Toulmin has described the assassination of the French King, Henry IV, also known as Henry Navarre, and its occurrence in the context of Europe’s struggle with Christendom having broken from one Universal (catholic) Church into two main religious camps, the Catholic and the Protestant, and of the policy of Henry IV to try to create the space in which both could exist at piece in the same polity.

The assassination stunned the people of France, except for a few fanatics bent on ridding the country of Protestants (and even likens the shock to how Americans reacted to the news of JFK’s assassination).

The Canons in the chapter house were unable to speak [Toulmin quotes from one source], some of them being full of tears and sobs, the rest gripped with depression. The people of Reims appeared pale, cast down, their expressions all changed, for, having lost the King, they reckoned that France itself was lost.

And he goes on to tell just how great the cost was:

“In practical terms, Henry’s murder carried to people in France and Europe the simple message, ‘A policy of religious tolerance was tried, and failed.’ For the next forty years, in all the major powers of Eurpoe, the tide flowed the other way. In England, Charles I wanted to arrange an accommodation between the Anglican Church and the Church of Rome, but most Anglicans were firmly anti-Papist and their views were shared by the Puritans and Presbyterians. In Spain and Austria, meanwhile, the Habsburgs, despite sizeable Protestant communities among their workers and craftsmen, as well as in the Czech nobility, were more and more committed to leading the Catholic cause. In fragmented Germany, political and religious rivalries persisted locally, ready to be aggravated by outside powers. Even in liberal Poland, to which Faustus Socinus had fled from Italy to set up an early Unitarian Church at Rakow, the King was persuaded to cancel the Protestants’ constitutional protection in the 1630s and reimpose Catholic domination. Then, only Holland survived as a haven of tolerance, to which Unitarians and other unpopular sects could retreat for protection.