Chapter XIII: Part VI: After the Reformation (7)

On the 24th of October 1670, at the very time that these treaties were in progress, Charles opened parliament and obtained a vote of L800,000 on the plea of supporting the Triple Alliance. Parliament was prorogued in April 1671, not assembling again till February 1673, and on the 2nd of January 1672 was announced the "stop of the exchequer," or national bankruptcy, one of the most blameworthy and unscrupulous acts of the reign, by which the payments from the exchequer ceased, and large numbers of persons who had lent to the government were thus ruined. On the reassembling of parliament on the 4th of February 1673 a strong opposition was shown to the Cabal ministry which had been constituted at the end of 1672. The Dutch War, declared on the 17th of March 1672, though the commercial and naval jealousies of Holland had certainly not disappeared in England, was unpopular because of the alliance with France and the attack upon Protestantism, while the king's second declaration of indulgence (15th of March 1672) aroused still further antagonism, was declared illegal by the parliament, and was followed up by the Test Act, which obliged James and Clifford to resign their offices. In February 1674 the war with Holland was closed by the treaty of London or of Westminster, though Charles still gave Louis a free hand in his aggressive policy towards the Netherlands, and the Cabal was driven from office. Danby (afterwards duke of Leeds) now became chief minister; but, though in reality a strong supporter of the national policy, he could not hope to keep his place without acquiescence in the king's schemes. In November 1675 Charles again prorogued parliament, and did not summon it again till February 1677, when it was almost immediately prorogued. On the 17th of February 1676, with Danby's knowledge, Charles concluded a further treaty with Louis by which he undertook to subordinate entirely his foreign policy to that of France, and received an annual pension of L100,000. On the other hand, Danby succeeded in effecting the marriage (4th of November 1677) between William of Orange and the princess Mary, which proved the most important political event in the whole reign. Louis revenged himself by intriguing with the Opposition and by turning his streams of gold in that direction, and a further treaty with France for the annual payment to Charles of L300,000 and the dismissal of his parliament, concluded on the 17th of May 1678, was not executed. Louis made peace with Holland at Nijmwegen on the 10th of August, and punished Danby by disclosing his secret negotiations, thus causing the minister's fall and impeachment. To save Danby Charles now prorogued the parliament on the 30th of December, dissolving it on the 24th of January 1679.

Meanwhile the "Popish Plot," the creation of a band of impostors encouraged by Shaftesbury and the most violent and unscrupulous of the extreme Protestant party in order to exclude James from the throne, had thrown the whole country into a panic. Charles's conduct in this conjuncture was highly characteristic and was marked by his usual cynical selfishness. He carefully refrained from incurring suspicion and unpopularity by opposing the general outcry, and though he saw through the imposture from the beginning he made no attempt to moderate the popular frenzy or to save the life of any of the victims, his co-religionists, not even intervening in the case of Lord Stafford, and allowing Titus Oates to be lodged at Whitehall with a pension. His policy was to take advantage of the violence of the faction, to "give them line enough," to use his own words, to encourage it rather than repress it, with the expectation of procuring finally a strong royalist reaction. In his resistance to the great movement for the exclusion of James from the succession, Charles was aided by moderate men such as Halifax, who desired only a restriction of James's powers, and still more by the violence of the extreme exclusionists themselves, who headed by Shaftesbury brought about their own downfall and that of their cause by their support of the legitimacy and claims of Charles's natural son, the duke of Monmouth. In 1679 Charles denied, in council, his supposed marriage with Lucy Walter, Monmouth's mother, his declarations being published in 1680 to refute the legend of the black box which was supposed to contain the contract of marriage, and told Burnet he would rather see him hanged than legitimize him. He deprived him of his general's commission in consequence of his quasi-royal progresses about the country, and in December on Monmouth's return to England he was forbidden to appear at court. In February 1679 the king had consented to order James to go abroad, and even approved of the attempt of the primate and the bishop of Winchester to convert him to Protestantism. To weaken the opposition to his government Charles accepted Sir W Temple's new scheme of governing by a council which included the leaders of the Opposition, and which might have become a rival to the parliament, but this was an immediate failure. In May 1679 he prorogued the new parliament which had attainted Danby, and in July dissolved it, while in October he prorogued another parliament of the same mind till January and finally till October 1680, having resolved "to wait till this violence should wear off." He even made overtures to Shaftesbury in November 1679, but the latter insisted on the departure of both the queen and James. All attempts at compromise failed, and on the assembling of the parliament in October 1680 the Exclusion Bill passed the Commons, being, however, thrown out in the Lords through the influence of Halifax. Charles dissolved the parliament in January 1681, declaring that he would never give his consent to the Exclusion Bill, and summoned another at Oxford, which met there on the 21st of March 1681, Shaftesbury's faction arriving accompanied by armed bands. Charles expressed his willingness to consent to the handing over of the administration to the control of a Protestant, in the case of a Roman Catholic sovereign, but the Opposition insisted on Charles's nomination of Monmouth as his successor, and the parliament was accordingly once more (28th of March) dissolved by Charles, while a royal proclamation ordered to be read in all the churches proclaimed the ill-deeds of the parliament and the king's affection for the Protestant religion.

