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the very survival of the first Bourbon king amid the dangers and conspiracies of his time suggests a certain element of rational calculation, if not outright hypocrisy.

Navarre were established during his own lifetime

In 1594 Jean Boucher, the most influential curé among the revolutionary leaders of the Leaguer Sixteen, launched an attack upon the hypocrisy of the king’s conversion fully as personal and venomous as his earlier indictment of the last Valois, Henri III

he became heir to the French throne through his marriage to Margaret of Valois

Despite converting to Catholicism after becoming king of France in 1589, Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes to foster religious tolerance. He was killed on May 14, 1610, in Paris, France

the spread of civil war made him reflect on its disastrous effect on France

The queen of France, Marie de’ Medici, had been crowned the previous day at the basilica of Saint Denis and was due to make her formal entry into the capital.

French queens were not crowned as a matter of course and Henry IV, king of France since 1589, saw no reason to go to the expense of a coronation for his second queen whom he had married in 1610

The alarm was shared by France, which had been at war with the Habsburg empire for much of the 16th century. Religion was also involved, as the Catholic Habsburgs were opposed by many German Protestant princes. Henry IV was urged to intervene militarily, but he had hesitated initially.

On July 31st, 1589, a young Jacobin friar, Jacques Clément, left Paris for the suburb of Saint-Cloud where Henry III of France had set up his military encampment.

As he did so, the friar produced a knife that he had hidden in the capacious sleeve of his habit and plunged it into Henry’s abdomen

Henry died early the next morning bringing to an end the Valois dynasty that had occupied the French throne since 1328. Henry III was the first king of France to be assassinated by one of his own subjects

He was the son and successor of Joan of France, queen of Navarre, and Philip, count of Évreux. Married in 1352 to Joan, daughter of John II of France

When Charles continued plotting with the English, John had him arrested at Rouen (April 1356). Soon afterward the English captured John at Poitiers.

Then John of France died (1364) and Charles V by military action forced Charles to renounce almost all his major claims in France.

Captured by the English at the Battle of Poitiers on Sept. 19, 1356, he was forced to sign the disastrous treaties of 1360 during the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) between France and England.

John continued a truce with the English until later that year

By March 1351 King Edward III of England realized the impossibility of remaining at peace; but John committed the first act of hostility

king of France from 1364 who led the country in a miraculous recovery from the devastation of the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453)

his father, King John II the Good, was captured by the English at Poitiers in 1356

When Charles reentered Paris on Aug. 2, 1358, his military situation remained precarious because he still had to fight both the English and his archenemy, the King of Navarre. The treaties of Brétigny and of Calais (May and October 1360) granted to Edward III of England most of southwestern France and 3,000,000 gold crowns for John’s ransom.

Henry of Navarre

Mahomet II conquered Constantinople

One section of the citizens of Paris massacred the rest on Saint Bartholomew’s night

under whose reign the prolonged crisis of the Wars of Religion was made worse by dynastic rivalries arising because the male line of the Valois dynasty was going to die out with him

In 1572 she presented him as a candidate for the vacant throne of Poland, to which he was finally elected in May 1573. In May 1574, however, Charles died, and Henry abandoned Poland and was crowned at Reims on Feb. 13, 1575. He was married two days later to Louise de Vaudémont, a princess of the house of Lorraine. The marriage proved childless.

The French Wars of Religion (1562–98) continued during Henry III’s reign

France was then sharply divided by religion. Thousands of Protestants, or Huguenots, had been massacred in Paris and other cities in 1572, but they remained strong in the south and west, while Paris was fiercely Catholic. Though a Catholic himself, Henry III lacked the means to take on the Huguenots in an all-out war.

accused the mignons of destroying Henry III’s virility

Monarchs were used to distributing special favours to certain members of their entourage in return for their loyalty and services. The first French king to do so was Philip III, ‘the Bold’ (1270-85). A long line of favourites can be traced through the succeeding reigns until that of Louis XIV, who had none. Henry III seems to have had more than any other French king. They can be divided into two groups: the first, formed in the 1570s, comprised some 20 young men, roughly of the same age as Henry. They belonged to families of the provincial nobility (or noblesse seconde), which had served the crown for generations. The second group was formed in the 1580s. It consisted of only two men, Anne de Joyeuse, baron d’Arques and Jean-Louis de La Valette. They became far more powerful than their predecessors and were known as the archimignons

the diplomatic nightmare of the trial and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots

the French crown maintained the only permanent embassy of Elizabeth’s reign

The Spanish embassy was a stormy one, suspended between 1572 and 1578 and permanently terminated in 1584

