drew his sword no more, save only against the enemies of the
   Christian faith and Christian civilization, the Mussulmans.'"

      G. Masson,
      Saint Louis and the Thirteenth Century,
      pages 44-56.
   "St. Louis ... by this war of 1242 finished those contests for
   the crown with its vassals which had been going on since the
   time of his ancestor, Louis the Fat. But it was not by warfare
   that he was to aid in breaking down the strongholds of
   feudalism. The vassals might have been beaten time and again,
   and yet the spirit of feudalism, still surviving, would have
   raised up new champions to contend against the crown. St.
   Louis struck at the spirit of the Middle Age, and therein
   insured the downfall of its forms and whole embodiment. He
   fought the last battles against feudalism, because, by a surer
   means than battling, he took, and unconsciously, the
   life-blood from the opposition to the royal authority.
   Unconsciously, we say; he did not look on the old order of
   things as evil, and try to introduce a better; he did not
   selfishly contend for the extension of his own power; he was
   neither a great reformer, nor a (so-called) wise king. He
   undermined feudalism, because he hated injustice; he warred
   with the Middle Age, because he could not tolerate its
   disregard of human rights; and he paved the way for
   Philip-le-bel's struggle with the papacy, because he looked
   upon religion and the church as instruments for man's
   salvation, not as tools for worldly aggrandizement.
{1164}
   He is, perhaps, the only monarch on record who failed in most
   of what he undertook of active enterprise, who was under the
   control of the prejudices of his age, who was a true
   conservative, who never dreamed of effecting great social
   changes,--and who yet, by his mere virtues, his sense of duty,
   his power of conscience, made the mightiest and most vital
   reforms. One of these reforms was the abolition of the trial
   by combat. ... It is not our purpose to follow Louis either in
   his first or second crusade. If the great work of his life was
   not to be done by fighting at home, still less was it to be
   accomplished by battles in Egypt or Tunis. His mission was
   other and greater than he dreamed of, and his service to
   Christendom was wholly unlike that which he proposed to
   himself. ... In November, 1244, he took the cross; but it was
   June of 1248 before he was able to leave Paris to embark upon
   his cherished undertaking. ...

      See CRUSADES: A. D. 1248-1254.

