March 27, 1625: Accession of Charles I, as King of England, Scotland and Ireland

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Accession, Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria, Charles I of England, Henrietta Marie de Bourbon of France, Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, King James VI of Scotland, Maria-Anna of Bavaria, Marie de' Medici

From the Emperor’s Desk: for some reason I am unable to post with pictures. I am looking into it and hopefully pictures will be back soon!

Charles I (November 1, 1600 – January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from March 27, 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life.

He became heir apparent to the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 upon the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry Charles to the Spanish Habsburg Infanta Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiation.

Maria Anna was born an Infanta of Spain and an Archduchess of Austria as the daughter of King Felipe III of Spain and Portugal and Archduchess Margaret of Austria, herself a daughter of Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria and Maria Anna of Bavaria.

The proposal with the Spanish princess Maria Anna fell through when King Felipe IV of Spain and Portugal demanded Charles convert to the Catholic Church and live in Spain for a year as pre-conditions for the marriage. As King Felipe IV was aware, such terms were unacceptable, and when Charles returned to England in October, he and Buckingham demanded King James declare war on Spain.

Two years later, he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria de Bourbon of France.

Henrietta Maria de Bourbon of France, the youngest daughter of King Henri IV of France (Henri III of Navarre) and his second wife, Marie de’ Medici; met her future husband in 1623 at a court entertainment in Paris, when he was on his way to Spain with the Duke of Buckingham to discuss the possible marriage with Infanta Maria Anna of Spain.

Searching elsewhere for a bride, Charles sent his close friend Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, to Paris in 1624. A Francophile and godson of Henri IV of France, Holland strongly favoured a marriage with Henrietta Maria, the terms of which were negotiated by James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle.

Henrietta Maria was aged fifteen at the time of her marriage, which was not unusual for royal princesses of the period. Opinions on her appearance vary; her niece Sophia of Hanover commented that the “beautiful portraits of Van Dyck had given me such a fine idea of all the ladies of England that I was surprised to see that the queen, who I had seen as so beautiful and lean, was a woman well past her prime.

King James I-VI died on March 26, 1625 and Charles succeeded as King of England, Scotland and Ireland.

A proxy marriage was held at Notre-Dame de Paris on May 1, 1625 where Duke Claude of Chevreuse stood as proxy for King Charles, with the couple spending their first night together at St Augustine’s Abbey near Canterbury on 13 June 1625. As a Roman Catholic, Henrietta Maria was unable to participate in the Church of England ceremony on February 2, 1626 when Charles was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

After his succession in 1625, Charles quarrelled with the English Parliament, which sought to curb his royal prerogative. He believed in the divine right of kings, and was determined to govern according to his own conscience. Many of his subjects opposed his policies, in particular the levying of taxes without parliamentary consent, and perceived his actions as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch.

Charles’ religious policies, coupled with his marriage to a Roman Catholic, generated antipathy and mistrust from Reformed religious groups such as the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters, who thought his views too Catholic. He supported high church Anglican ecclesiastics and failed to aid continental Protestant forces successfully during the Thirty Years‘ War.

His attempts to force the Church of Scotland to adopt high Anglican practices led to the Bishops’ Wars, strengthened the position of the English and Scottish parliaments, and helped precipitate his own downfall.

Henri IV of France and Navarre, His Wives and Mistresses. Conclusion

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Catherine-Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, Charlotte Marguerite of Montmorency, François Ravaillac, Henri de Bourbon Prince of Condé, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, Marie de Medici of Florence, Queen of France and Navarre, Royal Mistress

Henriette d’Entragues never reconciled herself to Henri’s marriage, and she drove Marie to tears by calling her his “fat banker”, claiming her own children were Henri’s legitimate heirs and branding the dauphin a bastard. Henri’s devotion to d’Entragues was tested during the revolt of Marshal Biron in 1602, in which her half-brother, Charles, Count of Auvergne, was implicated and she was compromised.

Though Marshal Biron was executed, Henri released Charles, Count of Auvergne to please Henriette. In 1604, she was at the heart of a Spanish-backed plot to install her son by the king as heir to the throne. Her father, the sieur d’Entragues, was involved in this plot, along with, again, her half-brother.

Henriette d’Entragues was sentenced to confinement in a convent, but Henri was moved to spare her even that and allowed her to retire to her estate at Verneuil. Despite the king’s clemency, Henriette d’Entragues may have continued to plot further against him.

According to a government report of 1616, a former companion of d’Entragues, Mlle d’Escoman, had claimed in 1611 that d’Entragues had met François Ravaillac, Henri’s assassin of 1610. However, this evidence is compromised by the fact that, at the time she made this accusation, Mlle d’Escoman was in prison on another charge.

The dauphin, Louis, turned out to be a difficult and temperamental child, and some historians have blamed this on his parents and the circumstances of his upbringing. He was raised just outside Paris at the château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, not only alongside Marie’s other children by Henri but, as Henri insisted, with several children of Henry’s mistresses.

Henri always seemed to get his mistresses pregnant at the same time as Marie. Just as Marie was in constant competition with Henri’s mistresses, so her children were forced to compete with their children for his affection.

The fact that Henri’s three children by Gabrielle d’Estrées were older than the heir to the throne caused particular problems of rivalry. César and Alexandre were later to rebel against Louis when he was king. He did not hesitate to throw them into prison.

Louis shared his father’s stubbornness, but he may have inherited his temper tantrums from his mother, who often gave Henri tongue-lashings in public.

Although Queen Marie has been accused of lacking affection for her children, a study of her letters reveals the contrary, though she was a stern disciplinarian. She wrote to the dauphin’s governess, for example, asking her to avoid whippings when the weather was hot and to beat Louis only “with such caution that the anger he might feel would not cause any illness”.

On another occasion, she reprimanded her middle daughter, Christine, for being ill, accusing her of not following the advice of her doctors. Marie personally educated the children in practical matters, such as etiquette. After Henri’s assassination in 1610, she became regent of France and retained influence over Louis XIII until he finally rejected her in 1617.

Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, Marquise de Verneuil

Henri’s last passion was for Charlotte Marguerite of Montmorency, the fifteen-year-old wife of Henri, Prince of Condé, First Prince of the Blood. The king had arranged Charlotte’s marriage to Condé for his own convenience, in order to sleep with her himself when he pleased.

