(1294-1328). King of France. Charles, the youngest son of Philip IV, acceded to the throne in 1322 after the death of his elder brother, Philip V, whose only children were daughters and so excluded from the throne. Early in his reign, Charles IV executed an obstreperous southern notable, Count Jourdain de l’Isle, and firmly established his authority by a subsequent progress through the south.
Charles dissipated some of the respect he enjoyed by employing unpopular and dubious means to strengthen his finances. He sold offices, manipulated the coinage, and hounded Christian debtors who owed money to Jews whose account books had been confiscated by the crown in 1306. He continued the process, begun by his brother, of collecting the fines that had been imposed on Jews who had returned from exile in 1315 but who were accused in 1321 of having plotted with lepers to poison the wells in France. In 1322, large numbers of Jews emigrated; whether this was under an order of expulsion issued by the king is uncertain.
Territorial ambitions and jurisdictional squabbles led Charles into war with England and military intervention in Flanders during his short reign. The war with England, which began in 1323 and produced a French invasion of Guyenne, had more success than the Flemish campaign. Owing to the overthrow of Edward II of England by his wife, Isabella (Charles’s sister), in 1327, the peace that ended the English war resulted in a 50,000-mark payment to the French crown and small territorial concessions in the Agenais.
The king relied on the advice of his uncle, Charles of Valois, on most matters and entrusted him with important military duties and a principal role in negotiating with the pope over a proposed crusade. Some scholars feel that Charles IV expressed interest in a crusade chiefly as a ruse to raise money for more pressing foreign and domestic objectives. Others recognize the force of financial concerns in his hard bargaining with the pope but see no necessary contradiction between these concerns and a genuine interest in promoting a crusade. In any case, no serious crusade took place.
Charles’s first wife, Blanche d’Artois, had been implicated in an adultery scandal that rocked the royal household in 1314. After that marriage was annulled in 1322, he married Marie de Luxembourg, who bore a son who died in infancy and then herself died in 1324. Charles then married Jeanne d’Evreux, who bore only daughters. When Charles died on February 1, 1328, at Vincennes, the succession was uncertain until the magnates rallied to his cousin Philip of Valois.
William Chester Jordan
[See also: CHARLES OF VALOIS; ISABELLA OF FRANCE; PHILIP V THE TALL; PHILIP VI; SAINT-SARDOS; VALOIS DYNASTY]
Jordan, William Chester. The French Monarchy and the Jews from Philip Augustus to the Last
Capetians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Langlois, Charles-Victor. Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, les derniers Capetiens directs: 1226-1328. Paris: Hachette, 1901.
World History
