Stones Tell Stories
The Assassination of Henri IV
Rue de la Ferronnerie
In the First Arrondissement of Paris, in the shadow of the ultra-moderne mall called Forum des Halles, are two stone markers located a block apart. Each marks a transformative moment in the development of Paris.
One marks the assassination of King Henri IV in 1610, an event as shocking and course-altering as President Kennedy's assassination was for Americans.
The other marks the site of what once was the largest cemetery in ancienne Paris. In 1780, the cemetery’s retaining wall collapsed and semi-decomposed corpses spilled out. This horrific event prompted the cemetery’s closure, a significant step in the urbanization of Paris, an urbanization envisioned by Henri IV.
Le Bon Roi, le Vert Galant
Henri IV was know variously as le bon Roi or good king, Henri le Grand, Henri de Navarre, and le Vert Galant, in reference to his charming nature and infamous womanizing. Henri’s accomplishments remain visible throughout Paris, but his sudden and tragic demise is heralded on a simple stone marker in the pavement of Rue de la Ferronnerie that reads:
“Henri IV, XIV Mai MDCX”
(Henri IV, May 14, 1610)
Today, motor traffic is restricted on the street, and pedestrians stroll over the marker with little notice.
A second marker is a few steps away on a wall with arched portals that lead to Rue des Innocents. There, a stone portrait of Henri IV is inscribed:
“Henric III D.G. France et Navar, Rex 1553-1610…and En ce lieu Le Roi Henri IV fur assassiné par Ravaillac le 14 Mai 1610.”
(On this spot, Henry IV, was assassinated by Ravaillac, May 14, 1610.)
And so, the fact of Henri IV’s assassination is carved in stone. But the story embedded in these stones is one that every French schoolchild learns well and every savvy traveler to Paris should know.
A Great King
A simplified account of Henri IV’s reign (1589-1610) would portray him as a great king, perhaps France’s finest. He followed three miserable kings and was father to Louis XIII and grandfather to Louis XIV, the Sun King. He was the first of the Bourbon kings, the last royal line before the Revolution, followed by the First Republic which vested powers in the hands of les citoyens. Henri’s contemporaries included Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare, who portrayed him in the comedy “Love’s Labor’s Lost.” Neighboring monarches of his era were Kings Phillip II and III of Spain, and Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor, who ruled from Prague.
Henri struggled for the first half of his 21-year reign to establish his legitimacy, but in the end his accomplishments were many. Henri had his faults (among them womanizing and war mongering) but on the plus side, he ended the Religious Wars, signed the Edict of Nantes which granted Protestants the right to worship, promoted mercantilism and fathered a series of urban projects that—different from most monarchs before and after him—sought to improve the lives of the French people and not just enrich and burnish the monarchy under the guise of restoring “la gloire de France.”
Henri’s reign was a brief and heady period of progressive projects, and to this day historians speculate on the course that France and Paris, in particular, might have taken had he lived a full life. Instead, Henri’s life, reign and all the promise it embodied was halted abruptly, when a deluded religious fanatic plunged his knife into Henri’s chest. He was 57 years old.
Hard facts aside, Henri was said to be a charming, irascible, womanizing scoundrel, a boy who never grew up. He stunk like a billygoat from vigorous hunting on horseback, an aversion to bathing and the habit of chewing raw garlic cloves like gum. When he complained to a mistress that her overuse of perfume made their carriage rides unpleasant, she replied: “I need the perfume to cover the stink of you!”
Henri’s personality and energy outweighed his shortcomings: He was a small man who dressed like a peasant and identified with the common man: “Should God let me live longer, I will see that no peasant in my realm is without the means to have a chicken in his pot.” In many ways, Henri was the quintessential Frenchman, always with a bon mot on his lips and a twinkle is his eye, usually for a pretty woman, married or otherwise. He believed it and lived it: It is good to be the king.
Place Royal (now Places des Vosges) introduced economic and social concepts way ahead of their time.
A Visionary and a Builder
Henri was an industrious visionary with notable successes in his portfolio. Chief among them was the creation of Place Royal, now known as Place des Vosges, completed in 1605. The project stemmed from Henri’s concern that France was over-reliant on imported goods, in particular silks from Italy. Place Royal was a boost for domestic manufacture but far more. It was planned as a silk factory that also would include arcades for retailing, as well as luxury housing for the rising bourgeoisie, all around an open garden where Parisians of all classes could promenade at leisure and gather for cultural celebrations. Today, developers call this a “live-work-play” mixed-use space.