Charles's tenacity and clever tact were now rewarded. A great popular reaction ensued in favour of the monarchy, and a large number of loyal addresses were sent in, most of them condemning the Exclusion Bill. Shaftesbury was imprisoned, and though the Middlesex jury threw out his indictment and he was liberated, he never recovered his power, and in October 1682 left England for ever. The Exclusion Bill and the limitation of James's powers were no more heard of, and full liberty was granted to the king to pursue the retrograde and arbitrary policy to which his disposition naturally inclined. In Scotland James set up a tyrannical administration of the worst type. The royal enmity towards William of Orange was increased by a visit of the latter to England in July. No more parliaments were called, and Charles subsisted on his permanent revenue and his French pensions. He continued the policy of double-dealing and treachery, deceiving his ministers as at the treaty of Dover, by pretending to support Holland and Spain while he was secretly engaged to Louis to betray them. On the 22nd of March 1681 he entered into a compact with Louis whereby he undertook to desert his allies and offer no resistance to French aggressions. In August he joined with Spain and Holland in a manifesto against France, while secretly for a million livres he engaged himself to Louis, and in 1682 he proposed himself as arbitrator with the intention of treacherously handing over Luxemburg to France, an offer which was rejected owing to Spanish suspicions of collusion. In the event, Charles's duplicity enabled Louis to seize Strassburg in 1681 and Luxemburg in 1684. The government at home was carried on principally by Rochester, Sunderland and Godolphin, while Guilford was lord chancellor and Jeffreys lord chief justice. The laws against the Nonconformists were strictly enforced. In order to obtain servile parliaments and also obsequious juries, who with the co-operation of judges of the stamp of Jeffreys could be depended upon to carry out the wishes of the court, the borough charters were confiscated, the charter of the city of London being forfeited on the 12th of June 1683.

The popularity of Charles, now greatly increased, was raised to national enthusiasm by the discovery of the Rye House plot in 1683, said to be a scheme to assassinate Charles and James at an isolated house on the high road near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire as they returned from Newmarket to London, among those implicated being Algernon Sidney, Lord Russell and Monmouth, the two former paying the death penalty and Monmouth being finally banished to the Hague. The administration became more and more despotic, and Tangier was abandoned in order to reduce expenses and to increase the forces at home for overawing opposition. The first preliminary steps were now taken for the reintroduction of the Roman Catholic religion. Danby and those confined on account of participation in the popish plot were liberated, and Titus Oates thrown into prison. A scheme was announced for withdrawing the control of the army in Ireland from Rochester, the lord-lieutenant, and placing it in the king's own hands, and the commission to which the king had delegated ecclesiastical patronage was revoked. In May 1684 the office of lord high admiral, in spite of the Test Act, was again given to James, who had now returned from Scotland. To all appearances the same policy afterwards pursued so recklessly and disastrously by James was now cautiously initiated by Charles, who, however, not being inspired by the same religious zeal as his brother, and not desiring "to go on his travels again," would probably have drawn back prudently before his throne was endangered. The developments of this movement were, however, now interrupted by the death of Charles after a short illness on the 6th of February 1685. He was buried on the 17th in Henry VII.'s chapel in Westminster Abbey with funeral ceremonies criticized by contemporaries as mean and wanting in respect, but the scantiness of which was probably owing to the fact that he had died a Roman Catholic.

On his death-bed Charles had at length declared himself an adherent of that religion and had received the last rites according to the Romanist usage. There appears to be no trustworthy record of his formal conversion, assigned to various times and various agencies. As a youth, says Clarendon, "the ill-bred familiarity of the Scotch divines had given him a distaste" for Presbyterianism, which he indeed declared "no religion for gentlemen," and the mean figure which the fallen national church made in exile repelled him at the same time that he was attracted by the "genteel part of the Catholic religion." With Charles religion was not the serious matter it was with James, and was largely regarded from the political aspect and from that of ease and personal convenience. Presbyterianism constituted a dangerous encroachment on the royal prerogative; the national church and the cavalier party were indeed the natural supporters of the authority of the crown, but on the other hand they refused to countenance the dependence upon France; Roman Catholicism at that moment was the obvious medium of governing without parliaments, of French pensions and of reigning without trouble, and was naturally the faith of Charles's choice. Of the two papers in defence of the Roman Catholic religion in Charles's own hand, published by James, Halifax says "though neither his temper nor education made him very fit to be an author, yet in this case ... he might write it all himself and yet not one word of it his own...."

Of his amours and mistresses the same shrewd observer of human character, who was also well acquainted with the king, declares "that his inclinations to love were the effects of health and a good constitution with as little mixture of the _seraphic_ part as ever man had.... I am apt to think his stayed as much as any man's ever did in the _lower_ region." His health was the one subject to which he gave unremitting attention, and his fine constitution and devotion to all kinds of sport and physical exercise kept off the effects of uncontrolled debauchery for thirty years. In later years the society of his mistresses seems to have been chiefly acceptable as a means to avoid business and petitioners, and in the case of the duchess of Portsmouth was the price paid for ease and the continuance of the French pensions. His ministers he never scrupled to sacrifice to his ease. The love of ease exercised an entire sovereignty in his thoughts. "The motive of his giving bounties was rather to make men less uneasy to him than more easy to themselves." He would rob his own treasury and take bribes to press a measure through the council. He had a natural affability, but too general to be much valued, and he was fickle and deceitful. Neither gratitude nor revenge moved him, and good or ill services left little impression on his mind. Halifax, however, concludes by desiring to moderate the roughness of his picture by emphasizing the excellence of his intellect and memory and his mechanical talent, by deprecating a too censorious judgment and by dwelling upon the disadvantages of his bringing up, the difficulties and temptations of his position, and on the fact that his vices were those common to human frailty. His capacity for king-craft, knowledge of the world, and easy address enabled him to surmount difficulties and dangers which would have proved fatal to his father or to his brother. "It was a common saying that he could send away a person better pleased at receiving nothing than those in the good king his father's time that had requests granted them,"[1] and his good-humoured tact and familiarity compensated for and concealed his ingratitude and perfidy and preserved his popularity. He had good taste in art and literature, was fond of chemistry and science, and the Royal Society was founded in his reign. According to Evelyn he was "debonnaire and easy of access, naturally kind-hearted and possessed an excellent temper," virtues which covered a multitude of sins.

