February 22, 1403: Birth of King Charles VII of France

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Charles VII of France, Henry VI of England, Jean II of France, Joan of Arc, Louis II of Anjou, Marie of Anjou, The Dauphin, Treaty of Troyes, Yolande of Aragon

Charles VII (February 22, 1403 – July 22, 1461), called the Victorious or the Well-Served, was King of France from 1422 to his death in 1461.

Born at the Hôtel Saint-Pol, the royal residence in Paris, Charles was given the title of Count of Ponthieu six months after his birth in 1403. He was the eleventh child and fifth son of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria.

His four elder brothers, Charles (1386), Charles (1392–1401), Louis (1397–1415) and Jean (1398–1417) had each held the title of Dauphin of France as heirs apparent to the French throne in turn. All died childless, leaving Charles with a rich inheritance of titles.

At the death of his father, Charles VI, the succession was cast into doubt. In the midst of the Hundred Years’ War, Charles VII inherited the throne of France under desperate circumstances.

The Treaty of Troyes, signed by Charles VI on May 21, 1420, mandated that the throne pass to the infant King Henry VI of England, the son of the recently deceased Henry V and Catherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI; however, Frenchmen loyal to the king of France regarded the treaty as invalid on grounds of coercion and Charles VI’s diminished mental capacity.

For those who did not recognize the treaty and believed the Dauphin Charles to be of legitimate birth, he was considered to be the rightful heir to the throne. For those who did not recognize his legitimacy, the rightful heir was recognized as Charles, Duke of Orléans, cousin of the Dauphin, who was in English captivity.

In addition, his father, Charles VI, had disinherited him in 1420 and recognized Henry V of England and his heirs as the legitimate successors to the French crown. At the same time, a civil war raged in France between the Armagnacs (supporters of the House of Valois) and the Burgundian party (supporters of the House of Valois-Burgundy, which was allied to the English).

Forces of the Kingdom of England and the duke of Burgundy occupied Guyenne and northern France, including Paris, the most populous city, and Reims, the city in which French kings were traditionally crowned.

With his court removed to Bourges, south of the Loire River, Charles was disparagingly called the “King of Bourges”, because the area around this city was one of the few remaining regions left to him.

However, his political and military position improved dramatically with the emergence of Joan of Arc as a spiritual leader in France. Joan and other charismatic figures led French troops to lift the sieges of Orléans and other strategic cities on the Loire river, and to crush the English at the battle of Patay. With the local English troops dispersed, the people of Reims switched allegiance and opened their gates, which enabled the coronation of Charles VII at Reims Cathedral in 1429.

Six years later, he ended the English-Burgundian alliance by signing the Treaty of Arras with Burgundy, followed by the recovery of Paris in 1436 and the steady reconquest of Normandy in the 1440s using a newly organized professional army and advanced siege cannons. Following the battle of Castillon in 1453, the French expelled the English from all their continental possessions except the Pale of Calais.

The last years of Charles VII were marked by conflicts with his turbulent son, the future Louis XI of France.

Marriage and Family

Charles married his second cousin Marie of Anjou They were both great-grandchildren of King Jean II of France and his first wife Bonne of Bohemia through the male line. They had fourteen children.

Marie was the eldest daughter of Louis II of Anjou, claimant to the throne of Naples, and Yolande of Aragon, claimant to the throne of Aragon.

Marie was betrothed to her second cousin Charles, son and heir apparent of Charles VI of France, in 1413. When a Burgundian force took Paris in 1418, Charles left her stranded, but she was taken by Jean the Fearless to Saumur to be reunited with him. However, Charles failed to arrive for the agreed rendezvous.

The wedding took place on December 18, 1422 at Bourges. The marriage made Marie Queen of France, but as far as it is known, she was never crowned. Her spouse’s victory in the Hundred Years War owed a great deal to the support he received from Marie’s family, notably from her mother Yolande of Aragon.

November 23, 1407: Death of Louis I, Duke of Orléans

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Charles V of France, Charles VI of France, Duke of Burgundy, Hundred Years War, Jean II of France, Jean of Burgundy, Louis I of Orléans, Valentina Visconti of Milan

Louis I of Orléans (March 13, 1372 – November 23, 1407) was Duke of Orléans from 1392 to his death. He was also Duke of Touraine (1386–1392), Count of Valois (1386?–1406) Blois (1397–1407), Angoulême (1404–1407), Périgord (1400–1407) and Soissons (1404–07).

Biography

Born March 13, 1372, Louis was the second son of King Charles V of France and Joanna of Bourbon and was the younger brother of Charles VI.

Joanna of Bourbon was a daughter of Peter I, Duke of Bourbon, and Isabella of Valois, a half-sister of Philippe VI of France.