In funding the project, Henri also was progressive. Traditionally, a French monarch would squeeze money from nobility, who in turn would squeeze money from peasants under their jurisdiction. But times were changing. The nobility were increasingly marginalized through centralization of the government, and many nobles no longer collected taxes nor had much money. Henri turned to the rising bourgeoisie with an innovative proposal: They would fund the project and he, the king, would grant them rights to resell the luxury housing and rent out the retail spaces. It was essentially a private equity deal.
Henri replicated this formula in his next project in 1607: Place Dauphine. This was a luxury housing project and public marketplace, triangular in shape, at the westward end of Ile de la Cite. Today Place Dauphine remains a quiet, secluded, and oft-overlooked treasure. Over centuries, housing on one side of the place, next to the Palais de Justice, was removed, and several renovations changed most of the building facades.
Place de France was Henri IV's most ambitious vision, uniting city and provinces. His death cut short its realization.
A Grand Vision Unrealized
Following Place Dauphine came a far more ambitious project, the Place de France, in 1608. This was envisioned as a monumental gateway to the city and celebration of the provinces that would transform an agricultural area in what is now the Haut Marais. The Place (which never was built) was to be a massive, semi-circular space, again mixed-use: residential, administrative and commercial. In the process, it would provide great open space for commerce and promenading. Plans depict seven arcaded market buildings, along with a new city portal, Porte de France. Eight new roads, named for provinces, would radiate outward. A canal from the Arsenal to Place de France would allow boats to carry goods in and out.
The project was halted upon Henri’s death. Picture this grand plaza instead of today’s unremarkable rue de Turenne and you have a sense of the urban landscape as it might have been, had Henri’s urban vision been carried out fully. Today, the outline of the first of several arcs in the semi-circular Place de France is traced by rue Debelleyme. Surrounding streets (Bretagne, Poitou, Picardie, etc.) are named for provinces that Henri had meant to embrace with the project. The unrealized magnificence of Place de France, as envisioned by architect Claude Chastillon and engineer Jacques Alleaume, is displayed in the Musée Carnavalet in the Marais.
Another of Henri’s accomplishments is the Hopital St. Louis in the 11th Arrondissement. Founded 1607 and completed 1611, this was the first public hospital to recognize the vital effect of light and air in wellness. It alleviated overcrowded conditions at Hotel-Dieux on Ile de la Cité.
Henri’s most visible accomplishment is the Pont Neuf at the western tip of Ile de la Cité. Construction of the new stone bridge had begun nearly 30 years before Henri’s time, under his predecessor Henry III, but when it opened in 1607 it transformed Paris. The wide bridge connected the three regions of Paris (la Cité, la Ville, and l’Université) and it promoted the free flow of people and commerce. The bridge was stone, not wood, and in contrast to older bridges there were no houses nor shops located on it to mar the remarkable view. The grace and beauty of the bridge’s arched design and grand placement embody the essence and spirit of Paris, and it has been the subject of countless paintings.
Benjamin Franklin, who resided several years in Paris, wrote that he understood the French character once he crossed the Pont Neuf. In 1838, Daguerre took the now iconic photo of Parisians promenading on le Pont Neuf. In 1985, the artists Christo and Jean-Claude wrapped the bridge. The bridge has been carefully maintained as a crown jewel of modern Paris. A major restoration was completed for its 400th anniversary, in 2007.
Appropriately, a bronze statue of Henri IV on horseback stands on the bridge, facing Place Dauphine. The backsides—of both Henri and his horse—face Square-du-Vert-Galant, the green tip of Ile de la Cité. The statue was commissioned in 1618 by Marie de Médicis, Henri’s widow, and it has been a political billboard since inception. In 1792, it was destroyed by Revolutionaries, who sought to impose their own narrative of French history. The statue was rebuilt in 1818 during the Bourbon restoration—in part with bronze from a melted-down statue of Napoleon, who (before his downfall) had intended to construct a 200-foot obelisk where Horseback Henri once had stood.
When Henri IV and his horse were rebuilt, four panels with accounts of Henri’s life were added to the pedestal, providing a counter-narrative to the revolutionaries’ agenda. The main panel in the front begins:
Henrici Magni, parterno in opulum animo
(Father of the People)
Today, the statue is encircled by a low-spiked fence that is ringed by a second, higher construction fence. An illustrated panel explains the history of Point Neuf. That panel is marked with graffiti, as is the pedestal. Henri’s statue remains a kind of palimpsest of dissenting views and political narratives. But safe within his fences and high upon his horse, Henri gazes out at his urbanist vision that lives on.
