Charles V of France

“ The question at that time was as to entertaining the appeal of the barons of Aquitaine to the King of France as suzerain of the Prince of Wales, whose government had become intolerable, and to thus make a first move to struggle out of the humiliating pace of Bretigny. Such a step, and such words, do great honor to the memory of the pacific prince who was at that time bearing the burden of the government of France. It was Charles V.‘s good fortune to find amongst his servants a man who was destined to be the thunderbolt of war and the glory of knighthood of his reign. ”

“ France, however, was no longer the divided power which it had been in the days of Henry V. When Louis XI. died in 1483, he left to his young son, Charles VIII., a territory the whole of which, with the exception of Brittany, was directly governed by the king. Charles's sister, Anne of Beaujeu, who governed in his name, made it the object of her policy to secure Brittany. She waged war successfully against its duke, Francis II., and after he died, in 1488, she continued to wage war against his daughter, the Duchess Anne. ”

“ You know how closely the king and the man are allied in the person of our sovereign, and to what lengths the man can lead the king on. If we could be, not rivals but allies, not mistresses but friends; if, while one held sway over François, the other might hold sway over François I., France would be ours, count, and at what a moment! just as Charles V. is about to plunge into our net of his own free will, when we can hold him to ransom on such terms as we choose, and take advantage of his imprudence to assure ourselves a magnificent future in case of accident. ”

“ Crier. My lord, it is Charles the Second, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith.
“Judge. Truly he deserves that title, if he shall now appear in defence of the truth, against that profane rout which lately threatened the extirpation both of sound doctrine and good life. I hear that the king is a sober and temperate person, and one that hates debauchery; I pray you let us hear what he saith.
“Crier. My lord, the king came into London May 29th, and on the 30th he published a Proclamation against Profaneness, to the great rejoicing of all good people of the land. ”

“ Russia, France, and Holland, all refused to have any communication with the ambassadors of the Commonwealth. The Scots, who too late repented of having surrendered their native sovereign into the hands of his enemies, now hastened to wipe out the stain of their disloyalty by proclaiming his son their king, with the title of Charles the Second. The impulsive Irish also declared for the Prince; while the Dutch began active preparations to assist him in regaining the throne of his unfortunate father. In England itself the Royalists were active and threatening. ”

“ The two monarchs, however, distrusted one another; and Charles V., anxious about Germany, sent to Francois proposals for peace from Crespy Couvrant, near Laon, where he had halted his army; Francois, almost in despair, gladly made terms with him. The King gave up his claims on Flanders and Artois, the Emperor his on the duchy of Burgundy; the King abandoned his old Neapolitan ambition, and Charles promised one of the Princesses of the House of Austria, with Milan as her dower, to the Duc d'Orleans, second son of Francois. ”

“ Oh, nothingness! Oh, mortals ignorant of their destinies!" It is not enough that contending dynasties dispute each other's crowns; their covetousness and rivalry must extend to their tombs. Not enough that sovereigns have been exiled from their country; they must be exiled from their graves. Disappointments in life and in death. This is the last word of divine anger, the last of the lessons of Providence.
V THE KING
Born at Versailles, the 9th of October, 1757, Charles X., King of France and Navarre, was entering his sixty-eighth year at the time of his accession to the throne. ”

“ He enriched himself from the estate of Charles V. and by excessive exactions, before he set out in 1382 for Italy to effect the conquest of Naples. Considerable discontent existed in the south of France at the time of the death of Charles V., and when the duke of Anjou re-imposed certain taxes which the late king had remitted at the end of his reign, there were revolts at Puy and Montpellier. Paris, Rouen, the cities of Flanders, with Amiens, Orleans, Reims and other French towns, also rose (1382) in revolt against their masters. ”

“ First he joined the Duke of Anjou, who was warring in Provence against Queen Joan of Naples. Then he put his sword again at the service of Henry of Transtamare, who was at war once more with Pedro the Cruel, and whom he was soon to dethrone and slay with his own hand. But shortly afterwards war broke out again between France and England, and Charles V. summoned Du Guesclin to Paris.
The king's purpose was to do the greatest honor to the poor but proud soldier. He offered him the high office of Constable of France,—commander-in-chief of the army and the first dignitary under the crown. ”

“ In a word, he laid "the foundation of all that is noble and beautiful and useful in the history of the Middle Ages."
DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE; TREATY OF VERDUN (843) .—Like the kingdom of Alexander, the mighty empire of Charlemagne fell to pieces soon after his death. "His sceptre was the bow of Ulysses which could not be drawn by any weaker hand." After a troublous period of dissension arid war, the empire was divided, by the important Treaty of Verdun, among Charlemagne's three grandchildren,—Charles, Lewis, and Lothair. To Charles was given France; to Lewis, Germany ”

“ France was his hereditary enemy, but, on the other hand, Charles, by uniting Spain, the Netherlands, and Austria, and acquiring in addition the position of Emperor, had built up such a vast power that he overshadowed Europe, and seemed dangerous by reason of his over-great dominions and wealth.
The balance of power.
Henry and Wolsey, therefore, fell back on the idea that a balance of power in Europe was the best thing for England. It would be a misfortune if either Francis I. or Charles V. should grow so powerful as to dominate the whole continent. ”

“ But he had another sort of person to deal with in Louis the Crafty. For three centuries the French kings had been engaged persistently in securing their dominion over the whole of France, and in putting down the arrogance of their nobles. Philip Augustus had deprived John of half his continental possessions, and would have expelled him from the whole, only John’s mother being still alive, he could not deprive her of her inheritance. Charles V., called the Wise, had completed the conquest. ”

