Part 380

Philip-le-Bel died in 1314. "With the accession of his son, Louis X., so well surnamed Hutin (disorder, tumult), comes a violent reaction of the feudal, local, provincial spirit, which seeks to dash in pieces the still feeble fabric of unity, demands dismemberment, and claims chaos. The Duke of Brittany arrogates the right of judgment without appeal; so does the exchequer of Rouen. Amiens will not have the king's sergeants subpœna before the barons, or his provosts remove any prisoner from the town's jurisdiction. Burgundy and Nevers require the king to respect the privileges of feudal justice. … The common demand of the barons is that the king shall renounce all intermeddling with their men. … The young monarch grants and signs all; there are only three points to which he demurs, and which he seeks to defer. The Burgundian barons contest with him the jurisdiction over the rivers, roads, and consecrated places. The nobles of Champagne doubt the king's right to lead them to war out of their own province. Those of Amiens, with true Picard impetuosity, require without any circumlocution, that all gentlemen may war upon each other, and not enter into securities, but ride, go, come, and be armed for war, and pay forfeit to one another. … The king's reply to these absurd and insolent demands is merely: 'We will order examination of the registers of my lord St. Louis, and give to the said nobles two trustworthy persons, to be nominated by our council, to verify and inquire diligently into the truth of the said article.' The reply was adroit enough. The general cry was for a return to the good customs of St. Louis: it being forgotten that St. Louis had done his utmost to put a stop to private wars. But by thus invoking the name of St. Louis, they meant to express their wish for the old feudal independence—for the opposite of the quasi-legal, the venal, and pettifogging government of Philippe-le-Bel. The barons set about destroying, bit by bit, all the changes introduced by the late king. But they could not believe him dead so long as there survived his Alter Ego, his mayor of the palace, Enguerrand de Marigny, who, in the latter years of his reign, had been coadjutor and rector of the kingdom, and who had allowed his statue to be raised in the palace by the side of the king's. His real name was Le Portier; but along with the estates he bought the name of Marigny. … It was in the Temple, in the very spot where Marigny had installed his master for the spoliation of the Templars, that the young king Louis repaired to hear the solemn accusation brought against him. His accuser was Philippe-le-Bel's brother, the violent Charles of Valois, a busy man, of mediocre abilities, who put himself at the head of the barons. … To effect his destruction, Charles of Valois had recourse to the grand accusation of the day, which none could surmount. {1167} It was discovered, or presumed, that Marigny's wife or sister, in order to effect his acquittal, or bewitch the king, had caused one Jacques de Lor to make certain small figures: 'The said Jacques, thrown into prison, hangs himself in despair, and then his wife, and Enguerrand's sisters are thrown into prison, and Enguerrand himself, condemned before the knights … is hung at Paris on the thieves' gibbet.' … Marigny's best vengeance was that the crown, so strong in his care, sank after him into the most deplorable weakness. Louis-le-Hutin, needing money for the Flemish war, treated as equal with equal, with the city of Paris. The nobles of Champagne and Picardy hastened to take advantage of the right of private war which they had just reacquired, and made war on the countess of Artois, without troubling themselves about the judgment rendered by the king, who had awarded this fief to her. All the barons had resumed the privilege of coining; Charles of Valois, the king's uncle, setting them the example. But instead of coining for their own domains only, conformably to the ordinances of Philippe-le-Hardi and Philippe-le-Bel, they minted coin by wholesale, and gave it currency throughout the kingdom. On this, the king had perforce to arouse himself, and return to the administration of Marigny and of Philippe-le-Bel. He denounced the coinage of the barons, (November the 19th, 1315;) ordained that it should pass current on their own lands only; and fixed the value of the royal coin relatively to thirteen different coinages, which thirty-one bishops or barons had the right of minting on their own territories. In St. Louis's time, eighty nobles had enjoyed this right. The young feudal king, humanized by the want of money, did not disdain to treat with serfs and with Jews. … It is curious to see the son of Philippe-le-Bel admitting serfs to liberty [see SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: FRANCE]; but it is trouble lost. The merchant vainly swells his voice and enlarges on the worth of his merchandise; the poor serfs will have none of it. Had they buried in the ground some bad piece of money, they took care not to dig it up to buy a bit of parchment. In vain does the king wax wroth at seeing them dull to the value of the boon offered. At last, he directs the commissioners deputed to superintend the enfranchisement, to value the property of such serfs as preferred 'remaining in the sorriness (chétiveté) of slavery,' and