Henri IV before Amiens

This anonymous painting, held at the Palace of Versailles, depicts **Henri IV** before the fortifications of **Amiens** in April 1597, at the very start of the siege he led to retake the city from the Spanish, who had seized it by ruse on 11 March of that year. The king is shown facing the town's bastion, in the sector where the parallel trenches and entrenchments were established that would, after more than five months of siege, force the surrender of the Spanish garrison on 25 September 1597. Produced in the years following the events, this work documents one of the last great military episodes of Henri IV's reconquest of the kingdom before the Peace of Vervins.