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- Charles VI (born Dec. 3, 1368, Paris, France—died Oct. 21, 1422, Paris) was the king of France who throughout his long reign (1380–1422) remained largely a figurehead, first because he was still a boy when he took the throne and later because of his periodic fits of madness.
www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-VI-king-of-France
Oct 17, 2024 · Charles VI (born Dec. 3, 1368, Paris, France—died Oct. 21, 1422, Paris) was the king of France who throughout his long reign (1380–1422) remained largely a figurehead, first because he was still a boy when he took the throne and later because of his periodic fits of madness.
- William
In Charles VI …expedition in August 1388 against Duke...
- Boniface Ix
Boniface IX was the pope from 1389 to 1404; he was the...
- William
Charles VI (3 December 1368 – 21 October 1422), nicknamed the Beloved (French: le Bien-Aimé) and in the 19th century, [1] the Mad (French: le Fol or le Fou), was King of France from 1380 until his death in 1422.
- Overview
- Philip Augustus
- Louis VIII
- Louis IX
- Later Capetians
The age of Gothic cathedrals and Scholastic theology was also an age of splendour for the French monarchy. Royal authority was greatly strengthened by Louis VII’s successor, Philip II (Augustus; reigned 1180–1223), who could claim descent from Charlemagne through his mother. Philip proved to be the ablest Capetian yet to reign. He was practical and...
Philip’s outstanding achievement was to wrest control from the Plantagenets of most of the domains they held in France. Intervening in struggles between Henry II of England and his sons, Philip won preliminary concessions in 1187 and 1189. He acquired strategic lands on the Norman borders following wars with Henry’s sons, King Richard and King John (1196 and 1200). And, when in 1202 John failed to answer a summons to the vassalic court of his lord, Philip Augustus confiscated his fiefs. Normandy fell to the Capetian in 1204. Maine, Anjou, and Touraine fell rapidly (1204–06), leaving only Aquitaine and a few peripheral domains in the contested possession of England. By the Truce of Chinon (September 18, 1214), John recognized the conquests of Philip Augustus and renounced the suzerainty of Brittany, although the complete submission of Poitou and Saintonge was to take another generation.
Philip’s other acquisitions of territory, if less spectacular, were no less important for consolidating the realm. In the north he pressed the royal authority to the border of Flanders. Artois, which came under his control as a dowry with his first wife, was fully secured in 1212. Vermandois and Valois (1213) and the counties of Beaumont-sur-Oise and Clermont-en-Beauvais were annexed during his last years. On the southern limits of the Île-de-France Philip rounded out prior possessions in Gâtinais and Berry. Much of Auvergne, whose suzerainty had been ceded by Henry II in 1189, passed to royal control in 1214, while in the more distant south Philip extended his influence by gaining lordship over Tournon, Cahors, Gourdon, and Montlaur in Vivarais. As the reign ended, only Brittany, Flanders, Champagne, Burgundy, and Toulouse, among principalities later annexed, lay outside the royal domain. At the end of Philip’s reign, rising concern about the heretical stance of the Albigenses set the stage for the Albigensian Crusade and later conquest of southern lands.
Because the territorial expansion was accomplished through traditional means—dynastic, feudal, and military—the curial administration was, outwardly, little changed. Household officers such as the butler and the constable continued to function as in the past. But Philip Augustus was even more suspicious of the seneschalship and chancellorship than his father had been; he allowed both offices to fall vacant early in his reign, entrusting their operations to lesser nobles or to clerics of the entourage. Although their activity is obscure, some of these men were beginning to specialize in justice or finance. The curia as such, however, remained undifferentiated; characteristically, the committee of regents, appointed in 1190 to hold three courts yearly while the king was absent on Crusade, was expected to concern itself with both justice and the administration of the kingdom on those occasions. Prelates and nobles of the curia also served as counselors; enlarged councils convened, at the king’s summons, on festivals or when major political or military issues were contemplated.
Philip Augustus acted vigorously to improve the efficiency of his lordship. He was, indeed, practically the founder of royal administration in France. His chancery began to keep better records of royal activities. Documents were copied into registers before being sent out, and lists of churches, vassals, and towns were drawn up to inform the king of his military and fiscal rights. These lists replaced others lost on the battlefield of Fréteval (1194), a disaster that may have hastened the adoption of a new form of fiscal accountancy. One may draw this conclusion because it is unlikely that the Capetians had previously troubled to record the balances of revenues and expenses in the form first revealed by a record of the year 1202. Its central audit was connected with other efforts to improve control of the domains dominated directly by the king. From early in his reign Philip appointed members of his court to hold periodic local sessions, collect extraordinary revenues, lead military contingents, and supervise the provosts. The new officers, called bailiffs (baillis), at first had no determined districts in which to serve (they resembled the circuit commissioners of Angevin government, whose office may have been the model for the Capetian institution). From the outset the bailiffs were paid salaries; they were more reliable than the provosts, who by the later 12th century generally farmed the revenues. In the newly acquired lands of the west and south, Philip and his successors instituted seneschals—functionaries similar to the bailiffs but with recognized territorial jurisdiction from the start.
