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Charles V of France
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Charles V (21 January 1338 – 16 September 1380), called the Wise, was King of France from 1364 to his death and a member of the House of Valois. His reign marked a high point for France during the Hundred Years' War, with his armies recovering much of the territory ceded to England at the Treaty of Brétigny.
les was born in Vincennes, Île-de-France, France, the son of John II of France and Bonne of Luxembourg. Upon his father's succession to the throne in 1350, Charles became Dauphin of France.
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Charles V (21 January 1338 – 16 September 1380), called the Wise, was King of France from 1364 to his death and a member of the House of Valois. His reign marked a high point for France during the Hundred Years' War, with his armies recovering much of the territory ceded to England at the Treaty of Brétigny.
Early life
Charles was born in Vincennes, Île-de-France, France, the son of John II of France and Bonne of Luxembourg. Upon his father's succession to the throne in 1350, Charles became Dauphin of France. He was the first French heir to use the title, which is named for the region of Dauphiné, acquired by Charles' grandfather.
The future king was highly intelligent but physically weak, with pale skin and a thin, ill-proportioned body. He made a sharp contrast to his father — who was tall, strong and sandy-haired — and gossip at the time suggested he was not John's son. Similar rumors would pursue Charles' grandson, Charles VII.
The Regency and the uprising of the Third Estate
King John was a brave warrior but a poor ruler who alienated his nobles through arbitrary justice and the elevation of associates considered unworthy. After a three-year break, the war resumed in 1355, with Edward, The Black Prince, leading an English-Gascon army in a violent raid across southwestern France. After checking an English incursion into Normandy, John led an army of about 16,000 south, crossing the Loire in September, 1356, attempting to outflank the Prince's 8,000 soldiers at Poitiers. Rejecting advice from one captain to surround and starve the Prince — a tactic Edward feared — John attacked the strong enemy position. In the subsequent Battle of Maupertuis (Poitiers), English archery all but annihilated the French cavalry, and John was captured. Charles led a battalion at Poitiers which withdrew early in the struggle; whether the order came from John (as he later claimed) or whether Charles himself ordered the withdrawal is unclear.
The outcome of the battle left many embittered at the nobility, whom popular opinion accused of betraying the King, but Charles and his brothers escaped blame, and he was received with honor upon his return to Paris. The Dauphin summoned the Estates-General in October to seek money for the defense of the country. Furious at what they saw as poor management, many of those assembled organized into a body led by Etienne Marcel, the Provost of Merchants (a title roughly equivalent to mayor of Paris today). Marcel demanded the dismissal of seven royal ministers, their replacement by a Council of 28, made of nobles, clergy and bourgeois, and the release of Charles II of Navarre, a leading Norman noble with a claim on the French throne who had been imprisoned by John for the murder of his constable. The Dauphin refused the demands, dismissed the Estates-General and left Paris.
A contest of wills followed. In an attempt to raise money, Charles tried to devalue the currency; Marcel ordered strikes, and the Dauphin was forced to cancel his plans and recall the Estates in February, 1357. The Third Estate presented the Dauphin with a Grand Ordinance, a list of 61 articles that would have given the Estates-General the right to approve all future taxes, assemble at their own volition and elect a Council of 36 — with 12 members from each Estate — to advise the king. Charles eventually signed the ordinance, but his dismissed councillors took news of the document to King John, imprisoned in Bordeaux. The King renounced the ordinance before being taken to England by Prince Edward.
Charles made a royal progress through the country that summer, winning support from the provinces. Marcel, meanwhile, enlisted Charles of Navarre, who asserted that his claim to the throne was at least as good as that of Edward III's. The Dauphin, re-entering Paris, won the city back.
Marcel, meanwhile, used the murder of a citizen seeking sanctuary to make an attack close to the Dauphin. Summoning a group of tradesmen, the Provost marched at the head of an army of 3,000, entered the royal palace and had the crowd murder two of the Dauphin's marshals before his eyes. Charles, horrified, momentarily pacified the crowd, but sent his family away and left the capital as quickly as he could. Marcel's action destroyed the Third Estate's support among the nobles, and the Provost's subsequent support for the Jacquerie undermined his support from the towns; he was murdered by a mob on 31 July 1358. Charles was able to recover Paris the following month; he later issued a general amnesty for all, except close associates of Marcel.
The Treaty of Bretigny
Jean's capture gave the English the edge in peace negotiations. The King signed a treaty in 1359 that would have ceded most of western France to England and imposed a ruinous ransom of 4 million ecus on the country. The Dauphin (backed by his councillors and the Estates General) rejected the treaty, and King Edward used this as an excuse to invade France later that year. Edward reached Reims in December and Paris in March, but Charles, trusting on improved municipal defenses, forbade his soldiers from direct confrontation with the English. Charles relied on improved fortifications made to Paris by Marcel, and would later rebuild the Left Bank (Rive Gauche) wall and built a new wall on the Right Bank that extended to a new fortification called the Bastille.
Edward pillaged and raided the countryside but could not bring the French to a decisive battle, and eventually agreed to reduce his terms. This non-confrontational strategy would prove extremely beneficial to France during Charles' reign.
The Treaty of Bretigny, signed on 8 May 1360, ceded a third of western France — mostly in Aquitaine and Gascony — to the English, and lowered the King's ransom to 3 million ecus. Jean was released the following October, his second son, Louis I of Anjou, taking his place as a hostage.
Though his father had regained his freedom, Charles suffered a personal tragedy. His three-year-old daughter, Jeanne, and his infant daughter Bonne died within two weeks of each other; the Dauphin was said at their double funeral to be "so sorrowful as never before he had been." Charles himself had been severely ill, with his hair and nails falling out; some suggest the symptoms are those of arsenic poisoning.
Jean proved as ineffective at ruling upon his return to France as he had before his capture. When Louis of Anjou escaped from English custody, Jean announced he had no choice but to return to captivity himself — an action that, despite the cult of chivalry, seemed extreme to 14th century minds. Jean arrived in London in January 1364, became ill, and died the following April.
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