HE was Good King Henri a leader who slept in barns, devoured chicken stew and brought an era of peace and prosperity to a country crippled by religious quarrels. He also, according to one historian, made a string of romantic conquests while “smelling strongly of garlic and feet”.

Two hundred years before revolution brought down the monarchy, a 35-year-old from the south-western city of Pau began a reign that would make France fall in love with him. Today, as the country remembers his death at the hands of a Catholic assassin, there is no sign that this love is fading.

In fact, 400 years after he drew his last breath in a Paris side street, Henri IV is everywhere on magazine covers, on billboards and in shop windows. Parisian guides are offering Henri IV walking tours; museums are hosting exhibitions; and locals in his home city near the Pyrenees are hosting feasts of poule au pot and garfou, his favourite sweet treat.

“If we were to measure his approval ratings now, what result would we get?” asked Nouvel Observateur magazine recently. “100 per cent happy? 200 per cent? At any rate a figure to make the late greats turn pale — even more so the not-so-greats who are still alive.” President Nicolas Sarkozy would do well to watch and learn.

During his reign from 1589 to 1610, Henri le Grand was credited with turning a country torn apart by religious wars into a newly confident land where Catholics and Protestants were forced to tolerate — if not like — each other.

He converted from Calvinism to Catholicism, the faith of the vast majority of France, but did not neglect the long-persecuted Huguenot minority. In 1598, 26 years after thousands of people who had gathered for his wedding died in the St Bartholomew's Day massacre, he declared the edict of Nantes, which guaranteed Protestants freedom of worship.

— The Guardian, London