Henry IV of France's Succession - Rival Claimants

Rival Claimants

The Catholic League's candidate for the crown of France in 1589 was Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon. The brother of Antoine of Bourbon (and Henry of Navarre's uncle), he was the last surviving Catholic prince of the blood. However, two factors made him an unconvincing choice: he was 66 years old, and he was firmly in the custody of first Henry III and then Henry IV. The cardinal found himself imprisoned in 1588, when Henry III ordered the murder of Henry, Duke of Guise, at the Château of Blois and rounded up those he regarded as a threat to his crown, including the Cardinal of Bourbon. On Henry III's death, Henry IV assumed responsibility for his captive rival. The League proved unable to free the cardinal; and when he died on 8 May 1591, they were left without a plausible successor as claimant to the throne. This proved fatal to their opposition to Henry's rule.

During the period between the succession of Henry IV and the death of the Cardinal of Bourbon, the city of Paris had achieved a degree of independence. While acknowledging the Catholic League and accepting a Spanish garrison, the authorities there had championed their liberties against those of the crown so much that some citizens openly opposed the institution of monarchy altogether. In October 1589, a Parisian lawyer complained publicly: "Our civil disorder and factions have opened the door to a crowd of corrupt little men who, with effrontery, have attacked authority with such licence and audacity that those who have not seen it would not believe it. In so doing, they have wanted to jump from a monarchy to a democracy".

The death of the Cardinal of Bourbon prompted measures to elect a new antiking. Although the French monarchy was hereditary, the League's lawyers searched the early history of France for precedents to legitimise the election of a king. The Protestant scholar and ideologue François Hotman had argued in his Francogallia that France was once a free country, whose liberties had been eroded over time, including the right to elect kings. Hotman had asserted the right of the Estates-General to perform this function. Though Hotman was a Protestant, his argument also influenced Catholic jurists searching for a means to replace the Cardinal of Bourbon at the beginning of the 1590s and the decision to summon the Estates-General to elect a new "king".

The meeting of the Estates General that opened on 26 January 1593 proved far from representative. Many royalist delegates refused to attend, and other delegates were blocked by royalist troops from reaching Paris. By this time, deep divisions in the League had become apparent. The League's leader, Charles of Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne, had repeatedly disputed the strategy of the Duke of Parma, the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, whom Philip II sent into northern France to reinforce the League. Mayenne had also quarrelled with his nephew, Charles, Duke of Guise, whom some wanted to elect king. Finally, Mayenne was at odds with many Parisian leaders, particularly with the Sixteen, a group of city representatives who pursued their own libertarian agenda and often worked with the Spanish behind Mayenne's back.

In November 1591, when the Sixteen executed a group of moderates from the Paris parlement, Mayenne hanged or imprisoned the ringleaders. Mayenne, who nursed ambitions to be king himself, saw his grand alliance of Catholic nobles, French towns, and Spain crumbling from a growing disunity of purpose and the absence of an obvious claimant to the throne.

It was widely believed among Catholics that the pope's blessing was essential to the legitimacy of a king of France because of the Protestant faith of Henry. At the time of his succession, Henry IV was under a papal excommunication, imposed by Pope Sixtus V on 21 September 1585 so the papacy considered it legitimate for Henry's subjects to oppose his rule, both as King of Navarre and, after 1589, as King of France. The persistence of rebellion and civil war in the early years of Henry's reign owed much to the papacy's refusal to accept anyone but a Catholic on the French throne.

Mayenne was opposed to the idea of summoning the Estates-General to elect a king, but in 1592, he finally caved in to Spanish pressure to do so. Mayenne opened the assembly with a symbolically empty chair beside him. The influence of Spain on the assembly soon proved problematic. Spain sought the election of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, the daughter of Philip II of Spain and the granddaughter of Catherine de' Medici. The Spanish urged the Estates-General to repeal the Salic Law, which prevented the rule of a queen regnant; but in this, they failed to grasp a fundamental principle of the French royal succession.

The Spanish ambassador in Paris had instructions to "insinuate cleverly" the rights of the Infanta to the French throne. His brief also stated that the Salic Law "was a pure invention... as the most learned and discerning of their lawyers recognise". The Estates-General of the Catholic League insisted that if Clara Isabella Eugenia were to be chosen, she should marry a French prince; Philip II, however, wanted her to marry Archduke Ernest of Austria. The Estates replied that "our laws and customs prevent us from calling forward as king any prince not of our nation". On 28 June 1593, the Paris parlement followed up by resolving "to preserve the realm which depends on God alone and recognizes no other ruler of its temporal affairs, no matter what his status, and to prevent it from being overrun by foreigners in the fair name of religion".

While the delegates of the Estates-General dithered in Paris, Henry IV dealt a well-timed blow to their deliberations by announcing his wish to be converted from Protestantism to Catholicism. This move effectively cut the ground from under the Catholic League's feet. The Estates-General sent delegates to treat with Henry's representatives; and on 8 August, most members of the assembly returned home.