to tax them 'as sufficiently and to such extent as the condition and wealth of the individuals may conveniently allow, and as the necessity of our war requires.' But with all this it is a grand spectacle to see proclamation made from the throne itself of the imprescriptible right of every man to liberty. The serfs do not buy this right, but they will remember both the royal lesson, and the dangerous appeal to which it instigates against the barons. The short and obscure reign of Philippe-le-Long [Philip V., 1316-1322] is scarcely less important as regards the public law of France, than even that of Philippe-le-Bel. In the first place, his accession to the throne decides a great question. As Louis Hutin left his queen pregnant, his brother Philippe is regent and guardian of the future infant. This child dies soon after its birth, and Philippe proclaims himself king to the prejudice of a daughter of his brother's; a step which was the more surprising from the fact that Philippe-le-Bel had maintained the right of female succession in regard to Franche-Comté and Artois. The barons were desirous that daughters should be excluded from inheriting fiefs, but that they should succeed to the throne of France; and their chief, Charles of Valois, favored his grand-niece against his nephew Philippe. Philippe assembled the States, and gained his cause, which, at bottom, was good, by absurd reasons. He alleged in his favor the old German law of the Franks, which excluded daughters from the Salic land; and maintained that the crown of France was too noble a fief to fall into hands used to the distaff ('pour tomber en quenouille')—a feudal argument, the effect of which was to ruin feudality. … By thus rejecting the right of the daughters at the very moment it was gradually triumphing over the fiefs, the crown acquired its character of receiving always without ever giving; and a bold revocation, at this time, of an donations made since St. Louis's day, seems to contain the principle of the inalienableness of the royal domain. Unfortunately, the feudal spirit which resumed strength under the Valois in favor of private wars, led to fatal creations of appanages, and founded, to the advantage of the different branches of the royal family, a princely feudality as embarrassing to Charles VI. and Louis XI., as the other had been to Philippe-le-Bel. This contested succession and disaffection of the barons force Philippe-le-Long into the paths of Philippe-le-Bel. He flatters the cities, Paris, and, above all, the University,—the grand power of Paris. He causes his barons to take the oath of fidelity to him, in presence of the masters of the university, and with their approval. He wishes his good cities to be provided with armories; their citizens to keep their arms in a sure place; and appoints them a captain in each bailiwick or district, (March the 12th, 1316). … Praiseworthy beginnings of order and of government brought no relief to the sufferings of the people. During the reign of Louis Hutin, a horrible mortality had swept off, it was said, the third of the population of the North. The Flemish war had exhausted the last resources of the country. … Men's imaginations becoming excited, a great movement took place among the people. As in the days of St. Louis, a multitude of poor people, of peasants, of shepherds or pastoureaux, as they were called, flock together and say that they seek to go beyond the sea, that they are destined to recover the Holy Land. … They wended their way towards the South, everywhere massacring the Jews; whom the king's officers vainly tried to protect. At last, troops were got together at Toulouse, who fell upon the Pastoureaux, and hanging them up by twenties and thirties the rest dispersed. … Philippe-le-Long … was seized with fever in the course of the same year, (A. D. 1321,) in the month of August, without his physicians being able to guess its cause. He languished five months, and died. … His brother Charles [Charles IV., 1322-1328] succeeded him, without bestowing a thought more on the rights of Philippe's daughter; than Philippe had done to those of Louis's daughter. The period of Charles's reign is as barren of facts with regard to France, as it is rich in them respecting Germany, England, and Flanders. The Flemings imprison their count. The Germans are divided between Frederick of Austria and Lewis of Bavaria, who takes his rival prisoner at Muhldorf. In the midst of the universal divisions, France seems strong from the circumstance of its being one. Charles-le-Bel interferes in favor of the count of Flanders. {1168} He attempts, with the pope's aid, to make himself emperor; and his sister, Isabella, makes herself actual queen of England by the murder of Edward II. … Charles-le-Bel … died almost at the same time as Edward, leaving only a daughter; so that he was succeeded by a cousin of his. All that fine family of princes who had sat near their father at the Council of Vienne was extinct. In the popular belief, the curses of Boniface had taken effect. … This memorable epoch, which depresses England so low, and in proportion, raises France so high, presents, nevertheless, in the two countries two analogous events: In England, the barons have overthrown Edward II. In France, the feudal party places on the throne the feudal branch of the Valois."