To escape from this predicament, the couple fled to Brussels. The king was enraged and threatened to march into Flanders with an army unless the Habsburg governors returned Condé and his wife at once.

At the time, he was also threatening war with the Habsburgs over the succession to the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, so historians are unsure how crucial in itself Charlotte’s return was as a reason for war. Condé continued to provoke Henri from Flanders. When asked to drink to the Queen of France, he replied that there seemed to be more than one queen of France, maybe as many as four or five.

King Henri IV was the target of at least 12 assassination attempts, including one by Pierre Barrière in August 1593, and another by Jean Châtel in December 1594. Some of these assassination attempts were carried out against Henri because he was considered a usurper by some Catholics and a traitor by some Protestants.

Charlotte Marguerite of Montmorency

Henri was killed in Paris on May 14, 1610 by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot who stabbed him in the Rue de la Ferronnerie. Henri’s coach was stopped by traffic congestion associated with the Queen’s coronation ceremony.

Hercule de Rohan, duc de Montbazon, was with him when he was killed; Montbazon was wounded, but survived. Ravaillac was immediately captured, and executed days later. Henry was buried at the Saint Denis Basilica.

His widow, Marie de’ Medici, served as regent for their nine-year-old son, Louis XIII, until 1617.

Henri IV of France and Navarre, His Wives and Mistresses. Part IV.

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Archduchess Joanna of Austria, Charlotte des Essarts, Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Henriette d'Entragues, Jacqueline de Bueil, King Felipe I of Castile, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, Marie de Medici of Florence, Queen Joanna of Castile, Queen of France and Navarre

By early 1599, Henri’s marriage to Margaret of Valois looked likely to be annulled at last. And so, at the age of forty-six and still without a legitimate heir, Henri felt free to propose to Gabrielle d’Estrées. On Mardi Gras, Henri placed on her finger the ring with which he had “married” France at his coronation in 1593.

During Holy Week, however, Gabrielle, who was pregnant at the time, fell ill; by Holy Saturday, to the relief of many in France, she was dead. Rumours flew that she had been poisoned, but in fact she died from eclampsia and a premature birth of a stillborn son.

Though grief-stricken, Henri grasped that his fiancée’s death had saved him from disaster: his plan to declare his two sons by d’Estrées heirs to the throne would have precipitated a major political crisis.

Henri IV, King of France and Navarre

Henri provided Gabrielle d’Estrées with a grandiose funeral and drowned his sorrows with a sustained spree of womanising. Sir Henry Neville, the English ambassador, reported that Henry was spending time “in secret manner at Zamet’s house”, where “la belle garce Claude” was known to entertain, and that he was fervently courting Henriette d’Entragues, the daughter of Charles IX’s former mistress, Marie Touchet.

Royal accounts record that Henri was soon making large payments to “Mademoiselle d’Entragues”, as well as to “Mademoiselle des Fossez”. D’Entragues quickly replaced d’Estrées as Henry’s principal mistress.

She extracted from him, in Neville’s words, “100,000 crowns in ready money and an yearly pension” as proof of his commitment. At about the same time, Henri began affairs with Marie Babou de la Bourdaisière and with two wives of Paris parlement members, madames Quélin and Potier.

Marie de’ Medici

In October 1599, the parlement of Paris officially petitioned that Henri marry a princess worthy of his dignity. Henri took note and began considering candidates from several foreign states. According to Sully, however, he ruled out a German wife, on the grounds that it would feel like going to bed with a wine-barrel.

Henri IV was keenest on Maria de’ Medici of Florence, the niece of Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Maria was the sixth daughter of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Archduchess Joanna of Austria, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary.

She was a descendant of Lorenzo the Elder –a branch of the Medici family sometimes referred to as the ‘cadet’ branch– through his daughter Lucrezia de’ Medici, and was also a Habsburg through her mother, who was a direct descendant of Queen Joanna of Castile and King Felipe I of Castile.

Although Maria’s ancestry was impressive, what Henri found particularly attractive about Maria was her enormous wealth.

On December 17, 1599, the Archbishop of Arles pronounced the annulment of Henri’s marriage to Margaret of Valois. The Medici marriage contract was signed in April 1600, pledging a huge dowry of 600,000 écus, part of which was subtracted to pay Henry’s debts to Ferdinando.

Henri played his part by proclaiming undying devotion to Maria in a series of letters, though he was sending similar love letters to Henriette d’Entragues, telling her in one that he wanted to kiss her a million times.

Young Marie de’ Medici of Florence

A proxy marriage took place in Florence in October 1600, and then Maria—to be known in France as Marie—sailed in great pomp for Marseille, where she disembarked on November 3. Marie was 26 and King Henri was 47 at the time of thier marriage.

Henri on campaign in Savoy, rode to meet her at Lyon, where he found her at supper. He visited her afterwards in her chamber; according to Ralph Winwood, secretary to English ambassador Sir Henry Neville:

She met him at the door, and offered to kneel down, but he took her in his arms, where he held her embraced a long time … He doth profess to the World the great Contentment he finds in her, how that for her Beauty, her sweet and pleasing carriage, her gracious behaviour, she doth surpass the relation which hath been made of her, and the Expectation which he thereby conceived.

The couple underwent a second marriage ceremony in Lyon; and Marie finally reached Paris on February 7, already pregnant. She found her new home, the Louvre, so shabby that at first she thought Henri was playing a joke.

She gave birth to a son, Louis, at the Palace of Fontainebleau on September 27, 1601, to the delight of Henri IV, who had rushed from military duties to her bedside to serve, he joked, as one of her midwives. The moment Henri was told that the child was a boy, he ushered two hundred courtiers into the chamber to share the euphoria.

The baby was fed a spoonful of wine and handed over to a governess, Baroness Robert de Harlay, baron de Monglat [fr], and to the physician Jean Héroard [fr], an expert on the bone structure of horses. According to Winwood, the baby was a “strong and a goodly prince, and doth promise long life”. The birth of a dauphin, as the first son of a French king was known, inspired rejoicing and bonfires throughout France.

Marie believed that after bearing a son, she “would begin to be a Queen ueen”. However, a few weeks later, Henriette d’Entragues also produced another son (Gaston Henri, Duc de Verneuil) and Henri not only made just as much fuss over this son but declared that he was better-looking, not fat and dark like Louis and the Medici.

