The final watershed in the French Wars of Religion
occurred in July 1593, after four long years of indecisive
fighting between the armies of King Henry IV
and the Catholic League
THE EDICT OF NANTES
The final watershed in the French Wars of Religion
occurred in July 1593, after four long years of indecisive
fighting between the armies of King Henry IV
and the Catholic League. The city of Paris had been
besieged by the royalist forces of the king in 1590,
and some Parisians even starved to death in a long,
ruinous summer. The turning point came when
Henry made the decision to abjure his Protestant
religion and take instruction in the Catholic faith. It
was certainly not a cynical decision, as his enemies
claimed, nor one made lightly. Henry had been a
devout Calvinist ever since he was first instructed in
the faith by his mother. He was forced to recognize,
however, that the French constitution required the
king to be Catholic. To resolve the long religious
conflict and bring the disorders in the kingdom to
W A R S O F R E L I G I O N , F R E N C H
194 E U R O P E 1 4 5 0 T O 1 7 8 9
French Wars of Religion. Assassination of Duke Henry of Guise by the guard of King Henry III, 23 December 1588, engraving
by Hogenberg, late sixteenth early seventeenth century. THE ART ARCHIVE/UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GENEVA/DAGLI ORTI
an end, Henry publicly converted to Catholicism in
the summer of 1593. When the pope formally absolved
the king shortly thereafter, the many nobles
and towns loyal to the league began to submit to his
authority and accept him as their new monarch. But
Henry IV still faced the same problem as all his
predecessors: how to produce a peace treaty that
was acceptable to both sides with a chance of survival.
