January 9, 1514: Death of Anne, Duchess of Brittany, Twice Queen of France

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Anullment, Duchess Anne of Brittany and Queen of France, Duke François II of Brittany, King Charles VIII of France, King François I of France, King Louis XI of France, King Louis XII of France, Pope Alexander VI, Salic Law

Anne of Brittany (January 25/26, 1477 – January 9,1514) was reigning Duchess of Brittany from 1488 until her death, and twice Queen of France from 1491 to 1498 and from 1499 to her death. She is the only woman to have been Queen of France twice. During the Italian Wars, Anne also became Queen of Naples, from 1501 to 1504, and Duchess of Milan, in 1499–1500 and from 1500 to 1512.

Anne was born on January 25 or 26, 1477 in the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany in the city of Nantes in what is now the Loire-Atlantique département of France, as the eldest child of Duke François II of Brittany and his second wife Margaret of Foix, Infanta of Navarre. Four years later (before May 10 1481), her parents had a second daughter, Isabelle. Her mother died when Anne was little, while her father died when Anne was eleven years old.

Anne, Duchess of Brittany and Queen of France

Anne was raised in Nantes during a series of conflicts in which King Charles VIII of France sought to assert his suzerainty over Brittany. Her father, François II, Duke of Brittany, was the last male of the House of Montfort.

In this period, the law of succession was unclear, but prior to the Breton War of Succession mainly operated according to semi-Salic Law; i.e., women could inherit, but only if the male line had died out. The Treaty of Guérande in 1365, however, stated that in the absence of a male heir from the House of Montfort, the heirs of Joanna of Penthièvre would succeed.

By the time Anne was born, her father was the only male from the Breton House of Montfort, and the Blois-Penthièvre heir was a female, Nicole of Blois, who in 1480 sold her rights over Brittany to King Louis XI of France for the amount of 50,000 écus.

The lack of a male heir gave rise to the threat of a dynastic crisis in the Duchy, or to its passing directly into the royal domain. To avoid this, François II had Anne officially recognised as his heiress by the Estates of Brittany on February 10, 1486; however, the question of her marriage remained a diplomatic issue.

King Charles VIII of France

Upon the death of her father, Duke François II of Brittany in 1488, Anne became Duchess Regnant of Brittany, Countess of Nantes, Montfort, and Richmond, and Viscountess of Limoges. She was only 11 at that time, but she was already a coveted heiress because of Brittany’s strategic position.

The next year, she married Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I of the House of Austria (Habsburg) by proxy, but King Charles VIII of France saw this as a threat since his realm was located between Brittany and Austria. He started a military campaign which eventually forced the duchess to renounce her marriage.

Anne eventually married King Charles VIII in 1491. None of their children survived early childhood, and when the king died in 1498, the throne went to his cousin, Louis of Orléans, the son of Charles, Duke of Orléans, and Maria of Cleves. Louis of Orléans became King Louis XII of France.

Following an agreement made to secure the annexation of Brittany, Anne had to marry the new king.

However, since King Louis XII was already married getting free from his first wife would be difficult and at this time Anne had many opportunities to reassert the independence of her duchy.

In 1476 Louis of Orléans was forced by King Louis XI (his second cousin) to marry his daughter Joan of France. King Charles VIII (son of Louis XI) succeeded to the throne of France in 1483, but died childless in 1498, when the throne passed to Louis of Orléans as King Louis XII as previously mentioned.

In order for to sustain the union between the quasi-sovereign Duchy of Brittany with the Kingdom of France, Louis XII had to have his marriage to Joan annulled so that he could marry Charles VIII’s widow, Anne of Brittany.

King Louis XII of France

The annulment of Louis and Joan has been described as “one of the seamiest lawsuits of the age”, and was not simple. Louis XII did not, as one might have expected, argue the marriage to be void due to consanguinity (the general allowance for the dissolution of a marriage at that time).

Though he could produce witnesses to claim that the two were closely related due to various linking marriages, there was no documentary proof, merely the opinions of courtiers. Likewise, Louis XII could not argue that he had been below the legal age of consent (fourteen) to marry: no one was certain when he had been born, with Louis XII claiming to have been twelve at the time, and others ranging in their estimates between eleven and thirteen. As there was no real proof, he had perforce to bring forward other arguments.

Accordingly, Louis XII (much to the dismay of his wife) claimed that Joan was physically malformed (providing a rich variety of detail precisely how) and that he had therefore been unable to consummate the marriage.

Joan, unsurprisingly, fought this uncertain charge fiercely, producing witnesses to Louis’s boast of having “mounted my wife three or four times during the night”. Louis also claimed that his sexual performance had been inhibited by witchcraft.

Joan responded by asking how he was able to know what it was like to try to make love to her. Had the Papacy been a neutral party, Joan would likely have won, for Louis’s case was exceedingly weak.

Pope Alexander VI, however, had political reasons to grant the annulment, and ruled against Joan accordingly. He granted the annulment on the grounds that Louis XII did not freely marry, but was forced to marry by Joan’s father King Louis XI. Outraged, Joan reluctantly submitted, saying that she would pray for her former husband. She became a nun; she was canonized in 1950.

Louis XII married the reluctant Queen Dowager, Anne, in 1499.

They had two daughters together and, although neither could succeed to the French throne due to the Salic Law, the eldest was proclaimed the heiress of Brittany. Anne managed to have her eldest daughter engaged to Archduke Charles of Austria, (Holy Roman Emperor Charles V), grandchild of Maximilian I, but after her death in 1514, her daughter married her cousin King François I of France. This marriage later led to the formal union between France and Brittany.

