Second; 1567–1568Saint-Denis; Chartres Third; 1568–1570Jarnac; La Roche-l'Abeille; Poitiers; Orthez; Moncontour; Saint-Jean d'Angély; Arney-le-Duc Fourth; 1572–1573Mons; Sommières; Sancerre; La Rochelle Fifth; 1574–1576Dormans Sixth; 1577La Charité-sur-Loire; Issoire; Brouage Seventh; 1580La Fère War of the Three Henrys (1585–1589)Coutras; Vimory; Auneau; Day of the Barricades Succession of Henry IV of France (1589–1594)Arques; Ivry; Paris; Château-Laudran; Rouen; Caudebec; Craon; 1st Luxembourg; Blaye; Morlaix; Fort Crozon Franco-Spanish War (1595–1598)2nd Luxembourg; Fontaine-Française; Ham; Le Catelet; Doullens; Cambrai; Calais; La Fère; Ardres; Amiens Henry III of Navarre's succession to the throne in 1589 was followed by a war of succession to establish his legitimacy, which was part of the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598).

Henry was already King of Navarre, as the successor of his mother, Jeanne d'Albret, but he owed his succession to the throne of France to the line of his father, Antoine of Bourbon, an agnatic descendant of Louis IX.

After the death of Charles of Bourbon, the Catholic League's failure to choose a replacement claimant to the throne, in combination with Henry IV's conversion to Catholicism, led to a general recognition of the king in France.

Henry IV's successors ruled France until the French Revolution, then returned during subsequent Bourbon restorations, and they founded dynasties in Spain and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

[citation needed] The importance of the princes of the blood had been demonstrated when Antoine of Navarre's uncle Francis, Count of Enghien (d. 1546) had commanded the victorious royal armies at the battle of Ceresole in 1544.

It was to be further demonstrated when Antoine of Bourbon's last surviving brother, Cardinal Charles (d. 1590), was chosen by the Catholic nobles as King of France in the face of Henry IV's Protestantism.

Catherine de' Medici had ensured her regency of the nine-year-old King Charles IX in 1560 only by making a deal with Antoine of Bourbon, who many considered had the right, as First Prince of the Blood, to be the regent.

[3] In a kingdom that the Salic Law excluded women from succession to the throne,[4] Catherine had overcome prejudice against government by a woman and been elected governor (gouvernante) of France with sweeping powers.

I intend to oppose it with all my heart, and to this end to rally around me... all true Frenchmen without regard to religion, since this time it is a question of the defence of the state against the usurpation of foreigners.

[5]The pull of such propaganda remained so potent that even after 25 years of civil war, an English agent reported that after that and similar declarations by Henry, "many good Catholics flooded to his standard".

[citation needed] During the period between the succession of Henry IV and the death of the Cardinal of Bourbon, the city of Paris had achieved a degree of independence.

While acknowledging the Catholic League and accepting a Spanish garrison, the authorities there had championed their liberties against those of the crown so much that some citizens openly opposed the institution of monarchy altogether.

In October 1589, a Parisian lawyer complained publicly, "Our civil disorder and factions have opened the door to a crowd of corrupt little men who, with effrontery, have attacked authority with such licence and audacity that those who have not seen it would not believe it.

Although the French monarchy was hereditary, the League's lawyers searched the early history of France for precedents to legitimise the election of a king.

[9] The Protestant scholar and ideologue François Hotman had argued in his Francogallia that France was once a free country, whose liberties had been eroded over time, including the right to elect kings.

Though Hotman was a Protestant, his argument also influenced Catholic jurists searching for a means to replace the Cardinal of Bourbon at the beginning of the 1590s and the decision to summon the Estates-General to elect a new "king".

Mayenne, who nursed ambitions to be king himself, saw his grand alliance of Catholic nobles, French towns and Spain crumbling from a growing disunity of purpose and the absence of an obvious claimant to the throne.

The persistence of rebellion and civil war in the early years of Henry's reign owed much to the papacy's refusal to accept anyone but a Catholic on the French throne.

[citation needed] Mayenne was opposed to the idea of summoning the Estates-General to elect a king, but in 1592, he finally caved in to Spanish pressure to do so.

The Spanish urged the Estates-General to repeal the Salic law, which prevented the rule of a queen regnant, but in so doing, they failed to grasp a fundamental principle of the French royal succession.

[14] On 28 June 1593, the Paris parlement followed up by resolving "to preserve the realm which depends on God alone and recognizes no other ruler of its temporal affairs, no matter what his status, and to prevent it from being overrun by foreigners in the fair name of religion".

[18] While the delegates of the Estates-General dithered in Paris, Henry IV dealt a well-timed blow to their deliberations by announcing his wish to be converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, a move that effectively cut the ground from under the Catholic League's feet.

[20] Finally, on 12 July 1595, Pope Clement VIII agreed to lift Henry's excommunication, and he pronounced the absolution on 17 September.

As a Catholic king, Henry should have, it was argued, closed Huguenot churches and banned Protestant worship, but he instead made concessions to his former co-religionists in the Edict of Nantes and tolerated the existence of what was seen as a "state within a state", with whole towns and regions of France in which the Huguenots' right to worship, bear arms and govern their own affairs being protected by Henry.

[citation needed] According to his murderer, François Ravaillac, Henry "made no attempt to convert these Protestants and was said to be on the point of waging war against the Pope so as to transfer the Holy See to Paris".