Bernadotte, alone among the marshals of the Empire, was a man of independent political means. He survived Napoleon’s abdication and fall as his own master, which again distinguishes him from his former colleagues

Only Bernadotte, elected Crown Prince of Sweden in 1810—he became King in 1818—was spared the dilemma that faced the Marshals when in 1814 the French Senate decreed Napoleon’s overthrow and the Allied Sovereigns coupled promises of further employment with demands for immediate public submission to the brothers of Louis XVI

Allied backing of the Bourbons, quite content to devote his governmental talents to the prosperity of his adoptive country, which, by his alliance with Tsar Alexander I and an understanding with England, he had already launched on the road to political and economic recovery

a vigorous suppressor of Protestants within his kingdom

Henry was sent with his brother Francis, the dauphin, as a hostage to Spain in 1526

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

One of the most extraordinary events of the 16th century was the election in 1573 of a French prince to the throne of Poland. The prince was Henri, the third son of Henry II of France.

Catherine’s two eldest sons, François and Charles, were kings of France successively. Henri also succeeded to that throne in 1574. Their sister, Marguerite, became queen of Navarre by marrying the future Henri IV of France in 1572

The Polish throne, unusually, was elective. Since 1386 the election had been in practice limited to members of the Jagiellon dynasty, but now, for the first time, it was to be free. Five candidates offered themselves including John III of Sweden, Ivan IV, Tsar of Muscovy, the Archduke Ernest, son of the Emperor Maximilian II, and Henri, Duke of Anjou

This was the reputation acquired by Francis the First in his own time and reverently preserved by subsequent generations. His mother, Louise of Savoy, laid its foundation even before it was certain that he would inherit the throne of his second cousin, Louis XII. In 1504 she had a medallion engraved in honour of the ten-year-old Duke of Valois

While Francis I has been remembered as the chivalrous leader who sustained a long and unequal struggle against the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles V, he has also been described as the King of the Renaissance

There are, however, other aspects of Francis I that are less consistent with the popular impression. He was the autocrat who built upon the work of Louis XI in creating the despotism of the new monarchy.

mother of the last Valois Kings

preserve the authority of the monarchy through the years of its degradation

Médicis Queen entered the capital as the prospective mother of the new Bourbon dynasty

On Louis’ death in January 1515 Francis duly became king of France at the age of twenty

In September 1515 Francis I once more asserted the French claim to Milan

In the spring of 1537, once more under Montmorency, the French attacked Artois in the Netherlands and a number of towns were captured before a truce was agreed with Charles’s regent, Mary of Hungary

in the seventeenth century English and French development diverged

Henry of Navarre is portrayed in a distinctly unromantic light

James I and Charles I always announced their intention to rule within the law and claimed only discretionary powers, though these, once established by Charles I, might have been extended with time, and Charles II and James II claimed the right, if not to legislate, then to suspend legislation; whereas Louis XIV could on occasion invoke 'the good of the people' to override the law, tolerated no overt opposition, used troops to collect taxes, and augmented Fouquet's sentence on his sovereign authority

King Henry III of France, who reigned from 1574 to 1589, is not well known in the English-speaking world

Henry III was the most unpopular French king

His reputation fluctuated across the centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries the last Valois king was largely eclipsed by his Bourbon successor, Henry IV

That the restoration of the Bourbons was a re-enactment of the Restoration of the Stewarts was not only a widespread belief at the time, but one that was, in itself, an important historical fact. If the French Restoration went the way of the English, it was partly because it was expected to do so. The parallel was formally close: Louis XVI and Charles I; Napoleon and Cromwell; Charles X and James II; Louis-Philippe and William III. All went roughly according to the historical plan, except that, in England, there was no 1848, no Second Republic, no Second Empire—which underlines the truth that not every country that needs Whigs gets them

The shock of the Revolution produced among the exiles many different schools of thought. Some attributed the course of events to the decline of religious faith (and so there was an attempt to beat Satan at his own game by the foundation of societies such as the Chevaliers de la foi). Some, like the Comte d’Artois, attributed all to the initial feebleness of Louis XVI. Obsta principiis was their motto and policy, one to which Charles X clung in the last fatal year of his reign, 1829-30.

In so far as there was any enthusiasm for the Bourbons, it was based upon the belief that they would bring peace—and peace on easy terms. The terms of the first Peace of Paris were easy