♦ The Kingdom of France was a state that existed in western Europe for nearly a thousand years and which was a major international power from the 16th century until the advent of the French Republic.
It originated from the Western portion of the Frankish empire, and consolidated significant power and influence over the next thousand years. Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King, developed a powerful state and legal theory of absolute monarchy. Eventually, the influences of the French Enlightenment, the growing costs of the American War of Independence that France partially supported, the rise of political awareness and the bourgeois need of political empowerment caused the French Revolution, as the Kingdom gave way to the similarly named constitutional Kingdom of France and then the French First Republic.
♦ “Marche Henri IV,” alternatively “Vive Henri IV” or “Vive le roi Henri” is a popular French song celebrating King Henri IV of France. Marche Henri IV was composed around 1590 and refers to the first Bourbon King of France, Henry IV (Henry III of Navarre), who had ended the wars of religion and restored peace to France.
Marche Henri IV was a common leitmotif for French royalty in several 19th century works, such as in Gioachino Rossini’s opera Il viaggio a Reims (in the finale, when Charles X is crowned).