Henry IV of France

Henry was baptised Catholic but raised Protestant by his mother, Queen Jeanne III of Navarre, whose throne he inherited in 1572. He survived the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and led Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion until 1589, when he inherited the French crown as a distant cousin of the childless Henry III. The Catholic League refused a Protestant king, so after four years of stalemate Henry converted in 1593 and five years later issued the Edict of Nantes, guaranteeing religious liberties that effectively ended the wars. He regularized state finance, promoted agriculture and trade, began France's first successful American colonization, and built infrastructure - roads, bridges, canals - to bind the country together. On 14 May 1610, a Catholic zealot assassinated him in Paris; his son Louis XIII succeeded him.