   On the fifth of June, 1249, he landed in Egypt, which was
   to be conquered before Palestine could be safely attacked. On
   the seventh of June, Damietta was entered, and there the
   French slept and feasted, wasting time, strength, and money,
   until the twentieth of the following November. Then came the
   march southward; the encampment upon the Nile; the terrors of
   the Greek fire; the skirmishes which covered the plain with
   dead; the air heavy with putridity and pestilence; the putrid
   water; the fish fat with the flesh of the dead; sickness,
   weakness, retreat, defeat, captivity. On the sixth of April,
   1250, Louis and his followers were prisoners to the
   Mussulmans; Louis might have saved himself, but would not quit
   his followers; he had been faithful thus far, and would be
   till death. ... On the eighth of May, 1250, Louis was a
   freeman, and it was not until the twenty-fifth of April, 1254,
   that he set sail to return to his native shores, where
   Blanche, who had been regent during his absence, had some
   months since yielded up her breath. On the seventh of
   September, he entered Paris, sad and worn. ... And scarce had
   he landed, before he began that course of legislation which
   continued until once more he embarked upon the crusade. ... In
   his first legislative action, Louis proposed to himself these
   objects,--to put an end to judicial partiality, to prevent
   needless and oppressive imprisonment for debt, to stop
   unfounded criminal prosecutions, and to mitigate the horrors
   of legalized torture. In connection with these general topics,
   he made laws to bear oppressively upon the Jews, to punish
   prostitution and gambling, and to diminish intemperance. And
   it is worthy of remark, that this last point was to be
   attained by forbidding innkeepers to sell to any others than
   travellers,--a measure now (six hundred years later) under
   discussion in some parts of our Union, with a view to the same
   end. But the wish which this rare monarch had to recompense
   all who had been wronged by himself and forefathers was the
   uppermost wish of his soul. He felt that to do justice himself
   was the surest way to make others willing to do it. Commissioners
   were sent into every province of the kingdom to examine each
   alleged case of royal injustice, and with power in most
   instances to make instant restitution. He himself went forth
   to hear and judge in the neighborhood of his capital, and as
   far north as Normandy. ... As he grew yet older, the spirit of
   generosity grew stronger daily in his bosom. He would have no
   hand in the affairs of Europe, save to act, wherever he could,
   as peacemaker. Many occasions occurred where all urged him to
   profit by power and a show of right, a naked legal title, to
   possess himself of valuable fiefs; but Louis shook his head
   sorrowfully and sternly, and did as his inmost soul told him
   the law of God directed. ... There had been for some reigns
   back a growing disposition to refer certain questions to the
   king's tribunals, as being regal, not baronial, questions.
   Louis the Ninth gave to this disposition distinct form and
   value, and, under the influence of the baron-hating legists,
   he so ordained, in conformity with the Roman law, that, under
   given circumstances, almost any case might be referred to his
   tribunal. This, of course, gave to the king's judgment-seat
   and to him more of influence than any other step ever taken
   had done. It was, in substance, an appeal of the people from
   the nobles to the king, and it threw at once the balance of
   power into the royal hands. ... It became necessary to make
   the occasional sitting of the king's council or parliament,
   which exercised certain judicial functions, permanent; and to
   change its composition, by diminishing the feudal and
   increasing the legal or legist element. Thus everywhere, in
   the barons' courts, the king's court, and the central
   parliament, the Roman, legal, organized element began to
   predominate over the German, feudal, barbaric tendencies, and
   the foundation-stones of modern society were laid. But the
   just soul of Louis and the prejudices of his Romanized
   counsellors were not arrayed against the old Teutonic
   barbarism alone, with its endless private wars and judicial
   duels; they stood equally opposed to the extravagant claims of
   the Roman hierarchy. ... The first calm, deliberate,
   consistent opposition to the centralizing power of the great
   see was that offered by its truest friend and most honest
   ally, Louis of France. From 1260 to 1268, step by step was
   taken by the defender of the liberties of the Gallican church,
   until, in the year last named, he published his 'Pragmatic
   Sanction' [see below], his response, by advice of his wise
   men, to the voice of the nation, the Magna Charta of the
   freedom of the church of France, upon whose vague articles,
   the champions of that freedom could write commentaries, and
   found claims, innumerable. ... But the legislation of Louis
   did not stop with antagonism to the feudal system and to the
   unauthorized claims of the church; it provided for another
   great grievance of the Middle Age, that lying and unequal
   system of coinage which was a poison to honest industry and
   commercial intercourse. ... And now the great work of Louis
   was completed; the barons were conquered, the people
   protected, quiet prevailed through the kingdom, the national
   church was secured in her liberties. The invalid of Egypt, the
   sojourner of Syria, had realized his dreams and purposes of
   good to his own subjects, and once again the early vision of
   his manhood, the recovery of Palestine, haunted his slumbering
   and his waking hours. ... On the sixteenth of March, 1270, he
   left Paris for the seashore; on the first of July, he sailed
   from France. The sad, sad story of this his last earthly doing
   need not be here repeated."

      See CRUSADES: A.. D. 1270-1271.

      Saint Louis of France
      (North American Review, April, 1846).
   On the part performed by Louis IX. in the founding of
   absolutism in France,

      See PARLIAMENT OF PARIS.

{1165}

FRANCE: A. D. 1252.
   The Crusading movement of the Pastors.

      See CRUSADES: A. D. 1252.

FRANCE: A. D. 1266.
   Acquisition of the kingdom of Naples or the Two Sicilies by
   Charles of Anjou, the king's brother.

      See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1250-1268.

FRANCE: A. D. 1268.
   The Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.
   Assertion of the rights of the Gallican Church.

   "The continual usurpations of the popes produced the
   celebrated Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis [about A.. D.
   1268]. This edict, the authority of which, though probably
   without cause, has been sometimes disputed, contains three
   important provisions; namely, that all prelates and other
   patrons shall enjoy their full rights as to the collation of
   benefices, according to the canons; that churches shall
   possess freely their rights of election; and that no tax or
   pecuniary exaction shall be levied by the pope, without
   consent of the king and of the national church. We do not
   find, however, that the French government acted up to the
   spirit of this ordinance."

