimension to the age-old opposition of the mighty feudal subject to the crown: that opposition was now backed by a tightly knit military organization based on the Huguenot communities, by the financial contributions of wealthy bankers and businessmen, and by the dedicated religious zeal of the faithful, inspired by the example of Geneva.

The struggle between the families of Guise, Bourbon, and Montmorency for political power at the centre of government after Henry II’s death; the vacillating policy of Catherine de Médicis, widow of Henry II, who strongly influenced the three sons who successively became king; and, most important, the ineptitude of those rulers—Francis II (1559–60), Charles IX (1560–74), and Henry III (1574–89)—meant that local government officials were never confident of their authority in seeking to curb the growing threat of Huguenotism. After the death of Francis II, Catherine de Médicis, who was ruling in the name of her second son, Charles IX, abandoned the repressive religious policy of Francis I and Henry II and attempted to achieve religious reconciliation.

in the following year she issued the Edict of January, which allowed the Calvinists a degree of toleration. These signs of favour to the Protestants brought a violent reaction from devout Catholics, who found leadership in the noble house of Guise, the champions of Roman Catholicism in France.

The King’s delight in his children was boundless, and his affection recognized no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate

he recognized the political significance of the eldest legitimate son in an hereditary monarchy, and as a matter of course the Dauphin was accorded special status. The King knew well the importance of forging personal ties between the sovereign and his people, and at the age of one month the future Louis XIII was introduced to public life:

Henry’s premature death ended César’s role in government; lacking his royal father’s support, he was reduced instantly to that anomalous status attendant upon a former monarch’s illegitimate offspring. During the reign of his half-brother he was naturally a rebel against the Crown

Jeanne-Baptiste de Bourbon and Marie-Henriette de Bourbon suffered the usual fate of unmarriageable daughters; they were relegated to convents

Throughout the last decade of Henry’s reign, speculation centred around the ‘Spanish marriages,’ a system of alliances

These schemes were encouraged by the Pope, who wished to unite the two great Catholic powers of Europe; and the Queen herself (who was half-Habsburg) voiced approval of alliance with Spain.

Her marriage to the Dauphin would have incorporated Lorraine in the French crown by peaceful annexation, strengthening France’s north-eastern frontier

The contract, signed a few weeks before the King’s murder, provided for an offensive and defensive league against Spain in which Henry agreed to support Savoy’s claims to Milan

Henry’s assassination in May of 1610 left Marie de Médicis Regent of a kingdom poised for attack against the forces of Austria and Spain, and she scrambled frantically to extricate France from the anti-Habsburg coalition without leaving herself diplomatically isolated. Charles Emmanuel of Savoy finally agreed to accept the younger princess, Christine, as his son’s bride

Thus Elisabeth was available for another alliance, and the long-discussed ‘Spanish match’ was realized in a double marriage in 1615: Louis XIII received the Infanta as his wife and Elisabeth went to Spain as the bride of the future Philip IV

In order to win Habsburg good will, the Regent had sacrificed the advantages of a match with Lorraine

A bigoted Roman Catholic, Henry was rigorous in the repression of Protestantism, which was approaching the zenith of its power in France.

The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was to be cemented by the marriages of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth and his sister Margaret to Philip II of Spain and to Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, respectively

He left four sons by his marriage to Catherine de Médicis: the future kings Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III and François

Claude, who married Charles III the Great, Duke of Lorraine

Margaret, who married Henry of Navarre (the future Henry IV)

in terms comparable with the later self-promoting propaganda arranged for his grandson, Louis XIV

It was, however, to the legendary hero that all sides appealed after his death in the troubles of the regencies of his second wife, Marie de Médicis, and then of Anne of Austria, the widow of his son, Louis XIII

In the 1660 Parisian entry ceremony for Louis XIV, it was the twenty-two year-old king who replaced his ancestor as Hercules on a triumphal arch

His attitude to the legend of Henri IV was more a matter of personal judgement than of any desire to flatter Louis XIV. His Histoire de France began to be published soon after the death of Louis XIII in 1643, and reached the year 1598 in 1651

Navarre’s great-grandson, the regent Philippe d’Orléans, who promoted his ancestor’s memory in the belief that he closely resembled him in appearance and character.

Navarre, as it had been for Louis XIV after the latter’s death.

Hence Henry of Navarre could appear an exemplary figure of a king of proto-Enlightenment.

Henri IV could be understood both as the product of his experience and of his inherent qualities of courage and sensibility.

in assessing Henry of Navarre he felt obliged to say: ‘Here the legend is nothing more than history; here fiction can add nothing to truth’.