These small traits of amiability, however, which pleased his contemporaries, cannot disguise for us the broad lines of Charles's career and character. How far the extraordinary corruption of private morals which has gained for the restoration period so unenviable a notoriety was owing to the king's own example of flagrant debauchery, how far to the natural reaction from an artificial Puritanism, is uncertain, but it is incontestable that Charles's cynical selfishness was the chief cause of the degradation of public life which marks his reign, and of the disgraceful and unscrupulous betrayal of the national interests which raised France to a threatening predominance and imperilled the very existence of Britain for generations. The reign of his predecessor Charles I., and even of that of his successor James II., with their mistaken principles and ideals, have a saving dignity wholly wanting in that of Charles II., and the administration of Cromwell, in spite of the popularity of the restoration, was soon regretted. "A lazy Prince," writes Pepys, "no Council, no money, no reputation at home or abroad. It is strange how ... everybody do nowadays reflect upon Oliver and commend him, what brave things he did and made all the neighbour princes fear him; while here a prince, come in with all the love and prayers and good liking of his people ... hath lost all so soon...."

Charles II. had no children by his queen. By his numerous mistresses he had a large illegitimate progeny. By Barbara Villiers, Mrs Palmer, afterwards countess of Castlemaine and duchess of Cleveland, mistress _en titre_ till she was superseded by the duchess of Portsmouth, he had Charles Fitzroy, duke of Southampton and Cleveland, Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton, George Fitzroy, duke of Northumberland, Anne, countess of Sussex, Charlotte, countess of Lichfield, and Barbara, a nun; by Louise de Keroualle, duchess of Portsmouth, Charles Lennox, duke of Richmond; by Lucy Walter, James, duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch, and a daughter; by Nell Gwyn, Charles Beauclerk, duke of St Albans, and James Beauclerk; by Catherine Peg, Charles Fitz Charles, earl of Plymouth; by Lady Shannon, Charlotte, countess of Yarmouth; by Mary Davis, Mary Tudor, countess of Derwentwater.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See the article in the _Dict, of Nat. Biog._ by A.W.
Ward (1887), with authorities there given; _Charles II._, by O. Airy
(1904); _Life of Sir G. Savile_, by H.C. Foxcroft, and esp. Halifax's
_Character of Charles II._ printed in the appendix (1898); _The Essex
Papers_ (Camden Soc., 1890); _Despatches of W. Perwich_ (Royal Hist.
Soc. Pubtns., 1903); _History of England, of the Civil War_ and _of
the Commonwealth_, by S.R. Gardiner; _Hist. of Scotland_, by A. Lang,
vol. iii. (1904); Macaulay's _Hist, of England_, vol. i.; _Notes which
passed at Meetings of the Privy Council between Charles II. and the
Earl of Clarendon_ (Roxburghe Club, 1896); _A French Ambassador at the
Court of Charles II._, by J.J. Jusserand (1902); _The Story of Nell
Gwyn and the Sayings of Charles II._, by P. Cunningham, ed. by H.B.
Wheatley (1892); for his adventures and period of exile see _Memoiren
der Herzogin Sophie_, ed. by A. Kocher (1879); "Briefe der Elisabeth
Stuart," by A. Wendland (_Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart_, No.
228); Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Mlle de Montpensier and Mme de
Motteville; _The King in Exile_, by E. Scott (1905); Scottish History
Pubtns. vols. 17 (_Charles II. in Scotland_, by S.R. Gardiner, 1894)
and 18 (_Scotland and the Commonwealth, 1651-1653_, ed. by C.H. Firth,
1895); _Charles II. in the Channel Islands_, by S.E. Hoskins (1854) i
_Boscobel_, by T. Blount, &c., ed. by C.G. Thomas (1894); _The Flight
of the King_ (1897) and _After Worcester Fight_ (1904), by A. Fea;
_Edinburgh Review_, (January 1894); _Eng. Hist. Rev._ xix. (1904) 363;
_Revue historique_, xxviii. and xxix.; _Art Journal_ (1889), p. 178
("Boscobel and Whiteladies," by J. Penderel-Brodhurst); _England under
Charles II._, by W.F. Taylor (1889), a collection of passages from
contemporary writers; and R. Crawfurd, _The Last Days of Charles II._
(1909). (P. C. Y.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _Mem. of Thomas, earl of Ailesbury_, p. 95.

CHARLES I. and II., kings of France. By the French, Charles the Great, Roman emperor and king of the Franks, is reckoned the first of the series of French kings named Charles (see CHARLEMAGNE). Similarly the emperor Charles II. the Bald (q.v.) is reckoned as Charles II. of France. In some enumerations the emperor Charles III. the Fat (q.v.) is reckoned as Charles II. of France, Charlemagne not being included in the list, and Charles the Bald being styled Charles I.