Philip Augustus’s policy toward his conquered domains was shrewd. He retained the deep-rooted customs and administrative institutions of such flourishing provinces as Anjou and Normandy; indeed, the superior fiscal procedures of Normandy soon exercised perceptible influence on Capetian accounting elsewhere. On the other hand, to secure the loyal operation of provincial institutions, Philip appointed men of his own court, typically natives of the Île-de-France. It was a compromise that was to work well for generations to come.
The character of Philip’s rule may likewise be deduced from his relations with the main classes of the population. A devoted son of the church, if not unswervingly faithful, he favoured the higher clergy in many of their interests. He opposed the infidels, heretics, and blasphemers; he supported the bishops of Laon, Beauvais, Sens, and Le Puy (among others) in their disputes with townspeople; and he granted and confirmed charters to monasteries and churches. Yet he was more insistent on his rights over the clergy than his predecessors had been. He required professions of fidelity and military service from bishops and abbots, summoned prelates to his court, and sought to limit the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts. He supported papal policies or submitted to papal directives only to the extent that these were consistent with his temporal interests. Cases in point were his reserved support of Crusades and his notorious rejection of Queen Ingeborg, whom he married, abandoned, and then, in response to the pope’s censure, feigned to reconcile.
The reign of Louis VIII (1223–26) had an importance out of proportion to its brevity. It was he (this frail husband of the formidable Blanche of Castile and father of famous sons) who first brought Languedoc under the crown of France and who inaugurated the appanages—grants of patrimonial land to members of the royal family or royal favourites that...
The real successor to Philip Augustus, however, was his grandson, Louis IX (reigned 1226–70), in whose reign were fulfilled some of the grand tendencies of prior Capetian history.
Louis IX, who was canonized in 1297, is the best-known Capetian ruler. He impressed all who came in touch with him, and the records of his reign—anecdotal and historical as well as official—leave no doubt that he commanded affection and respect in a combination and to an extent that were unique. He regarded himself as a Christian ruler, duty-bound to lead his people to salvation. He led by example, precept, and correction. He earned a reputation for fairness and wisdom that enabled him to rule as absolutely as he wished; only with the Crusade, perhaps, did his judgment falter. His reign was marked by consolidation, maturation, and reform rather than by innovation.
In his early years baronial revolts, supported by Henry III of England, were put down by the regency, headed by the queen mother, with singular firmness and skill. Poitou and Saintonge remained restive largely because of the stubborn machinations of Isabella of Angoulême (King John’s widow); it was only in 1243, after a revolt planned to coincide with an uprising in Languedoc, that the adjudication of 1202 was fulfilled in Aquitaine. The revolt of Raymond Trencavel, dispossessed heir to the viscounty of Béziers, halfheartedly supported by Raymond VII of Toulouse, was no more successful; its failure resulted in the vindictive destruction of the petty nobility of Languedoc, and many fiefs thereupon passed to the crown. In 1239 a childless count of Mâcon sold his domains to the king.
Such were the principal territorial acquisitions of Louis IX; the balance of his work, however, was to be affected further by three characteristic events. First, despite his victory of 1243, Louis remained disposed to compromise with Henry III; in the Treaty of Paris (December 1259) Henry regained title to lands and reversionary rights in Guyenne in exchange for renouncing all claims to Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou. Similarly, by the Treaty of Corbeil (May 1258) Louis himself had abandoned ancient claims to Catalonia and Roussillon in exchange for the renunciation of Barcelona’s rights in Gévaudan and Rouergue. Meanwhile, upon the death of Raymond VII in 1249, the county of Toulouse had passed to Raymond’s son-in-law, Alphonse of Poitiers, who proceeded to govern it as effectively as his appanage lands; and when he and his wife died without issue in 1271, their enormous inheritance reverted to the royal domain.
The ancient household administration died out in the 13th century. Offices such as the chancery and treasury became more specialized and bureaucratic, while the greater advisory personnel formed a fluctuating corps of reliable favourites: bishops, abbots, and minor nobles of the old Capetian homelands. The counselors, meeting in diverse political and ceremonial capacities, continued to assemble with other prelates and barons during festivals or ad hoc. But the fiscal and judicial activities of the court were growing in volume and technicality. Ordinary revenues expanded apace with the royal domains; taxes ceased to be exceptional. Toward 1250 judgments of the curia began to be recorded centrally, and the judicial sessions, now often called parlements, derived an ever-expanding jurisdiction from the king’s repute.
Meanwhile, a real local administration evolved as the bailiffs and seneschals became well established in territorial circumscriptions. Complaints arose when these men, and more particularly their subordinate officers, abused their powers for personal profit or the king’s. Commissions of investigation, first appointed in 1247, provided means for redress; these investigators continued to function after Louis returned from his first Crusade in 1254.
