Филипп V Долгий: Король Франции и Наварры

King of France from 1316 to 1322

Philip V (c. 1291 – 3 January 1322), known as the Tall , was King of France and Navarre (as Philip II) from 1316 to 1322. Philip engaged in a series of domestic reforms intended to improve the management of the kingdom. These reforms included the creation of an independent Court of Finances, the standardization of weights and measures, and the establishment of a single currency. Philip was the second son of King Philip IV of France and Queen Joan I of Navarre. He was granted an appanage, the County of Poitiers, while his elder brother, Louis X, inherited the French and Navarrese thrones. When Louis died in 1316, he left a daughter and a pregnant wife, Clementia of Hungary. Philip the Tall successfully claimed the regency. Queen Clementia gave birth to a boy, who was proclaimed king as John I, but the infant king lived only for five days. At the death of his nephew, Philip immediately had himself crowned at Reims. However, his legitimacy was challenged by the party of Louis X's daughter Joan. Philip V successfully contested her claims for a number of reasons, including her youth, doubts regarding her paternity (her mother was involved in the Tour de Nesle Affair), and the Estates General's determination that women should be excluded from the line of succession to the French throne. The succession of Philip, instead of Joan, set the precedent for the French royal succession that would be known as the Salic law. Philip restored somewhat good relations with the County of Flanders, which had entered into open rebellion during his father's rule, but simultaneously his relations with his brother in law Edward II of England worsened as Edward, who was also Duke of Guyenne, initially refused to pay him homage. A spontaneous popular crusade started in Normandy in 1320 aiming to liberate the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors. Instead the angry populace marched to the south attacking castles, royal officials, priests, lepers, and Jews. In 1307 Philip married Joan II, Countess of Burgundy, with whom he had four daughters. The couple produced no male heirs, however, so when Philip died from dysentery in 1322, he was succeeded by his younger brother Charles IV.

Philip was born in Lyon in 1291, the second son of King Philip IV of France and Queen Joan I of Navarre. His father granted to him the county of Poitiers in appanage. Modern historians have described Philip V as a man of "considerable intelligence and sensitivity", and the "wisest and politically most apt" of Philip IV's three sons. Philip was influenced by the troubles and unrest that his father had encountered during 1314, as well as by the difficulties his older brother, Louis X, known as "the Quarreler", had faced during the intervening few years. At the heart of the problems for both Philip IV and Louis X were taxes and the difficulty in raising them outside of crises. The original plan had been for Louis X to marry Joan, but this was altered after Louis was engaged to Margaret of Burgundy. Modern scholars have found little evidence as to whether the marriage was a happy one, but the pair had a considerable number of children in a short space of time, and Philip was exceptionally generous to Joan by the standards of the day. Amongst the various gifts were a palace, villages, additional money for jewels, and her servants and the property of all the Jews in Burgundy, which he gave to Joan in 1318. Joan was implicated in Margaret's adultery case during 1314; Margaret was accused and convicted of adultery with two knights, upon the testimony of their sister in law, Isabella. Joan was suspected of having secretly known about the adultery; placed under house arrest at Dourdan as punishment, it was then implied that Joan was guilty of adultery herself. With Philip's support she continued to protest her innocence, and by 1315 her name had been cleared by the Paris Parlement, partially through Philip's influence, and she was allowed to return to court. It is unclear why Philip stood by her in the way that he did. One theory has been that he was concerned that if he were to abandon Joan, he might also lose Burgundy; another theory suggests that his slightly "formulaic" love letters to his wife should be taken at face value, and that he was in fact very deeply in love. There were several potential candidates for the role of regent, including Charles of Valois and Duke Odo IV of Burgundy, but Philip successfully outmanoeuvred them, being appointed regent himself. and Philip called a rapid assembly of the nobility on 2 February in Paris. In 1317, Philip reissued an act first passed by his father, in 1311, condemning the alienation and theft of royal resources and offices in the provinces. the courts still exist today. In practice, Philip did not entirely keep to his self declared principles on grants of royal lands and titles, but he was far more conservative in such matters than his immediate predecessors.

