Henry the Fourth’s greatest political achievement, by which he manifested his far-seeing ability as a statesman, was the Edict of Nantes, promulgated on the thirteenth of April, 1598. It guaranteed freedom of conscience and equality before the law to Catholics and Protestants; and it was the first great manifesto of religious toleration issued by any ruler. But noble and high-minded as it was, even if inspired only by political motives, the fanatics of the Catholic Church would not forgive him. Unquestionably it was the Edict of Nantes which caused his assassination,--an act of revenge with which the Church paid back the injury it supposed it had received at his hands.
Henry, with the assistance of his great minister, the Duke of Sully, devoted the first few years, after peace had been restored, to building up the prosperity of the country, which had been distracted by war for nearly forty years. In this he admirably succeeded. With wonderful rapidity the monarchy recovered from the disasters and calamities of the religious and civil wars. Without Henry’s success, late as it came, this national improvement would have been impossible, and France would have sunk into the same condition of intellectual lethargy and material decay from which Spain has suffered for three centuries. But Henry’s ambition went much beyond the borders of his kingdom. The house of Hapsburg, a branch of which ruled Spain, appeared to him too dangerous for the security and greatness of France. He supported the German Protestant princes in their opposition to Austria, which wanted to take possession of Juliers-Cleves, two German principalities, and sent an army of ten thousand men to their assistance. Henry wanted to join personally this army on the nineteenth of May, 1610. On the thirteenth of May he published a decree appointing the Queen, Mary de Médicis, Regent of the kingdom, and her coronation was celebrated on the same day with great pomp.
On the fourteenth of May, the day after the coronation, the King was assassinated by Francis Ravaillac in the Ferronière Street at Paris, where his carriage had stopped a few minutes. It was this short delay which gave Ravaillac a chance: he climbed upon the hind-wheel of the carriage and stabbed the King twice with a long poniard, with deadly effect. It was thus that the greatest King France has produced died at the hands of a miserable fanatic, at a moment too when, according to the statement of Sully, who knew him better than any other man, he had formed a plan of establishing a great European confederation, founded on the civil equality of Catholics and Protestants and on an equilibrium of power among the great nations of Europe. Ravaillac was executed with revolting barbarity on the twenty-seventh of May, but not even the repeated application of the torture elicited the least information as to the motives or the accomplices which he may have had in his crime. Henry’s death was a cruel loss not only for France, but for the whole world.