King François I of France

Exhausted by many pregnancies and miscarriages, Anne died of a kidney-stone attack in the Château de Blois at 6 a.m. on 9 January 1514, after having dictated in her will the customary partition of her body (dilaceratio corporis, “division of the body” in heart, entrails and bones) with multiple burials, a privilege of the Capetian dynasty, which allowed for multiple ceremonies (funerals of the body – the most important – and heart) and places (the burial of the body and heart).

She was buried in the necropolis of Saint Denis. Her funeral was exceptionally long, lasting 40 days, and it inspired all future French royal funerals until the 18th century.

She was buried in the necropolis of Saint Denis. Her funeral was exceptionally long, lasting 40 days, and it inspired all future French royal funerals until the 18th century.

Anne was a highly intelligent woman who spent much of her time on the administration of Brittany. She was described as shrewd, proud and haughty in manner. She made the safeguarding of Breton autonomy, and the preservation of the Duchy outside the French crown, her life’s work, although that goal would prove to have failed shortly after her death.

Anne was also a patron of the arts and enjoyed music. A prolific collector of tapestries, it is very likely that the unicorn tapestries now on view at The Cloisters museum in New York City were commissioned by her in celebration of her wedding to Louis XII. Of her four surviving illuminated manuscript books of hours the most famous is the Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany. She also patronized printed books and their authors.

Anne as Queen, receives a book in praise of famous women, painted by Jean Perréal.

She was a devoted mother, spending as much time as possible with her children. She commissioned a book of prayers for her son, Charles-Orland, to use in teaching him how to pray, and as guidance for his role as future King of France. Unfortunately, Charles-Orland died in 1495, and no other son lived more than a few weeks. She also commissioned a primer, yet extant, for her then 8-year-old daughter Claude.

Anne is highly regarded in Brittany as a conscientious ruler who defended the duchy against France. In the Romantic period, she became a figure of Breton patriotism and she was honoured with many memorials and statues.

Her artistic legacy is important in the Loire Valley, where she spent most of her life. She was notably responsible, with her husbands, for architectural projects in the châteaux of Blois and Amboise.

November 23, 1890: Accession of Prince Adolphe of Nassau as Grand Duke of Luxembourg

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Duke of Nassau, Grand Duke Adolphe of Luxembourg, Grand Duke Guillaume IV of Luxembourg, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, King Willem III of the Netherlands, Salic Law

Adolphe (July 24, 1817 – November 17, 1905) Grand Duke of Luxembourg.

Adolphe was a son of Wilhelm, Duke of Nassau (1792–1839), and his first wife, Princess Louise of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Adolphe’s half-sister, Sophia of Nassau, was the wife of King Oscar II of Sweden.

Adolphe became Duke of Nassau in August 1839 at the age of 22, after the death of his father. Wiesbaden had by this time become the capital of the Duchy and Adolphe took up residence in the newly constructed Stadtschloss in 1841.

On March 4, 1848 he consented to the population of Nassau’s nine “Demands of the Nassauers”. A few years later, however, he revoked his liberal views and took a strongly conservative and reactionary course. In general, though, he was seen as a popular ruler.

He supported the Austrian Empire in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. After Austria’s defeat, Nassau was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia and he lost his throne on September 20, 1866.

From 1815 to 1839, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was ruled by the kings of the Netherlands as a province of the Netherlands. Following the Treaty of London (1839), the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg became independent but remained in personal union with the Netherlands with the Dutch King as the Head of State.

Grand Duke of Luxembourg

In 1879, Adolphe’s niece Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, the daughter of another of his half-sisters, married Willem III, King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg. In 1890, their only daughter Wilhelmina succeeded on his death without surviving male issue to the Dutch throne, but was excluded from the succession to Luxembourg by Salic Law.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg passed to Adolphe in accordance with the Nassau Family Pact. Adolphe was King-Grand Duke Willem III’s 17th cousin once removed through a male-only line, but was also his 3rd cousin as they both descended from Willem IV, Prince of Orange (he being the paternal great-grandson of William IV’s eldest daughter Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau.)

Marriage and family

On January 31, 1844, Adolphe married firstly in St. Petersburg Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mikhailovna of Russia, who was the second child and daughter of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich of Russia and Princess Charlotte of Württemberg who took the name Elena Pavlovna upon her conversion to the Orthodox faith. Through her father, Elizabeth was a granddaughter of Emperor Paul I of Russia, and a niece of both Russian Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I.

She died less than a year afterwards giving birth to a stillborn daughter. Adolphe built the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Elizabeth 1847 to 1855 as her funeral church.

On April 23, 1851, he remarried Princess Adelheid-Marie of Anhalt-Dessau. She was the daughter of to Prince Friedrich August of Anhalt-Dessau and Princess Marie Luise Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel.

They had five children, of whom only two lived to the age of eighteen and became prince and princess of Luxembourg

Grand Duke Adolphe was already 73 years old when he assumed the throne and knew little of Luxembourgish politics, he left his hands off the day-to-day governing.

The prime minister Paul Eyschen, in office since 1888, took care of the affairs of state, and this created a tradition that the ruler would remain absent from the politics of the day.

In 1902 Adolphe appointed his son Prince Gullaume as Lieutenant-Representative. Adolphe died in 1905 at his summer home, Schloss Hohenburg in Lenggries, and was succeeded by his eldest son as Grand Duke Guillaume IV of Luxembourg. In 1953 Adolphe was buried in the crypt of the church of Schloss Weilburg.

Luxembourg is a French speaking country and therefore the Dutch Monarchs of Luxembourg were known as Grand Duke Guillaume I, Guillaume II and Guillaume III of Luxembourg respectively.

