Henry III of France (19 September 1551 – 2 August
1589, born
Alexandre-Édouard de Valois-Angoulême,
, ;), was
King of France from 1574 to
1589, and as
Henry of Valois, first elected
Monarch of the
Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth with the dual titles of
King of
Poland and
Grand
Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.
Life
Early years
Henry was
born at the Royal Château de Fontainebleau
, Seine-et-Marne
, third son of King
Henry II and Catherine de'
Medici, grandson of Francis I of
France and Claude of France,
and brother of Francis II of
France and Charles IX of
France. He was made
Duke of Angoulême and
Duke of Orleans in 1560, and
Duke of Anjou in 1566.
In 1564, his name became
Henri. He was his mother's
favourite; she called him
chers yeux ("Precious Eyes") and
lavished fondness and affection upon him for most of his life. His
elder brother, Charles, grew to detest him, resenting Henry's
greater health and activity.
Youth
In his youth, he was considered the best of the sons of Catherine
de' Medici and Henry II. Unlike his father and elder brothers, he
had little interest in the traditional Valois pastimes of hunting
and physical exercise. Although he was both fond of
fencing and skilled in it, he preferred to indulge
his tastes for the arts and reading. These predilections were
attributed to his
Italian
mother.
At one point in his youth he showed a tendency towards
Protestantism as a means of rebelling. At the
age of nine, calling himself
un petit Huguenot, he refused
to attend
Mass, sang Protestant
psalms to his sister Margot (exhorting her all
the while to change her religion and cast her
Book of Hours into the fire), and even bit the
nose off a statue of
Saint
Paul. His mother firmly cautioned her children against such
behaviour, and he would never again show any Protestant
tendencies—instead becoming nominally
Roman Catholic.
Prior to ascending the throne, he was a leader of the royal army in
the
French Wars of Religion
against the
Huguenots, and took part in
the victories over them at
Battle of
Jarnac and
Battle of
Moncontour. While still Duke, he was involved in the plot for
the
St. Bartholomew's Day
Massacre (but did not participate), in which thousands of
Huguenots were killed; his reign as King, like the ones of his
elder brothers Francis II and Charles IX, would see France in
constant turmoil over religion.
Homosexuality
For a long time after his death, Henry was assumed to have been
homosexual or at least
bisexual. Although there are many credible
references which document Henry's homosexuality, it is still
disputed. For example, some modern historians, such as P. Erlanger
Philippe Erlanger, ||Henri III||, Gallimard, 1935, J.F. Solnon,
Nicolas Le Roux Nicolas Le Roux, ||Un régicide au nom de Dieu,
l'assassinat d'Henri III||, Gallimard, 2006 and J. Boucher
Jacqueline Boucher, ||La cour de Henri III||, Ouest-France, 1986 ,
found evidence to support the idea that, not only was Henry not
homosexual (though still perhaps bisexual), but he had many famous
mistresses. They found that there were no men named with whom he
could have had sex, and that he was well-known at the time for his
taste in beautiful women. They concluded that the idea of his
supposed homosexuality was based on his dislike of war and hunting
being interpreted as effeminate, an image cultivated by political
opponents (both Protestants and ultra-Catholics) to turn the
opinion of the French people against him.
Elizabeth
In 1570, discussions commenced to arrange for Henry to court
Elizabeth I of
England. Elizabeth, almost 37, was in
need of a husband in order to produce an heir. However, nothing
came of these discussions. Elizabeth is viewed by historians as
having intended only to arouse the concern of Spain, rather than to
have seriously contemplated marriage. The chance of marriage was
further blighted by their differing religious views—Henry was at
least formally a Catholic while Elizabeth was a Protestant—and his
opinion of Elizabeth. Henry tactlessly referred to Elizabeth as a
putain publique (a "public whore") and made stinging
remarks about their difference in age. Upon hearing (inaccurately)
that she limped because of a
varicose
vein, he called her an "old creature with a sore leg."
Reign
In 1573, Henry was elected King of the
Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. As conditions for his
free election, he was compelled to sign the
pacta conventa and
the
Henrician Articles, pledging
religious tolerance in the
Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. Henry chafed at the restrictions on
monarchic power under the Polish-Lithuanian
political system of "
Golden Liberty". The
Polish-Lithuanian parliament had been urged by
Anna Jagiellon, the sister of the
recently deceased king
Sigismund
II Augustus, to elect him based on the understanding that Henry
would wed Anna afterward.
