Henry IV has worked during his reign,…
April 1610 CE
Henry IV has worked during his reign, through his faithful right-hand man, the minister Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, to regularize state finance, promote agriculture, drain swamps to create productive crop lands, undertake many public works, and encourage education, as with the creation of the Collège Royal Henri-le-Grand in La Flèche (today Prytanée Militaire de la Flèche).
He and Sully have protected forests from further devastation, built a new system of tree-lined highways, and constructed new bridges and canals.
He has had a twelve hundred meter canal built in the park at the royal Château at Fontainebleau (which can be fished today), and ordered the planting of pines, elms and fruit trees.
The king has renewed Paris as a great city, with the Pont Neuf, which still stands today, constructed over the Seine river to connect the Right and Left Banks of the city.
Henry IV is also building the Place Royale (since 1800 known as Place des Vosges), and has added the Grande Galerie to the Louvre.
More than four hundred meters long and thirty-five meters wide, this huge addition has been built along the bank of the Seine River, and at the time is the longest edifice of its kind in the world.
A promoter of the arts by all classes of people, the King has invited hundreds of artists and craftsmen to live and work on the building's lower floors.
This tradition is to continue for another two hundred years until banned by Emperor Napoleon I.
The art and architecture of his reign will become known as the Henry IV style.