In the words of biographer David Buisseret, “the royal couple was well embarked upon nine years of mutual recrimination and misunderstandings, in which the fault plainly lay with the king”.

Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France and Navarre

Henri had made Marie’s position clear to her from the first. When she began by pressing him to accept the decrees of the Council of Trent, he told her to keep her nose out of state business and look after herself. Shortly after Marie’s arrival in Paris, Henri had introduced Henriette d’Entragues to her, reportedly pushing Henriette further towards the ground when her curtsey was not low enough.

He housed his senior mistress close to the Louvre and was seen dining with the queen and d’Entragues together. Marie also had to cope with a second public mistress, La Bourdaisière, as well as with Henry’s continued visits to Zamet’s house for services provided by “la belle garce Claude”.

In the next nine years, Marie bore Henri six children; but he also sired five more by d’Entragues, Jacqueline de Bueil, and Charlotte des Essarts. Nonetheless, Henri often wrote affectionate letters to Marie and in other ways treated her with respect.

Henri IV of France and Navarre, His Wives and Mistresses. Part II.

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Catherine de Médici, Charlotte de Sauve, Françoise de Montmorency-Fosseux, Huguenot, King Henri III of France, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, Lovers War, Margaret of Anjou

Until 1576, Henri remained at court, siding with Margaret and her brother François Duke of Alençon against King Henri III of France who became king in 1574. During this time, Henri of Navarre often ignored Margaret and instead slept with his mistress, Charlotte de Sauve.

It appeared, in the words of Henri’s biographer David Buisseret, as if “the pleasure-loving and libidinous elements of his ancestry had finally gained the upper hand”. A rivalry developed between him and Alençon over the beautiful de Sauve, who was one of Catherine de’ Medici’s so-called “flying squadron”, a group of “court lovelies” whom Catherine used to lure noblemen to court and, it was rumoured, as informants.

According to Margaret’s Memoirs, de Sauve “treated both of them in such a way that they became extremely jealous of each other… to such a point that they forgot their ambitions, their duties and their plans and thought of nothing but chasing after this woman”. De Sauve may have been acting as a tool of Henri III and Catherine in their attempts to split the two men. Henri of Navarre’s good judgement was already known to desert him when it came to women.

Margaret’s behaviour was also the subject of scandal. On one occasion in 1575, Catherine de’ Medici was heard yelling at her, accusing her of taking a lover. In a separate incident, the king sent a band of assassins to murder Margaret’s lover Bussy d’Amboise, a friend of Alençon’s, who managed to escape.

As Catherine’s biographer Leonie Frieda puts it: “he then decided to leave the Court immediately citing health reasons, which happened to be nothing less than the truth”. In 1576, King Henri III accused Marguerite of improper relations with a lady-in-waiting.

Margaret claimed in her Memoirs that he would have killed her if Catherine had not stopped him. Despite their sexual infidelities, Margaret remained politically loyal to her husband during the early period of their marriage and helped him negotiate the complexities of the court. By 1575, however, their relations were no longer physical: “I could not endure the pain that I felt”, she recalled in her Memoirs, “and I stopped sleeping with the King my husband”.

In 1576, Henri of Navarre managed to slip away while hunting and made for his kingdom, where he abjured the Catholic religion on June 13. For a time, the abandoned Margaret found herself imprisoned, suspected of complicity, and was afterwards distrusted by her own family.

Charlotte de Sauve

Henri of Navarre eventually demanded that she be brought to him. In 1578, therefore, Catherine de’ Medici travelled south to Nérac and duly delivered Margaret to her husband. At first, in this new phase in their marriage, the couple managed a show of harmony, but strains were apparent.

In 1580 a religious war, later called the “Lovers’ War”, broke out between the Huguenots and King Henri III. Although inaccurate, this name for the war relates to a series of scandals at the Navarre court and to the notion that Henri of Navarre took up arms in response to jibes about his love life from the French court.

At this point, he was conducting a passionate affair with a mistress Françoise de Montmorency-Fosseux, known as “La Belle Fosseuse”, while Margaret was involved with one of his own commanders, the Vicomte de Turenne. Henri wrote to Margaret apologising for the state of affairs between them. He expressed “extreme regret that instead of bringing you contentment… I have brought the opposite”.

In 1582, Margaret returned to the French court without her husband, who was still openly besotted with La Fosseuse. Before long, she began taking lovers again, such as Harlay de Champvallon, one of her brother François’s retinue, and acting more scandalously than ever. After a rumour that she had borne Champvallon a child, Henry III ordered her back to Navarre and then had her carriage searched and detained her in an abbey for questioning.

Françoise de Montmorency-Fosseux

Henri of Navarre at first refused to take Margaret back unless Henri III made a public statement asserting her innocence of all the charges against her. Catherine de’ Medici sent Pomponne de Bellièvre south to smooth things over and arrange Margaret’s return.

In a letter, she spelled out to Margaret that a royal wife must bear her husband’s affairs without complaint, recalling proudly that her own conduct as a wife had been impeccable, despite all provocation. Margaret was reunited with Henri of Navarre on April 13, 1584, but she failed to heed her mother’s words, even though the death of her brother François in June 1584 made her husband heir presumptive to the French throne.

Henri of Navarre himself was under increased pressure to produce an heir. He was advised by his closest friend Philippe Duplessis-Mornay that it was now “time to make love to France”.

Henri IV of France. His Wives and Mistresses. Part I.

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Catherine de Médici, Jeanne d'Albret, King Charles IX of France, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, King Philip II of Spain, Pope Gregory XIII, Princess Margaret de Valois, Queen Joan III of Navarre, Queen of France and Navarre, St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

Henri IV of France’s wives and mistresses played a significant role in the politics of his reign.

Henri’s womanising became legendary, earning him the nickname of Le Vert Galant. His sexual appetite was said to have been insatiable, and he always kept mistresses, often several at a time, as well as engaging in random sexual encounters and visits to brothels. Even so, he tended to elevate one mistress above the others and shower her with money, honours, and promises.

First Marriage

After the signature of the peace of Saint-Germain, Catherine de’ Medici, the powerful mother of King Charles IX, was convinced by François of Montmorency to marry her daughter Margaret with Henri III of Navarre.

