This is the first Cluedo game in French history. There is also the question of carrying weapons. Who assassinated Henry IV (1553-1610)? François Ravaillac (1577-1610), with a knife, in Paris, near the inn of the Crowned Heart pierced with an arrow.
The murder weapon deserves attention, because its nature is ultimately the only certainty in this tragic story. In May 1610, the good King Henry had already escaped around twenty assassination attempts, and although the pace of these attacks began to slow down, the pacification of minds was not assured. The kingdom was full of potential Ravaillacs, fervent Catholics worried that the Huguenots would come to threaten, or worse, attack the Catholic and Roman Church.
At the end of the Wars of Religion (1562-1598), we must imagine a society armed to the extent of its means. To the nobles and the bourgeoisie arquebuses, muskets and crossbows, to the others bladed weapons. Commoners were prohibited from carrying weapons, but it was difficult to tell the difference between a utility knife and an instrument used to kill others. This practice was thus common. The fifth commandment of the Decalogue having lead in the wing, a number of texts attempted to limit, or even to prohibit the carrying of weapons, or at least to limit the length of the blades and to moderate the ardor of the grinders and grinders, quick to sharpen points. Like sumptuary laws, these prohibitions were little respected. Knives and daggers were also very similar, in appearance, to what one carried on one’s person, often indicating a social condition. The owner of an ornate knife wore good looks, Ravaillac was as sensitive to it as his contemporaries when, on April 30, hesitating to kill the king, he damaged the blade of a knife he had just stolen but did not want to separate it. He initially gave up on his plan, before changing his mind and sharpening the blade.
Henri III (1551-1589) had already died stabbed by the monk Jacques Clément (1567-1589). The example was edifying for the disturbed Angoumoisin. Above all, he had no other weapon within his reach. If he had been introduced at court, poison would have been an option, as suggested by some rumors circulating from Brussels at the beginning of May 1610. Never mind, Ravaillac was fanatical enough to make the knife the weapon of justice. and sacrificial of regicide, that by which he would establish himself as a saint or martyr near his true Lord.
Ravaillac was patient, he waited for the coronation of Marie de Medici (1575-1642) before assassinating the Vert-Galant. His savings dwindled as he stayed at the inn of Cinq-Croissants, Faubourg Saint-Jacques, then at that of Trois-Pigeons, rue Saint-Honoré, closer to the king’s residence. Between the two, he was rejected by a hostelry near the Quinze-Vingts district and stole a knife left unattended on a table. The weapon is usually described as a “kitchen knife, as long as a kind of bayonet,” said [François de] Malherbe in a letter to [Nicolas-Claude Fabri de] Peiresc, “and sharp on both sides”*. Sources agree that the blade, as unsteady as the spirit of its new owner, was secured by a turner who changed the original handle for one made of deer antler.
*The Assassination of Henry IV, mysteries of a crime, by Jean-Christian Petitfils (Éditions Perrin, 2009).
