page_title: Henry IV of France's wives and mistresses
section_title: Gabrielle d'Estrées
hierarchical_section_title: Henry IV of France's wives and mistresses / Gabrielle d'Estrées
context_page_description: Henry IV of France's wives and mistresses played a significant role in the politics of his reign. Both Henry and his first wife Margaret of Valois, whom he married in 1572, were repeatedly unfaithful to each other, and the collapse of their marriage led to their estrangement and living apart. Although Henry fathered children with a series of mistresses, his lack of a legitimate heir became a cause of concern, and his marriage was not annulled until 1599. In 1600, at the age of forty-six, he married his second wife, Marie de' Medici, who bore him six children, including the future Louis XIII. Henry was unfaithful to his second wife as well and insisted that she raise his illegitimate children along with her own.
  Henry's womanising became legendary, earning him the nickname of Le Vert Galant. His sexual appetite was said to have been insatiable, and he always kept mistresses, often several at a time, as well as engaging in random sexual encounters and visits to brothels. Even so, he tended to elevate one mistress above the others and shower her with money, honours, and promises.
context_section_description: Henry IV was an energetic soldier who spent long periods at war. After military campaigns, he rewarded himself with bouts of idle pleasure, hunting during the day, gambling in the evening, and womanising at night. His companion in these leisure pursuits was often the banker Sébastien Zamet, who lent him vast sums of money and made his house available to the king for dalliances. One drawback to Henry's philandering, however, was a proneness to venereal diseases. In October 1598, he nearly died from an infection of the bladder, and an attack of gonorrhoea a few weeks later briefly brought on a heart problem. On 6 November, he wrote to the Duke of Sully that the illness "has made me very depressed [tout chagrin], and I do everything that my doctors recommend, so keen am I to get better".
  Henry's sexual appetite, said to have been insatiable, was often indiscriminate, but he always recognised a particular mistress as his first lady. One such was Gabrielle d'Estrées, whom he met at Cœuvres in 1590 and later made the duchess of Beaufort. This relationship was castigated by Henry's enemies in the church, particularly by the Capuchins. On one occasion, arriving at her apartments near the Louvre, Henry was stabbed in the face by a Jesuit  would-be-assassin called Jean Chastel, who slashed his mouth and broke one of his teeth. In June 1594, d'Estrées bore Henry a son, César, who was legitimized in Jan/Feb 1595. Henry's duchess had gradually risen in prominence, and she acted as her royal lover's hostess for diplomatic occasions, such as the surrender talks with the rebel Charles of Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne, in 1596. In October of that year, an Italian observer reported that "among the French nobility people begin to expect that the king intends to name as his successor the natural son born of Gabrielle". Henry's advisers were deeply opposed to any such plan, however, which would guarantee a war of succession—but, for a while, Henry seemed determined. When the last of the Catholic League rebels, Philippe Emmanuel, Duke of Mercœur, surrendered in 1598, Henry and Gabrielle's son, César, was ceremonially promised in marriage to Mercœur's daughter, though both were small children. The chronicler Pierre de L'Estoile records a vignette of Gabrielle d'Estrées' status at this time: "The duchess of Beaufort [was] seated in a chair, and Madame de Guise brought her the various dishes with great ceremony. Gabrielle took what she most liked with one hand, and gave her other to be kissed by the king, who was near her".
  By early 1599, Henry's marriage to Marguerite of Valois looked likely to be annulled at last. And so, at the age of forty-six and still without a legitimate heir, Henry felt free to propose to Gabrielle d'Estrées. On Mardi Gras, Henry placed on her finger the ring with which he had "married" France at his coronation in 1593. During Holy Week, however, Gabrielle, who was pregnant at the time, fell ill; by Holy Saturday, to the relief of many in France, she was dead. Rumours flew that she had been poisoned, but in fact she died from eclampsia and a premature birth of a stillborn son. Though grief-stricken, Henry grasped that his fiancée's death had saved him from disaster: his plan to declare his two sons by d'Estrées heirs to the throne would have precipitated a major political crisis. The English agent Edmondes reported:
  And the King himselfe doth freelie confesse it, that albeit her death is a great grief unto him, in regard that he did so dearlie love her, and intending as he acknowledgeth to have married her, but that God having directlie manifested that he would not suffer him to fall into the danger of so great an error and inconvenience to himselfe and to his state, that he will not fail to make a lesson thereof.
  Henry provided Gabrielle d'Estrées with a grandiose funeral and drowned his sorrows with a sustained spree of womanising. Sir Henry Neville, the English ambassador, reported that Henry was spending time "in secret manner at Zamet's house", where "la belle garce Claude" was known to entertain, and that he was ferven
caption: Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort, came closest of all Henry's mistresses to marrying him.
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