_J. Michelet, History of France, books 5-6 (volume l)._

See, also, VALOIS, THE HOUSE OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1347. The king's control of the Papacy in its contest with the emperor.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328. The extent of the royal domain. The great vassals. The possessions of foreign princes in France.

On the accession of the House of Valois to the French throne, in the person of Philip VI. (A. D. 1328), the royal domain had acquired a great increase of extent. In the two centuries since Philip I. it had gained, "by conquest, by confiscation, or by inheritance, Berry, or the Viscounty of Bourges, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Valois, Vermandois, the counties of Auvergne, and Boulogne, a part of Champagne and Brie, Lyonnais, Angoumois, Marche, nearly the whole of Languedoc, and, lastly, the kingdom of Navarre, which belonging in her own right to queen Jeanne, mother of the last three Capetians [Jeanne, heiress of the kingdom of Navarre and of the counties of Champagne and Brie, was married to Philip IV., and was the mother of Louis X., Philip V. and Charles IV.], Charles IV. united with the crown. But the custom among the kings of giving apanages or estates to the princes of their house detached afresh from the domain a great part of the reunited territories, and created powerful princely houses, of which the chiefs often made themselves formidable to the monarchs. Among these great houses of the Capetian race, the most formidable were: the house of Burgundy, which traced back to king Robert; the house of Dreux, issue of a son of Louis the Big, and which added by a marriage the duchy of Brittany to the county of that name; the house of Anjou, issue of Charles, brother of Saint Louis, which was united in 1290 with that of Valois; the house of Bourbon, descending from Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth son of Saint Louis; and the house of Alençon, which traced back to Philip III., and possessed the duchy of Alençon and Perche. Besides these great princely houses of Capetian stock, which owed their grandeur and their origin to their apanages, there were many others which held considerable rank in France, and of which the possessions were transmissible to women; while the apanages were all masculine fiefs. The most powerful of these houses were those of Flanders, Penthièvre, Châtillon, Montmorency, Brienne, Coucy, Vendôme, Auvergne, Foix, and Armagnac. The vast possessions of the two last houses were in the country of the Langue d'Oc. The counts of Foix were also masters of Bearn, and those of Armagnac possessed Fezensac, Rouergue, and other large seigniories. Many foreign princes, besides, had possessions in France at the accession of the Valois. The king of England was lord of Ponthieu, of Aunis, of Saintonge, and of the duchy of Aquitaine; the king of Navarre was count of Evreux, and possessor of many other towns in Normandy; the king of Majorca was proprietor of the seigniory of Montpellier; the duke of Lorraine, vassal of the German empire, paid homage to the king of France for many fiefs that he held in Champagne; and, lastly, the Pope possessed the county Venaissin, detached from Provence."

_E. de Bonnechose, History of France, volume 1, page 224._

FRANCE: A. D. 1328. Accession of King Philip VI.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328. The splendor of the Monarchy on the eve of the calamitous wars.

"Indisputably, the king of France [Philip VI., or Philip de Valois] was at this moment [A. D. 1328] a great king. He had just reinstated Flanders in its state of dependence on him. The king of England had done him homage for his French provinces. His cousins reigned at Naples and in Hungary. He was protector of the king of Scotland. He was surrounded by a court of kings—by those of Navarre, Majorca, Bohemia; and the Scottish monarch was often one of the circle. The famous John of Bohemia, of the house of Luxembourg, and father to the emperor Charles IV., declared that he could not live out of Paris, 'the most chivalrous residence in the world.' He fluttered over all Europe, but ever returned to the court of the great king of France—where was kept up one constant festival, where jousts and tournaments ever went on, and the romances of chivalry, king Arthur and the round table, were realized."

_J. Michelet, History of France, book 6, chapter 1._

FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339. The claim of Edward III. of England to the French crown.

"History tells us that Philip, king of France, surnamed the Fair, had three sons, beside his beautiful daughter Isabella, married to the king of England [Edward II.]. These three sons were very handsome. The eldest, Lewis, king of Navarre during the lifetime of his father, was called Lewis Hutin [Louis X.]; the second was named Philip the Great, or the Long [Philip V.]; and the third, Charles [Charles IV.]. All these were kings of France, after their father Philip, by legitimate succession, one after the other, without having by marriage any male heirs; yet, on the death of the last king, Charles, the twelve peers and barons of France did not give the kingdom to Isabella, the sister, who was queen of England, because they said and maintained, and still do insist, that the kingdom of France is so noble that it ought not to go to a woman; consequently neither to Isabella, nor to her son, the king of England [Edward III.]; for they hold that the son of a woman cannot claim any right of succession, where that woman has none herself. For these reasons the twelve peers and barons of France unanimously gave the kingdom of France to the lord Philip of Valois, nephew to king Philip, and thus put aside the queen of England, who was sister to Charles, the late king of France, and her son. Thus, as it seemed to many people, the succession went out of the right line; which has been the occasion of the most destructive wars and devastations of countries, as well in France as elsewhere, as you will learn hereafter; the real object of this history being to relate the great enterprises and deeds of arms achieved in these wars, for from the time of good Charlemagne, king of France, never were such feats performed."