      H. Hallam,
      The Middle Ages,
      chapter 7, part 2.
   "This Edict appeared either during the last year of Clement
   IV., ... or during the vacancy in the Pontificate. ... It
   became the barrier against which the encroachments of the
   ecclesiastical power were destined to break; nor was it swept
   away till a stronger barrier had arisen in the unlimited power
   of the French crown." It "became a great Charter of
   Independence to the Gallican Church."

      H. H. Milman,
      History of Latin Christianity,
      book 11, chapter 4 (volume 5).
FRANCE: A. D. 1270-1285.
   The sons of St. Louis.
   Origin of the Houses of Valois and Bourbon.

   St. Louis left several sons, the elder of whom succeeded him
   as Philippe III., and his youngest son was Robert, Count of
   Clermont and Lord of Bourbon, the ancestor of all the branches
   of the House of Bourbon. Philippe III. died in 1285, when he
   was succeeded by his son, Philippe IV. A younger son, Charles,
   Count of Valois, was the ancestor of the Valois branch of the
   royal family.

FRANCE: A. D. 1285-1314.
   Reign of Philip IV.
   His conflict with the Pope and his destruction of the
   Templars.

   Philippe IV., called "le Bel" (the Handsome), came to the
   throne on the death of his father, Philippe "le Hardi," in
   1285. He was presently involved in war with Edward I. of
   England, who crossed to Flanders in 1297, intending to invade
   France, but was recalled by the revolt in Scotland, under
   Wallace, and peace was made in 1303. The Flemings, who had
   provoked Philippe by their alliance with the English, were
   thus left to suffer his resentment. They bore themselves
   valiantly in a war which lasted several years, and inflicted
   upon the knights of France a fearful defeat at Courtrai, in
   1302. In the end, the French king substantially failed in his
   designs upon Flanders.

      See FLANDERS: A. D. 1299-1304.