Despite the events of May 14, 1610.
For all of his achievements in transforming Paris, Henri IV met his demise in a traffic jam.
Caught in Traffic
May 14, 1610: King Henri IV of France, known as le Bon Roi or good king, went for an afternoon carriage ride across Paris. It did not go well. In fact, it changed the course of French history.
At 3pm, the King’s carriage departed the Cour Carée of the Louvre, accompanied by a light security detail. The king’s destination was not far off, and the king had declined an additional horse guard. He was headed to the Arsenal to visit his chief minister, Duc de Sully, who had taken ill and was confined to his bed.
The king took his place on the left of the carriage facing forward. To his right was the duc d’Epernon. Seated across from him were Monsieur de Levardin and Hercule de Rohan, Duc de Montbazon, governor of Paris and Ile de France. They set out on rue St. Honoré.
About 3:30pm, at a point where the street narrowed and fed into la rue Ferronnerie, the king’s carriage was halted. A wine cart and a hay wagon had become entangled, and nothing was moving on the crowded street. Traffic jams were common here, despite an 1554 royal decree (largely unenforced) to restrict commerce on the street to mitigate such tie-ups.
Henri, sitting in an open and still carriage, provided an easy target for an assailant. And one such evil-doer had been stalking him. François Ravaillac, an eccentric lawyer and religious fanatic who in the past had unsuccessfully sought an audience with the king, had followed the carriage along its route. The king lifted his leather privacy curtain, and onlookers recognized him and gathered. The royal footmen stepped off the cart and moved into the crowd to disperse it.
Seizing an opportunity, Ravaillac jumped up on a back wheel, brandished a double-bladed dagger and lunged forward and stabbed three times. The first jab landed in the king’s armpit.
“Je suis blessé” (“I am hurt”), the king sighed.
Ravaillac lunged a second time, stabbing the king between the second and third ribs, severing his aorta. Blood streamed from the king's mouth and he slumped over, mortally wounded. A third stab cut the sleeve of Duc de Montbazon.
People in the carriage and on the street were stunned. An onlooker had the presence of mind to draw his sword and capture Ravaillac.
“Ne le tuez pas!” (“Don’t kill him”) cried Duc d’Epernon. “Il y va de votre tete!” (“They are going for your head.”)
The crowd erupted in rage. At the direction of the Duc d’Epernon, the guards rescued Ravaillac from a sure lynching. They took him to the Hotel de Retz for two days then transferred him to a prison cell in the Conciergerie.
King Henri IV was rushed back to the Louvre where he was declared dead at 4:30pm. Parliament was informed, as was his wife Marie de Medici, who had been crowned Queen of France just the day before.
Within hours, the Parlement granted the queen regency on behalf of her 8-year old son, the future King Louis XIII. Paris was in shock. The Noblesse de l’Eppé (Nobles of the Sword) took to their horses and rode the city streets with swords drawn.
Executions in 17th Century France provided gruesome public entertainment. For regicide, they really put on a show.
A Royal Death, a Spectacular Execution
Mourning Monarch Style
Henri’s remains were treated with the pomp befitting a beloved king. (Accounts vary, and some of the following may fall into historical embellishment verging on myth.)
Henri was laid in state in the chambre de Parade du Roi, his bedchamber in the Louvre. A famous engraving of Henri in state was later rendered by Francois Quesnel, who also engraved the most famous depiction of the assassination itself.
May 15: An autopsy was conducted. Henri's heart was removed, placed in a silver urn and later entombed in the Church of Saint Louis in La Flèche in the Loire valley, a small town where Henri had been conceived and had founded a college.
June 10: An effigy body made of wicker with a face made of wax was placed in a casket and set up in the Salle des Caryatides in the Louvre. The effigy was served daily meals, signifying continuity and respect.
June 21: The effigy was removed and a week of tributes were held around France. June 29: The casket was taken to Notre Dame
June 30: A funeral mass was said at Notre Dame and following that Henri’s remains were taken to the Basilica Saint Denis, the crypt of French royalty. They were entombed the next day.
For nearly two centuries, they remained undisturbed at Saint-Denis until Revolutionaries desecrated the royal tombs in 1789; a dubious tale asserts that Henri’s head was severed, stolen and recovered, but recent DNA tests failed to corroborate the theory.
