On May 14, 1610, in Paris, Henry IV of Bourbon, a key French ruler, was assassinated while travelling in his carriage. The killer was François Ravaillac, a religious fanatic.
Henry IV had come to power after decades of religious wars. Born a Protestant, he had fought as the leader of the Huguenots (French Calvinists), then converted to Catholicism to obtain the crown. His choice, summed up in the phrase "Paris is well worth a Mass," which popular culture attributed to him, had allowed him to restore a fragile stability to France. With the Edict of Nantes in 1598, he granted Protestants religious freedom, seeking to end an era of violence. But that stability was not shared by everyone. For many radical Catholics, Henry remained a heretic converted out of opportunism. For some Protestants, however, he was a traitor. His reign, therefore, was marked by a delicate balance, built more on compromise than full consensus. It is no coincidence that he had already survived numerous assassination attempts.
On the day of the assassination attempt, the king was travelling through Paris to visit his minister Sully. The carriage stopped in the narrow Rue de la Ferronnerie, blocked by traffic. It was at that moment that Ravaillac approached. He stabbed the king several times with a knife, killing Henry almost immediately. The assassin was captured on the spot and executed a few days later. The act was presented as an isolated act, but the climate that had made it possible was much broader, characterised by religious tensions, suspicions about the king's legitimacy, and fear of new wars.
The death of Henry IV shattered this balance. His son, Louis XIII, ascended the throne at just nine years old, and so power effectively passed to the regency of Marie de' Medici. France entered a new phase of instability, while Henry's political project remained unfinished.
The assassination occurred at a crucial moment. The king was preparing for a possible war against the Habsburgs and seeking to consolidate France's role in Europe. His death interrupted this process and slowed the evolution of the French state. But he also left a legacy. Henry IV had demonstrated that, after decades of religious wars, it was possible to build a balance, but his end showed how fragile that balance was. It took only one man, a knife, and a narrow street to shatter it.