The whole of Philip’s rule is marked by the steady encroachments upon feudal independence and privilege of an unscrupulous but efficient despotism. He claimed for the crown the right of creating peers, which he exercised in favour of Charles II. of Naples and of Robert of Artois. He raised to the rank of nobles men who had no qualification either by descent or by tenure, and was thus enabled to reward those ministers who borrowed from Roman Law the phrase, quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem, and coined from it a French legal adage, which the monarchy might have taken for its motto: que veut le roi, si veut la loi. But there was one glaring defect in Philip IV.’s government, which he also bequeathed to his successors. His financial |Financial maladministration.| administration was as incompetent as it was tyrannical and oppressive. He strained to the utmost the normal sources of revenue, the income from the domain and the feudal incidents. When these were exhausted, he imposed gabelles or taxes on the sale of commodities. But these taxes he was foolish enough to farm out to his creditors in order to obtain large sums of ready money. Such an expedient, especially in early times, always results in loss to the state and oppression to the taxpayer. More ruinous, because more dishonest, was the constant debasement of the coinage, which Philip carried to such lengths that contemporaries called him the ‘false coiner.’ Thus the founder of the French monarchy was also responsible for the defect which ultimately ruined his creation. It is an extraordinary thing that France, one of the richest countries in Europe, and in some ways one of the most efficiently governed, never had a sound financial system under the old monarchy. Philip’s successors imitated the defects as well as the merits of his rule. To his devices of farming the taxes and of debasing the currency they added the disastrous practice of selling offices, and of increasing their value by granting their holders exemption from taxation. Many Frenchmen saw and deplored the evil results of this system, but no one was strong enough to apply a drastic remedy. The deficit which resulted was the immediate occasion, though not the cause, of the great revolution. It may be fanciful, but it is not preposterous, to contend that, if Philip IV. had been a capable and honest financier, the Bourbons might still be seated on the throne of France.
Such a harsh government as that of Philip IV. could not possibly be popular. His direct attack upon their |Death of Philip IV.| interests exasperated the noblesse, and his financial extortions alienated the bourgeoisie. In 1314 a new war broke out with Flanders, and Philip attempted to defray its expense by a heavy tax upon all commodities, to be levied on their sale, from both seller and purchaser. This caused an explosion, and for the first and only time nobles and third estate were leagued together against the king. Such an alliance threatened to ruin the monarchy, and Philip was forced to yield. He abolished the tax, and promised to redress the grievances of his subjects as regards the coinage. Soon after this humiliation he died (November 29, 1314).
During the next fourteen years Philip’s three sons ruled in rapid succession, and their reigns are chiefly notable for |Louis X., 1314-16.| the establishment of the all-important rule of succession which excluded females from the succession to the French throne. The eldest, Louis X., was only twenty-four years old at his father’s death, and took no interest in the work of government. The conduct of affairs was allowed to fall into the hands of his uncle, Charles of Valois, who had always sympathised with the feudal opposition to Philip IV. The triumph of the reactionary party was seen in the trial and execution of Enguerrand de Marigny, one of the chief advisers of the late king. But the nobles, freed for the moment from royal domination, were short-sighted enough to throw over their recent alliance with the bourgeoisie, and thus lost an excellent chance of imposing permanent restrictions upon the power of the crown. The concessions which they obtained were solely in the interests of their own class, and even they were not national concessions but were embodied in a series of provincial charters. The absence of national unity, to which these events testified, was a cause of the ultimate victory of the monarchy, which had never again to face such a hostile union of classes as had been formed for the moment in 1314.
Apart from this momentary victory of the feudal nobles, the reign of Louis X. is absolutely uneventful. He got rid of his first wife, Margaret of Burgundy, in order that he might marry Clementia, sister of Carobert of Hungary. He also undertook an expedition to Flanders in order to force the Count to observe his treaty obligations; but the campaign was wholly unsuccessful, and soon afterwards the young king died, on June 5, 1316. His death was more |Succession question in 1316.| important than his life, as it gave rise to the first doubtful succession since the reign of Hugh Capet. For the first time for more than three centuries there was no male heir to the crown, as Louis only left a daughter, Jeanne, the offspring of his first marriage. As the question of female succession had never arisen before, there was no rule to decide either way. But the problem in this case was further complicated by the fact that Clementia, Louis’s second wife, was expecting a child to be born five months after her husband’s death. Until this event took place nothing could be settled, and during the necessary interregnum the regency was naturally intrusted to Philip, the elder brother of the late king. Meanwhile the interests of Jeanne were maintained by her maternal uncle, Eudes IV. of Burgundy, with whom Philip concluded a treaty. This provided that if Clementia gave birth to a son he should succeed to the whole inheritance, but if the posthumous child were a daughter, then Jeanne was to have Navarre, Champagne, and Brie until she was of marriageable age, when she was to choose whether to renounce the crown of France or to demand a formal consideration of her claims.
In November, 1316, Louis X.’s widow gave birth to a son, who is reckoned in the list of French kings as John I. The child was born on a Sunday, and died on the following Friday. Thus the claims of Jeanne were left in full force, but they were seriously prejudiced by the fact that during the previous five months her uncle had obtained a firm hold of the reins of government, which he was by no means prepared to resign. The Duke of Burgundy was bribed to abandon the cause of Jeanne by a marriage with Philip’s daughter, and by the gift of Franche-Comté and 500,000 crowns as his bride’s dowry. The French lawyers, sharing the general prejudice against female rule, which resulted from so long a period of male succession, hunted out a clause in the laws of the Salian Franks which forbade |The so-called Salic Law.| the inheritance by women of terra Salica. This clause they arbitrarily applied to the crown, and thus coined the famous expression, the Salic Law. But it must never be forgotten that the exclusion of women from the throne of France rests, not upon any ancient rule, but upon the precedent of Jeanne’s exclusion in 1316, followed and confirmed by further exclusions in 1322 and 1328.