CHARLES III., the Simple (879-929), king of France, was a posthumous son of Louis the Stammerer and of his second wife Adelaide. On the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887 he was excluded from the throne by his youth; but during the reign of Odo, who had succeeded Charles, he succeeded in gaining the recognition of a certain number of notables and in securing his coronation at Reims on the 28th of January 893. He now obtained the alliance of the emperor, and forced Odo to cede part of Neustria. In 898, by the death of his rival (Jan. 1), he obtained possession of the whole kingdom. His most important act was the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte with the Normans in 911. Some of them were baptized; the territory which was afterwards known as the duchy of Normandy was ceded to them; but the story of the marriage of their chief Rollo with a sister of the king, related by the chronicler Dudo of Saint Quentin, is very doubtful. The same year Charles, on the invitation of the barons, took possession of the kingdom of Lotharingia. In 920 the barons, jealous of the growth of the royal authority and discontented with the favour shown by the king to his counsellor Hagano, rebelled, and in 922 elected Robert, brother of King Odo, in place of Charles. Robert was killed in the battle of Soissons, but the victory remained with his party, who elected Rudolph, duke of Burgundy, king. In his extremity Charles trusted himself to Herbert, count of Vermandois, who deceived him, and threw him into confinement at Chateau-Thierry and afterwards at Peronne. In the latter town he died on the 7th of October 929. In 907 he had married Frederona, sister of Bovo, bishop of Chalons. After her death he married Eadgyfu (Odgiva), daughter of Edward the Elder, king of the English, who was the mother of Louis IV.

See A. Eckel, _Charles le Simple_ (Paris, 1899).

CHARLES IV. (1294-1328), king of France, called THE FAIR, was the third and youngest son of Philip IV. and Jeanne of Navarre. In 1316 he was created count of La Marche, and succeeded his brother Philip V. as king of France and Navarre early in 1322. He followed the policy of his predecessors in enforcing the royal authority over the nobles, but the machinery of a centralized government strong enough to hold nobility in check increased the royal expenditure, to meet which Charles had recourse to doubtful financial expedients. At the beginning of his reign he ordered a recast of the coinage, with serious results to commerce; civil officials were deprived of offices, which had been conferred free, but were now put up to auction; duties were imposed on exported merchandise and on goods brought into Paris; the practice of exacting heavy fines was encouraged by making the salaries of the magistrates dependent on them; and on the pretext of a crusade to free Armenia from the Turks, Charles obtained from the pope a tithe levied on the clergy, the proceeds of which he kept for his own use; he also confiscated the property of the Lombard bankers who had been invited to France by his father at a time of financial crisis. The history of the assemblies summoned by Charles IV. is obscure, but in 1326, on the outbreak of war with England, an assembly of prelates and barons met at Meaux. Commissioners were afterwards despatched to the provinces to state the position of affairs and to receive complaints. The king justified his failure to summon the estates on the ground of the expense incurred by provincial deputies. The external politics of his reign were not marked by any striking events. He maintained excellent relations with Pope John XXII., who made overtures to him, indirectly, offering his support in case of his candidature for the imperial crown. Charles tried to form a party in Italy in support of the pope against the emperor Louis IV. of Bavaria, but failed. A treaty with the English which secured the district of Agenais for France was followed by a feudal war in Guienne. Isabella, Charles's sister and the wife of Edward II., was sent to France to negotiate, and with her brother's help arranged the final conspiracy against her husband. Charles's first wife was Blanche, daughter of Otto IV., count of Burgundy, and of Matilda (Mahaut), countess of Artois, to whom he was married in 1307. In May 1314, by order of King Philip IV., she was arrested and imprisoned in the Chateau-Gaillard with her sister-in-law Marguerite, daughter of Robert II., duke of Burgundy, and wife of Louis Hutin, on the charge of adultery with two gentlemen of the royal household, Philippe and Gautier d'Aunai. Jeanne, sister of Marguerite and wife of Philip the Tall, was also arrested for not having denounced the culprits, and imprisoned at Dourdan. The two knights were put to the torture and executed, and their goods confiscated. It is impossible to say how far the charges were true. Tradition has involved and obscured the story, which is the origin of the legend of the _tour de Nesle_ made famous by the drama of A. Dumas the elder. Marguerite died shortly in prison; Jeanne was declared innocent by the parlement and returned to her husband. Blanche was still in prison when Charles became king. He induced Pope John XXII. to declare the marriage null, on the ground that Blanche's mother had been his godmother. Blanche died in 1326, still in confinement, though at the last in the abbey of Maubuisson.

In 1322, freed from his first marriage, Charles married his cousin Mary of Luxemburg, daughter of the emperor Henry VII., and upon her death, two years later, Jeanne, daughter of Louis, count of Evreux. Charles IV. died at Vincennes on the 1st of February 1328. He left no issue by his first two wives to succeed him, and daughters only by Jeanne of Evreux. He was the last of the direct line of Capetians.

See A. d'Herbomey, "Notes et documents pour servir a l'histoire des
rois fils de Philippe le Bel," in _Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes_ (lix.
pp. 479 seq. and 689 seq.); de Brequigny, "Memoire sur les differends
entre la France et l'Angleterre sous le regne de Charles le Bel," in
_Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions_ (xli. pp. 641-692); H. Lot,
"Projets de crusade sous Charles le Bel et sous Philippe de Valois"
(_Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes_, xx. pp. 503-509); "Chronique
parisienne anonyme de 1316 a 1339 ..." ed. Hellot in _Mem. de la soc.
de l'hist. de Paris_ (xi., 1884, pp. 1-207).