Titles of the British Monarch. Part II.

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Battle of Agincourt, Charles IV of France, Charles VI of France, coronation, Edward III of England, Henry VI of England, Hundred Years War, Joan of Arc, Philippe VI of France, Reims Cathedral, Salic Law, Siege of Orléans, Titles of the British Monarch, Treaty of Troyes

Claims to the French Throne

When King Charles IV of France died on February 1, 1328 without a surviving male heir, it ended the direct line of the Capetian Dynasty which had ruled France since the election and accession of King Hughes Capét on July 3, 987 by the prelate of Reims.

King Charles VI of France

Twelve years prior to the death of Charles IV, 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. The application of this rule barred Charles’s one-year-old daughter Mary, by Jeanne d’Évreux, from succeeding as the monarch, but Jeanne was also pregnant at the time of Charles’s death.

Since she might have given birth to a son, a regency was set up under the heir presumptive Philippe of Valois, son of Charles of Valois and a member of the House of Valois, the next most senior branch of the Capetian dynasty.

After two months, Jeanne gave birth to another daughter, Blanche, and thus Philippe became king and in May and was consecrated and crowned Philippe 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 Philippe IV, should have inherited the throne.

At first, King Edward III seemed to accept Philippe VI’s succession. However, in 1337 Edward III declared himself the rightful heir to the French throne. This started what became known as the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). Following some initial setbacks, this first phase of the war went exceptionally well for England; victories at Crécy and Poitiers led to the highly favourable Treaty of Brétigny, in which England made territorial gains, and Edward renounced his claim to the French throne.

Revival of the claims to France

By 1378, under King Charles V the Wise and the leadership of Bertrand du Guesclin, the French had reconquered most of the lands ceded to King Edward III in the Treaty of Brétigny (signed in 1360), leaving the English with only a few cities on the continent.

Arms of Henry VI of England.

In the following decades, the weakening of royal authority, combined with the devastation caused by the Black Death of 1347–1351 (with the loss of nearly half of the French population and between 20% and 33% of the English population) and the major economic crisis that followed, led to a period of civil unrest in both countries. These crises were resolved in England earlier than in France.

Lancastrian Phase of the Hundred Years War

The newly crowned Henry V of England seized the opportunity presented by the mental illness of Charles VI of France and the French civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians to revive the conflict.

In 1415 the army of Charles VI was crushed by the English at the Battle of Agincourt, which led to Charles’ signing of the Treaty of Troyes, which entirely disinherited his son, the Dauphin and future Charles VII, in favour of his future son-in-law Henry V of England. Henry was thus made regent and heir to the throne of France, and Charles VI married him to his daughter Catherine de Valois.

Henry V and Catherine de Valois had a son, Henry, born on December 6, 1421 at Windsor Castle. The young Henry succeeded to the throne as King Henry VI of England at the age of nine months on September 1, 1422, the day after his father’s death; he remains the youngest person ever to succeed to the English throne. On October 21, 1422, in accordance with the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, he became titular King of France upon the death of his grandfather King Charles VI of France. His mother, the 20-year-old Catherine of Valois, was viewed with considerable suspicion by English nobles as Charles VI’s daughter. Therefore she was prevented from playing a full role in her son’s upbringing.

However Charles VI’s own son, the disinherited Dauphin, was regarded as the true heir by the French. 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 allied to the English).

With his court removed to Bourges, south of the Loire River, Charles VII 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 of Arc and other charismatic figures led French troops to lift The Siege of Orléans in 1429 which announced the beginning of the end for English hopes of conquest.

With the local English troops dispersed, the people of Reims switched allegiance and opened their gates, which enabled the coronation of Charles VII in 1429 at Reims Cathedral.

In reaction to the coronation of Charles VII on July 17, 1429, at Reims Cathedral, Henry was soon crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey on November 6, 1429, aged 7. This was folowed by his own coronation as King of France at Notre-Dame de Paris on December 16, 1431, aged 10. He was the only English king to be crowned king in both England and France.

Despite the eventual capture of Joan of Arc by the Burgundians and her execution in 1431, a series of crushing French victories such as those at Patay in 1429, Formigny in 1450 and Castillon in 1453 concluded the Hundred Years War in favour of France and the Valois dynasty.

England permanently lost most of its continental possessions, with only the Pale of Calais remaining under its control on the continent, until it too was lost in the Siege of Calais in 1558.

Despite his brief reign in France, Henry VI of England is not recognized as a legitimate King of France.

The claim to the title of “King of France” was nonetheless not relinquished and was retained in pretense by the English/British monarchs until the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, by which time the French monarchy had been overthrown by the French Revolution.

Henry IV of England and his claim to the English Throne

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agnatic primogeniture, Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England and Lord of Ireland, House of Lancaster, Salic Law, Usurper

From The Emperor’s Desk: in my recent post I discussed how Henry Bolingbroke became King Henry IV of England. Historians consider him a usurper and although he did have a strong hereditary claim to the throne his assumption of the crown was more of a right by conquest than him being the legal heir to King Richard II.

When Richard II was forced to abdicate the throne on September 29, 1399, Henry was next in line to the throne according to Edward III’s entailment of 1376. That entailment clearly reflects the operation of agnatic primogeniture, also known as the Salic law. At this time, it was by no means a settled custom for the daughter of a king to supersede the brothers of that king in the line of succession to the throne.

