Their son, Henri III of Navarre, was the Henri IV of France. Born at Pau in 1553, he was first only the Comte de Viane. When he came to Paris he would not have allied his Pyrenean possessions with those of France but for the pressure brought to bear upon him. He declared that his ancestral lands should remain entirely separate, but the procureur general, La Guesle, forced his hand, and it was thus that the Royaume de France became augmented by Basse-Navarre, the Comtés d’Armagnac, Foix, d’Albret and Bigorre, the Duché de Vendome, the Comté de Périgord and the Vicomté de Limoges.
The story of Béarn and Navarre, for most folk, begins with those kings of Navarre who were also kings of France. The first of these was the white-plumed knight Henri III, Prince of Béarn, who became Henri IV of France. The France of the Valois, which strain died with Henri III, murdered by the black monk Clement, was much more narrow in its confines than now. In the northeast it lacked Lorraine, Franche Comté, Bresse, Dombes and Bucey; in the south Roussillon, Béarn and Basse-Navarre, and there was a sort of quasi-independence observed by the former great states of Bretagne, Bourgogne and Dauphiné.
With the coming of the king of Navarre to the throne of France, the three great movements which took place in the religious situation, the manners and customs of the court and noblesse, and in the aspirations of the people gave an aspect of unity and solidarity to France.
The religious question was already momentous when Henri IV was crowned, and Protestantism and its followers were gaining ground everywhere, though the real Français—the Guises and the Bourbons, the princes of Lorraine and the “princes of the blood”—were on the side of Catholicism, and had their swords ever unsheathed in its behalf.
The court, in the midst of this great religious quarrel, was also in a state of transition. Catherine and her gay troupe of damsels had passed, as also had Charles IX, who died shortly after the Huguenot massacre of St. Bartholomew’s night. His brother, and successor to the throne, Henri III, Duc d’Anjou, was a weakling, and he too died miserably at the point of the assassin’s knife, and few seemed to regret the passing of him who devoted himself more to monkeys, parrots and little dogs than to statecraft. Henri of Béarn was the strong man in public view, and of him great things were expected by all parties in spite of his professed Calvinism of the time.
It was during the reign of the feeble-witted Henri III that Henri, king of Navarre, became the titular head of the Huguenots; thus abjuring the Catholic religion that he had previously embraced under pressure. The Protestant League became a powerful institution, and the gentilshommes of Béarn, Guienne, Poitou and Dauphiné became captains in the cause, just as the gentilshommes of Picardie and Artois became captains of Catholicism. The whole scheme was working itself out on traditional hereditary lines; it was the Protestantism of the mountains against the Catholicism of the lowlands. As for the people, the masses, they simply stood by and wondered, ready for any innovation which augured for the better.