The match was in fact assumed almost thirteen years earlier by the late King Henri II. Catherine, who believed in dynastic marriage as a potent political tool, aimed to unite the interests of the Valois and the Bourbons, and create harmony between Catholics and Huguenots in the reign of France.

By all accounts, Margaret of Valois was deemed highly attractive, even sexually magnetic: “The beauty of that princess is more divine than human, she is made to damn and ruin men rather than to save them”, said about her Don Juan of Austria came to court just to see her.

King Henri IV of France and Navarre

Margaret had also an enterprising and flirtatious character. Shortly before this marriage plan with Henri of Navarre, she had been involved in a scandal: it was discovered that she encouraged the handsome Henri of Guise, who intended to marry her, entertaining a secret correspondence with him. When her family discovered it put an end to the crush between them and sent Henri of Guise away from court.

Some sources claim the duke of Guise was Margaret’s first lover, but this is highly unlikely. For political reasons, the duty of a Daughter of France was to be a virgin at the wedding and for this she was very guarded.

If Margaret had really compromised her reputation, Jeanne d’Albret (Queen Joan III of Navarre) would not accept the marriage between her son Henri and the princess. Although certainly after the wedding, Margaret was unfaithful to her husband, many of the extramarital adventures are the result of pamphlets that have had to politically discredit her and her family: the most famous was Le Divorce Satyrique (1607), who described her as a nymphomaniac.

Margaret complied with her mother’s desire to marry Henri of Navarre, provided she was not forced to convert to Protestantism. When Jeanne d’Albret arrived at the French court after receiving numerous pressures from Catherine, she was extremely impressed by Margaret: “She has frankly owned to me the favourable impression which she has formed of you.

With her beauty and wit, she exercises a great influence over the Queen-Mother and the King, and Messieurs her younger brothers.” The problems began when the Protestant Jeanne discovered that Margaret had no intention of abjuring Catholicism. Meanwhile the marriage negotiations were repeatedly impeded by the Pope Gregory XIII and King Felipe II of Spain.

Tired of the duration of the negotiations, Charles IX decided that the wedding would be celebrated by the Cardinal of Bourbon even without papal dispensation, so Jeanne gave her consent to the wedding by promising that Henri could remain a Huguenot.

When Jeanne arrived in Paris to buy clothes for the wedding, she was taken ill and died, aged forty-four; and Henri succeeded her as the King Henri III of Navarre. Henri arrived in Paris in July 1572 and saw Margaret after six years of separation (they had spent their childhood together with the French court). Despite subsequent historiographic interpretations, contemporaries do not point out any mutual dissatisfaction between future spouses.

Princess Margaret de Valois, Queen of France and Navarre

The controversial wedding took place on August 18, 1572 at Notre-Dame, Paris. After a nuptial lunch, four days of balls, masques and banquets ensued, only to be interrupted by the outbreak of violence in Paris.

After the attempted assassination of the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny on August 18, 1572, Dowager Queen Catherine and King Charles IX, to forestall the expected Huguenot backlash, ordered the murder of the Huguenot leaders gathered in Paris for the wedding. The result was the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in which thousands of Huguenots were killed in Paris and throughout the reign.

Margaret later described in her Memoirs the chaos and bloodshed in the Louvre Palace, where she and her new husband were lodged. Henri found himself escorted to a room with his cousin Henri of Condé, and told to choose between death and conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Henri chose the latter. After the massacre, the Queen-Mother proposed to her daughter that the marriage be annulled, but Margaret replied that this was impossible because she had already had sexual relations with Henri and was “in every sense” his wife. She wrote in her Memoirs: “I suspected the design of separating me from my husband was in order to work some mischief against him.“

December 13, 1553: Birth of Henri IV, King of France and Navarre.

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Antoine de Bourbon, Archduke Ernst of Austria, Catholic League, House of Guise, House of Lorraine, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, Pope Clement VIII, Pope Sixtus V, Princess Elisabeth de Valois, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Queen Joan III of Navarre, Siege of Paris 1590

From the Emperor’s Desk: On anniversary of the birth of King Henri IV of France and Navarre, I will focus on his difficult accession to the French throne.

Henri IV (December 13, 1553 – May 14, 1610) was King of Navarre (as Henri III) from 1572 and as King Henri IV of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first monarch of France from the House of Bourbon, a cadet branch of the Capetian Dynasty. He was assassinated in 1610 by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot, and was succeeded by his son Louis XIII.

Henri de Bourbon was born in Pau, the capital of the joint Kingdom of Navarre with the sovereign principality of Béarn. His parents were Queen Joan III of Navarre (Jeanne d’Albret) and her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, King of Consort of Navarre.

Although technically Antoine de Bourbon was a King Consort he did rule Navarre via Jure uxoris (a Latin phrase meaning “by right of (his) wife”) which describes a title of nobility used by a man because his wife holds the office or title suo jure (“in her own right”).

King Henri IV of France and Navarre

Although baptised as a Catholic, Henri was raised as a Protestant by his mother, who had declared Calvinism the religion of Navarre. As a teenager, Henri joined the Huguenot forces in the French Wars of Religion. On June 9, 1572, upon his mother’s death, the 19-year-old became King Henri III of Navarre.

French Succession

When Henri III of France died, King Henri III of Navarre nominally, and technically, became King Henri IV of France. The Catholic League, however, strengthened by support from outside the country—especially from Spain—was strong enough to prevent a universal recognition of his new title.

Pope Sixtus V excommunicated Henri and declared him devoid of any right to inherit the crown. Most of the Catholic nobles who had joined Henri III of Navarre for the siege of Paris also refused to recognize the claim of Henri III of Navarre, and abandoned him.

King Henri IV set about winning his kingdom by military conquest, aided by English money and German troops. Henry IV’s Catholic uncle Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon was proclaimed King Charles X by the Catholic League, but the Cardinal was Henry IV’s prisoner at the time.

Henry IV was victorious at the Battle of Arques and the Battle of Ivry, but failed to take Paris after besieging it in 1590.

Archduke Ernst of Austria

When Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon died in 1590, the League could not agree on a new candidate. While some supported various Guise candidates, the strongest candidate was probably the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, the daughter of Felipe II of Spain, whose mother Princess Elisabeth de Valois, had been the eldest daughter of King Henri II of France and Catherine de’ Medici.

