Charles IV (18/19 June 1294 – 1 February
1328), called the Fair (le Bel) in France
and the Bald (el Calvo) in Navarre, was the
fifteenth and last king of the direct line
of the House of Capet, King of France and
King of Navarre (as Charles I) from 1322 to
his death.
Charles was the third son of Philip IV; like
his father, he was known as "the fair" or
"the handsome".Beginning in 1323 Charles was
confronted with a peasant revolt in Flanders,
and in 1324 he made an unsuccessful bid to
be elected Holy Roman Emperor.
As Duke of Guyenne, King Edward II of England
was a vassal of Charles, but he was reluctant
to pay homage to another king.
In retaliation, Charles conquered the Duchy
of Guyenne in a conflict known as the War
of Saint-Sardos (1324).
In a peace agreement, Edward II accepted to
swear allegiance to Charles and to pay a fine.
In exchange, Guyenne was returned to Edward
but with a much-reduced territory.
When Charles IV died without a male heir,
the senior line of the House of Capet, descended
from Philip IV, became extinct.
He was succeeded in Navarre by his niece Joan
II and in France by his paternal first cousin
Philip of Valois.
However, the dispute on the succession to
the French throne between the Valois monarchs
descended in male line from Charles's grandfather
Philip III of France, and the English monarchs
descended from Charles's sister Isabella,
was a factor of the Hundred Years' War.
== Personality and marriage ==
By virtue of the birthright of his mother,
Joan I of Navarre, Charles claimed the title
Charles I, King of Navarre.
From 1314 to his accession to the throne,
he held the title of Count of La Marche and
was crowned King of France in 1322 at the
cathedral in Reims.
Unlike Philip IV and Philip V, Charles is
reputed to have been a relatively conservative,
"strait-laced" king – he was "inclined to
forms and stiff-necked in defence of his prerogatives",
while disinclined either to manipulate them
to his own ends or achieve wider reform.
Charles married his first wife, Blanche of
Burgundy, the daughter of Otto IV, Count of
Burgundy, in 1308, but Blanche was caught
up in the Tour de Nesle scandals of 1314 and
imprisoned.
After Charles assumed the throne he refused
to release Blanche, their marriage was annulled,
and Blanche retreated to a nunnery.
His second wife, Marie of Luxembourg, the
daughter of Henry VII, the Holy Roman Emperor,
died following a premature birth.Charles married
again in 1325, this time to Jeanne d'Évreux:
she was his first cousin, and the marriage
required approval from Pope John XXII.
Jeanne was crowned queen in 1326, in one of
the better recorded French coronation ceremonies.
The ceremony represented a combination of
a political statement, social event, and an
"expensive fashion statement"; the cost of
food, furs, velvets, and jewellery for the
event was so expensive that negotiations over
the cost were still ongoing in 1329.
The coronation was also the first appearance
of the latterly famous medieval cook, Guillaume
Tirel, then only a junior servant.During the
first half of his reign Charles relied heavily
on his uncle, Charles of Valois, for advice
and to undertake key military tasks.
Charles of Valois was a powerful magnate in
his own right, a key advisor to Louis X, and
he had made a bid for the regency in 1316,
initially championing Louis X's daughter Joan,
before finally switching sides and backing
Philip V. Charles of Valois would have been
aware that if Charles died without male heirs,
he and his male heirs would have a good claim
to the crown.
== Domestic policy ==
Charles came to power following a troublesome
two years in the south of France, where local
nobles had resisted his elder brother Philip
V's plans for fiscal reform, and where his
brother had fallen fatally ill during his
progress of the region.
Charles undertook rapid steps to assert his
own control, executing the Count of L'Isle-Jourdain,
a troublesome southern noble, and making his
own royal progress.
Charles, a relatively well educated king,
also founded a famous library at Fontainebleau.During
his six-year reign Charles' administration
became increasingly unpopular.
He debased the coinage to his own benefit,
sold offices, increased taxation, exacted
burdensome duties, and confiscated estates
from enemies or those he disliked.
He was also closely involved in Jewish issues
during the period.
Charles' father, Philip IV, had confiscated
the estates of numerous Jews in 1306, and
Charles took vigorous, but unpopular, steps
to call in Christian debts to these accounts.
Following the 1321 leper scare, in which numerous
Jews had been fined for their alleged involvement
in a conspiracy to poison wells across France
through local lepers, and Charles worked hard
to execute these fines.