Indeed, it was not an established belief that women could inherit the throne at all by right: the only previous instance of succession passing through a woman had been that which involved the Empress Matilda, and this had involved protracted civil war, with the other protagonist being the son of Matilda’s father’s sister (not his brother). Yet, the heir of the royal estate according to common law (by which the houses and tenancies of common people like peasants and tradesmen passed) was Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, who descended from the daughter of Edward III’s third son (second to survive to adulthood), Lionel of Antwerp. Bolingbroke’s father, John of Gaunt, was Edward’s fourth son and the third to survive to adulthood. The problem was solved by emphasising Henry’s descent in a direct male line, whereas March’s descent was through his grandmother.

The official account of events claims that Richard II voluntarily agreed to resign his crown to Henry on September 29. The country had rallied behind Henry and supported his claim in parliament. However, the question of the succession never went away. The problem lay in the fact that Henry was only the most prominent male heir, but not the most senior in terms of agnatic descent from Edward III.

Although he was heir to the throne according to Edward III’s entail to the crown of 1376, Dr. Ian Mortimer has pointed out in his 2008 biography of Henry IV that this entail had probably been supplanted by an entail made by Richard II in 1399 (see Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV, appendix two, pp. 366–9). Henry thus had to overcome the superior claim of the Mortimers in order to maintain his inheritance.

This difficulty compounded when the Mortimer claim was merged with the Yorkist claim in the person of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The Duke of York was the heir-generalof Edward III, and the heir presumptive (due to agnatic descent, the same principle by which Henry IV claimed the throne in 1399) of Henry’s grandson Henry VI (since Henry IV’s other sons did not have male heirs, and the legitimated Beauforts were excluded from the throne). The House of Lancaster was finally deposed by Edward IV, son of Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, during the Wars of the Roses.

Henry avoided the problem of Mortimer having a superior claim by ignoring his own descent from Edward III. He claimed the throne as the right heir to King Henry III by claiming that Edmund Crouchback was the elder and not the younger son of King Henry. He asserted that every monarch from Edward I was a usurper, and he, as his mother Blanche of Lancaster was a great-granddaughter of Edmund, was the rightful king. Henry also claimed to be King of France, but Henry III had no hereditary claim to that throne.

September 12, 1494: Birth of François I, King of France.

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Charles of Orléans, Claude of France, Count of Angoulême, Filed of the Cloth of Gold, Francis I of France, King François I of France, King Henri II of France, King Louis XII of France, Kingdom of France, Kings and Queens of France, Louise of Savoy, Salic Law

From the Emperor’s Desk: Yesterday, September 11, was the Anniversary of the birth of Louise of Savoy, today is the anniversary the birth of her son, King François I of France.

François I (September 12, 1494 – March 31, 1547) was King of France from 1515 until his death in 1547.

François of Orléans was born on September 12, 1494 (the day after his mother’s birthday) at the Château de Cognac in the town of Cognac, which at that time lay in the province of Saintonge, a part of the Duchy of Aquitaine. Today the town lies in the department of Charente.

François was the only son of Charles of Orléans, Count of Angoulême, and Louise of Savoy, eldest daughter of Philip II, Duke of Savoy and his first wife, Margaret of Bourbon, the daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon (1401–1456) and Agnes of Burgundy (1407–1476). François was a great-great-grandson of King Charles V of France, through his father and it was from this line François drew his claim to the French throne.

His family was not expected to inherit the throne, as his third cousin King Charles VIII was still young at the time of his birth, as was his father’s cousin the Duke of Orléans, later King Louis XII. However, Charles VIII died childless in 1498 and was succeeded by Louis XII, who himself had no male heir. The Salic Law prevented women from inheriting the throne. Therefore, the four-year-old François (who was already Count of Angoulême after the death of his own father two years earlier) became the heir presumptive to the throne of France in 1498 and was vested with the title of Duke of Valois.

In 1505, Louis XII, having fallen ill, ordered that his daughter Claude and François be married immediately, but only through an assembly of nobles were the two engaged. Claude was heir presumptive to the Duchy of Brittany through her mother, Anne of Brittany. Following Anne’s death, the marriage took place on May 18, 1514. On January 1, 1515, Louis XII died, and François inherited the throne. He was crowned King of France in the Cathedral of Reims on 25 January 1515, with Claude as his queen consort.

By the time François ascended the throne in 1515, the Renaissance had arrived in France, and prodigious patron of the arts, he initiated the French Renaissance by attracting many Italian artists to work for him, including Leonardo da Vinci, who brought the Mona Lisa with him, which François had acquired. François’ reign saw important cultural changes with the rise of absolute monarchy in France, the spread of humanism and Protestantism, and the beginning of French exploration of the New World. Jacques Cartier and others claimed lands in the Americas for France and paved the way for the expansion of the first French colonial empire.

For his role in the development and promotion of a standardized French language, he became known as le Père et Restaurateur des Lettres (the ‘Father and Restorer of Letters’). He was also known as François du Grand Nez (‘Francis of the Large Nose’), the Grand Colas, and the Roi-Chevalier (the ‘Knight-King’) for his personal involvement in the wars against his great rival Emperor Charles V, who was also King of Spain.

Following the policy of his predecessors, Francis continued the Italian Wars. The succession of Charles V to the Burgundian Netherlands, the throne of Spain, and his subsequent election as Holy Roman Emperor meant that France was geographically encircled by the Habsburg monarchy. In his struggle against Imperial hegemony, he sought the support of Henry VIII of England at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. When this was unsuccessful, he formed a Franco-Ottoman alliance with the Muslim sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, a controversial move for a Christian king at the time.