In the religious fervor of the time, the Catholic Infanta was recognized to be a suitable candidate, provided that she marry a suitable husband. The French overwhelmingly rejected Felipe II’s first choice, Archduke Ernst of Austria, son of Emperor Maximilian II, and brother of Emperors Rudolph II and Matthias, also a member of the House of Habsburg.

In case of such opposition, Felipe II indicated that princes of the House of Lorraine would be acceptable to him: the Duke of Guise; a son of the Duke of Lorraine; and the son of the Duke of Mayenne.

Princess Elisabeth de Valois

The House of Lorraine (German: Lothringen) originated as a cadet branch of the House of Metz which ruled Lorraine between 1048 to 1453. It inherited the Duchy of Lorraine in 1473 after the death without a male heir of Nicholas I, Duke of Lorraine.

The Spanish ambassadors selected Henri I, Duke of Guise, to the joy of the League. However, at that moment of seeming victory, the envy of the Duke of Mayenne was aroused, and he blocked the proposed election of a king.

The House of Guise was founded as a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine by Claude of Lorraine (1496–1550), who entered French service and was made the first Duke of Guise by King Francis I in 1527. The family’s high rank was due not to possession of the Guise dukedom but to their membership in a sovereign dynasty, which procured for them the rank of prince étranger at the royal court of France.

Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, Archduchess of Austria

The problems with the House of Lorraine and Guise as far as succession rights to the French throne were concerned, was that neither were collateral branches of the Capetian Dynasty and therefore had no legal claim to the throne. However, there was nothing preventing them from overthrowing the old dynasty in favor of a new dynasty.

However, despite the interference of the Spanish King with the French succession, the Parlement of Paris also upheld the Salic law. They argued that if the French accepted natural hereditary succession, as proposed by the Spaniards, and accepted a woman as their queen, then the ancient claims of the English kings would be confirmed, and the monarchy of centuries past would be nothing but an illegality.

The Parlement admonished Mayenne, as lieutenant-general, that the kings of France had resisted the interference of the pope in political matters, and that he should not raise a foreign prince or princess to the throne of France under the pretext of religion. Mayenne was angered that he had not been consulted prior to this admonishment, but yielded, since their aim was not contrary to his present views.

King Henri IV of France and Navarre

Despite these setbacks for the League, King Henri IV remained unable to take control of Paris.

On July 25, 1593, with the encouragement of his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées, Henri permanently renounced Protestantism and converted to Catholicism in order to secure his hold on the French crown, thereby earning the resentment of the Huguenots and his former ally Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Henri was said to have declared that Paris vaut bien une messe (“Paris is well worth a mass”), although there is some doubt whether he said this, or whether the statement was attributed to him by his contemporaries. His acceptance of Catholicism secured the allegiance of the vast majority of his subjects.

Coronation and recognition (1594–1595)

Since Reims, traditional coronation place of French kings, was still occupied by the Catholic League, Henri IV was crowned King of France at the Cathedral of Chartres on February 27, 1594. Pope Clement VIII lifted excommunication from Henri on September 17, 1595.

King Henri IV did not forget his former Calvinist coreligionists, however, and was known for his religious tolerance. In 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted circumscribed toleration to the Huguenots.

December 5, 1559: Accession of Charles IX as King of France

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Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria, Catherine de Médici, King Charles IX of France, KIng François II of France, King Henri II of France, King Henri III of Navarre, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, Queen Mary I of Scotland, Queen of France, St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

Charles IX (June 27, 1550 – May 30, 1574) was King of France from 1560 until his death in 1574. He ascended the French throne upon the death of his brother François II in 1560, and as such was the penultimate monarch of the House of Valois.

Prince Charles Maximilien of France, third son of King Henri II of France and Catherine de’ Medici, the daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne.

Prince Charles Maximilien was born on June 27, 1550 at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He was the fifth of ten children born to the royal couple. Styled since birth as Duke of Angoulême, he was created Duke of Orléans after the death of his older brother Louis, his parents’ second son, who had died in infancy on October 24, 1550.

Charles’ father, King Henri II, died in 1559, and was succeeded by Charles’ elder brother, King François II, who was married to Queen Mary I of Scotland. Therefore, François II was also King Consort of Scotland and died at a young age in 1560.

King Charles IX of France

The ten-year-old Charles Maximilian was immediately proclaimed King Charles IX of France on December 5, 1560, and the Privy Council appointed his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, as governor of France (Regent) with sweeping powers, at first acting as regent for her young son.

On 15 May 1561, King Charles IX was consecrated in the cathedral at Reims. Prince Antoine of Bourbon, himself in line to the French throne and husband to Queen Joan III of Navarre, was appointed Lieutenant-General of France.

Charles IX’s reign saw the culmination of decades of tension between Protestants and Catholics. Civil and religious war broke out between the two parties after the massacre of Vassy in 1562.

On November 26, 1570, Charles married Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria, with whom he fathered one daughter, Princess Marie Elisabeth of France. In 1573, Charles fathered an illegitimate son, Charles, Duke of Angoulême, with his mistress, Marie Touchet.

Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria was a member of the House of Habsburg, she was the daughter of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, and his wife and his first cousin, Infanta Maria of Spain, and she herself was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (Carlos I of Spain) and Infanta Isabella of Portugal.

Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria, Queen of France

In 1572, following several unsuccessful attempts at brokering peace, Charles IX arranged the marriage of his sister Margaret to King Henri III of Navarre, a major Protestant nobleman in the line of succession to the French throne, in a last desperate bid to reconcile his people.

Facing popular hostility against this policy of appeasement and at the instigation of his mother Catherine de’ Medici, Charles IX oversaw the massacre of numerous Huguenot leaders who gathered in Paris for the royal wedding, though his direct involvement is still debated.

This event, known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, was a significant blow to the Huguenot movement, and religious civil warfare soon began anew. Charles IX sought to take advantage of the disarray of the Huguenots by ordering the siege of La Rochelle, but was unable to take the Protestant stronghold.

Many of Charles’ decisions were influenced by his mother, a fervent Roman Catholic who initially supported a policy of relative religious tolerance. However, after the events of St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, he began to support the persecution of Huguenots.