   "It is probable that this long struggle would have been still
   protracted, but for a general quarrel which had sprung up some
   time before its close, between the French king and Pope
   Boniface VIII., concerning the [taxation of the clergy and
   the] right of nomination to vacant bishoprics within the
   dominions of Philippe. The latter, on seeing Bernard Saissetti
   thrust into the Bishopric of Pamiers by the pontiff's sole
   authority, caused the Bishop to be arrested by night, and,
   after subjecting him to various indignities, consigned him to
   prison on a charge of treason, heresy, and blasphemy. Boniface
   remonstrated against this outrage and violence in a bull known
   in history, by its opening words 'Ausculta, fili,' in which he
   asserted his power 'over nations and kingdoms, to root out and
   to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to
   plant,' and concluded by informing Philippe that he had
   summoned all the superior clergy of France to an assembly at
   Rome on the 1st of the following November, in order to
   deliberate on the remedies for such abuses as those of which
   the king had been guilty. Philippe, by no means intimidated by
   this measure, convoked a full and early assembly of the three
   estates of his kingdom, to decide upon the conduct of him whom
   the orthodox, up to that time, had been in the habit of deeming
   infallible. This (10th April 1302) was the first meeting of a
   Parliament, properly so called, in France. ... The chambers
   unanimously approved and applauded the conduct of the king,
   and resolved to maintain the honour of the crown and the
   nation from foreign insult or domination; and to mark their
   decision more conclusively, they concurred with the sovereign
   in prohibiting the clergy from attending the Pope's summons to
   Rome. The papal bull was burned as publicly as possible. ...
   The Pope, alarmed at these novel and bold proceedings, sought
   instantly to avert their consequences by soothing
   explanations; but Philippe would not now be turned aside from
   his course. He summoned a convocation of the Gallican
   prelates, in which by the mouth of William de Nogaret, his
   chancellor, he represented the occupier of St. Peter's chair
   as the father of lies and an evil-doer; and he demanded the
   seizure of this pseudo-pope, and his imprisonment until he
   could be brought before a legitimate tribunal to receive the
   punishment due to his numerous crimes. Boniface now declared
   that the French king was excommunicated, and cited him by his
   confessor to appear in the papal court at Rome within three
   months, to make submission and atonement for his contumacy.
   ... While this unseemly quarrel ... seemed to be growing
   interminable in its complexities, the daring of a few men
   opened a shorter path to its end than could have been
   anticipated. William of Nogaret associating to him Sciarra
   Colonna, a noble Roman, who, having been driven from his
   native city by Boniface and subjected to various hardships,
   had found refuge in Paris, passed, with a train of three
   hundred horsemen, and a much larger body of picked infantry,
   secretly into Italy, with the intention of surprising the Pope
   at his summer residence in his native town of Anagni. ... The
   papal palace was captured after a feeble resistance, and the
   cardinals and personal attendants of the Pontiff fled for
   their lives. ... The Condottieri ... dragged the Pope from his
   throne, and conveying him into the street, mounted him upon a
   lean horse without saddle or bridle, with his head to the
   animal's tail, and thus conducted him in a sort of pilgrimage
   through the town. He was then consigned prisoner to one of the
   chambers of his palace and placed under guard; while the body
   of his captors dispersed themselves through the splendid
   apartments in eager pursuit of plunder. Three days were thus
   occupied; but at the end of that time the ... people of Anagni
   ... took arms in behalf of their fellow-townsman and spiritual
   father, and falling upon the French while still indulging in
   the licence of the sack, drove Nogaret and Colonna from their
   quarters, and either expelled or massacred the whole of their
   followers."
{1166}
   The Pope returned to Rome in so great a rage that his reason
   gave way, and soon afterwards he was found dead in his bed.
   "The scandal of these proceedings throughout Christendom was
   immense; and Philippe adopted every precaution to avert evil
   consequences from himself by paying court to Benedict XI. who
   succeeded to the tiara. This Pope, however, though he for some
   time temporised, could not be long deaf to the loud voices of
   the clergy which called for punishment upon the oppressors of
   the church. Ere he had reigned nine months he found himself
   compelled to excommunicate the plunderers of Anagni; and a few
   days afterwards he perished, under circumstances which leave
   little doubt of his having been poisoned. ... The king of
   France profitted largely by the crime; since, besides gaining
   time for the subsidence of excitement, he was subsequently
   enabled, by his intrigues, to procure the election of a person
   pledged not only to grant him absolution for all past
   offences, but to stigmatise the memory of Boniface, to restore
   the deposed Colonna to his honours and estates, to nominate
   several French ecclesiastics to the college of cardinals, and
   to grant to the king the tenths of the Gallican church for a
   term of five years. The pontiff who thus seems to have been
   the first of his race to lower the pretensions of his office,
   was Bertrand de Goth, originally a private gentleman of
   Bazadors, and subsequently promoted to the Archiepiscopal See
   of Bordeaux. He assumed the title of Clement V., and after
   receiving investiture at Lyons, fixed the apostolic residence
   at Avignon, where it continued, under successive occupants,
   for a period, the length of which caused it to be denominated
   by the Italians the Babylonian captivity. This quarrel
   settled, Philippe engaged in another undertaking, the
   safe-conduct of which required all his skill and
   unscrupulousness. This important enterprise was no less than
   the destruction and plunder of the military order of Knights
   Templars. ... Public discontent ... had, by a variety of
   circumstances, been excited throughout the realm. Among the
   number of exactions, the coin had been debased to meet the
   exigencies of the state, and this obstructing the operations
   of commerce, and inflicting wrongs to a greater or less extent
   upon all classes, everyone loudly complained of injustice,
   robbery and oppression, and in the end several tumults
   occurred, in which the residence of the king himself was
   attacked, and the whole population were with difficulty
   restrained from insurrection. In Burgundy, Champagne, Artois
   and Forez, indeed, the nobles, and burgess class having for
   the first time made common cause of their grievances, spoke
   openly of revolt against the royal authority, unless the
   administration should be reformed, and equity be substituted
   in the king's courts for the frauds, extortions and
   malversations, which prevailed. The sudden death of
   Philippe--owing to a fall from his horse while hunting the
   wild boar in the forest of Fontainebleau--on the 29th of
   November, 1314, delivered the people from their tyrant, and
   the crown from the consequences of a general rebellion. Pope
   Clement, the king's firm friend, had gone to his last account
   on the 20th of the preceding April. Louis X., le Hutin (the
   Quarrelsome), ascended the throne at the mature age of
   twenty-five."