CHARLES V. (1337-1380), king of France, called THE WISE, was born at the chateau of Vincennes on the 21st of January 1337, the son of John II. and Bonne of Luxemburg. In 1349 he became dauphin of the Viennois by purchase from Humbert II., and in 1355 he was created duke of Normandy. At the battle of Poitiers (1356) his father ordered him to leave the field when the battle turned against the French, and he was thus saved from the imprisonment that overtook his father. After arranging for the government of Normandy he proceeded to Paris, where he took the title of lieutenant of the kingdom. During the years of John II.'s imprisonment in England Charles was virtually king of France. He summoned the states-general of northern France (Langue d'oil) to Paris in October 1356 to obtain men and money to carry on the war. But under the leadership of Etienne Marcel, provost of the Parisian merchants and president of the third estate, and Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, president of the clergy, a partisan of Charles of Navarre, the states refused any "aid" except on conditions which Charles declined to accept. They demanded the dismissal of a number of the royal ministers; the establishment of a commission elected from the three estates to regulate the dauphin's administration, and of another board to act as council of war; also the release of Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, who had been imprisoned by King John. The estates of Languedoc, summoned to Toulouse, also made protests against misgovernment, but they agreed to raise a war-levy on terms to which the dauphin acceded. Charles sought the alliance of his uncle, the emperor Charles IV., to whom he did homage at Metz as dauphin of the Viennois, and he was also made imperial vicar of Dauphine, thus acknowledging the imperial jurisdiction. But he gained small material advantage from these proceedings. The states-general were again convoked in February 1357. Their demands were more moderate than in the preceding year, but they nominated members to replace certain obnoxious persons on the royal council, demanded the right to assemble without the royal summons, and certain administrative reforms. In return they promised to raise and finance an army of 30,000 men, but the money--a tithe levied on the annual revenues of the clergy and nobility--voted for this object was not to pass through the dauphin's hands. Charles appeared to consent, but the agreement was annulled by letters from King John, announcing at the same time the conclusion of a two years' truce, and the reformers failed to secure their ends. Charles had escaped from their power by leaving Paris, but he returned for a new meeting of the estates in the autumn of 1357.

Meanwhile Charles of Navarre had been released by his partisans, and allying himself with Marcel had become a popular hero in Paris. The dauphin was obliged to receive him and to undergo an apparent reconciliation. In Paris Etienne Marcel was supreme. He forced his way into the dauphin's palace (February 1358), and Charles's servant, Jean de Conflans, marshal of Champagne, and Robert de Clermont, marshal of Normandy, were murdered before his eyes. Charles was powerless openly to resent these outrages, but he obtained from the provincial assemblies the money refused him by the states-general, and deferred his vengeance until the dissensions of his enemies should offer him an opportunity. Charles of Navarre, now in league with the English and master of lower Normandy and of the approaches to Paris, returned to the immediate neighbourhood of the city, and Marcel found himself driven to avowed co-operation with the dauphin's enemies, the English and the Navarrese. Charles had been compelled in March to take the title of regent to prevent the possibility of further intervention from King John. In defiance of a recent ordinance prohibiting provincial assemblies, he presided over the estates of Picardy and Artois, and then over those of Champagne. The states-general of 1358 were summoned to Compiegne instead of Paris, and granted a large aid. The condition of northern France was rendered more desperate by the outbreak (May-June 1358) of the peasant revolt known as the Jacquerie, which was repressed with a barbarity far exceeding the excesses of the rebels. Within the walls of Paris Jean Maillart had formed a royalist party; Marcel was assassinated (31st July 1358), and the dauphin entered Paris in the following month. A reaction in Charles's favour had set in, and from the estates of 1359 he regained the authority he had lost. It was with their full concurrence that he restored their honours to the officials who had been dismissed by the estates of 1356 and 1357. They supported him in repudiating the treaty of London (1359), which King John had signed in anxiety for his personal freedom, and voted money unconditionally for the continuation of the war. From this time the estates were only once convoked by Charles, who contented himself thenceforward by appeals to the assembly of notables or to the provincial bodies. Charles of Navarre was now at open war with the regent; Edward III. landed at Calais in October; and a great part of the country was exposed to double depredations from the English and the Navarrese troops. In the scarcity of money Charles had recourse to the debasement of the coinage, which suffered no less than twenty-two variations in the two years before the treaty of Bretigny. This disastrous financial expedient was made good later, the coinage being established on a firm basis during the last sixteen years of Charles's reign in accordance with the principles of Nicolas Oresme. On the conclusion of peace King John was restored to France, but, being unable to raise his ransom, he returned in 1364 to England, where he died in April, leaving the crown to Charles, who was crowned at Reims on the 19th of May.

The new king found an able servant in Bertrand du Guesclin, who won a victory over the Navarrese troops at Cocherel and took prisoner their best general, Jean de Grailli, captal of Buch. The establishment of Charles's brother, Philip the Bold, in the duchy of Burgundy, though it constituted in the event a serious menace to the monarchy, put an end to the king of Navarre's ambitions in that direction. A treaty of peace between the two kings was signed in 1365, by which Charles of Navarre gave up Mantes, Meulan and the county of Longueville in exchange for Montpellier. Negotiations were renewed in 1370 when Charles of Navarre did homage for his French possessions, though he was then considering an offensive and defensive alliance with Edward III. Du Guesclin undertook to free France from the depredations of the "free companies," mercenary soldiers put out of employment by the cessation of the war. An attempt to send them on a crusade against the Turks failed, and Du Guesclin led them to Spain to put Henry of Trastamara on the throne of Castile. By the marriage of his brother Philip the Bold with Margaret of Flanders, Charles detached the Flemings from the English alliance, and as soon as he had restored something like order in the internal affairs of the kingdom he provoked a quarrel with the English. The text of the treaty of Bretigny presented technical difficulties of which Charles was not slow to avail himself. The English power in Guienne was weakened by the disastrous Spanish expedition of the Black Prince, whom Charles summoned before the parlement of Paris in January 1369 to answer the charges preferred against him by his subjects, thus expressly repudiating the English supremacy in Guienne. War was renewed in May after a meeting of the states-general. Between 1371 and 1373 Poitou and Saintonge were reconquered by Du Guesclin, and soon the English had to abandon all their territory north of the Garonne. John IV. of Brittany (Jean de Montfort) had won his duchy with English help by the defeat of Charles of Blois, the French nominee, at Auray in 1364. His sympathies remained English, but he was now (1373) obliged to take refuge in England, and later in Flanders, while the English only retained a footing in two or three coast towns. Charles's generals avoided pitched battles, and contented themselves with defensive and guerrilla tactics, with the result that in 1380 only Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest and Calais were still in English hands.