However, the incident haunted Charles IX for the rest of his life, and historians suspect that it caused his physical and mental health to deteriorate in his later years. King Charles IX died of tuberculosis in 1574 without legitimate male issue, and was succeeded by his brother as King Henri III of France, whose own death in 1589 without issue allowed for the ascension of King Henri III of Navarre to the French throne as King Henri IV of France and Navarre establishing the House of Bourbon as the new French royal dynasty.

May 25, 1660: King Charles II lands at Dover at the invitation of the Convention Parliament of England.

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Charles II, Commonwealth, Declaration of Breda, Dover, King Charles I of England, King Charles II of England, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, King of Ireland, King of Scots, Lord Protector, Restoration, Richard Cromwell

May 25, 1660 – King Charles II lands at Dover at the invitation of the Convention Parliament (England), which marks the end of the Cromwell-proclaimed Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and begins the Restoration (1660) of the British monarchy.

Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685)[c] was king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He was king of Scotland from 1649 until his deposition in 1651, and king of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685.

Charles II was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta-Maria de Bourbon of France, the youngest daughter of HenrI IV of France and his second wife, Marie de’ Medici.

After Charles I’s execution at Whitehall on January 30, 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on February 5, 1649. However, England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, and the country was a de facto republic led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell became virtual dictator of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Restoration

After the death of Cromwell in 1658, Charles’s initial chances of regaining the Crown seemed slim; Cromwell was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son, Richard. However, the new Lord Protector had little experience of either military or civil administration.

On May 25, 1659, after the Rump Parliament agreed to pay his debts and provide a pension, Richard Cromwell delivered a formal letter resigning the position of Lord Protector. “Richard was never formally deposed or arrested, but allowed to fade away. The Protectorate was treated as having been from the first a mere usurpation.”

During the civil and military unrest that followed Cromwell’s resignation George Monck, the Governor of Scotland, was concerned that the nation would descend into anarchy. Monck and his army marched into the City of London, and forced the Rump Parliament to re-admit members of the Long Parliament, who had been sympathetic to the Crown, and who had been excluded in December 1648 during Pride’s Purge.

The Long Parliament dissolved itself and there was a general election for the first time in almost 20 years. The outgoing Parliament defined the electoral qualifications intending to bring about the return of a Presbyterian majority.

The restrictions against royalist candidates and voters were widely ignored, and the elections resulted in a House of Commons that was fairly evenly divided on political grounds between Royalists and Parliamentarians and on religious grounds between Anglicans and Presbyterians.

The new so-called Convention Parliament assembled on April 25, 1660, and soon afterwards welcomed the Declaration of Breda, in which Charles II promised lenience and tolerance. There would be liberty of conscience and Anglican church policy would not be harsh.

He would not exile past enemies nor confiscate their wealth. There would be pardons for nearly all his opponents except the regicides. Above all, Charles promised to rule in cooperation with Parliament. The English Parliament resolved to proclaim Charles king and invite him to return, a message that reached Charles at Breda on May 8, 1660. In Ireland, a convention had been called earlier in the year, and had already declared for Charles. On May 14, he was proclaimed King of Ireland in Dublin.

Charles II set out for England from Scheveningen, arrived in Dover on May 25, 1660 and reached London on May 29, his 30th birthday. Although Charles and Parliament granted amnesty to nearly all of Cromwell’s supporters in the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, 50 people were specifically excluded.

In the end nine of the regicides were executed: they were hanged, drawn and quartered; others were given life imprisonment or simply excluded from office for life. The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw were subjected to the indignity of posthumous decapitations.

May 14, 1610: Assassination of Henri IV, King of France and Navarre. Part II.

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Assassination, Catherine-Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, Edict of Nantes, Gabrielle d'Estrées, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Marie de' Medici, Princess Marguerite de Valois of France, Queen of France, Regent of France, Royal Mistress

In the last installment of this series we left of with the marriage of King Henri IV of France and Navarre to Marie de’ Medici (April 26, 1575 – July 3, 1642) after the annulment of his marriage to Princess Marguerite de Valois of France in 1599.

Marie de’ Medici

Marie de’ Medici was born at the Palazzo Pitti of Florence, the sixth daughter of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Archduchess Joanna of Austria, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary.

Marie was not a male-line descendant of Lorenzo the Magnificent but from Lorenzo the Elder, a branch of the Medici family sometimes referred to as the ‘cadet’ branch. She did descend from Lorenzo in the female line however, through his daughter Lucrezia de’ Medici. She was also a Habsburg through her mother, who was a direct descendant of Joanna of Castile and Felipe I of Castile, Archduke of Austria.

King Henri IV was almost 47 and Marie de’ Medici was 25 when they married in October of 1600. After the annulment dynastic considerations required him to take a second wife, his first spouse, Princess Marguerite de Valois, never produced children with Henri. The King chose Marie de’ Medici because HenrI “owed the bride’s father, Francesco de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had helped support his war effort, a whopping 1,174,000 écus and this was the only means Henry could find to pay back the debt….”

King Henri IV of France and Navarre.

The wedding ceremony was held in Florence, and was celebrated by four thousand guests with lavish entertainment, including examples of the newly invented musical genre of opera, such as Jacopo Peri’s Euridice. Henry did not attend the ceremony, and the two were therefore married by proxy. Marie brought as part of her dowry 600,000 crowns. Her eldest son, the future King Louis XIII, was born at Fontainebleau the following year.

The marriage was successful in producing children, but it was not a happy one. Even after the marriage Henri continued with his long succession of mistresses. Queen Marie feuded with Henri’s mistresses in language that shocked French courtiers. She quarreled mostly with her husband’s leading mistress, Catherine-Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues.

Catherine-Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, Marquise de Verneuil (1579–1633) who became the favorite mistress of Henri IV of France after Gabrielle d’Estrées died: her sister Marie-Charlotte de Balzac d’Entragues was also a mistress of King Henri. Both sisters were the daughter of Charles Balzac d’Entragues and his wife Marie Touchet, who was formerly the sole mistress of King Charles IX of France.

Catherine-Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues

King Henri often promised he would marry following the death of his former “official mistress”, Gabrielle d’Estrées.

Gabrielle d’Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort and Verneuil, Marchioness of Monceaux (1573-1599) was a confidante and adviser and favorite mistress of Henri IV. She persuaded Henri to renounce Protestantism in favour of Catholicism in 1593. Later she urged French Catholics to accept the Edict of Nantes, which granted certain rights to the Protestants. It was legally impossible for the king to marry her, because he was already married to Princess Marguerite de Valois, but he acknowledged Gabrielle as the mother of three of his children, and as “the subject most worthy of our friendship”.