      G. M. Bussey and T. Gaspey,
      Pictorial History of France,
      volume 1, chapter 4.
      See, also, PAPACY: A.D. 1294-1348,
      and TEMPLARS: A.D. 1307-1314.

FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1328.
   Louis X., Philip V., Charles IV.
   Feudal reaction.

   Philip-le-Bel died in 1314. "With the accession of his son,
   Louis X., so well surnamed Hutin (disorder, tumult), comes a
   violent reaction of the feudal, local, provincial spirit,
   which seeks to dash in pieces the still feeble fabric of
   unity, demands dismemberment, and claims chaos. The Duke of
   Brittany arrogates the right of judgment without appeal; so
   does the exchequer of Rouen. Amiens will not have the king's
   sergeants subpœna before the barons, or his provosts remove
   any prisoner from the town's jurisdiction. Burgundy and Nevers
   require the king to respect the privileges of feudal justice.
   ... The common demand of the barons is that the king shall
   renounce all intermeddling with their men. ... The young
   monarch grants and signs all; there are only three points to
   which he demurs, and which he seeks to defer. The Burgundian
   barons contest with him the jurisdiction over the rivers,
   roads, and consecrated places. The nobles of Champagne doubt
   the king's right to lead them to war out of their own
   province. Those of Amiens, with true Picard impetuosity,
   require without any circumlocution, that all gentlemen may war
   upon each other, and not enter into securities, but ride, go,
   come, and be armed for war, and pay forfeit to one another.
   ... The king's reply to these absurd and insolent demands is
   merely: 'We will order examination of the registers of my lord
   St. Louis, and give to the said nobles two trustworthy
   persons, to be nominated by our council, to verify and inquire
   diligently into the truth of the said article.' The reply was
   adroit enough. The general cry was for a return to the good
   customs of St. Louis: it being forgotten that St. Louis had
   done his utmost to put a stop to private wars. But by thus
   invoking the name of St. Louis, they meant to express their
   wish for the old feudal independence--for the opposite of the
   quasi-legal, the venal, and pettifogging government of
   Philippe-le-Bel. The barons set about destroying, bit by bit,
   all the changes introduced by the late king. But they could
   not believe him dead so long as there survived his Alter Ego,
   his mayor of the palace, Enguerrand de Marigny, who, in the
   latter years of his reign, had been coadjutor and rector of
   the kingdom, and who had allowed his statue to be raised in
   the palace by the side of the king's. His real name was Le
   Portier; but along with the estates he bought the name of
   Marigny. ... It was in the Temple, in the very spot where
   Marigny had installed his master for the spoliation of the
   Templars, that the young king Louis repaired to hear the
   solemn accusation brought against him. His accuser was
   Philippe-le-Bel's brother, the violent Charles of Valois, a
   busy man, of mediocre abilities, who put himself at the head
   of the barons. ... To effect his destruction, Charles of
   Valois had recourse to the grand accusation of the day, which
   none could surmount.
{1167}
   It was discovered, or presumed, that Marigny's wife or sister,
   in order to effect his acquittal, or bewitch the king, had
   caused one Jacques de Lor to make certain small figures: 'The
   said Jacques, thrown into prison, hangs himself in despair,
   and then his wife, and Enguerrand's sisters are thrown into
   prison, and Enguerrand himself, condemned before the knights
   ... is hung at Paris on the thieves' gibbet.' ... Marigny's
   best vengeance was that the crown, so strong in his care, sank
   after him into the most deplorable weakness. Louis-le-Hutin,
   needing money for the Flemish war, treated as equal with
   equal, with the city of Paris. The nobles of Champagne and
   Picardy hastened to take advantage of the right of private war
   which they had just reacquired, and made war on the countess of
   Artois, without troubling themselves about the judgment
   rendered by the king, who had awarded this fief to her. All
   the barons had resumed the privilege of coining; Charles of
   Valois, the king's uncle, setting them the example. But
   instead of coining for their own domains only, conformably to
   the ordinances of Philippe-le-Hardi and Philippe-le-Bel, they
   minted coin by wholesale, and gave it currency throughout the
   kingdom. On this, the king had perforce to arouse himself, and
   return to the administration of Marigny and of
   Philippe-le-Bel. He denounced the coinage of the barons,
   (November the 19th, 1315;) ordained that it should pass
   current on their own lands only; and fixed the value of the
   royal coin relatively to thirteen different coinages, which
   thirty-one bishops or barons had the right of minting on their
   own territories. In St. Louis's time, eighty nobles had enjoyed
   this right. The young feudal king, humanized by the want of
   money, did not disdain to treat with serfs and with Jews. ...
   It is curious to see the son of Philippe-le-Bel admitting
   serfs to liberty [see SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: FRANCE]; but it is
   trouble lost. The merchant vainly swells his voice and
   enlarges on the worth of his merchandise; the poor serfs will
   have none of it. Had they buried in the ground some bad piece
   of money, they took care not to dig it up to buy a bit of
   parchment. In vain does the king wax wroth at seeing them dull
   to the value of the boon offered. At last, he directs the
   commissioners deputed to superintend the enfranchisement, to