His first wife, Claude of France, died in 1524 and On July 7, 1530, François I married his second wife Eleanor of Austria (November 15, 1498 – February 25, 1558), also called Eleanor of Castile, was born an Archduchess of Austria and Infanta of Castile from the House of Habsburg and a sister of the Emperor Charles V. The couple had no children. During his reign, François kept two official mistresses at court.

The first mistress was Françoise de Foix, Countess of Châteaubriant. In 1526, she was replaced by the blonde-haired, cultured Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess of Étampes who, with the death of Queen Claude two years earlier, wielded far more political power at court than her predecessor had done. Another of his earlier mistresses was allegedly Mary Boleyn, mistress of King Henry VIII and sister of Henry’s future wife, Anne Boleyn.

Death

François died at the Château de Rambouillet on March 31 1547, on his son and successor’s 28th birthday. It is said that “he died complaining about the weight of a crown that he had first perceived as a gift from God”. He was interred with his first wife, Claude, Duchess of Brittany, in Saint Denis Basilica. He was succeeded by his son, Henri II.

François’ tomb and that of his wife and mother, along with the tombs of other French kings and members of the royal family, were desecrated on 20 October 1793 during the Reign of Terror at the height of the French Revolution.

François I has a poor reputation in France–his 500th anniversary was little noted in 1994. Popular and scholarly historical memory ignores his building of so many fine chateaux, his stunning art collection, his lavish patronage of scholars and artists. He is seen as a playboy who disgraced France by allowing himself to be defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia. The historian Jules Michelet set the negative image.

British historian Glenn Richardson considers Francis a success:

“He was a king who ruled as well as reigned. He knew the importance of war and a high international profile in staking his claim to be a great warrior-king of France. In battle he was brave, if impetuous, which led equally to triumph and disaster. Domestically, François exercised the spirit and letter of the royal prerogative to its fullest extent. He bargained hard over taxation and other issues with interest groups, often by appearing not to bargain at all.

He enhanced royal power and concentrated decision-making in a tight personal executive but used a wide range of offices, gifts and his own personal charisma to build up an elective personal affinity among the ranks of the nobility upon whom his reign depended….Under Francis, the court of France was at the height of its prestige and international influence during the 16th century. Although opinion has varied considerably over the centuries since his death, his cultural legacy to France, to its Renaissance, was immense and ought to secure his reputation as among the greatest of its kings.”

March 22, 1459: Birth of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. Part I.

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Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, Eleanor of Portugal, Holy Roman Emperor, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, Holy Roman Empire, Louis XI of France, Mary of Burgundy, Philip the Handsome, Salic Law

Maximilian I (March 22, 1459 – January 12, 1519) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death. Maximilian was the son of Friedrich III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Eleanor of Portugal, daughter of King Duarte of Portugal and his wife Infanta Eleanor of Aragon. Maximilian was born at Wiener Neustadt on March 22, 1459. His father named him for an obscure saint, Maximilian of Tebessa, whom Friedrich believed had once warned him of imminent peril in a dream.

Friedrich III, Holy Roman Emperor and Infanta Eleanor of Portugal

At the time, the dukes of Burgundy, a cadet branch of the French royal family, with their sophisticated nobility and court culture, were the rulers of substantial territories on the eastern and northern boundaries of France. The reigning duke, Charles the Bold, was the chief political opponent of Maximilian’s father Friedrich III. Friedrich was concerned about Burgundy’s expansive tendencies on the western border of his Holy Roman Empire, and, to forestall military conflict, he attempted to secure the marriage of Charles the Bold’s only daughter, Mary of Burgundy, to his son Maximilian. After the Siege of Neuss (1474–75), he was successful. The wedding between Maximilian and Mary took place on August 19, 1477.

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Mary, Duchess of Burgundy

Maximilian’s wife had inherited the large Burgundian domains in France and the Low Countries upon her father’s death in the Battle of Nancy on 5 January 1477. Already before his coronation as the King of the Romans in 1486, Maximilian decided to secure this distant and extensive Burgundian inheritance to his family, the House of Habsburg, at all costs.

The Duchy of Burgundy was also claimed by the French crown under Salic Law, with Louis XI of France vigorously contesting the Habsburg claim to the Burgundian inheritance by means of military force. Maximilian undertook the defence of his wife’s dominions from an attack by Louis XI and defeated the French forces at Guinegate, the modern Enguinegatte, on August 7, 1479.

Maximilian and Mary’s wedding contract stipulated that their children would succeed them but that the couple could not be each other’s heirs. Mary tried to bypass this rule with a promise to transfer territories as a gift in case of her death, but her plans were confounded. After Mary’s death in a riding accident on March 27, 1482 near the Wijnendale Castle, Maximilian’s aim was now to secure the inheritance to his and Mary’s son, Philipp the Handsome.

Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor

Maximilian ruled jointly with his father for the last ten years of the latter’s reign, from c. 1483 to his father’s death in 1493. Maximilian was elected King of the Romans on February 16, 1486 in Frankfurt-am-Main at his father’s initiative and crowned on April 9, 1486 in Aachen. He became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire upon the death of his father in 1493. He was never crowned by the pope, as the journey to Rome was always too risky. He was instead proclaimed Emperor Elect by Pope Julius II at Trent, thus breaking the long tradition of requiring a papal coronation for the adoption of the imperial title.

Part II Reign in the Holy Roman Empire

King Henry IV of England: Part III.

