Death of Henry IV of France

​On the 14th May 1610, Henry IV of France was assassinated by Francois Ravaillac, a Catholic radical, who stabbed the king when the coach he was travelling in was caught up in congestion on the Rue de la Ferronnerie in Paris.

​In 1793, an eyewitness reported that when the royal tombs at the Abbey of Saint Denis were destroyed, the embalmed and perfectly preserved body of Henry was displayed in state in the Basilica, and for many days people filed in silence to pay their respects.

​A story of the treatment of the French kings remains suggests that in 1793, at the height of the French Revolution, Henry's body was exhumed and posthumously beheaded, revolutionary soldiers even taking cuttings from his beard. Henry's head is said to have been sold in the 1920's and remained in private ownership. Eventually the skull resurfaced, and in 2010 a digital facial reconstruction was undertaken and as you can see from the image below the finished article certainly looks king like.

​However, a recent study on the DNA taken from the skull found a genetic discrepancy between the head and three living male relatives leading to the conclusion the head didn't come from Henry at all or anybody in the royal lineage.

It seems that the story of the ill treatment of Henry IV's body during the French Revolution was propaganda and to use a term that is popular at the moment - fake news.

Henry IV of France was known as Good King Henry, he was a military leader and politician who put an end to the religious wars that had torn France apart. A Protestant, he had converted to Catholicism to unite his subjects for whom he had great compassion. He showed much sympathy for the poorest in his realm of whom he said
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   "If God keeps me, I will make sure that no peasant in my realm will lack the means to have a chicken in the pot on Sunday!"