   value the property of such serfs as preferred 'remaining in
   the sorriness (chétiveté) of slavery,' and to tax them 'as
   sufficiently and to such extent as the condition and wealth of
   the individuals may conveniently allow, and as the necessity of
   our war requires.' But with all this it is a grand spectacle
   to see proclamation made from the throne itself of the
   imprescriptible right of every man to liberty. The serfs do
   not buy this right, but they will remember both the royal
   lesson, and the dangerous appeal to which it instigates
   against the barons. The short and obscure reign of
   Philippe-le-Long [Philip V., 1316-1322] is scarcely less
   important as regards the public law of France, than even that
   of Philippe-le-Bel. In the first place, his accession to the
   throne decides a great question. As Louis Hutin left his queen
   pregnant, his brother Philippe is regent and guardian of the
   future infant. This child dies soon after its birth, and
   Philippe proclaims himself king to the prejudice of a daughter
   of his brother's; a step which was the more surprising from
   the fact that Philippe-le-Bel had maintained the right of
   female succession in regard to Franche-Comté and Artois. The
   barons were desirous that daughters should be excluded from
   inheriting fiefs, but that they should succeed to the throne
   of France; and their chief, Charles of Valois, favored his
   grand-niece against his nephew Philippe. Philippe assembled
   the States, and gained his cause, which, at bottom, was good,
   by absurd reasons. He alleged in his favor the old German law
   of the Franks, which excluded daughters from the Salic land;
   and maintained that the crown of France was too noble a fief
   to fall into hands used to the distaff ('pour tomber en
   quenouille')--a feudal argument, the effect of which was to
   ruin feudality. ... By thus rejecting the right of the
   daughters at the very moment it was gradually triumphing over
   the fiefs, the crown acquired its character of receiving
   always without ever giving; and a bold revocation, at this
   time, of an donations made since St. Louis's day, seems to
   contain the principle of the inalienableness of the royal
   domain. Unfortunately, the feudal spirit which resumed
   strength under the Valois in favor of private wars, led to
   fatal creations of appanages, and founded, to the advantage of
   the different branches of the royal family, a princely
   feudality as embarrassing to Charles VI. and Louis XI., as the
   other had been to Philippe-le-Bel. This contested succession
   and disaffection of the barons force Philippe-le-Long into the
   paths of Philippe-le-Bel. He flatters the cities, Paris, and,
   above all, the University,--the grand power of Paris. He
   causes his barons to take the oath of fidelity to him, in
   presence of the masters of the university, and with their
   approval. He wishes his good cities to be provided with
   armories; their citizens to keep their arms in a sure place;
   and appoints them a captain in each bailiwick or district,
   (March the 12th, 1316). ... Praiseworthy beginnings of order
   and of government brought no relief to the sufferings of the
   people. During the reign of Louis Hutin, a horrible mortality
   had swept off, it was said, the third of the population of the
   North. The Flemish war had exhausted the last resources of the
   country. ... Men's imaginations becoming excited, a great
   movement took place among the people. As in the days of St.
   Louis, a multitude of poor people, of peasants, of shepherds
   or pastoureaux, as they were called, flock together and say
   that they seek to go beyond the sea, that they are destined to
   recover the Holy Land. ... They wended their way towards the
   South, everywhere massacring the Jews; whom the king's
   officers vainly tried to protect. At last, troops were got
   together at Toulouse, who fell upon the Pastoureaux, and
   hanging them up by twenties and thirties the rest dispersed.
   ... Philippe-le-Long ... was seized with fever in the course
   of the same year, (A. D. 1321,) in the month of August,
   without his physicians being able to guess its cause. He
   languished five months, and died. ... His brother Charles
   [Charles IV., 1322-1328] succeeded him, without bestowing a
   thought more on the rights of Philippe's daughter; than
   Philippe had done to those of Louis's daughter. The period of
   Charles's reign is as barren of facts with regard to France,
   as it is rich in them respecting Germany, England, and
   Flanders. The Flemings imprison their count. The Germans are
   divided between Frederick of Austria and Lewis of Bavaria, who
   takes his rival prisoner at Muhldorf. In the midst of the
   universal divisions, France seems strong from the circumstance
   of its being one. Charles-le-Bel interferes in favor of the
   count of Flanders.
{1168}
   He attempts, with the pope's aid, to make himself emperor; and
   his sister, Isabella, makes herself actual queen of England by
   the murder of Edward II. ... Charles-le-Bel ... died almost at
   the same time as Edward, leaving only a daughter; so that he
   was succeeded by a cousin of his. All that fine family of
   princes who had sat near their father at the Council of Vienne
   was extinct. In the popular belief, the curses of Boniface had
   taken effect. ... This memorable epoch, which depresses
   England so low, and in proportion, raises France so high,
   presents, nevertheless, in the two countries two analogous
   events: In England, the barons have overthrown Edward II. In
   France, the feudal party places on the throne the feudal
   branch of the Valois."