Gabrielle d’Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort and Verneuil, Marchioness of Monceaux

After Gabrielle d’Estrées death in 1599 King Henri failed to keep his promise and marry Catherine-Henriette de Balzac and instead married Marie de’ Medici that next year. That resulted in Catherine-Henriette de Balzac and Queen Marie in competition for the affections of the king; there was was constant bickering and political intrigues behind the scenes.

Catherine-Henriette de Balzac referred to Queen Marie as “the fat banker’s daughter”; Henri used Marie for breeding purposes, which was exactly as Henri II of France had treated his wife, Catherine de’ Medici. Although Henri could have easily banished his mistress, supporting his queen, he never did so. Queen Marie, in turn, showed great sympathy and support to her husband’s banished ex-wife Marguerite de Valois, prompting Henri to allow her back into the realm.

King Henri IV

During his reign, Henri IV worked through his faithful right-hand man, the minister Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, to regularize state finance, promote agriculture, drain swamps, undertake public works, and encourage education. He established the Collège Royal Henri-le-Grand in La Flèche (today the Prytanée Militaire de la Flèche). He and Sully protected forests from further devastation, built a system of tree-lined highways, and constructed bridges and canals. He had a 1200-metre canal built in the park at the Château Fontainebleau (which may be fished today) and ordered the planting of pines, elms, and fruit trees.

The King restored Paris as a great city, with the Pont Neuf, which still stands today, constructed over the river Seine to connect the Right and Left Banks of the city. Henri IV also had the Place Royale built (since 1800 known as Place des Vosges), and added the Grande Galerie to the Louvre Palace. More than 400 metres long and thirty-five metres wide, this huge addition was built along the bank of the Seine River.

At the time it was the longest edifice of its kind in the world. King Henri IV, a promoter of the arts by all classes of people, invited hundreds of artists and craftsmen to live and work on the building’s lower floors. This tradition continued for another two hundred years, until Emperor Napoleon I banned it. The art and architecture of his reign have become known as the “Henri IV style” since that time.

During the reign of Henri IV, rivalry continued among France, the Habsburg rulers of Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire for the mastery of Western Europe. The conflict was not resolved until after the Thirty Years’ War.

HenrI IV proved to be a man of vision and courage. Instead of waging costly wars to suppress opposing nobles, Henri simply paid them off. As king, he adopted policies and undertook projects to improve the lives of all subjects, which made him one of the country’s most popular rulers ever. Henri is said to have originated the oft-repeated phrase “a chicken in every pot”.

This statement epitomises the peace and relative prosperity which Henri IV brought to France after decades of religious war, and demonstrates how well he understood the plight of the French worker and peasant farmer. This real concern for the living conditions of the “lowly” population—who in the final analysis provided the economic basis for the power of the king and the great nobles—was perhaps without parallel among the kings of France. Following his death Henry would be remembered fondly by most of the population.

Assassination

Henri was the subject of numerous attempts on his life, including one by Pierre Barrière in August 1593 and Jean Châtel in December 1594.

Despite being married to the king since 1600 Queen Marie never had a coronation. This was rectified when Marie was crowned Queen of France on May 13, 1610, a day before her husband’s death.

Assassination of King Henri IV

King Henri IV was assassinated in Paris on May 14, 1610 by a Catholic fanatic, François Ravaillac, who stabbed him in the Rue de la Ferronnerie. Henri IV’s coach was stopped by traffic congestion associated with the celebrations of Queen’s coronation, as depicted in the engraving by Gaspar Bouttats. Hercule de Rohan, duc de Montbazon, was with him when he was killed; Montbazon was wounded, but survived. Henri IV was buried at the Saint Denis Basilica.

Queen Marie de’ Medici, Regent of France.

Hours after Henri IV’s assassination, Queen Marie was confirmed as Regent by the Parliament of Paris for her young son, the new nine-year-old King Louis XIII. Queen Marie would serve as Regent until 1617. Queen Marie immediately banished Henry’s mistress, Catherine Henriette de Balzac, from the court.

May 7, 1664 – Louis XIV of France begins construction of the Palace of Versailles.

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French Revolution, Hunting Lodge at Versailles, King Henri IV of France and Navarre, King Louis XIII of France and Navarre, King Louis XIV of France and Navarre, King Louis XVI of France, Palace of Versailles, Petit Trianon

The Palace of Versailles was the principal royal residence of France from 1682, under Louis XIV, until the start of the French Revolution in 1789, under Louis XVI. It is located in the department of Yvelines, in the region of Île-de-France, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) southwest of the centre of Paris.

The site of the Palace was first occupied by a small village and church, surrounded by forests filled with abundant game. It was owned by the Gondi family and the priory of Saint Julian. King Henri IV of France went hunting there in 1589, and returned in 1604 and 1609, staying in the village inn. His son, the future Louis XIII, came on his own hunting trip there in 1607.

Henri IV, King of France and Navarre.

After he became King in 1610, Louis XIII returned to the village, bought some land, and in 1623-24 built a modest two-story hunting lodge on the site of the current marble courtyard. He was staying there in November 1630 during the event known as the Day of the Dupes, when the enemies of the King’s chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, aided by the King’s mother, Marie de’ Medici, tried to take over the government. The King defeated the plot and sent his mother into exile.

King Louis XIII, King of France and Navarre

After this event, Louis XIII decided to make his hunting lodge at Versailles into a château. The King purchased the surrounding territory from the Gondi family and in 1631–1634 had the architect Philibert Le Roy replace the hunting lodge with a château of brick and stone with classical pilasters in the doric style and high slate-covered roofs, surrounding the courtyard of the original hunting lodge. The gardens and park were also enlarged, laid out by Jacques Boyceau and his nephew, Jacques de Menours (1591–1637), and reached essentially the size they have today.

The palace of Louis XIV

Louis XIV first visited the château on a hunting trip in 1651 at the age of twelve, but returned only occasionally until his marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain in 1660 and the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, after which he suddenly acquired a passion for the site. He decided to rebuild, embellish and enlarge the château and to transform it into a setting for both rest and for elaborate entertainments on a grand scale.