“ HENRY VI. (1421–1471) , king of England, son of Henry V. and Catherine of Valois, was born at Windsor on the 6th of December 1421. He became king of England on the 1st of September 1422, and a few weeks later, on the death of his grandfather Charles VI., was proclaimed king of France also. Henry V. had directed that Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (q.v.) , should be his son’s preceptor; Warwick took up his charge in 1428; he trained his pupil to be a good man and refined gentleman, but he could not teach him kingship. ”

“ But that which marks the position of Charles V. as the representative man of his epoch, and as the founder of the policy of modern times, is that, wherever he was victorious, the effect of his success was to crush the last efforts of the spirit of the middle ages, and of the independence of nations. In Italy, in Spain, in Germany, and in the Low Countries, his triumphs were so much gain to the cause of absolute monarchy and so much loss to the liberty derived from the old state of society. ”

“ Charles V was on the point of becoming as despotic in Germany as he was in Spain. The long interval of peace, though not very profound—war being always threatened and attempts to provoke it frequent—yet was sufficiently so to enable him to devote himself to his favorite scheme of humbling the princes and free states of the empire. He had sown dissension among them, succeeded in breaking up the League of Smalkald, and detained in prison, threatened with perpetual captivity, the Landgrave of Hesse and the elector John Frederick of Saxony. ”

“ We do not wonder men loved him and were glad to die for him. He had a soul, and honor, and remembrance of friendship. He was a genius, superlative and bewildering. We can forget and forgive some things in such a man; but for such a sovereign as Charles V, what can we say, save that he was not so execrable as Philip II, his son? Charles, being Flemish in birth, both Flanders and himself considered him less Spaniard than Belgian. He was Emperor first and King of Spain afterward; and in Flanders he set the pageant of his abdication. ”

“ Charles was less fortunate in the part he took in the wars between Francis I and Charles V, the brother-in-law of his wife. He tried to maintain a strict neutrality, but his attendance at the emperor’s coronation at Bologna in 1530 was imperative in his double character of kinsman and vassal. The visit was fatal to him, for he was rewarded with the county of Asti, and this so displeased the French king that on the revolt of Geneva to Protestantism in 1532, Francis sent help to the citizens. Berne and Fribourg did likewise, and so expelled the duke from Lausanne and Vaud. ”

“ Their wars were almost perpetual, their peaces never honestly carried out. Their powers were very equally balanced; if Charles owned broader lands than Francis, they were more scattered and in some cases less loyal. The solid and wealthy realm of France proved able to make head against Spain and the Netherlands, even when they were backed by the emperor’s German vassals. Charles was also distracted by many stabs in the back from the Ottoman Turks, who were just beginning their attack on Christendom along the line of the Danube. ”

“ Charles V. was an absolute monarch in his Spanish dominions; in the Netherlands he was no more than the first citizen. In the southern portion of his empire he might have learned contempt for the rights of individuals; here he was taught to respect them. The more he there tasted the pleasures of unlimited power, and the higher he raised his opinion of his own greatness, the more reluctant he must have felt to descend elsewhere to the ordinary level of humanity, and to tolerate any check upon his arbitrary authority. ”

“ Little had France to hope from the boy who was now called on to fill the throne. Charles VI. was not twelve years old, a light-wined, handsome boy, under the guardianship of the royal Dukes his uncles, who had no principles except that of their own interest to guide them in bringing up the King and ruling the people. Before Charles VI. had reached years of discretion, he was involved by the French nobles in war against the Flemish cities, which, under guidance of the great Philip van Arteveldt, had overthrown the authority of the Count of Flanders. ”

“ Charles was born in 1433, and became Duke of Burgundy in 1467. He "held the rank of one of the first princes in Europe without being a king, and without possessing an inch of ground for which he did not owe service to some superior lord." Some of his territories were held of the Holy Roman Empire, and some of the French crown, and he was at once a vassal of France and of the Emperor. His dominions contained many prosperous and wealthy cities. ”

“ By the march to Reims the French party, those Armagnacs reviled for their cruelty and felony, that little King of Bourges compromised in an infamous ambuscade, may have won advantages greater and more solid than the conquest of the county of Maine and the duchy of Normandy and than a victorious assault on the first city of the realm. By retaking his towns of Champagne and of France without bloodshed, King Charles appeared to advantage as a good and pacific lord, as a prince wise and debonair, as the friend of the townsfolk, as the true king of cities. ”

“ In spite of the outcries of historians, the terms of this treaty must be regarded as moderate. Charles exacted nothing, after his extraordinary success, except what he must have considered to be his own by right. But how far his moderation was dictated by policy, and how far by natural feelings of justice, may remain undecided. The Duke of Bourbon and Henry VIII had pressed upon him the pursuit of the war, the invasion and dismemberment of France. Had Charles really aimed at European supremacy this course was open to him. ”

“ The father of Charles found himself stronger than his king, possessor not only of Burgundy, but of many other fiefs from Germany as well as France, and lord of the Netherlands as well. [8]
Charles was thus the last of those great, overgrown vassals so characteristic of feudal times. Like Hugh Capet in France, like William the Conqueror in England, he hoped to establish himself as an independent king. He opened negotiations for this purpose with the Emperor Frederick, Maximilian's father. He made himself practically independent of France. ”

“ In 1377, on its expiring, Charles, who in two years had sedulously improved the state of France, renewed the war. By sea and land the English were utterly overmatched, and by 1378 Charles was master of the situation on all hands. Now, however, he pushed his advantages too far; and the cold skill which had overthrown the English, was used in vain against the Bretons, whose duchy he desired to absorb. Languedoc and Flanders also revolted against him. France was heavily burdened with taxes, and the future was dark and threatening. ”