      J. Michelet,
      History of France,
      books 5-6 (volume l).
      See, also, VALOIS, THE HOUSE OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1347.
   The king's control of the Papacy in its contest with the
   emperor.

      See GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
   The extent of the royal domain.
   The great vassals.
   The possessions of foreign princes in France.

   On the accession of the House of Valois to the French throne,
   in the person of Philip VI. (A. D. 1328), the royal domain had
   acquired a great increase of extent. In the two centuries
   since Philip I. it had gained, "by conquest, by confiscation,
   or by inheritance, Berry, or the Viscounty of Bourges,
   Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Valois, Vermandois, the
   counties of Auvergne, and Boulogne, a part of Champagne and
   Brie, Lyonnais, Angoumois, Marche, nearly the whole of
   Languedoc, and, lastly, the kingdom of Navarre, which
   belonging in her own right to queen Jeanne, mother of the last
   three Capetians [Jeanne, heiress of the kingdom of Navarre and
   of the counties of Champagne and Brie, was married to Philip
   IV., and was the mother of Louis X., Philip V. and Charles
   IV.], Charles IV. united with the crown. But the custom among
   the kings of giving apanages or estates to the princes of
   their house detached afresh from the domain a great part of
   the reunited territories, and created powerful princely
   houses, of which the chiefs often made themselves formidable
   to the monarchs. Among these great houses of the Capetian
   race, the most formidable were: the house of Burgundy, which
   traced back to king Robert; the house of Dreux, issue of a son
   of Louis the Big, and which added by a marriage the duchy of
   Brittany to the county of that name; the house of Anjou, issue
   of Charles, brother of Saint Louis, which was united in 1290
   with that of Valois; the house of Bourbon, descending from
   Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth son of Saint Louis; and the
   house of Alençon, which traced back to Philip III., and
   possessed the duchy of Alençon and Perche. Besides these great
   princely houses of Capetian stock, which owed their grandeur
   and their origin to their apanages, there were many others
   which held considerable rank in France, and of which the
   possessions were transmissible to women; while the apanages
   were all masculine fiefs. The most powerful of these houses
   were those of Flanders, Penthièvre, Châtillon, Montmorency,
   Brienne, Coucy, Vendôme, Auvergne, Foix, and Armagnac. The
   vast possessions of the two last houses were in the country of
   the Langue d'Oc. The counts of Foix were also masters of
   Bearn, and those of Armagnac possessed Fezensac, Rouergue, and
   other large seigniories. Many foreign princes, besides, had
   possessions in France at the accession of the Valois. The king
   of England was lord of Ponthieu, of Aunis, of Saintonge, and
   of the duchy of Aquitaine; the king of Navarre was count of
   Evreux, and possessor of many other towns in Normandy; the
   king of Majorca was proprietor of the seigniory of
   Montpellier; the duke of Lorraine, vassal of the German
   empire, paid homage to the king of France for many fiefs that
   he held in Champagne; and, lastly, the Pope possessed the
   county Venaissin, detached from Provence."

