Battle of Fontaine-Française

This anonymous painting, executed in the first quarter of the seventeenth century and held at the Musée national du château de Pau, depicts the **Battle of Fontaine-Française**, fought on 5 June 1595 in Burgundy, where **Henri IV** personally charged at the head of his cavalry to relieve Marshal Biron, encircled by the Spanish-League forces of Juan Fernández de Velasco and Mayenne. Painted close in time to the events, this work belongs to the generation of images produced during the king's own lifetime or shortly after his death, intended to celebrate a victory whose political significance far outweighed its tactical scale: it marked the end of the League as a serious military threat.