Finally, Charles at least acquiesced, or at
worst actively ordered, in the expulsion of
many Jews from France following the leper
scare.
== Foreign policy ==
=== 
Charles and England ===
Charles inherited a long-running period of
tension between England and France.
Edward II, King of England, as Duke of Aquitaine,
owed homage to the King of France, but he
had successfully avoided paying homage under
Charles' older brother Louis X, and had only
paid homage to Philip V under great pressure.
Once Charles took up the throne, Edward attempted
to avoid payment again.
One of the elements in the disputes was the
border province of Agenais, part of Gascony
and in turn part of Aquitaine.
Tensions rose in November 1323 after the construction
of a bastide, a type of fortified town, in
Saint-Sardos, part of the Agenais, by a French
vassal.
Gascon forces destroyed the bastide, and in
turn Charles attacked the English-held Montpezat:
the assault was unsuccessful, but in the subsequent
War of Saint-Sardos Charles' trusted uncle
and advisor, Charles of Valois, successfully
wrested control of Aquitaine from the English;
by 1324, Charles had declared Edward's lands
forfeit and had occupied the whole of Aquitaine
apart from the coastal areas.
Charles's sister Isabella was married to King
Edward and was sent to France in 1325 with
the official mission of negotiating peace
with her brother; unofficially, some chroniclers
suggested that she was also evading Hugh Despenser
the elder and Hugh the younger, her political
enemies in England.
Charles had sent a message through Pope John
XXII to Edward suggesting that he was willing
to reverse the forfeiture of the lands if
Edward ceded the Agenais and paid homage for
the rest of the lands.
The Pope in turn had proposed Isabella as
an ambassador.
Charles met with Isabella and was said to
have welcomed her to France.
Isabella was joined by the young Prince Edward
later that year, who paid homage to Charles
on his father's behalf as a peace gesture.
Despite this, Charles refused to return the
lands in Aquitaine to the English king, resulting
in a provisional agreement under which Edward
resumed administration of the remaining English
territories in early 1326, whilst France continued
to occupy the rest.Meanwhile, Isabella had
entered into a relationship with the exiled
English nobleman Roger Mortimer and refused
to return to England, instead travelling to
Hainaut, where she betrothed Prince Edward
to Philippa, the daughter of the local Count.
She then used this money, plus an earlier
loan from Charles, to raise a mercenary army
and invade England, deposing her husband Edward
II, who was then murdered in 1327.
Under Isabella's instruction, Edward III agreed
to a peace treaty with Charles: Aquitaine
would be returned to Edward, with Charles
receiving 50,000 livres, the territories of
Limousin, Quercy, the Agenais, and Périgord,
and the Bazas county, leaving the young Edward
with a much reduced territory.
=== Revolt in Flanders ===
Charles faced fresh problems in Flanders.
The Count of Flanders ruled an "immensely
wealthy state" that had traditionally led
an autonomous existence on the edge of the
French state.
The French king was generally regarded as
having suzerainty over Flanders, but under
former monarchs the relationship had become
strained.
Philip V had avoided a military solution to
the Flanders problem, instead enabling the
succession of Louis as count – Louis was,
to a great extent, already under French influence,
having been brought up at the French court.
Over time, however, Louis' clear French loyalties
and lack of political links within Flanders
itself began to erode his position within
the county itself.
In 1323 a peasant revolt led by Nicolaas Zannekin
broke out, threatening the position of Louis
and finally imprisoning him in Bruges.Charles
was relatively unconcerned at first, since
in many ways the revolt could help the French
crown by weakening the position of the Count
of Flanders over the long term.
By 1325, however, the situation was becoming
worse and Charles' stance shifted.
Not only did the uprising mean that Louis
could not pay Charles some of the monies due
to him under previous treaties, the scale
of the rebellion represented a wider threat
to the feudal order in France itself, and
to some it might appear that Charles was actually
unable, rather than unwilling, to intervene
to protect his vassal.
Accordingly, France intervened.
In November 1325 Charles declared the rebels
guilty of high treason and ordered them excommunicated,
mobilising an army at the same time.
Louis pardoned the rebels and was then released,
but once safely back in Paris he shifted his
position and promised Charles not to agree
to any separate peace treaty.
Despite having amassed forces along the border,
Charles' military attentions were distracted
by the problems in Gascony, and he eventually
chose to settle the rebellion peacefully through
the Peace of Arques in 1326, in which Louis
was only indirectly involved.
