Шарль IV: Францияның соңғы Капет патшасы

King of France from 1322 to 1328

Charles IV (18/19 June 1294 – 1 February 1328), called the Fair (le Bel) in France and the Bald (el Calvo) in Navarre, was last king of the direct line of the House of Capet, King of France and King of Navarre (as Charles I) from 1322 to 1328. 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.

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. After Charles assumed the throne he refused to release Blanche, their marriage was annulled, and Blanche retreated to a nunnery. 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. 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. 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. During his six year reign Charles's administration became increasingly unpopular.

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's 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. 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's 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. In 1326 after negotiations with Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray, Charles renewed the Auld Alliance with Scotland through the Treaty of Corbeil (1326). 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,

Charles faced fresh problems in Flanders. The Count of Flanders ruled an "immensely wealthy state" 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. By 1325, however, the situation was becoming worse and Charles's 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's 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 was also responsible for shaping the life of his nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. The latter, 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.

The crusades remained a popular cause in France during Charles's 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. 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. 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.

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 women, arguably derived from the Salic Law, had been recognised – with some dissent – as controlling succession to the French throne. 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 III, son of Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II and daughter of Philip IV, should have inherited the throne, forming the basis of his claim during the ensuing Hundred Years War (1337–1453).