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5th Earl of March, Duke of York, Edmund Mortimer, Edward III of England, Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England, House of Lancaster, Kings and Queens of England, Richard Plantagenet, Salic Law

When Richard II was forced to abdicate the throne in 1399, Henry Bolingbroke was next in line to the throne according to Edward III’s entailment of 1376. That entailment clearly reflects the operation of agnatic primogeniture, also known as the Salic law. At this time, it was by no means a settled custom for the daughter of a king to supersede the brothers of that king in the line of succession to the throne. Indeed, it was not an established belief that women could inherit the throne at all by right: the only previous instance of succession passing through a woman had been that which involved the Empress Matilda, and this had involved protracted civil war, with the other protagonist being the son of Matilda’s father’s sister (not his brother).

Edward III, King of England, Lord of Ireland

Yet, the heir of the royal estate according to common law (by which the houses and tenancies of common people like peasants and tradesmen passed) was Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, who descended from the daughter of Edward III’s third son (second to survive to adulthood), Lionel of Antwerp.

Bolingbroke’s father, John of Gaunt, was Edward’s fourth son and the third to survive to adulthood. The problem was solved by emphasising Henry IV’s descent in a direct male line, whereas Edmund’s descent was through his grandmother.

The official account of events claims that Richard voluntarily agreed to resign his crown to Henry on September 29. The country had rallied behind Henry and supported his claim in parliament. However, the question of the succession never went away. The problem lay in the fact that Henry was only the most prominent male heir, but not the most senior in terms of agnatic descent from Edward III. Although he was heir to the throne according to Edward III’s entail to the crown of 1376, Dr. Ian Mortimer has pointed out in his 2008 biography of Henry IV that this entail had probably been supplanted by an entail made by Richard II in 1399.

Henry IV, King of England, Lord of Ireland

Henry IV thus had to overcome the superior claim of the Mortimers in order to maintain his inheritance. This difficulty compounded when the Mortimer claim was merged with the Yorkist claim in the person of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The Duke of York was the heir-general of Edward III, and the heir presumptive (due to agnatic descent, the same principle by which Henry IV claimed the throne in 1399) of Henry’s grandson Henry VI (since Henry IV’s other sons did not have male heirs, and the legitimated Beauforts were excluded from the throne). The House of Lancaster was finally deposed by Edward IV, son of Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, during the Wars of the Roses.

Henry IV avoided the problem of Mortimer having a superior claim by ignoring his own descent from Edward III. He claimed the throne as the right heir to King Henry III by claiming that Edmund Crouchback was the elder and not the younger son of King Henry. He asserted that every monarch from Edward I was a usurper, and he, as his mother Blanche of Lancaster was a great-granddaughter of Edmund, was the rightful king. Henry also claimed to be king of France, but Henry III had no claim to that throne.

February 25, 1912: Marie-Adélaïde becomes the first Grand Duchess of Luxembourg

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Abdication, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Marie-Adelaide of Luxembourg, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Salic Law, William III of the Netherlands, William IV of Luxembourg

Marie-Adélaïde (June 14, 1894 – January 24, 1924), reigned as Grand Duchess of Luxembourg from 1912 until her abdication in 1919. She was the first Grand Duchess regnant of Luxembourg (after five grand dukes), its first female monarch since Duchess Maria Theresa (1740–1780, who was also Austrian Archduchess and Holy Roman Empress) and the first Luxembourgish monarch to be born within the territory since Count John the Blind (1296–1346).

Marie-Adélaïde was born on June 14, 1894 in Berg Castle as the eldest child of Grand Duke Guillaume IV of Luxembourg and his wife, Marie Anne of Portugal, the fifth child and second-youngest daughter of the deposed King Miguel of Portugal and his wife Princess Adelaide of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg.

Due to that same Salic Law, the elder branch of the House of Nassau, called Nassau-Weilburg (present-day Luxembourg-Nassau) had inherited the Grand Ducal throne in 1890 upon the death of King Willem III of the Netherlands. Ever since 1815 and the proclamation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the new King of the Netherlands, Willem I, was also made Grand Duke of Luxembourg, a part of the Kingdom that was, at the same time, a member state of the German Confederation.

In 1830, Belgium seceded from the Kingdom, a step that was recognised by the Netherlands only in 1839. At that point, Luxembourg became a fully independent country in a personal union with the Netherlands. When Willem III of the Netherlands died leaving only his daughter Wilhelmina as an heir, the crown of the Netherlands, not being bound by the family pact, passed to Wilhelmina. However, the crown of Luxembourg, under the Salic Law, passed to a male of another branch of the House of Nassau: Adolphe, the dispossessed Duke of Nassau and head of the branch of Nassau-Weilburg.

In 1907, Adolphe’s only son, Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, obtained passage of a law, overturning the Salic Law, confirming the right of his eldest daughter, Marie-Adélaïde, to succeed to the throne in virtue of the absence of any remaining dynastic males of the House of Nassau, as originally stipulated in the Nassau Family Pact.

Thus, when her father died on February 25, 1912 she succeeded to the throne at the age of 17, becoming the first reigning Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. Her mother served as regent until Marie-Adélaïde’s eighteenth birthday on June 18, 1912 when the President of the Chamber Auguste Laval swore her in as the first Luxembourgish monarch to be born in the territory since the reign of Count John the Blind of Luxembourg (1296–1346).

Marie-Adélaïde was deeply interested in politics and took an active part in the government and the political life of the Grand Duchy in accordance with the Luxembourgish Constitution which at that time granted the monarch extensive political powers. She was a devout Roman Catholic, with strong religious convictions and very conservative political views.

On the day of her ascension to the throne – February 25, 1912 – she refused to sign a new law reducing the role of Roman Catholic priests within the education system. Later, in 1915, she hesitated before appointing the mayors of Differdange and Hollerich, both known for their anticlerical views.

