The aim of this book is to examine the relationship that Henry IV cultivated with urban France in order to explore how he acquired power and strengthened the French state. The work continues the general effort made by revisionary historians to explain what the term ‘absolute’ meant in practice to rulers and subjects as opposed to what it meant in theory to jurists and dogmatists.? This book is not a biographical assessment of Henry IV, but rather a case study of his interactions with selected towns. It attempts to discover how the balance between royal authority and urban autonomy was negotiated in the late sixteenth century. Henry IV mastered urban France with a policy of lenient pacification that emphasized his clemency. By easing internal strife after the religious wars, he re-opened lines of communication between the Crown and the towns. The re-establishment of communication strengthened the state by promoting cooperation between the king and his urban subjects and encouraging their compliance.

In the pages that follow two key concepts appear many times, legitimacy and clientage. In fact, the two terms are linked in explaining how Henry secured his realm and restored peace to France. The idea of a ‘legitimate’ king is one that appears often in the literature on early modern kingship, but legitimacy is a concept seldom defined by historians.? This book relies on Orlando Patterson's definition of legitimacy as a process that incorporates power relations into a moral order ultimately defining right and wrong.? Legitimation, the action of establishing legitimacy, is an important part of all political processes and can be conceptualized in the early modern period as a dialogue between rulers and subjects.