From October 1340 through at least 1343, negotiations and treaties were made for Joanna of Bourbon to marry Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy. The goal was to bring Savoy more closely into French influence. Following this she was betrothed to Humbert, Dauphin of Viennois, which also fell through.

On April 8, 1350, Joanna married her cousin, the future Charles V of France, at Tain-l’Hermitage. Since they were second cousins, their marriage required a papal dispensation. Born thirteen days apart, they both were 12 years old.

In 1374, Louis was betrothed to Catherine, heir presumptive to the throne of Hungary. Louis and Catherine were expected to reign either over Hungary or over Poland, as Catherine’s father, Louis I of Hungary, had no sons. Catherine’s father also planned to leave them his claim to the Crown of Naples and the County of Provence, which were then held by his ailing and childless cousin Joanna I.

However, Catherine’s death in 1378 ended the marriage negotiations. In 1384, Elizabeth of Bosnia started negotiating with Louis’ father about the possibility of Louis marrying her daughter Mary, notwithstanding Mary’s engagement to Sigismund of Luxembourg. If Elizabeth had made this proposal in 1378, after Catherine’s death, the fact that the French king and the Hungarian king did not recognise the same pope would have presented a problem. However, Elizabeth was desperate in 1384 and was not willing to let the schism stand in the way of the negotiations.

Antipope Clement VII issued a dispensation which annulled Mary’s betrothal to Sigismund and a proxy marriage between Louis and Mary was celebrated in April 1385. Nonetheless, the marriage was not recognised by the Hungarian noblemen who adhered to Pope Urban VI. Four months after the proxy marriage, Sigismund invaded Hungary and married Mary, which ultimately destroyed Louis’ chances to reign as King of Hungary.

Role in court and the Hundred Years’ War

Louis d’Orléansplayed an important political role during the Hundred Years’ War. In 1392, his elder brother Charles the Mad (who may have suffered from either schizophrenia, porphyria, paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) experienced the first in a lifelong series of attacks of ‘insanity’.

It soon became clear that Charles was unable to rule independently. In 1393 a regency council presided over by Queen Isabeau was formed, and Louis gained powerful influence.

Louis disputed the regency and guardianship of the royal children with Jean the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. The enmity between the two was public and a source of political unrest in the already troubled France. Louis had the initial advantage, being the brother rather than the first cousin of the king, but his reputation as a womanizer and the rumour of an affair with the queen consort Isabeau of Bavaria made him extremely unpopular.

For the following years, the children of Charles VI were successively kidnapped and recovered by both parties, until the Duke of Burgundy managed to be appointed by royal decree to be the guardian of Louis, the Dauphin and regent of France.

Louis did not give up and took every effort to sabotage Jean’s rule, including squandering the money raised for the relief of Calais, then occupied by the English. After this episode, Jean and Louis broke into open threats and only the intervention of Jean of Valois, Duke of Berry and uncle of both men, avoided a civil war.

Louis was reportedly responsible for the deaths of four dancers at a disastrous 1393 masquerade ball that became known as the Bal des Ardents (Ball of the Burning Men). The four victims were burnt alive when a torch held by Louis came too close to their highly flammable costumes. Two other dancers wearing the same costumes (one of whom was Charles VI himself) narrowly escaped a similar fate.

Murder

On Sunday, November 20, 1407, the contending Dukes exchanged solemn vows of reconciliation before the court of France. But only three days later, Louis was brutally assassinated in the streets of Paris, by the orders of the Duke of Burgundy Jean the Fearless. Louis was stabbed while mounting his horse by fifteen masked criminals led by Raoulet d’Anquetonville, a servant of the Duke of Burgundy. An attendant was severely wounded.

Jean was supported by the population of Paris and the University. He could even publicly admit the killing. Rather than deny it, Jean had the scholar Jean Petit of the Sorbonne deliver a peroration justifying the killing of tyrants.

Louis’ murder sparked a bloody feud and civil war between Burgundy and the French royal family which divided France for the next twenty-eight years, ending with the Treaty of Arras in 1435.

Marriage and issue

In 1389, Louis married Valentina Visconti, daughter of Gian Galeazzo, Duke of Milan and his first wife Isabelle of Valois, a daughter of King Jean II the Good of France by his first wife, Bonne of Bohemia.

The union produced eight children. Among them were Louis’ eldest son, Charles, Duke of Orléans (1394 – 1465), who married Marie of Cleves (daughter of Adolph I, Duke of Cleves) and was father of Louis XII, King of France.

Another son was Jean, Count of Angoulême (1399 – 1467), who was the grandfather of Francis I of France.