With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the German Empire violated the neutrality of Luxembourg established and recognized in International Law by invading the country on August 2, 1914. Although Marie-Adélaïde issued a formal protest, this did nothing to prevent the military occupation of Luxembourg. She decided not to resist the occupying army, but tried instead to maintain formally her country’s neutrality throughout the war.

However, during the war she developed a rather cordial relationship with the German occupiers (including hosting German Emperor Wilhelm II in the palace and allowing his son, Crown Prince Wilhelm to establish his temporary military headquarters in Luxembourg City), an attitude which made her very unpopular with the Luxembourgish population, especially after she refused as well to send away her German entourage who was part of the Grand Ducal Household (palace personnel).

In late 1916 the Grand Duchess caused controversy by dissolving the Chamber of Deputies to solve the deadlock faced by the Loutsch Ministry, which was composed of Party of the Right members and did not have a majority in the Chamber. Marie-Adélaïde ordered the Chamber dissolved and new elections held on December 23, 1916. This action was permissible under the Constitution, but regarded as unconventional, and provoked an outcry and long-term resentment among the socialists and liberals in parliament, who saw it as resembling a coup d’état.

Although she had not done anything flagrantly in contradiction with the Luxembourg Constitution of 1868, voices in Parliament began to demand her abdication. On January 9, 1919 a group of Socialist and Liberal Luxembourgish Members of Parliament (“Deputies”) publicly proclaimed a republic after losing a vote in parliament to abolish the monarchy, a situation which was followed by public unrest in the streets requiring even the intervention of the French Army to restore order.

Under intense national (and international) pressure, and after consulting with the Prime Minister, the 24-year-old Grand Duchess decided to abdicate (January 14, 1919). She was succeeded by her younger sister, Princess Charlotte, The Hereditary Grand Duchess.

After her abdication Marie-Adélaïde went into exile by travelling through Europe. She entered a Carmelite convent in Modena, Italy, in 1920. Later, she joined the Little Sisters of the Poor in Rome, taking the name “Sister Marie of the Poor”. Her worsening health did not allow her to remain a nun, however, and she eventually had to leave the convent.

She then moved to Schloss Hohenburg in Bavaria, where, surrounded by her family, she died of influenza aged 29 on January 24, 1924. Marie-Adélaïde never married nor had children. On October 22, 1947, her body was interred in the Grand Ducal Crypt of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in the city of Luxembourg.

French Dynastic Disputes: Part IV (b).

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Catherine de Médici, Charles Cardinal de Bourbon, Chartres, Henri IV of France, Henry of Navarre, Roman Catholic Church, Salic Law, The Catholic League

At one point Henri of Navarre had been excluded from the succession.

Catherine de’ Medici (spouse of King Henri II) had ensured her regency of the nine-year-old King Charles IX in 1560 only by making a deal with Antoine of Bourbon, who many considered had the right, as First Prince of the Blood, to be the regent.

Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France

In a kingdom that the Salic Law excluded women from succession to the throne, Catherine had overcome prejudice against government by a woman and been elected governor (gouvernante) of France with sweeping powers. However, she accepted that none of her three daughters would ever inherit the French throne. By 1572, only two of her sons remained alive, she brokered a marriage between her daughter Margaret and Henry, who that year became King Henry III of Navarre after the death of his mother, Jeanne d’Albret while she was buying clothes for the wedding in Paris. The marriage was intended to unite the interests of the house of Valois with the house of Bourbon.

Henri of Navarre always emphasised the significance of his blood, rather than religion, when he challenged the Guise-led Catholic League. After the League forced Henry III to sign the Treaty of Nemours, which excluded Navarre from the succession, in July 1585, the latter issued a manifesto condemning the pact as:

A peace made with foreigners at the expense of the princes of the blood; with the House of Lorraine at the expense of the House of France; with rebels at the expense of obedient subjects; with agitators at the expense of those who have brought peace by every means within their power…. I intend to oppose it with all my heart, and to this end to rally around me… all true Frenchmen without regard to religion, since this time it is a question of the defence of the state against the usurpation of foreigners.

The pull of such propaganda remained so potent that even after 25 years of civil war, “many good Catholics flooded to his standard”.

Henri of Navarre’s pedigree gave him a special place of honour in the French nobility since all scions of the Bourbon line were acknowledged as the princes of the blood. As Head of the House of Bourbon, Henri was officially the First Prince of the Blood, the first nobleman of the kingdom.

At the death of Henri III, Henri of Navarre became Henri IV of France and Navarre. He was the legitimate successor designated by the Salic law, but his authority was rejected by most of Catholic France. Next in line to Henri in the throne of France was his elderly uncle Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon. The cardinal had been detained by Henri III for having been the royal candidate of the Catholic League and Spain.

Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon

The Parlement of Paris proclaimed the Cardinal de Bourbon as King Charles X of France in 1589. But despite their similar names, the French Parlement is not an equivalent of the British Parliament, which had the power to choose the king and regulate the succession. The French Parlement is a court of justice, not a sovereign legislative body.

Events favored the cause of Henri IV. He won brilliant victories at Arques and Ivry. In 1591, the Cardinal de Bourbon died. The heir presumptive of Henri IV was now the infant Henri, Prince of Condé (1588–1646) son of a Protestant prince. The remaining Bourbons supported the claim of their chief. The Catholic League were left without a plausible successor to the throne. Henri converted to Catholicism in 1593, and was anointed at Chartres the next year.

The proclamation of Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, as King Charles X, went against the principle of primogeniture, and was therefore void. By the principle of continuity of the crown, the reign of Henri IV is dated from 1589, immediately after the death of his predecessor, and not from 1594, when he was crowned, or in 1593, when he became a Catholic. Contrary to the interpretation of the League, the late conversion of the “relapsed heretic” Henri IV was not enough to exclude him from the succession.

