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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.