Meanwhile, Ravaillac’s plight worsened, as could be expected for a perpetrator of regicide. Ravaillac was repeatedly tortured, in hopes that he would give up the names of co-conspirators. He swore to the end he had acted alone and by divine inspiration. He claimed to be a devout Catholic and described a prophetic dream that Henry IV (who had both Catholic and Huguenot roots) would declare war on the Pope, whom Ravaillac saw as God.
Ravaillac acknowledged killing Henri (“I know very well he is dead. I saw his blood on my knife and the place where I stabbed him.”), but he claimed that God's word provided justification for killing the blaspheming king. (“I have no regrets at all about dying because I’ve done what I came to do.”) His actions, he claimed, would halt Henri’s imminent assault on the Pope and secure Catholicism’s future throughout France.
Execution Regicide Style
Ravaillac was brought to trial and after 10 days was found guilty of regicide and of acting alone. On May 27, he was given a spectacularly brutal public execution; the punishment for regicide requires a gaudy show.
First, he was taken in just a shirt and in bare feet to the front of Norte Dame to do penance while holding a candle. Then he was transported in a garbage cart to Place de Greve, where public executions were staged according to protocols: the poor were hanged, heretics were burned, and nobles were beheaded (a premium step that required the hiring of a skilled executioner).
For regicide, however, the punishment was stepped up, and Ravaillac got the works. Under the direction of famed executioner Jean Guillaume, Ravaillac was tortured for hours before a rapt crowd. His right hand, which had held the deadly knife, was burned off with sulphur. Then his body was drenched with a mixture of molten lead, boiling oil, pitch, hot resin and sulphur. Next his flesh was torn off by guards wielding pinchers. He then was strapped to a wagon wheel, and his arms and legs were tethered to four horses who were driven in opposing directions until his limbs were pulled clean off. What remained of his mutilated body was thrown in a bonfire, and his ashes were tossed to the winds.
The punishment didn’t stop with the assassin’s death. His parents were exiled and threatened with hanging if they ever returned to French soil. The house of his birth in Angouleme was torn down; nothing was ever to be built upon it. And family members were forbidden to ever again use the name Ravaillac.
Henri IV on horseback, surveying the human spectacle on le Pont Neuf, his most visible achievement.
Beyond the Facts, the Why
Those are the facts of what happened one fateful day on rue de Ferronerrie. But this being France, a host of related philosophical issues have been debated ever since. Henri IV had been well loved by many, if not by his Catholic detractors. He was known as “le Bon Roi” or the “good king” for the many public works among his achievements: among them, Place Royal, Place Dauphine, Pont Neuf, l’Hopital Saint Louis. Le Bon Roi essentially lost his life--and a progressive chapter in French history came to an abrupt end--because of deep-seated religious intolerance.
Henri had been an unlikely king. He was born in 1553, in line to be Henry III, King of Navarre, a southern region tossed back and forth between France and Spain over the centuries. Henri was baptized Catholic but raised and educated in the Protestant faith of his mother. His marriage to a Catholic princess Marguerite de Valois in 1572 took place at Notre Dame Cathedral, though Henri (as a Protestant) was obliged to stand outside the church during the ceremony while his bride stood inside at the altar. In fact, Marguerite was a reluctant bride, in love with another, and when asked by the priest if she consented to marriage, her brother grasped the back of her head and forced her to nod in the affirmative. The circumstances of the wedding were more than just odd; they were calamitous. Six days after the vows, thousands of Protestants who had traveled to Paris as wedding guests were slaughtered in the horrific St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.
In 1589, King Henry III of France died without heir, ending the Valois line of kings. Henri III of Navarre was deemed next in line--though it was a very long and convoluted line—to be King Henri IV of France. His ascension to the throne as the first Bourbon king, however, was hotly disputed, and a leading objection was his Protestant faith. Henri fought for four years to gain the throne against the forces of the opposition Catholic League. In the end, the tide was turned when Henri formally abjured Protestantism and converted to Catholicism. As Henri was quoted, famously, “Paris is well worth a mass.” For Henri, being a realist delivered him both the city and France.
In 1594, he was crowned King of France at the Cathedral in Chartres.