Charles had in 1378 obtained proof of Charles of Navarre's treasonable designs. He seized the Norman towns held by the Navarrese, while Henry of Trastamara invaded Navarre, and imposed conditions of peace which rendered his lifelong enemy at last powerless. A premature attempt to amalgamate the duchy of Brittany with the French crown failed. Charles summoned the duke to Paris in 1378, and on his non-appearance committed one of his rare errors of policy by confiscating his duchy. But the Bretons rose to defend their independence, and recalled their duke. The matter was still unsettled when Charles died at Vincennes on the 16th of September 1380. His health, always delicate, had been further weakened, according to popular report, by a slow poison prepared for him by the king of Navarre. His wife, Jeanne of Bourbon, died in 1378, and the succession devolved on their elder son Charles, a boy of twelve. Their younger son was Louis, duke of Orleans.

Personally Charles was no soldier. He owed the signal successes of his reign partly to his skilful choice of advisers and administrators, to his chancellors Jean and Guillaume de Dormans and Pierre d'Orgemont, to Hugues Aubriot, provost of Paris, Bureau de la Riviere and others; partly to a singular coolness and subtlety in the exercise of a not over-scrupulous diplomacy, which made him a dangerous enemy. He had learnt prudence and self-restraint in the troubled times of the regency, and did not lose his moderation in success. He modelled his private life on that of his predecessor Saint Louis, but was no fanatic in religion, for he refused his support to the violent methods of the Inquisition in southern France, and allowed the Jews to return to the country, at the same time confirming their privileges. His support of the schismatic pope Clement VII. at Avignon was doubtless due to political considerations, as favouring the independence of the Gallican church. Charles V. was a student of astrology, medicine, law and philosophy, and collected a large and valuable library at the Louvre. He gathered round him a group of distinguished writers and thinkers, among whom were Raoul de Presles, Philippe de Mezieres, Nicolas Oresme and others. The ideas of these men were applied by him to the practical work of administration, though he confined himself chiefly to the consolidation and improvement of existing institutions. The power of the nobility was lessened by restrictions which, without prohibiting private wars, made them practically impossible. The feudal fortresses were regularly inspected by the central authority, and the nobles themselves became in many cases paid officers of the king. Charles established a merchant marine and a formidable navy, which under Jean de Vienne threatened the English coast between 1377 and 1380. The states-general were silenced and the royal prerogative increased; the royal domains were extended, and the wealth of the crown was augmented; additions were made to the revenue by the sale of municipal charters and patents; and taxation became heavier, since Charles set no limits to the gratification of his tastes either in the collection of jewels and precious objects, of books, or of his love of building, examples of which are the renovation of the Louvre and the erection of the palace of Saint Paul in Paris.

See the chronicles of Froissart, and of Pierre d'Orgemont (_Grandes
Chroniques de Saint Denis_, Paris, vol. vi, 1838); Christine de Pisan,
_Le Livre des fais et bonnes moeurs du sage roy Charles V_, written in
1404, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat, vol. ii. (1836); L. Delisle,
_Mandements et actes divers de Charles V_ (1886); letters of Charles
V. from the English archives in Champollion-Figeac, _Lettres de rois
et de reines_, ii. pp. 167 seq.; the anonymous _Songe du vergier_ or
_Somnium viridarii_, written in 1376 and giving the political ideas of
Charles V. and his advisers; "Relation de la mort de Charles V" in
Haureau, _Notices et extraits_, xxxi. pp. 278-284; Ch. Benoist, _La
Politique du roi Charles V_ (1874); S. Luce, _La France pendant la
guerre de cent ans_; G. Clement Simon, _La Rupture du traite de
Bretigny_ (1898); A. Vuitry, _Etudes sur le regime financier de la
France_, vols. i. and ii. (1883); and R. Delachenal, _Histoire de
Charles V_ (Paris, 1908).

CHARLES VI. (1368-1422), king of France, son of Charles V. and Jeanne of Bourbon, was born in Paris on the 3rd of December 1368. He received the appanage of Dauphine at his birth, and was thus the first of the princes of France to bear the title of dauphin from infancy. Charles V. had entrusted his education to Philippe de Mezieres, and had fixed his majority at fourteen. He succeeded to the throne in 1380, at the age of twelve, and the royal authority was divided between his paternal uncles, Louis, duke of Anjou, John, duke of Berry, Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and his mother's brother, Louis II., duke of Bourbon. In accordance with an ordinance of the late king the duke of Anjou became regent, while the guardianship of the young king, together with the control of Paris and Normandy, passed to the dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon, who were to be assisted by certain of the councillors of Charles V. The duke of Berry, excluded by this arrangement, was compensated by the government of Languedoc and Guienne. Anjou held the regency for a few months only, until the king's coronation in November 1380. He enriched himself from the estate of Charles V. and by excessive exactions, before he set out in 1382 for Italy to effect the conquest of Naples. Considerable discontent existed in the south of France at the time of the death of Charles V., and when the duke of Anjou re-imposed certain taxes which the late king had remitted at the end of his reign, there were revolts at Puy and Montpellier. Paris, Rouen, the cities of Flanders, with Amiens, Orleans, Reims and other French towns, also rose (1382) in revolt against their masters. The _Maillotins_, as the Parisian insurgents were named from the weapon they used, gained the upper hand in Paris, and were able temporarily to make terms, but the commune of Rouen was abolished, and the _Tuchins_, as the marauders in Languedoc were called, were pitilessly hunted down. Charles VI. marched to the help of the count of Flanders against the insurgents headed by Philip van Artevelde, and gained a complete victory at Roosebeke (November 27th, 1382). Strengthened by this success the king, on his return to Paris in the following January, exacted vengeance on the citizens by fines, executions and the suppression of the privileges of the city. The help sent by the English to the Flemish cities resulted in a second Flemish campaign. In 1385 Jean de Vienne made an unsuccessful descent on the Scottish coast, and Charles equipped a fleet at Sluys for the invasion of England, but a series of delays ended in the destruction of the ships by the English.

