As a Huguenot (Protestant), Henry was involved in the French Wars of Religion, barely escaping assassination in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.

As a pragmatic politician (politique), he promulgated the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants, thereby effectively ending the French Wars of Religion.

An active ruler, Henry worked to regularize state finance, promote agriculture, eliminate corruption, and encourage education.

He promoted trade and industry, and prioritized the construction of roads, bridges, and canals to facilitate communication within France and strengthen the country's cohesion.

While the Edict of Nantes brought religious peace to France, some hardline Catholics and Huguenots remained dissatisfied, leading to occasional outbreaks of violence and conspiracies.

[2] He was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church a few weeks after his birth, on 6 March 1554, at the chapel of the Château de Pau, by Cardinal Georges d'Armagnac.

[5][6] Faithful to the spirit of Calvinism, Henry's mother Jeanne d'Albret raised him in its strict morality, according to the precepts of the Reformation.

[7] On the accession of Charles IX of France in 1561, Henry was brought to live at the French court in Paris by his father Antoine de Bourbon.

[11] A conflict for the throne of France then ensued, contested by these three men and their respective supporters: Salic law barred inheritance by the king's sisters and all others who could claim descent through only the female line.

[18] When Cardinal de Bourbon died in 1590, the League could not agree on a new candidate at the Estates General called to settle the question, also attended by the envoys of Spain.

The French overwhelmingly rejected Philip's first choice, Archduke Ernest of Austria, the Emperor's brother, also a member of the House of Habsburg.

On 25 July 1593, with the encouragement of his mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées, Henry permanently renounced Protestantism and converted to Catholicism to secure his hold on the French crown,[21] thereby earning the resentment of the Huguenots and his ally Elizabeth I of England.

[30][31] The assembly approved the creation of a new tax on goods entering towns that would be known as the pancarte, however in 1597 the crown was again rocked by military crisis when the Spanish seized Amiens.

The Edict of Nantes signed religious tolerance into law, and the brevets were an act of benevolence that created a Protestant state within France.

[39] During the reign of Henry IV, rivalry continued among France, Habsburg Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire for the mastery of Western Europe.

Henri IV accepted this, but Spain objected that Bresse was a vital part of the Spanish Road, and persuaded the Duke to reject the decision.

Henry IV was already at Lyon and had soldiers ready, and four days later he marched fifty thousand men against the duchy, occupying almost all of its area west of the Alps.

Henry aimed to maintain peace among the Protestant princes of the Holy Roman Empire to present a united front against the Habsburgs.

To achieve this, Henry encouraged a peaceful settlement over the succession between the two main protestant claimants: Wolfgang Wilhelm of Palatinate-Neuburg and Johann Sigismund of Brandenburg.

[41] Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, his financial advisor, was particularly keen on joining the war, as France's finances at the time were secure.

It was widely believed that in 1610 Henry was preparing to escalate the war against the Holy Roman Empire, which was prevented by his assassination and the subsequent rapprochement with Spain under the regency of Marie de' Medici.

[49][50] The Croissant, carrying François Martin de Vitré, reached Ceylon and traded with Aceh in Sumatra, but was captured by the Dutch on the return leg at Cape Finisterre.

[51] From 1604 to 1609, following the return of François Martin de Vitré, Henry attempted to set up a French East India Company on the model of England and the Netherlands.

Although a formal Catholic, he valued his Calvinist upbringing and was tolerant toward the Huguenots until his death in 1610, and issued the Edict of Nantes which granted them many concessions.

[56] Henry was killed in Paris on 14 May 1610 by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot who stabbed him while his coach was stopped on Rue de la Ferronnerie.

During the early phase of the French Revolution, when it aimed to create a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, Henry IV was held up as a model for King Louis XVI.

[62] After the assassination of the dauphin Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry by a Republican fanatic, seven months later his widow Princess Caroline gave birth to their son, heir to the throne of France, and conspicuously named him Henri after his royal forefather.

[63] Henry serves as a loose inspiration for the character Ferdinand, King of Navarre, in William Shakespeare's 1590s play Love's Labour's Lost.

[67] On 14 September 1788, when anti-tax riots broke out during the incipient French Revolution, rioters stopped travellers and demanded they dismount to salute Henry IV's statue.

Henry's councillors strongly opposed this idea, but the matter was resolved unexpectedly by Gabrielle's sudden death in the early hours of 10 April 1599, after she had given birth to a premature stillborn son.