As king, he was progressive. In 1598, he signed the Edict of Nantes, a monumental document proclaiming religious tolerance for Protestants (and temporary asylum for Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain). The Edict stood for nearly a century. Henri ruled undisputed for 16 years, and in that time proved his “bon roi” status. In stark contrast to his three abysmal Valois predecessors and his four Bourbon descendants (in particular, his grandson Louis XIV the Sun King), Henri ruled with an eye toward improving the everyday life of his subjects and to enhancing commerce throughout the land.
Henri initiated a series of public works that defined his distinct urbanist vision. He created open public spaces for all classes to gather for leisure and commerce. He engaged the rising bourgeoisie in urban development (marginalizing the declining nobility). And he promoted health and education. Henri’s vision was that of a magnificent Paris would be the key to centralizing power and would provide a guiding star for a unified France.
In the estimation of many historians, Henri moved Paris forward from Medieval to moderne to a degree unmatched for the next 250 years, at which time Napoleon III and his prefect Baron Haussmann radically redesigned the city and decimated much of its antiquities.
Henri's assassination (which followed at least a dozen previous attempts) halted many works still on the drawing board—in particular, the colossal Place de France and the College de France. Over the next two centuries, Paris would be changed not in the direction set by Henri—improving the lives and prospects for all Parisians—but in the opposite direction: grooming Paris as a playland for the wealthy and a gilded showcase to the world.
Knitting Together Old and New
There is irony here in what Henri did not address and which his descendants did. Henri did not believe in decimating the ancienne Paris—“piercing” impacted quartiers or neighborhoods, expropriating private property to create straight, wide boulevards to improve circulation. He “knitted together” the old and the new, building new projects in largely empty spaces while preserving neighborhoods and the ways of life found there.
Under Louis XIV, in particular, those neighborhoods were swept away in favor of the Grands Boulevards which promoted circulation over everyday life. For those with carriages and means, the traffic flowed. But for all his riches and privilege, Henri met his end in a traffic jam.
This is admittedly a very short history of the life of Henri IV of France. It should be noted what a colorful man he was, the epitome, they say, of the charming Frenchman and for many a Frenchman a favorite king. By accounts, he also smelled of the fields and stables. His armpits announced his presence from afar. His mistresses doused themselves with perfume to overpower his billygoat stench. And yet he was known for his many loves and was loved by many.
Henri was a man of war, said to have survived 125 battles and 200 sieges. He was preparing for battle the day he was killed. But in peace times, he built and transformed much of Paris. To summarize his life, Henri provided his own bon mots: “I do three things well: I make war, I make love, and I build.”
Despite royal plans, Paris grew mostly by the force of the people who made it a great city.
Sustaining a "querelle" or philosophical argument is a French tradition. The querelle over the assassination of Henri IV has gone on more than 400 years.
The Philosophical Arguments
This being France, analyzing the assassination of Henry IV embodies a host of philosophical complexities. To this day, theories, ethical questions and political arguments emanate from the event, in a distinctly French cottage industry of historical querelles or formal arguments as to causation and significance. Interest in the 1610 event rivals that of the Kennedy assassination and bears striking similarities.
Was the assassination a conspiracy? Initially, it was unthinkable that one man so handily could kill a king—something a dozen previous assailants had failed to do. Jesuits were blamed as they had been before. Ravaillac, despite extreme torture, swore that his was the work of one man obedient to the instructions of one god. Still, an investigation was launched to determine if others were in on it. A leading suspect was d’Epernon—based on behavior and history. Why, some ask, didn’t d’Epernon intercede in the attack? Ravaillac had to leap over him to get to the king. And, after witnessing the first stab, he surely might have tried to block the second. The investigation led to d’Epernon's mistress Charlotte du Tillet, whose servant claimed that Ravaillac, on previous visits to Paris, had lodged in her home. Years earlier, d’Epernon (part of the inner circle of Henry III) before his assassination) had opposed Henri IV's rise to the throne. Right after Henri’s murder, d'Epernon eagerly supported a swift transfer of power to Henri’s widow, Marie de Medici, who served as regent for Louis XIII. Other suspects with motives included Marie de Medici, who had feared the king and thought he might poison her. Her right-hand man, Concino Concini, who had come to France from Italy with her in 1600, also was implicated. Henri had disliked Concini and threatened several times to banish him; now, Concini's influence and fortunes rose precipitously.
“There is plenty of proof that the assassination was a conspiracy,” concluded Archile de Harlay, president of the Parlement, at the conclusion of the investigation. Yet no charges were brought and no conspiracy was ever proven.