      E. de Bonnechose,
      History of France,
      volume 1, page 224.
FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
   Accession of King Philip VI.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
   The splendor of the Monarchy on the eve of the calamitous
   wars.

   "Indisputably, the king of France [Philip VI., or Philip de
   Valois] was at this moment [A. D. 1328] a great king. He had
   just reinstated Flanders in its state of dependence on him.
   The king of England had done him homage for his French
   provinces. His cousins reigned at Naples and in Hungary. He
   was protector of the king of Scotland. He was surrounded by a
   court of kings--by those of Navarre, Majorca, Bohemia; and
   the Scottish monarch was often one of the circle. The famous
   John of Bohemia, of the house of Luxembourg, and father to the
   emperor Charles IV., declared that he could not live out of
   Paris, 'the most chivalrous residence in the world.' He
   fluttered over all Europe, but ever returned to the court of
   the great king of France--where was kept up one constant
   festival, where jousts and tournaments ever went on, and the
   romances of chivalry, king Arthur and the round table, were
   realized."

      J. Michelet,
      History of France,
      book 6, chapter 1.
FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339.
   The claim of Edward III. of England to the French crown.

   "History tells us that Philip, king of France, surnamed the
   Fair, had three sons, beside his beautiful daughter Isabella,
   married to the king of England [Edward II.]. These three sons
   were very handsome. The eldest, Lewis, king of Navarre during
   the lifetime of his father, was called Lewis Hutin [Louis X.];
   the second was named Philip the Great, or the Long [Philip
   V.]; and the third, Charles [Charles IV.]. All these were
   kings of France, after their father Philip, by legitimate
   succession, one after the other, without having by marriage
   any male heirs; yet, on the death of the last king, Charles,
   the twelve peers and barons of France did not give the kingdom
   to Isabella, the sister, who was queen of England, because
   they said and maintained, and still do insist, that the
   kingdom of France is so noble that it ought not to go to a
   woman; consequently neither to Isabella, nor to her son, the
   king of England [Edward III.]; for they hold that the son of a
   woman cannot claim any right of succession, where that woman
   has none herself. For these reasons the twelve peers and
   barons of France unanimously gave the kingdom of France to the
   lord Philip of Valois, nephew to king Philip, and thus put
   aside the queen of England, who was sister to Charles, the
   late king of France, and her son. Thus, as it seemed to many
   people, the succession went out of the right line; which has
   been the occasion of the most destructive wars and
   devastations of countries, as well in France as elsewhere, as
   you will learn hereafter; the real object of this history
   being to relate the great enterprises and deeds of arms
   achieved in these wars, for from the time of good Charlemagne,
   king of France, never were such feats performed."

      J. Froissart, Chronicles (Johnes'),
      book 1, chapter 4.