Henri IV

"Babelon’s biography of Henri IV is still the standard work. It’s about a thousand pages long. Babelon was a very senior archivist in France. His whole career was spent with the documents, so there’s a depth and a richness to Babelon’s book that I don’t think anybody else can really match. He doesn’t stray very far from the standard narrative, but it’s very rich and it’s very full. The book originally came out in the 1980s, just a few years before the 400th anniversary of Henri’s accession, and it really is the indispensable book. What I like about it is that it recognises that Henri, for much of his early life, had no likelihood of ever becoming king. He was a distant collateral relation, and there were four living sons of Henri II. There was no reason to think that at least one of them wouldn’t leave behind an heir. And so, much of Henri’s formation, much of his experience, and much of Henri’s behaviour is really conditioned by his trying to assert himself as the head of the very powerful House of Bourbon, rather than presenting himself as a future king of France. For Babelon, this earlier status gave Henri a different outlook, together with the fact that his mother positioned him as the head of the Protestant movement in France. He had a built-in constituency, which fed into his desires to augment the importance of his own house. The possibility of inheriting the crown didn’t become likely until the late 1570s and early 1580s, when it was evident the ruling dynasty was fading. Charles IX died without an heir; Henri III didn’t seem to be on the way to producing one; and the Duc d’Alençon/d’Anjou was not even married at that point (he was hoping to marry Elizabeth of England). It began to come into focus that quite conceivably there was going to be a dynastic crisis or failure, and Henri was the head of the next branch of the royal house. I think that unexpected change in his prospects is very important. I think some of the other people working on Henri are not so interested in that aspect and much more interested in Henri as king. “Henri, for much of his early life, had no likelihood of ever becoming king” Babelon also sees Henri’s personality being formed by his many, many years on the battlefield. Henri envisioned himself essentially as a soldier, in the model of his own father, Antoine de Bourbon. That was the ancestral narrative he inherited. Babelon sees Henri as a military man at heart, always quick and decisive, abrupt in a way and not interested in nonessential details. At the same time, paradoxically, Henri was the only king of France who had to be a good politician. He constantly had to cultivate his constituency, he couldn’t count on it. He had a quick wit, a sense of humour. He also permitted that familiarity or informality expected of a captain in the field with his soldiers, a trait which endeared him to his followers. I think Babelon does a very good job of touching all the bases, and of putting Henri in the context of the time: dynastic failure, the rivalry of the three great houses—Bourbon, Montmorency and Guise—and the underlying turmoil fueled by the existence in French society of a minority of militant Calvinists (about 10 percent of the population) and the determination of their foes to eradicate them. Babelon does not neglect other factors which combined to give rise to social conflict, dislocation, and civil war in 16th-century France, such as the impact of the changing climactic conditions of the time, or the disruptions in the rhythms of an agricultural society caused by endless violence, thereby adding widespread peasant discontent to the mix. Having described this perfect storm, Babelon then shows us how Henri quelled it gradually, and began the restoration of the state and the monarchy, reinvigorating the organs of government and projecting the image of a strong monarch as an indispensable element in the configuration of the state."