The first phase of the expansion (c. 1661–1678) was designed and supervised by the architect Louis Le Vau. Initially he added two wings to the forecourt, one for servants quarters and kitchens, the other for stables.mIn 1668 he added three new wings built of stone, known as the envelope, to the north, south and west (the garden side) of the original château. These buildings had nearly-flat roofs covered with lead.

Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre

The king also commissioned the landscape designer André Le Nôtre to create the most magnificent gardens in Europe, embellished with fountains, statues, basins, canals, geometric flower beds and groves of trees. He also added two grottos in the Italian style and an immense orangerie to house fruit trees, as well as a zoo with a central pavilion for exotic animals. After Le Vau’s death in 1670, the work was taken over and completed by his assistant François d’Orbay.

Enlargement of the Palace (1678–1715)

The King increasingly spent his days in Versailles, and the government, court, and courtiers, numbering six to seven thousand persons, crowded into the buildings. The King ordered a further enlargement, which he entrusted to the young architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Hadouin-Mansart added two large new wings on either side of the original Cour Royale (Royal Courtyard). He also replaced Le Vau’s large terrace, facing the garden on the west, with what became the most famous room of the palace, the Hall of Mirrors.

Grand Hall of Mirrors

Mansart also built the Petites Écuries and Grandes Écuries (stables) across the Place d’Armes, on the eastern side of the château. The King wished a quiet place to relax away from the ceremony of the Court. In 1687 Hardouin-Mansart began the Grand Trianon, or Trianon de Marbre (Marble Trianon), replacing Le Vau’s 1668 Trianon de Porcelaine in the northern section of the park. In 1682 Louis XIV was able to proclaim Versailles his principal residence and the seat of the government and was able to give rooms in the palace to almost all of his courtiers.

After the death of Maria Theresa of Spain in 1683, Louis XIV undertook the enlargement and remodeling of the royal apartments in the original part of the palace, within the former hunting lodge built by his father. He instructed Mansart to begin the construction of the Royal Chapel of Versailles, which towered over the rest of the palace. Hardouin-Mansart died in 1708 and so the chapel was completed by his assistant Robert de Cotte in 1710.

Louis XIV died in 1715, and the young new King, Louis XV, just five years old, and his government were moved temporarily from Versailles to Paris under the regency of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. In 1722, when the King came of age, he moved his residence and the government back to Versailles, where it remained until the French Revolution in 1789.

Louis XV, King of France and Navarre

Louis XV remained faithful to the original plan of his great-grandfather, and made few changes to the exteriors of Versailles. His main contributions were the construction of the Salon of Hercules, which connected the main building of the Palace with the north wing and the chapel (1724–36); and the royal opera theater, designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, and built between 1769 and 1770. The new theater was completed in time for the celebration of the wedding of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, and Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria.

Louis XV also made numerous additions and changes to the royal apartments, where he, the Queen, his daughters, and his heir lived. In 1738, Louis XV remodeled the king’s petit appartement on the north side of the Cour de Marbre, originally the entrance court of the old château. He discreetly provided accommodations in another part of the palace for his famous mistresses, Madame de Pompadour and later Madame du Barry.

The extension of the King’s petit appartement necessitated the demolition of the Ambassador’s Staircase, one of the most admired features of Louis XIV’s palace, which left the Palace without a grand staircase entrance. The following year Louis XV ordered the demolition of the north wing facing onto the Cour Royale, which had fallen into serious disrepair. He commissioned Gabriel to rebuild it in a more neoclassical style. The new wing was completed in 1780. Louis XVI, and the Palace during the Revolution

Louis XVI was constrained by the worsening financial situation of the kingdom from making major changes to the palace, so that he primarily focused on improvements to the royal apartments. Louis XVI gave Marie Antoinette the Petit Trianon in 1774. The Queen made extensive changes to the interior, and added a theater, the Théâtre de la Reine. She also totally transformed the arboretum planted during the reign of Louis XV into what became known as the Hameau de la Reine.

Petit Trianon

This was a picturesque collection of buildings modeled after a rural French hamlet, where the Queen and her courtiers could play at being peasants. The Queen was at the Petit Trianon in July 1789 when she first learned of the beginning of the French Revolution.

In 1783, the Palace was the site of the signing of three treaties of the Peace of Paris (1783), in which the United Kingdom recognized the independence of the United States. The King and Queen learned of the storming of the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789. while they were at the Palace, and remained isolated there as the Revolution in Paris spread. The growing anger in Paris led to the Women’s March on Versailles on October 5, 1789.

Louis XVI, King of France and Navarre

A crowd of several thousand men and women, protesting the high price and scarcity of bread, marched from the markets of Paris to Versailles. They took weapons from the city armory, besieged the Palace, and compelled the King and Royal family and the members of the National Assembly to return with them to Paris the following day.

As soon as the royal family departed, the Palace was closed, awaiting their return—but in fact, the monarchy would never again return to Versailles. In 1792, the Convention, the new revolutionary government, ordered the transfer of all the paintings and sculptures from the Palace to the Louvre. In 1793, the Convention declared the abolition of the monarchy, and ordered all of the royal property in the Palace to be sold at auction.

The auction took place between 25 August 1793 and 11 August 1794. The furnishings and art of the Palace, including the furniture, mirrors, baths and kitchen equipment, were sold in seventeen thousand lots. All fleurs-de-lys and royal emblems on the buildings were chambered or chiseled off. The empty buildings were turned into a storehouse for furnishings, art and libraries confiscated from the nobility. The empty grand apartments were opened for tours beginning in 1793, and a small museum of French paintings and art school was opened in some of the empty rooms.

Die Proklamation des Deutschen Kaiserreiches by Anton von Werner (1877), depicting the proclamation of Kaiser Wilhelm I (18 January 1871, Palace of Versailles). From left, on the podium (in black): Crown Prince Friedrich (later Emperor Friedrich III), his father Emperor Wilhelm I, and Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden, proposing a toast to the new emperor. At centre (in white): Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian Chief of Staff.

The palace has also been a site of historical importance. The Peace of Paris (1783) was signed at Versailles, the Proclamation of the German Empire occurred in the vaunted Hall of Mirrors, and World War I was ended in the palace with the Treaty of Versailles, among many other events.