Philip was able to achieve a successful resolution of the ongoing Flanders problem. The Count of Flanders ruled an "immensely wealthy state", which largely led an autonomous existence on the edge of the French state. The French king was generally regarded as having suzerainty over Flanders, but in recent years the relationship had become strained. Meanwhile, the French position had become strained by the need to maintain a wartime footing. Louis X had prohibited exports of grain and other material to Flanders in 1315, resulting in a profitable smuggling industry that in turn discouraged legal trade with the French crown along the border region; Louis was forced to directly requisition food for his forces, resulting in a string of complaints from local lords and the Church. Philip began to reinstate a proper recompensation scheme in 1317, but the situation remained unstable. Both Philip and Robert turned away from seeking a military solution in favour of a political compromise. Accordingly, Robert made an accommodation with Philip in June 1320, under which Robert would confirm his young grandson, Louis, as his designated heir, in return for Louis being pledged in marriage to Philip's second daughter, Margaret. This would provide Robert, and then Louis, with strong French support within Flanders. and was culturally effectively a French prince. This arrangement was a considerable success for Philip's policy, although over time Louis' clear French loyalties and lack of political links within Flanders itself would lead to political upheaval and peasant revolt. Philip also faced difficulties with Edward II of England. Like the Count of Flanders, Edward in his role as the ruler of Gascony owed homage to the king of France, but as a king in his own right, and as the head of a largely autonomous Gascon province, was disinclined to do so. Edward gave homage but refused to swear fealty; nonetheless, this marked a period of increased French pressure on England over Gascony.

Philip was also to play a role in the ongoing crusade movement during the period. Pope John XXII, the second of the Avignon popes, had been elected at a conclave assembled in Lyons during 1316 by Philip himself, and set out his renewed desire to see fresh crusades. Philip IV had agreed to a joint plan for a new French led crusade at the Council of Vienne in 1312, with his son Philip, a "committed crusader," taking the cross himself in 1313. Nonetheless, John continued to assure the Armenians that Philip would shortly lead a crusade to relieve them. Over the winter of 1319–20 Philip convened a number of meetings with French military leaders in preparation for a potential second expedition, By the end of Philip's reign, however, he and John had fallen out over the issue of new monies and commitments to how they were spent, and the attentions of both were focused on managing the challenge of the Shepherds' Crusade. Philip's intent for a new crusade had certainly become widely known by the spring of 1320, and the emerging peace in Flanders and the north of France had left a large number of displaced peasants and soldiers. The result was a large and violent anti Semitic movement threatening local Jews, royal castles, the wealthier clergy, and Paris itself. The movement was ultimately condemned by Pope John, who doubted whether the movement had any real intent to carry out a crusade. Philip was forced to move against it, crushing the movement militarily and driving the remnants south across the Pyrenees into Aragon.

In 1321 an alleged conspiracy – the "leper scare" – was discovered in France. The accusation, apparently unfounded, was that lepers had been poisoning the wells of various towns, and that this activity had been orchestrated by the Jewish minority, Following the events of 1320, Philip was involved in fining those who had attacked Jews during the Shepherds' Crusade, which in practice added further to the dislike of this minority in France. Rumours and allegations about lepers themselves had been circulated in 1320 as well, and some had been arrested during the Crusade. Philip was in Poitiers in June, involved in a tour of the south aimed at reform of the southern fiscal system, when word arrived of the scare. Philip issued an early edict demanding that any leper found guilty was to be burnt and their goods would be forfeit to the crown. The King's southern tour and reform plans, although administratively sound by modern standards, had created much local opposition, and modern historians have linked the King's role in Poitiers with the sudden outbreak of violence. This all put Philip in a difficult position: He could not openly side with those claiming wrongdoing by the lepers, Jews, and Muslims without encouraging further unnecessary violence; on the other hand, if he did not ally himself to the cause, he encouraged further unsanctioned violence, weakening his royal position. Some Jews did leave France as a result of the leper scare, but Philip had successfully resisted signing any formal edict, which limited the impact to some degree.

In August, Philip was continuing to progress his reform plans when he fell unwell from multiple illnesses.