=== Charles and the Holy Roman Empire ===
Charles was also responsible for shaping the
life of his nephew, Charles IV, Holy Roman
Emperor.
Charles IV, originally named Wenceslaus, came
to the French court in 1323, aged seven, where
he was taken under the patronage of the French
king.
Charles gave his nephew a particularly advanced
education by the standards of the day, arranged
for his marriage to Blanche of Valois, and
also renamed him.
=== Charles and the Crusades ===
The crusades remained a popular cause in France
during Charles' reign.
His father, Philip IV, had committed France
to a fresh crusade and his brother, Philip
V, had brought plans for a fresh invasion
close to execution in 1320.
Their plans were cancelled, however, leading
to the informal and chaotic Shepherds' Crusade.Charles
entrusted Charles of Valois to negotiate with
Pope John XXII over a fresh crusade.
Charles, a keen crusader who took the cross
in 1323, had a history of diplomatic intrigue
in the Levant – he had attempted to become
the Byzantine emperor earlier in his career.
The negotiations floundered, however, over
the Pope's concerns whether Charles IV would
actually use any monies raised for a crusade
for actual crusading, or whether they would
be frittered away on the more general activities
of the French crown.
Charles of Valois's negotiations were also
overtaken by the conflict with England over
Gascony.
After the death of Charles of Valois, Charles
became increasingly interested in a French
intervention in Byzantium, taking the cross
in 1326.
Andronicus II responded by sending an envoy
to Paris in 1327, proposing peace and discussions
on ecclesiastical union.
A French envoy sent in return with Pope John's
blessing later in the year, however, found
Byzantium beset with civil war, and negotiations
floundered.
The death of Charles the next year prevented
any French intervention in Byzantium.
== Death and legacy ==
Charles IV died in 1328 at the Château de
Vincennes, Val-de-Marne, and is interred with
his third wife, Jeanne d'Évreux, in Saint
Denis Basilica, with his heart buried at the
now-demolished church of the Couvent des Jacobins
in Paris.
Like his brothers before him, Charles died
without a surviving male heir, thus ending
the direct line of the Capetian dynasty.
Twelve years earlier, a rule against succession
by females, arguably derived from the Salic
Law, had been recognised – with some dissent
– as controlling succession to the French
throne.
The application of this rule barred Charles's
one-year-old daughter Mary, by Jeanne d'Évreux,
from succeeding as the monarch, but Jeanne
was also pregnant at the time of Charles'
death.
Since she might have given birth to a son,
a regency was set up under the heir presumptive
Philip of Valois, son of Charles of Valois
and a member of the House of Valois, the next
most senior branch of the Capetian dynasty.After
two months, Jeanne gave birth to another daughter,
Blanche, and thus Philip became king and in
May was consecrated and crowned Philip VI.
Edward III of England argued, however, that
although the Salic law should forbid inheritance
by a woman, it did not forbid inheritance
through a female line – under this argument,
Edward should have inherited the throne, forming
the basis of his claim during the ensuing
Hundred Years War (1337–1453).
== Family and succession ==
Charles married three times and fathered six
legitimate children.
In 1307, he married Blanche of Burgundy, daughter
of Otto IV, Count of Burgundy.
The marriage was dissolved in 1322.
They had two children:
Philip (January 1314 – March 1322)
Joan (1315 – 17 May 1321).In 1322, Charles
married Marie of Luxembourg, daughter of Henry
VII, Holy Roman Emperor.
They had a son:
Louis (born and died March 1324).On 5 July
1324, Charles married Jeanne d'Évreux (1310–71).
Their children were:
Jeanne (May 1326 – January 1327)
Marie (1327 – 6 October 1341)
Blanche (1 April 1328 – 8 February 1393).Thus,
five of Charles' six children (including two
sons) died young, and only his youngest daughter,
Blanche, survived to adulthood.
Incidentally, Blanche was born posthumously,
two months after Charles died.
During those two months, Charles' first cousin,
Philip the fortunate, served as regent pending
the birth of the child.
Once a female child was born, the regent,
who was the nearest male heir of the late
king, succeeded to the throne and became the
first king of France from the House of Valois.
== In fiction ==
Charles is a character in Les Rois maudits
(The Accursed Kings), a series of French historical
novels by Maurice Druon.
He was portrayed by Gilles Béhat in the 1972
French miniseries adaptation of the series,
and by Aymeric Demarigny in the 2005 adaptation.
== Ancestry ==
== Notes
