Henry IV to Gabrielle d'Estrées
    Henry IV, France's hero king of the late 16th century, is one of history's more surprising lovers. A commanding authority in state affairs, he saved and rebuilt a ruined country after the Wars of Religion in France, and also served as a figurehead for Catholic renewal. Yet he repeatedly allowed his heart to rule his head, threatening his political achievements in the process. No woman so affected him as the beautiful young Gabrielle d'Estrées, his lover for nine years, mother of three of his children, and his wife and queen in all but name. When heavily embroiled in military campaigns during the early years of their affair, Henry would lodge Gabrielle in a town at a safe distance from the fighting so that he could visit her from the battlefront. He sent her letters via servants almost daily, sometimes twice a day. The letter extracted is typical of his 35 surviving letters to her, many of which were not only amorous but also tinged with jealously. At the time the letter was written she was a young beauty of 20, he a soldier of 40, married in a political alliance to the Catholic Marguerite de Valois, and known for his infidelities.
    Henry first saw Gabrielle in November 1590 at her father's chateau in Coeuvres, Picardy, while civil war raged between the Catholic and Protestant forces. Contemporary accounts praise her long golden hair, her delicate rose complexion, and her exquisite figure. After his failure to take Paris from the militant Catholics of the Holy League in the fall of 1590, Henry's advisers counseled his to attack the city of Rouen, the League's greatest northern stronghold after Paris. But Henry, who by this time had designs on Gabrielle, instead lay siege to the less strategically important city of Chartres (February to april 1591), where Gabrielle's family had important interests, and restored her uncle as governor of the city. From that time on Gabrielle became his constant companion.
    To keep Gabrielle from rival suitors, Henry married her of to an elderly widower, Nicolas d'Amerval, sieur of Liencourt, in June 1592. Throughout the following year, he sent her letter after passionate letter, jealousy sometimes getting the better of him. On April 15, for example, he wrote:

"My beautiful love, you are indeed to be admired, yet why should I praise you? Up to now, aware of my passion, triumph has made you unfaithful..."
But five days later he had forgotten his jealously and wanted only to be with her again:

"Tomorrow I shall kiss your beautiful hands a thousand times. I can already feel the relief from my troubles that that hour will bring, which I hold as dear as my life; but if you delay by even one day, I shall die...To pass the month of April without one's mistress is not to live."
Whether Gabrielle was motivated more by love or ambition, she certainly put herself in some danger by accompanying him on his campaigns. In her one surviving letter to him, probably written sometime in February 1593, she wrote:

"Believe me, I am dying of fright. I beg you to let me know how things are with the most wonderful man in the world. I fear that your troubles must be great, for no other reason would deprive me of your presence today..."
In June Henry wrote the letter extracted here, full of anticipation at their next meeting; by autumn, Gabrielle was pregnant with their first child.
    Meanwhile, in July 1593 Henry converted to Catholicism to consolidate his hold on the crown, a step many considered to be a cynical act of statesmanship. But in a letter to Gabrielle he suggested it was not something he did lightly, as he wrote,

"tomorrow I shall make a perilous leap..."
He closed the letter,

"...come early tomorrow, my love; it seems already as if a year has passed since I last saw you. I kiss a million times the beautiful hands of my angel and the mouth of my dear mistress."
    On February 27, 1594, Henry's coronation took place in Chartres cathedral. In June Gabrielle gave birth to their son, César. The following September she and Henry entered Paris together, with a magnificent escort, in public recognition of her status as the king's unofficial consort.
    France, however, was still in a dangerous state of turmoil. In January 1595 Henry formally declared war on Spain. A year of fighting drained the country's finances, and by the winter Henry was very short of money. Gabrielle could have remained in luxury with César in Paris. She chose instead to join Henry for Christmas at the chateau of Folembray, only eight miles from the town of La Fère, which Henry was besieging. He was able to take the town the following spring only because Gabrielle gave up her diamonds as security for a loan from the grand duke of Tuscany. A contemporary historian wrote the following observation:

"This lady knew how to keep the affections of that great prince, so that he was as faithful to her as she was to him, for he looked at no other woman and it would be difficult to say which of the two was the fonder."
    By the end of 1596 it was clear that Henry wanted to marry Gabrielle and make César his official heir. He had her marriage to Liencourt annulled, and gave her a string of titles. But before she could become queen, he had to obtain an annulment of his own marriage to Marguerite de Valois. Such a stope could easily have led to a war of succession after his death and destroyed all his hard-won political achievements. To show how serious his intentions were, he gave Gabrielle the great diamond ring that had symbolized his marriage to France at his coronation.
    During Holy Week 1599, fate took a hand. Henry was at Fontainebleau, while GAbrielle, expecting their third child, was in Paris. She went into a difficult labor on Maundy Thursday, and died in childbirth the next day, in such agony that she was rumored to have been poisoned. A mourning Henry wrote:

"the roots of love are dead within me and will never spring to life again."





Text from
Famous Love Letters
Messages of Intimacy and Passion
Edited by Ronald Tamplin