Once securely established on the throne, Philip V. showed |Philip V., 1316-22.| himself a resolute and able ruler. The reaction in favour of feudal independence was checked; the lawyers recovered their ascendency in the royal counsels; and the administrative machinery of Philip IV. was once more set in working order. Numerous assemblies were held, in which the third estate was fully represented; and a vigorous attempt was made to improve trade, and to check provincial isolation by establishing uniformity in coinage, weights, and measures. But Philip did not live long enough to carry out designs which, if successful, might have given him a place among the great administrators of France. He died in 1322 leaving only daughters, and his brother Charles IV. had little difficulty in seizing, not only the throne, |Charles IV., 1322-28.| but also Navarre, Champagne, and Brie, which ought to have been left in the hands of Jeanne. The reign of Charles is of little importance except in connection with England, where Edward II. was deposed and murdered by a conspiracy headed by his faithless wife and Charles’s sister, Isabella of France. To his nephew, the young Edward III., Charles handed over Guienne, but retained the district of Agen, to be the source of future disputes. With Charles IV.’s death (January 31, 1328) the main line of the House of Capet came to an end. There was still one doubt as to the rule or custom of succession. That women could not themselves hold the crown had been settled by three successive precedents within twelve years. But could they transmit a claim to their male descendants? There were in 1328 two possible claimants on this ground—Philip, the son of Eudes IV. of Burgundy by a daughter of Philip V., and Edward III. of England, whose mother was a sister of the three last kings. But France was not likely to adopt a rule of succession which might at any moment give the crown to a foreign prince. And so the crown passed to the nearest male heir, Philip of Valois.
CHAPTER IV
FRANCE UNDER THE EARLY VALOIS, 1328-1380
The accession of Philip of Valois—His relations with Navarre and England—Robert of Artois—Philip’s action in Gascony, Scotland, and Flanders brings on War with England—Edward III. and Jacob van Artevelde—Edward III. claims the French Crown—Beginning of the Hundred Years’ War—English Expedition into Picardy—The succession in Brittany followed by a war—The Murder of Artevelde—The battle of Crecy and siege of Calais—Annexation of Dauphiné to France—Accession of King John and renewal of the war with England—Battle of Poitiers—Etienne Marcel and the States-General of 1355 and 1357—The Ordinance of March 3, 1357—Anarchy in France—The Murder of the Marshals—Royalist reaction—The Jacquerie—The Murder of Marcel and the capture of Paris—English Invasion of 1359 followed by the Treaty of Bretigni—The succession to Burgundy—Charles V/’s Government—Success of his policy in Brittany and Spain—The reconquest of the English Provinces—Last years of Charles V/—Du Guesclin and de Clisson.
The first result of the accession of Philip VI. was the severance |Accession of Philip of Valois, 1328.| of the crowns of France and Navarre, which had been united since the marriage of Philip the Fair (see p. [48]). Navarre was now given up to Jeanne, the daughter of Louis X., and her husband, Philip of Evreux. In return Jeanne abandoned all other claims, either to the French crown or to the provinces of Champagne and Brie. By this bargain Philip secured his throne against one possible claimant, and confirmed the exclusion of female succession in France. Another rival, Edward III. of England, who could contend that females might transmit a claim to a male heir, was not at the moment very formidable. He was very young, he had obtained the throne through his father’s deposition in 1327, and for the time he was under the tutelage of his mother Isabella and her paramour Mortimer. So far from putting forward a claim to the French crown, Edward III. came over to Amiens in 1329, and recognised Philip VI. by doing homage to him for his inherited possessions in Aquitaine.
So confident was Philip in the strength of his position that he did not hesitate to provoke enemies both at home and abroad, and this recklessness ultimately led to a quarrel with England, and to the outbreak of a war which lasted more than a hundred years, and exercised the most decisive influence upon the development of both nations. Among the nobles who had contributed most to bring about Philip VI.’s accession was his brother-in-law, Robert of Artois. He was a grandson of Count Robert of |Robert of Artois.| Artois, who had fallen in the battle of Courtrai in 1302. In spite of the normal preference for male succession, the grandson had been excluded in favour of his aunt Matilda, whose daughter Jeanne had married Philip V. Robert had made several efforts to vindicate his claim to Artois, but without success. On the accession of Philip VI., however, he was confident of obtaining justice, and at once commenced a suit for the purpose of proving that the inheritance had been unlawfully withheld from him. Matilda and Jeanne came to Paris to defend their rights, and both of them died within a short interval of each other, not without strong suspicions of foul play. Their claims now passed to Margaret, the daughter of Jeanne and Philip V. Robert of Artois found himself accused, not only of employing poison to rid himself of his rivals, but also of forging documents in support of his claims, and of employing magic arts against the king himself. His supposed accomplices were tortured into some sort of confession, and Robert, finding that he had lost the royal favour on which he had reckoned, fled from the court. The suit was decided against him (1332), and he himself sentenced to banishment. He found a refuge in England, and in his eagerness for revenge set himself to urge Edward III. to claim the French throne on the ground of his mother’s descent from Philip IV.