In 1385 Charles VI. married Elizabeth, daughter of Stephen II., duke of Bavaria, her name being gallicized as Isabeau. Three years later, with the help of his brother, Louis of Orleans, duke of Touraine, he threw off the tutelage of his uncles, whom he replaced by Bureau de la Riviere and others among his father's counsellors, nicknamed by the royal princes the _marmousets_ because of their humble origin. Two years later he deprived the duke of Berry of the government of Languedoc. The opening years of Charles VI.'s effective rule promised well, but excess in gaiety of all kinds undermined his constitution, and in 1392 he had an attack of madness at Le Mans, when on his way to Brittany to force from John V. the surrender of his cousin Pierre de Craon, who had tried to assassinate the constable Olivier de Clisson in the streets of Paris. Other attacks followed, and it became evident that Charles was unable permanently to sustain the royal authority. Clisson, Bureau de la Riviere, Jean de Mercier, and the other _marmousets_ were driven from office, and the royal dukes regained their power. The rivalries between the most powerful of these--the duke of Burgundy, who during the king's attacks of madness practically ruled the country, and the duke of Orleans--were a constant menace to peace. In 1306 peace with England seemed assured by the marriage of Richard II. with Charles VI.'s daughter Isabella, but the Lancastrian revolution of 1399 destroyed the diplomatic advantages gained by this union. In France the country was disturbed by the papal schism. At an assembly of the clergy held in Paris in 1398 it was resolved to refuse to recognize the authority of Benedict XIII., who succeeded Clement VII. as schismatic pope at Avignon. The question became a party one; Benedict was supported by Louis of Orleans, while Philip the Bold and the university of Paris opposed him. Obedience to Benedict's authority was resumed in 1403, only to be withdrawn again in 1408, when the king declared himself the guardian and protector of the French church, which was indeed for a time self-governing. Edicts further extending the royal power in ecclesiastical affairs were even issued in 1418, after the schism was at an end.

The king's intelligence became yearly feebler, and in 1404 the death of Philip the Bold aggravated the position of affairs. The new duke, John the Fearless, did not immediately replace his father in general affairs, and the influence of the duke of Orleans increased. Queen Isabeau, who had generally supported the Burgundian party, was now practically separated from her husband, whose madness had become pronounced. She was replaced by a young Burgundian lady, Odette de Champdivers, called by her contemporaries _la petite reine_, who rescued the king from the state of neglect into which he had fallen. Isabeau of Bavaria was freely accused of intrigue with the duke of Orleans. She was from time to time regent of France, and as her policy was directed by personal considerations and by her love of splendour she further added to the general distress. The relations between John the Fearless and the duke of Orleans became more embittered, and on the 23rd of November 1407 Orleans was murdered in the streets of Paris at the instigation of his rival. The young duke Charles of Orleans married the daughter of the Gascon count Bernard VII. of Armagnac, and presently formed alliances with the dukes of Berry, Bourbon and Brittany, and others who formed the party known as the Armagnacs (see ARMAGNAC), against the Burgundians who had gained the upper hand in the royal council. In 1411 John the Fearless contracted an alliance with Henry IV. of England, and civil war began in the autumn, but in 1412 the Armagnacs in their turn sought English aid, and, by promising the sovereignty of Aquitaine to the English king, gave John the opportunity of posing as defender of France. In Paris the Burgundians were hand in hand with the corporation of the butchers, who were the leaders of the Parisian populace. The malcontents, who took their name from one of their number, Caboche, penetrated into the palace of the dauphin Louis, and demanded the surrender of the unpopular members of his household. A royal ordinance, promising reforms in administration, was promulgated on the 27th of May 1413, and some of the royal advisers were executed. The king and the dauphin, powerless in the hands of Duke John and the Parisians, appealed secretly to the Armagnac princes for deliverance. They entered Paris in September; the ordinance extracted by the Cabochiens was rescinded; and numbers of the insurgents were banished the city.

In the next year Henry V. of England, after concluding an alliance with Burgundy, resumed the pretensions of Edward III. to the crown of France, and in 1415 followed the disastrous battle of Agincourt. The two elder sons of Charles VI., Louis, duke of Guienne, and John, duke of Touraine, died in 1415 and 1417, and Charles, count of Ponthieu, became heir apparent. Paris was governed by Bernard of Armagnac, constable of France, who expelled all suspected of Burgundian sympathies and treated Paris like a conquered city. Queen Isabeau was imprisoned at Tours, but escaped to Burgundy. The capture of Paris by the Burgundians on the 20th of May 1418 was followed by a series of horrible massacres of the Armagnacs; and in July Duke John and Isabeau, who assumed the title of regent, entered Paris. Meanwhile Henry V. had completed the conquest of Normandy. The murder of John the Fearless in 1419 under the eyes of the dauphin Charles threw the Burgundians definitely into the arms of the English, and his successor Philip the Good, in concert with Queen Isabeau, concluded (1420) the treaty of Troyes with Henry V., who became master of France. Charles VI. had long been of no account in the government, and the state of neglect in which he existed at Senlis induced Henry V. to undertake the re-organization of his household. He came to Paris in September 1422, and died on the 21st of October.