Was the assassination simply an expression of religious intolerance? The reign of Henry IV could be viewed as a critical step in France’s transition from a monolithic Catholic nation toward being a multi-denominational nation and finally a separate church-and-state nation. His assassination was a rupture in that transition. In 1610, was France a Catholic nation or a multi-denominational one as Henri IV had decreed? Was it a Catholic nation beholden to Papal decree or to the French Catholic Church? Is there a France without Catholicism being central? This last question was later a critical one in the formation of the First Republic following the French Revolution—and it remains to this day a central issue in modern French politics.
What is the role of God in the actions of man? “Thou shalt not kill” is the sixth commandment. Yet Moses smoke an abusive Egyptian taskmaster and God was not angered. The murder was a seminal step in Moses becoming the great leader of the Israelites who led them out of bondage toward the Promised Land. So, is murder justified in some cases? For example, if Ravaillac’s intentions were pure and holy, were his actions justifiable? He claims he heard the word of God in dreams. He acted because Henri planned to wage war on the Pope, and the Pope was the equivalent of God. He acted to halt blasphemy and to fulfill his duty to God.
Theologians are pretty clear in opposing murder even if the victim is a tyrant:
“No man may take it upon himself to kill a tyrant; turn a cheek to evil.” — Martin Luther
There are contrary interpretations:
“All power derives from God--and from God kings are made….Obey and suffer tyranny unless on a mission from God.” —John Calvin
So was Ravaillac’s execution allowable under God? If a monarch is divinely empowered (and Henri’s grandson Louis XIV claimed to be “Dieu donné” or God-given), then the punishment for killing a monarch appropriately reflects a higher crime than killing a mere mortal. But was Henri IV a true Catholic? Or a wolf in sheep’s clothing, an opportunist who had insincerely renounced Protestantism and falsely converted to Catholicism? After all, Henri’s inner circle was made up mostly of Protestants, including his powerful chief minister Sully. Protestants, said detractors, formed a shadow army within the government, a state within the state.
Did Ravaillac win? It can be argued that Ravaillac succeeded in great effect. He ensured that France was ruled by Catholic monarchs for most of the next two centuries. Had Henri’s rule continued another 10 years or more, would France have transitioned more fully into a multi-religious nation? If so, would Henri’s grandson, Louis XIV, have been able to reverse the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and banish Huguenots from France? The Sun King’s actions were considered a colossal blunder (exiling both wealth and military expertise) and a stain upon his long reign.
What if Henri IV had lived? Had Henri survived and reigned for another 10 or 20 years even, what course might France have taken? Centralization was in full swing, but so was the concept of sovereignty as the power derived from the people and vested in the monarch. These movements were well afoot. By 1576, philosophe Jean Bodin authored Six Books of the Republic in which he called for the sovereignty of an elective monarch.
What of Absolutism? In some ways, the assassination of Henri IV reinforced the absolutism of the monarchy. Further, absolutism tends to facilitates war and territorial expansion. The century that followed Henri saw nearly continuous wars, accompanied by crop failures and starvation as field workers were drawn off to battle. This was a major step backward from the reign of Henri IV, who had ended the Religious Wars and ushered in a period of relative growth and prosperity. These questions falls squarely into the French tradition of asking “Pourquioi…et si?” Essentially: “Why…and what if?”
Does it really matter? Finally, what do the French and visitors to France know of the place where Henri IV, his life, death and legacy came to an end? Not much, judging from the fact that the spot is marked by an unobtrusive tile memorial in the middle of the street at 11 rue de Ferronnerie. Four centuries after a hay wagon became entangled with a wine cart there, the street finally restricts vehicles, and Parisians stroll over the marker all day long, seldom with any notice.
And what does it all mean that we might pause here and contemplate? Bien, mes amis, something of great consequence happened here—on an otherwise nondescript Paris street—where the forces of power, wealth, influence and ideology collided and transformed Paris in great measure into what it is today.
Resources
The Paris of Henri IV Architecture and Urbanism (1991)
by Hillary Ballon
The Assassination of Henry IV (1964)
by Ronald Mousnier.
The Tyrannicide Problem and the Consolidation of the
French Absolute Monarchy in the Early 17th Century (1969)
by Roland Mousnier
Henry of Navarre, Henry IV of France (1970)
by Lord Russell of Liverpool
The First Bourbon
Henry IV of France and Navarre (1971)
by Desmond Seward
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