Sunday 16 May 2010

Recalling Henri IV


The French Republic has recently celebrated a new hero. The odd thing is he is a King and he’s been dead for exactly four hundred years!

We have not long passed to four hundredth anniversary of the death of Henri IV, the first of France’s Bourbon kings, who was assassinated on May 17 1610 by religious fanatic by the name of Francois Ravaillac.

The French have every reason to celebrate his rule, which contrast so sharply with the miserable performance of the present-day monarch, Nicholas Sarkozy. Not only did Henri end the Wars of Religion, which had torn the country apart for a good bit of the preceding century but he managed to reduce the country’s deficit by a third, while increasing state revenues by a half without resorting to large hikes in taxation. He is the sort of leader that we need now in England!

Henri for a King had a remarkable common touch and his death was widely mourned by the nation. He famously promised all French workers the “means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday”, contrasting sharply with the ruinous tax and spend policies of his successors, which by 1789 was to impoverish the peasants and bankrupt the state.

He was also something of a pragmatist and a cynic. Formerly as King of Navarre he had been a leading Huguenot, a French Calvinist, who converted to Catholicism to save his life in the wake of the 1572 Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of his co-religionists. Afterwards he reverted back to Protestantism, which made him in the eyes of Catholics a ‘relapsed heretic’ and therefore unworthy to be King of France.

His succession was opposed by the powerful Catholic League, particularly strong in Paris and the north. But with the assassination in 1589 of Henri III, the last of the Valois kings, Henri Bourbon had by far the strongest claim. Saying that “Paris is well worth a mass” he converted back to Catholicism, easing his way to the throne.

Though his legitimacy was accepted by most in the Catholic party that still left a semi-lunatic fringe; it left the likes of Ravaillac, not just a fanatic but almost certainly clinically mad, so mad that he was even expelled after three weeks by the Cistercian order of the Feuillants on account of his ‘visions.’ Believing that Henri was about to make war on the Pope, whom he heretically believed to be God, Ravaillac determined to kill the king, stealing a knife from an inn for the purpose and stabbing him while he was travelling through the busy Paris streets in his couch.

But now Henri is back, a symbol of national nostalgia, the embodiment of the legend of the good king whose image is to be seen across the country on billboards, on magazine covers and him shop windows. Vive Henri Quatre!

12 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Adam, the French is Paris vaut bien une messe.

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  3. Ah very good Ana. I have a feeling you'd have fit in very well in the House of Bourbon--no Lord Protectors to worry about....just a bloody revolution or several :-)

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  4. Yes indeed though, I think your quote is the more literal and therefore most linguistically correct translation, but the translation I'm more familiar with is perhaps a more starkly analogue English expression. Either way, it's one of my favourite quotes in history--one conviction driven people such as myself, too often forget. The fact remains, no French King could ever hold the romance of a Russian Tsar.

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  5. Im my speed I made a mess of the English translation!

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  6. St. George is disappointed....Marie Antoinette smiles with a cheerful glee. Sarko is probably off having a tantrum of some kind or another.

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  7. It is just funny when ever I'm asked to define realpolitik, this is the quote I use...hence, why my French translation skills in this area are better than my usual dismal efforts in this area.

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  8. Sarko? I have a broadside ready in the guns. I might post it in the morning. :-))

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  9. I nearly spat out my foie gras all over a dish of caviare--luckily I've washed it down with some lovely claret. Bloody French, what have they ever contributed to the world other than tiny tyrants? Is it wrong of me by the way to cringe ever so slightly, when ever someone rather pompously points out Napoleon was of relatively average height for the period?

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  10. Actually, he was taller than Sarkozy.

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  11. In that case it only remains for Sarko to be exiled, just after he tries to take on Medvedev(who is also rather short). I actually do believe in the Napoleonic Complex, which is why I sometimes say to people, "Don't allow my appearance deceive. I assure you, I posses the strength of a much shorter man".

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