Louis IX was succeeded by his son, Philip III (reigned 1270–85); his grandson, Philip IV (the Fair; 1285–1314); and three great-grandsons, Louis X (1314–16), Philip V (1316–22), and Charles IV (1322–28). The most significant of these last Capetian reigns was that of Philip the Fair. Worldly and ambitious yet pious and intelligent, he was less accommodating than his forebears and more devoted to his power than to his reputation. He brought the monarchy to a degree of coordinated strength it would not again have in the Middle Ages. But, in so doing, he strained the resources and patience of his subjects. His sons had to give in to the demands of a country beginning to suffer from the natural disasters, such as the great famine and the Black Death, that would mark the 14th century. They did so, however, without abandoning their father’s objectives. When Charles IV died without a male heir in 1328, as his brothers had done before him, the royal succession was claimed by a collateral Capetian family.
The reigns of the later Capetian kings were marked by further territorial consolidation. Marrying his son to the heiress of Champagne and Navarra in 1284, Philip III prepared the way for a reversion no less important than that of Toulouse (1271). Philip the Fair secured the heiress to the county of Burgundy for his son Philip in 1295 and annexed southern Flanders and Lyon in 1312. Smaller acquisitions, cumulatively of great importance, resulted from purchase: the counties of Guînes (1281), Chartres (1286), and La Marche and Saintonge (1308); the viscounties of Lomagne and Auvillars (1302) and La Soule (1306); and a number of untitled lordships.
Through treaties, Philip the Fair extended his jurisdiction into the ecclesiastical principalities of Viviers, Cahors, Mende, and Le Puy. With his greatly expanded domain, the king could assert unprecedented authority everywhere in France. Yet it does not appear that territorial policy as such had changed. Appanages were still to be granted and to be recovered by the later Capetians. The monarchs continued to do without Brittany, Burgundy, and many lesser lordships, which did not prevent them from legislating for these lands along with the rest.
Government became more engrossing, specialized, and efficient. Although the royal curia continued to exist as an aggregate of favourites, magnates, prelates, and advisers, its ministerial element—comprising salaried officers serving at the king’s pleasure—functioned increasingly in departments. The small council acquired definition from an oath first mentioned in 1269. With its sessions lengthening under a growing burden of cases, Parlement was divided into chambers of pleas, requests, and investigations (1278), and its composition and jurisdiction were regulated. Older provincial tribunals, such as the Norman Exchequer and the Jours of Troyes, became commissions of Parlement. While the direction of finance was left with the council, the Chambre des Comptes (Chamber of Accounts), apart from the treasury, was organized to audit accounts. Council and chamber as well as Parlement developed appropriate jurisdiction, and all three bodies kept archives. The chancery, serving all departments, remained in the hands of lesser functionaries until 1315, when Louis X revived the title of honour.
Local administration was marked by the proliferation of officers subordinate to the bailiffs and seneschals. The chief judge (juge-mage) assumed the seneschal’s judicial functions in the south; receivers of revenues, first appearing in Languedoc, were instituted in the bailiwicks at the end of the 13th century. Commissions of investigation continued to traverse the provinces under the later Capetians, but all too often they now functioned as fiscal agents rather than as reformers.
Many of the officers who served Philip the Fair were laymen, and many were lawyers. Impressed with the power they wielded, they promoted loyalty to the crown and a conception of the royal authority approaching that of sovereignty. Without claiming absolute power for the king, they thought in terms of his “superiority” over all men within national boundaries now (for the first time) strictly determined; and they did not hesitate to argue from Roman law that, when the “state of the kingdom” was endangered, the monarch had an overriding right to the aid of all his subjects in its defense. While this doctrine, in a notorious case, was made a justification for imposing on the clergy, the later Capetians did not lose the religious mystique they had inherited from their predecessors’ efforts in Christian causes. Even as political loyalties were being engrossed by the lay state, the “religion of monarchy” derived impetus from the fervent utterance of those who saw in Philip the Fair a type of Christ or the ruler of a chosen and favoured people.
Charles replied from Barcelona with two distinct proposals which dealt with the lesser burden of the Camerale, but left untouched the major difficulty of the Militare.
Charles VI the Well-Beloved, later known as Charles VI the Mad (French: Charles VI le Bien-Aimé, later known as Charles VI le Fol) (December 3, 1368 – October 21, 1422) was King of France (1380–1422) and a member of the Valois Dynasty. The Hundred Years’ War continued throughout his reign.
Charles VI (Charles the Mad or Charles the Well Beloved), 1368–1422, king of France (1380–1422), son and successor of King Charles V. During his minority he was under the tutelage of his uncles (particularly Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy), whose policies drained the royal treasury and provoked popular uprisings in France and in Flanders.
However, the most famous mad King of France was Charles VI (1368-1422), who had the conviction that he was made of glass and about to break. Charles VI of France became King at the age of 12. He was a dreamy, sentimental, agreeable and pleasure-loving young man.
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