His brother,
Charles IX of
France, died three months after Henry's coronation as king of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Henry secretly departed and
returned to France.
He was crowned king of France on 13 February
1575, at Rheims
Cathedral
.
Marriage
Although when he married
Louise de
Lorraine-Vaudémont (14 February 1575) he was expected to
produce an heir, they were unable to conceive a child.

Coin of Henry III, 1577
In 1576, Henry signed the
Edict of
Beaulieu, granting many concessions to the Huguenots. His
action resulted in the Catholic activist,
Henry I, Duke of Guise, forming the
Catholic League. After much
posturing and negotiations, Henry was forced to rescind most of the
concessions that had been made to the Protestants in the
Edict of Beaulieu.
In 1584, the King's youngest brother and heir presumptive,
François, duc d'Anjou, died.
Under
Salic Law, the next heir to the
throne was Protestant
Henry III of
Navarre, a descendant of
St.
Louis IX. Under pressure from the Duke of Guise, Henry III
issued an edict suppressing Protestantism and annulling Henry III
of Navarre's right to the throne.
Henry began a great friendship with the
Feuillant reformer
Jean de la Barrière and built a
monastery for him and his followers to commemorate their friendship
in 1587.
On 12 May 1588, when the
duc de
Guise entered Paris, Henry III fled the city.
On 23
December 1588, at the Château de Blois
, the duc de Guise arrived in the council chamber
where his brother Louis II,
Cardinal of Guise, waited. The Duke was told that the
King wished to see him in the private room adjoining the royal
bedroom. There guardsmen murdered the Duke, then the Cardinal. To
make sure that no contender for the French throne was free to act
against him, the King had the Duke's son imprisoned.
The
Duke of Guise had been
highly popular in France, and the citizenry turned against King
Henry for the murders. The
Parlement instituted criminal charges against
the King, and he joined forces with his heir, the protestant Henry
of Navarre, setting up the
Parliament of Tours.
Assassination
Jacques Clément assassinating Henry III
On 1
August 1589, Henry III lodged with his army at Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine
, prepared to attack Paris, when a young fanatical
Dominican friar, Jacques Clément, carrying false papers,
was granted access to deliver important documents to the
King. The monk gave the King a bundle of papers and stated
that he had a secret message to deliver. The King signaled for his
attendants to step back for privacy, and Clément whispered in his
ear while plunging a knife into his abdomen. Clément was killed on
the spot by the guards.
At first the King's wound did not appear fatal, but he enjoined all
the officers around him, in the event that he did not survive, to
be loyal to Henry of Navarre as their new king. The following
morning—the day that he was to have launched his assault to retake
Paris—Henry III died.
Chaos swept the attacking army, most of it quickly melting away;
the proposed attack on Paris was postponed. Inside the city, joy at
the news of Henry III's death was near delirium; some hailed the
assassination as an
act of God.
Burial
Henry III
was interred at the Saint Denis Basilica
. Childless, he was the last of the
Valois kings. Henry III of Navarre succeeded
him as
Henry IV, the first of the
Bourbon kings.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Henry III in Polish hat, portrait
1580s
On 16 May 1573 Polish nobles elected Henry, as the first elected
monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, the
Lithuanian nobles, boycotted this election, and it was the
Lithuanian ducal council who confirmed his election. In Paris, on
10 September, a Polish delegation met with Henry and he took
an oath, at Notre Dame Cathedral, to "respect traditional Polish
liberties and the law on religious freedom that had been passed
during the
interregnum". It was at
a ceremony before the Paris
parlement on
13 September that the Polish delegation handed over the
"certificate of election to the throne of Poland-Lithuania". Henry
also gave up any claims to succession and he "recognized the
principle of free election" under the
Henrician Articles and the
pacta conventa.
It was not until January of 1574 that Henry was to reach the
borders of Poland. On 21 February, Henry's coronation was
held. It was in mid June of 1574 that Henry would take leave of
Poland and head back to France, upon hearing of his brother,
Charles IX's death. Henry's
absence 'provoked a constitutional crisis' which Parliament
attempted to resolve by notifiying Henry that his throne would be
lost if he did not return from France by 12 May 1575. His
failure to return caused Parliament to declare his throne
vacant.