Henri IV, King of France and Navarre

Arrêt Lemaistre emphasized the fulfillment of all the principles of royal succession prior to the recognition of a king:
* Masculinity could be fulfilled by any male;
* Male collaterality could only be fulfilled by an agnate of the royal line;
* Primogeniture could only be fulfilled by one person, the head of the royal line;
* Inalienability meant that no member of the royal line can be deprived of his position, since it would break the order of primogeniture;
* Catholicity can be fulfilled by any Catholic.

Hence, at any point in time only one person has the potential of fulfilling all the conditions of French kingship — the chief of the Capetian dynasty. His non-fulfillment of the only remaining condition, Catholicism, will not necessarily exclude him, such being contrary to the inalienability principle. By not being a Catholic, what he actually does is to delay the full acquisition of his royal powers, which would be exercised by other persons, as happened during the Protestantism of Henri IV (1589-1593).

French Dynastic Disputes: Part IV (a).

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Fundamental Laws of Succession to the French Crown, Henri III of France, Henri IV of France, Henri of Navarre, House of Bourbon, House of Valois, Louis IX of France, Louise of Lorraine, Salic Law

The Bourbon succession

At the time of the accession of Henri III, upon the death of his brother, Charles IX on May 30, 1574, France was plagued by the Wars of Religion, and Henri III’s authority was undermined by violent political parties funded by foreign powers: the Catholic League (supported by Spain and the Pope), the Protestant Huguenots (supported by England and the Dutch) and the Malcontents, led by Henri III’s own brother, the Duke of Alençon, which was a party of Catholic and Protestant aristocrats who jointly opposed the absolutist ambitions of the king. Henri III was himself a politique, arguing that a strong and religiously tolerant monarchy would save France from collapse.

Henri III, King of France.

He was expected to produce an heir after he married Louise of Lorraine, age 21, on February 1575, no issue resulted from their union. Louise was the third daughter and youngest child of Nicholas of Lorraine, Duke of Mercœur, and Countess Marguerite d’Egmont. However, as early as the death of François, Duke of Anjou, brother of Henri III of France, in 1584, the succession of Henri of Navarre, Head of the House of Bourbon, had been a likely eventuality. Henri III was the sole remaining representative of the House of Valois, and he was still childless.

Reports that Henri III engaged in same-sex relations with his court favourites, known as the mignons, date back to his own time. Certainly he enjoyed intense relationships with them. The scholar Louis Crompton maintains that all of the contemporary rumours were true. Some modern historians dispute this. Jean-Francois Solnon, Nicolas Le Roux, and Jacqueline Boucher have noted that Henri III had many famous mistresses, that he was well known for his taste in beautiful women, and that no male sex partners have been identified. They have concluded that the idea he was homosexual was promoted by his political opponents (both Protestant and Catholic) who used his dislike of war and hunting to depict him as effeminate and undermine his reputation with the French people.

Louise of Lorraine

The laws of succession designated the head of the next branch of the Capetian family as heir presumptive. Normally this would not have been controversial; but the 16th century was a period of religious discord in France, and Henri of Navarre was the chief of the Protestant party and he was also next in line to the French throne.

This was an unacceptable choice for Catholic France which was considered the eldest daughter of the Church; and anointing the king implied that he must belong to the Catholic faith. Ultra-Catholics rejected Henri of Navarre as a relapsed heretic; they would not accept him even if he converted. Moderate Catholics supported Navarre, provided that he would convert.

How did Henri of Navarre derive his claim to the French throne? And the objection to his claim was not predicated solely on religious reasons, but also upon genealogical issues.

Bourbon claim to the throne

Henri of Navarre was descended through his father from King Louis IX of France, via Robert, Count of Clermont (d. 1317), the sixth and youngest son of Louis IX, and the only son besides Philippe III to produce a surviving line. Robert married Beatrix of Bourbon and assumed the title of sire de Bourbon. Bourbon was elevated into a duchy for Robert’s son Louis, who became the first Duke of Bourbon.

At the death of Charles IV, Duke of Alençon in 1525, all cadet branches of the House of Valois had become extinct, with the only remaining Valois being the royal family itself. The chief of the Bourbons became the first prince of the blood, the closest to the succession to the throne should the immediate family of the king become extinct. At the death of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon in 1527, the Vendôme branch of the House of Bourbon became the senior line of the family. At that time, represented by Charles de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme. His son Antoine de Bourbon was the King of Navarrethrough his marriage (jure uxoris) to Queen Jeanne III of Navarre. Antoine’s son, Prince Henri of Navarre, inherited the throne of Navarre on his death from an arquebus wound at the siege of Rouen in 1562.

Despite meeting the criteria for the crown under the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom, the legitimacy of Henri of Navarre’s claim to the throne was still questioned, however. In similar cases, the throne had earlier passed to successors with a much closer blood link to the throne. Louis XII had succeeded Charles VIII as his second cousin once removed in the male line. François I had succeeded Louis XII as his cousin five times removed in the male line. The successions were legally unproblematic because consanguinity was acknowledged in law to the tenth degree.

Henri of Navarre

Henri of Navarre, on the other hand, could claim only an agnatic relationship to Henri III in the twenty-second degree. When Henri of Navarre had become the heir presumptive to the throne in 1584, on the death of François, Duke of Anjou, polemicist Jean Boucher had been among those who protested that such a distance in blood meant Henri of Navarre’s claim to the throne had effectively lapsed and that therefore the French States-General had the right to elect a new king.