_J. Froissart, Chronicles (Johnes'), book 1, chapter 4._

[Images: Maps of France]

France in 1154 At the Accession of Henry II. (Anjou) Showing how he Acquired his fiefs in France.

Acquired By Henry From Matilda.

Acquired By Henry From His Father Goeffrey Of Anjou.

Acquired By Henry From His Wife Eleanor Of Aquitaine

French Crown Lands

Other Vassal Lands.

France in 1180 At The Accession Of Philip Augustus Showing The Lands Acquired By The Crown During His Reign.

Crown Lands At Accession Of Philip

Acquired During His Reign Form Angevins

Acquired During His Reign From Other Vassals

Angevin Lands (1223)

Other Vassal Lands

France at the death of Philip IV (The Fair) 1314

France at the Peace of Bretigny

End: Maps of France----------------

{1169}

"From the moment of Charles IV.'s death [A. D. 1328], Edward III. of England buoyed himself up with a notion of his title to the crown of France, in right of his mother Isabel, sister to the three last kings. We can have no hesitation in condemning the injustice of this pretension. Whether the Salic law were or were not valid, no advantage could be gained by Edward. Even if he could forget the express or tacit decision of all France, there stood in his way Jane, the daughter of Louis X., three [daughters] of Philip the Long, and one of Charles the Fair. Aware of this, Edward set up a distinction, that, although females were excluded from succession, the same rule did not apply to their male issue; and thus, though his mother Isabel could not herself become queen of France, she might transmit a title to him. But this was contrary to the commonest rules of inheritance; and if it could have been regarded at all, Jane had a son, afterwards the famous king of Navarre [Charles the Bad], who stood one degree nearer to the crown than Edward. It is asserted in some French authorities that Edward preferred a claim to the regency immediately after the decease of Charles the Fair, and that the States-General, or at least the peers of France, adjudged that dignity to Philip de Valois. Whether this be true or not, it is clear that he entertained projects of recovering his right as early, though his youth and the embarrassed circumstances of his government threw insuperable obstacles in the way of their execution. He did liege homage, therefore, to Philip for Guienne, and for several years, while the affairs of Scotland engrossed his attention, gave no signs of meditating a more magnificent enterprise. As he advanced in manhood, and felt the consciousness of his strength, his early designs grew mature, and produced a series of the most important and interesting revolutions in the fortunes of France."

_H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 1, part l._

See, also, SALIC LAW: APPLICATION TO THE REGAL SUCCESSION IN FRANCE.

FRANCE: A. D. 1337-1360. The beginning of the "Hundred Years War."

It was not until 1337 that Edward III. felt prepared to assert formally his claim to the French crown and to assume the title of King of France. In July of the following year he began undertakings to enforce his pretended right, by crossing with a considerable force to the continent. He wintered at Antwerp, concerting measures with the Flemings, who had espoused his cause, and arranging an alliance with the emperor-king of Germany, whose name bore more weight than his arms. In 1339 a formal declaration of hostilities was made and the long war—the Hundred Years War, as it has been called—of English kings for the sovereignty of France, began. "This great war may well be divided into five periods. The first ends with the Peace of Bretigny in 1360 (A. D. 1337-1360), and includes the great days of Crécy [1346] and Poitiers [1356], as well as the taking of Calais: the second runs to the death of Charles the Wise in 1380; these are the days of Du Guesclin and the English reverses: the third begins with the renewal of the war under Henry V. of England, and ends with the Regency of the Duke of Bedford at Paris, including the field of Azincourt [1415] and the Treaty of Troyes (A. D. 1415-1422): the fourth is the epoch of Jeanne Darc and ends with the second establishment of the English at Paris (A. D. 1428-1431): and the fifth and last runs on to the final expulsion of the English after the Battle of Castillon in 1453. Thus, though it is not uncommonly called the Hundred Years War, the struggle really extended over a period of a hundred and sixteen years."

_G. W. Kitchin, History of France, book 4, chapters 1-7._