The short
reign of Henry at Wawel
Castle
in Poland was marked by a clash of cultures between
the Polish and the French. The young king and his followers
were astonished by several Polish practices and disappointed by the
rural poverty and harsh climate of the country. The Polish, on the
other hand, wondered if all Frenchmen were as concerned with their
appearance as their new King appeared to be.
In many aspects, Polish culture had a positive influence on France.
At
Wawel
, the French were introduced to new methods of
septic facilities, in which litter (excrement) was taken outside
the castle walls. On returning to France, Henry ordered the
construction of such facilities at the Louvre and other palaces.
Other inventions introduced to the French by the Polish included a
bath with regulated hot and cold water and the
fork.
Notes
- Frieda, Leonie, Catherine de Medici, pp.179-180
- Henri III
- Henri III était homosexuel - Tatoufaux.com
- Durant, Will, The Age of Reason Begins, vol. VII,
(Simon and Schuster, 1961), p. 361.
See also
Ancestors
References
- Durant, Will, The Age of Reason Begins, vol. VII,
Simon and Schuster, 1961.
- Frieda, Leonie, Catherine de Medici, HarperCollins
Publishers, 2003.
- Paweł, Jasienica Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów (The
Commonwealth of the Both Nations), Warsaw, 1982.
- Stanisław, Grzybowski, Henryk Walezy, Warsaw,
1985.
- Stone, Daniel, The Polish-Lithuanian state, 1386-1795; A
History of East Central Europe, Volume IV., Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2001.
- Zbigniew, Satała, Poczet polskich królowych, księżnych i
metres, Warsaw, 1990.
External links
Literature
References in popular culture
- The Alexandre Dumas,
père's novels: La Reine Margot(1845), La Dame de Monsoreau
(1846) and Les quarante-cinq (1847).
- The Alexandre Dumas,
père's play, Henry III and His Court (1829)
- The French movies La
Reine Margot (1954) and La Reine Margot (1994),
both based on Alexandre
Dumas, père's novel of the
same title, are fictional depictions of the lives of Henry
III's family, his sister Margot, and her Protestant husband Henry
around the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day
Massacre. In the 1994 film Henry is played by the actor
Pascal Greggory. In Dumas' novel,
Henri was not portrayed as homosexual, whereas, in the 1954 film,
he was shown as an effeminate, comical queen. In the 1994 film, he
was portrayed as a more sinister character, bisexual and showing
sexual interest for his sister. His brother dies by being
accidentally poisoned by his mother, who had intended to kill Henry
of Navarre instead.
- The film Elizabeth,
released in 1998, depicts a fictional courtship between Elizabeth I
of England and Henry III whilst still Duke of Anjou. In reality,
the two never met and the Queen of England was actually courted by
his younger brother François, Duke of Anjou. The
film borrows some of the aspects of Henry III's life and features
Anjou as a comical foolish transvestite. The role is portrayed by
French actor Vincent Cassel.
- In the film Dangerous
Beauty he has a short affair with the main character,
venetian courtesan Veronica Franco. He appears masculine, although
he declared to Veronica that the "rumors" about him were true. He
is played by British actor Jake
Weber.
- In an episode of Animaniacs,
entitled "The Three Muska-Warners", an Elmer
Fudd-like Henri III is protected by Yakko, Wakko and Dot. In this version,
Henri is portrayed by Jeff Bennett as
nervous and jumpy, and for no apparent reason speaks with an
English accent.
- Chabrier's opéra-comique Le roi malgré lui (1887) deals
with the unhappy Polish episode, with Henri as the reluctant King
of Poland. In Kraków he conspires with Polish nobles to depose
himself. His friend Nangis changes places with him but in the end
the plot fails and the curtain falls on Henri being crowned.
- One episode of the science fiction novel "Vive le Roi!" by
Vivian Davis takes place in a forest clearing near St. Cloud at an early morning hour of 1 August
1589, with a group of time travelers preparing to prevent the
King's assassination as part of a complicated series of
interventions in French history aimed at preventing the French Revolution and keeping France a
monarchy into the 21st Century. The appearance of Time Police
agents foils the plot, and Henry III's assassination goes ahead - a
protagonist remarking "A pity, but history should not be tampered
with".