The chief authorities for the reign of Charles VI. are:--_Chronica
Caroli VI._, written by a monk of Saint Denis, commissioned officially
to write the history of his time, edited by C. Bellaguet with a French
translation (6 vols., 1839-1852); Jean Juvenal des Ursins,
_Chronique_, printed by D. Godefroy in _Histoire de Charles VI_
(1653), chiefly an abridgment of the monk of St Denis's narrative; a
fragment of the _Grandes Chroniques de Saint Denis_ covering the years
1381 to 1383 (ed. J. Pichon 1864); correspondence of Charles VI.
printed by Champollion-Figeac in _Lettres de rois_, vol. ii.; _Choix
de pieces inedites rel. au regne de Charles VI_ (2 vols., 1863-1864),
edited by L. Douet d'Arcq for the Societe de l'Histoire de France; J.
Froissart, _Chroniques_; Enguerrand de Monstrelet, _Chroniques_,
covering the first half of the 15th century (Eng. trans., 4 vols.,
1809); _Chronique des quatre premiers Valois_, by an unknown author,
ed. S. Luce (1862). See also E. Lavisse, _Hist, de France_, iv. 267
seq.; E. Petit, "Sejours de Charles VI," _Bull. du com. des travaux
hist._ (1893); Vallet de Viriville, "Isabeau de Baviere," _Revue
francaise_ (1858-1859); M. Thibaut, _Isabeau de Baviere_ (1903).

CHARLES VII. (1403-1461), king of France, fifth son of Charles VI. and Isabeau of Bavaria, was born in Paris on the 22nd of February 1403. The count of Ponthieu, as he was called in his boyhood, was betrothed in 1413 to Mary of Anjou, daughter of Louis II., duke of Anjou and king of Sicily, and spent the next two years at the Angevin court. He received the duchy of Touraine in 1416, and in the next year the death of his brother John made him dauphin of France. He became lieutenant-general of the kingdom in 1417, and made active efforts to combat the complaisance of his mother. He assumed the title of regent in December 1418, but his authority in northern France was paralysed in 1419 by the murder of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, in his presence at Montereau. Although the deed was not apparently premeditated, as the English and Burgundians declared, it ruined Charles's cause for the time. He was disinherited by the treaty of Troyes in 1420, and at the time of his father's death in 1422 had retired to Mehun-sur-Yevre, near Bourges, which had been the nominal seat of government since 1418. He was recognized as king in Touraine, Berry and Poitou, in Languedoc and other provinces of southern France; but the English power in the north was presently increased by the provinces of Champagne and Maine, as the result of the victories of Crevant (1423) and Verneuil (1424). The Armagnac administrators who had been driven out of Paris by the duke of Bedford gathered round the young king, nicknamed the "king of Bourges," but he was weak in body and mind, and was under the domination of Jean Louvet and Tanguy du Chastel, the instigators of the murder of John the Fearless, and other discredited partisans. The power of these favourites was shaken by the influence of the queen's mother, Yolande of Aragon, duchess of Anjou. She sought the alliance of John V., duke of Brittany, who, however, vacillated throughout his life between the English and French alliance, concerned chiefly to maintain the independence of his duchy. His brother, Arthur of Brittany, earl of Richmond (comte de Richemont), was reconciled with the king, and became constable in 1425, with the avowed intention of making peace between Charles VII. and the duke of Burgundy. Richemont caused the assassination of Charles's favourites Pierre de Giac and Le Camus de Beaulieu, and imposed one of his own choosing, Georges de la Tremoille, an adventurer who rapidly usurped the constable's power. For five years (1427-1432) a private war between these two exhausted the Armagnac forces, and central France returned to anarchy.

Meanwhile Bedford had established settled government throughout the north of France, and in 1428 he advanced to the siege of Orleans. For the movement which was to lead to the deliverance of France from the English invaders, see JOAN OF ARC. The siege of Orleans was raised by her efforts on the 8th of May 1429, and two months later Charles VII. was crowned at Reims. Charles's intimate counsellors, La Tremoille and Regnault de Chartres, archbishop of Reims, saw their profits menaced by the triumphs of Joan of Arc, and accordingly the court put every difficulty in the way of her military career, and received the news of her capture before Compiegne (1430) with indifference. No measures were taken for her deliverance or her ransom, and Normandy and the Isle of France remained in English hands. Fifteen years of anarchy and civil war intervened before peace was restored. Bands of armed men fighting for their own hand traversed the country, and in the ten years between 1434 and 1444 the provinces were terrorized by these _ecorcheurs_, who, with the decline of discipline in the English army, were also recruited from the ranks of the invaders. The duke of Bedford died in 1435, and in the same year Philip the Good of Burgundy concluded a treaty with Charles VII. at Arras, after fruitless negotiations for an English treaty. From this time Charles's policy was strengthened. La Tremoille had been assassinated in 1433 by the constable's orders, with the connivance of Yolande of Aragon. For his former favourites were substituted energetic advisers, his brother-in-law Charles of Anjou, Dunois (the famous bastard of Orleans), Pierre de Breze, Richemont and others. Richemont entered Paris on the 13th of April 1436, and in the next five years the finance of the country was re-established on a settled basis. Charles himself commanded the troops who captured Pontoise in 1441, and in the next year he made a successful expedition in the south.