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French

     Wednesday October 16, 1596, Henri IV made his solemn entry into Rouen. King of France for six years, he was terminating the reconquest of his kingdom and striving to restore a state weakened by thirty years of civil wars. His accession, on August 2, 1589, following the assassination of Henri III, the last Valois king, had brought on a real shock: the new king of France, very Christian king, eldest son of the Church, was in fact a follower of the reformed religion. This unprecendented situation had radicalized the opposition of the zealous Catholics, within the League or the Holy Union, who wanted to put a Catholic prince on the throne. During the first decade of his reign, Henri would have to fight on all fronts; it would be necessary to subjugate the provinces and the cities which had seceded, give battle to rebels who were well armed and supported by the king of Spain, resolve the problem posed by the existence of a strong Protestant minority, and reestablish the normal functions of the authorities, completely disorganized. To imagine the concrete difficulties facing the king, one must remember that Paris, his capital, had been in the hands of the members of the League since May, 1588; that vast provinces like Normandy or Brittany escaped from his authority, that tax income was therefore diminished, whereas it was necessary to sustain a prolonged war effort. Emergency solutions had been put in place. To ensure the continuity of the state, certain institutions had been split: thus, a royalist parliament had been set up in Tours to replace the one in Paris where the judges of the League had remained.
During the autumn of 1596, Henri IV could be proud of the recovery which had been making progress for three years. For the first years had been difficult ones. If at first he had gained dazzling victories despite an unfavorable balance of power (Arques in September, 1589 and Ivry in March, 1590), he tried in vain, by an implacable blockade, to recapture Paris from May to August, 1590, and the siege of Rouen, from November, 1591 to April, 1592, also failed. The king’s abjuration allowed the beginning of the pacification process: July 25, 1593, Henri IV had made a Catholic profession of faith in Saint-Denis, and February 27, 1594 had been crowned in Chartres Cathedral (Rheims Cathedral, the traditional location for this ceremony, was still in the hands of the League members). These two steps had facilitated the first coming round: the king had entered his capital March 22, 1594 and had obtained submission from Rouen and Normandy a few days later. Meanwhile the leaders of the League (mainly the young duc de Guise and his uncles, the ducs de Mayenne and de Nemours) continued the fight and refused to recognize a prince who was still under the pontifical censure of Sixtus V denouncing him on September 9, 1585, already depriving him of his states (Navarre and Béarn) and declaring him unfit to succeed to the throne of France. This last encumbrance was raised on September 17, 1595 when Pope Clement VIII accorded absolution to the king. A few months later, in January of 1596, the last rebel princes submitted, with the exception of the duc de Mercœur, governor of Brittany. To induce a “patriotic” wellspring, in January, 1595 Henri IV had declared war on Spain. Militarily and financially, King Philip II had constantly supported the League members and even tried to place his own daughter the Infanta Isabelle Claire Eugénie, Henri II’s granddaughter on the throne of France. The victory of Fontaine-Française in Burgundy, June 5, 1595, had reinforced the position of the king of France.
In autumn, 1596, the situation of Henri IV had considerably strengthened. From a purely political point of view, there remained only- to tell the truth still fearsome tasks- subjugating Brittany, settling the problem of the coexistence between Catholics and Protestants and ending the foreign war. These three goals would be reached in the spring of 1598 with the winning over of Mercœur, the Edict of Nantes and the Peace of Vervins. But in order to complete his work of pacification and reconciliation, the king had to restore his finances, which were in catastrophic condition. The payment of heavy indemnities to the united Leaguers was added to the irreducible expenses necessitated to maintain the royal armies for seven years. The astronomical sums demanded and obtained notably by the admiral de Villars, the governor of Rouen, Charles de Cossé-Brissac, the governor of Paris, or the duc de Guise, had dried up the royal treasury and forced the sovereign to borrow. The public debt was a bottomless pit and it was necessary to find a remedy as soon as possible. One of the traditional ways to face such a crisis was to consult the representatives of the three constituant orders of the kingdom. Henri IV was loath to summon the Estates General, because he had a very bad memory of the preceding session, organized in Paris in 1593 by the duc de Mayenne, leader of the League. He had recourse to a simpler and surer method: calling together notables, who were summoned by royal letters July 25, 1596.
Thus it was to open this assembly and follow its deliberations closely that Henri IV came to Rouen with the government and the court. The choice of this city, inhabited by members of the League for a long time, was wholly symbolic: it illustrated the king’s desire to manifest the national reconciliation which was becoming reality little by little. The king and his retinue took up residence in the abbey palace of Saint-Ouen. During the entry, October 16, the inhabitants could not miss being struck by the presence, very visible, of his blond mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées. Henri, still married to Marguerite de Valois but separated from her, had fallen in love with Gabrielle in 1591. She had given him a son, César, on June 3, 1594. Catherine-Henriette, their second child, was born on November 11, 1596, and her baptism celebrated with the ceremony reserved for the children of France. The king did not hide his intention, once his preceding union was declared nul and void, to marry his mistress, who was already behaving like a queen. A third child, Alexandre, was born in 1598. We know that this idyll was broken by Gabrielle’s sudden death on April 10, 1599.
Open in Rouen on November 4, 1596, the assembly of eighty-five notables sat for more than two months. The timid reforms they recommended were rendered very quickly inapplicable by another emergency which came up in March, 1597: the Spanish having captured Amiens, it was necessary to beseige the city which was not recaptured until September 19. During this crucial period, a young Protestant gentleman, the baron de Rosny, a recent member of the Council of Finances, distinguished himself by his skill in finding the necessary resources. Won over by his efficiency, Henri IV would name him superintendent of finances soon after. He is known in history as the duc de Sully.
The Rouen assembly, therefore, did not have the expected results. At least, by his solemn entry and his long stay in the city, (which he only left on February 6), the king had affirmed his authority and made it understood that the time for revolt against the legitimate power had passed.

Bernard Barbiche (École nationale des Chartes, Paris) – 2009

Critical bibliography

B. Guenée & F. Lehoux, Les entrées royales françaises de 1328 à 1515, Paris, Éditions du CNRS, 1968.

M. McGowan, "Henri IV as Architect and Restorer of the State: His Entry into Rouen, 16 October 1596", J. R. Mulryne (ed.), Ceremonial Entries in Early Modern Europe, Farnham, Ashgate, 2015, pp. 53-76.

C. de Robillard de Beaurepaire, L’entrée à Rouen du roi Henri IV, Rouen, Cagniard, 1887.