Henry IV was a popular king who ruled France during the religious strife of the Reformation. He was son of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret, who were the king and queen of Navarre. From his parents he was related with the royal house of France. He later became king of France and thus a new dynasty began to rule in France, the Bourbons. He was born at Pau in Navarre on December 13, 1553. Navarre was an independent kingdom situated in the north-east of Spain and south-west of France, near the Pyrenees. Its religion was protestant. Nowadays, Navarra is an autonomous region with the capital at Pamplona. .
After the death of his mother, he was crowned king of Navarre, in 1572 as Henry III, and in 1589 he was crowned king of France and took the name Henry IV. He ruled both countries till he died in 1610. On May, 14 a Catholic fanatic extremist called Franzois Ravaillac assassinated him on the Pont Neuf in Paris. He was buried at Saint Denis Basilica.
Henry was brought up as a Calvinist by his strong-minded mother, a leader of the French Protestant (Huguenot) movement, which during the 1560s became involved in a series of civil wars with the Catholics. In 1569 he was recognized by the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny as the nominal head of the Huguenots and leader of the Protestant party. In the same year he was crowned king of Navarre, he married the sister of the reigning monarch, Charles IX, Margaret of Valois, as a result of the temporary reconciliation between the Huguenots and the crown and to calm religious unrest. A few days after his marriage (August 18, 1572), on August 24, the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day took place from the order of Catherine de Medici, the king's mother. Henry saved his own life by converting to Roman Catholicism, but he remained a prisoner at court until 1576. After his escape he repudiated his conversion and assumed the leadership of the Huguenot movement.
