heritage without a civil war, but he was speedily victorious and made his position secure by treating his opponents with great clemency. He now devoted himself to promoting the welfare of his subjects, and did his utmost to support the cause of Christianity, both by his bounty and by his example. He well deserved the surname of Le Bon, by which he is known to posterity. He refused the offer of the crown of Jerusalem on the death of Baldwin, and declined to be nominated as a candidate for the imperial crown in succession to the emperor Henry V. He was murdered in the church of St Donat at Bruges on the 2nd of March 1127.
See J. Perneel, Histoire du règne de Charles le Bon, précedé d’un résumé de l’histoire de Flandres (Brussels, 1830).
CHARLES I. (c. 950–c. 992), duke of Lower Lorraine, was a younger son of the Frankish king Louis IV., and consequently a member of the Carolingian family. Unable to obtain the duchy of Burgundy owing to the opposition of his brother, King Lothair, he went to the court of his maternal uncle, the emperor Otto the Great, about 965, and in 977 received from the emperor Otto II. the duchy of Lower Lorraine. His authority in Lorraine was nominal; but he aided Otto in his struggle with Lothair, and on the death of his nephew, Louis V., made an effort to secure the Frankish crown. Hugh Capet, however, was the successful candidate and war broke out. Charles had gained some successes and had captured Reims, when in 991 he was treacherously seized by Adalberon, bishop of Laon, and handed over to Hugh. Imprisoned with his wife and children at Orleans, Charles did not long survive his humiliation. His eldest son Otto, duke of Lower Lorraine, died in 1005.
CHARLES II. (d. 1431), duke of Lorraine, called The Bold, is sometimes referred to as Charles I. A son of Duke John I., he succeeded his father in 1390; but he neglected his duchy and passed his life in warfare. He died on the 25th of January 1431, leaving two daughters, one of whom, Isabella (d. 1453), married René I. of Anjou (1409–1450), king of Naples, who succeeded his father-in-law as duke of Lorraine.
CHARLES III. or II. (1543–1608), called The Great, duke of Lorraine, was a son of Duke Francis I. (d. 1545), and a descendant of René of Anjou. He was only an infant when he became duke, and was brought up at the court of Henry II. of France, marrying Henry’s daughter Claude in 1559. He took part in the wars of religion in France, and was a member of the League; but he was overshadowed by his kinsmen the Guises, although he was a possible candidate for the French crown in 1589. The duke, who was an excellent ruler of Lorraine, died at Nancy on the 14th of May 1608. He had three sons: Henry (d. 1624) and Francis (d. 1632), who became in turn dukes of Lorraine, and Charles (d. 1607), bishop of Metz and Strassburg.
CHARLES IV. or III. (1604–1675), duke of Lorraine, was a son of Duke Francis II., and was born on the 5th of April 1604. He became duke on the abdication of his father in 1624, and obtained the duchy of Bar through his marriage with his cousin Nicole (d. 1657), daughter of Duke Henry. Mixing in the tortuous politics of his time, he was in continual conflict with the crown of France, and spent much of his time in assisting her enemies and in losing and regaining his duchies (see Lorraine). He lived an adventurous life, and in the intervals between his several struggles with France fought for the emperor Ferdinand II. at Nordlingen and elsewhere; talked of succouring Charles I. in England; and after the conclusion of the treaty of Westphalia in 1648 entered the service of Spain. He died on the 18th of September 1675, leaving by his second wife, Beatrix de Cusance (d. 1663), a son, Charles Henry, count of Vaudemont (1642–1723).
CHARLES V. or IV. (1643–1690), duke of Lorraine, nephew of Duke Charles IV., was born on the 3rd of April 1643, and in 1664 received a colonelcy in the emperor’s army. In the same year he fought with distinction at the battle of St Gotthard, in which he captured a standard from the Turks. He was a candidate for the elective crown of Poland in 1668. In 1670 the emperor made him general of horse, and during the following years he was constantly on active service, first against the Turks and subsequently against the French. At Seneff (1674) he was wounded. In the same year he was again a candidate for the Polish crown, but was unsuccessful, John Sobieski, who was to be associated with him in his greatest feat of arms, being elected. In 1675, on the death of Charles IV., he rode with a cavalry corps into the duchy of Lorraine, then occupied by the French, and secured the adhesion of the Lorraine troops to himself; a little after this he succeeded Montecucculi as general of the imperial army on the Rhine, and was made a field marshal. The chief success of his campaign of 1676 was the capture of Philipsburg, after a long and arduous siege. The war continued without decisive result for some time, and the fate of the duchy, which was still occupied by the French, was the subject of endless diplomacy. At the general peace Charles had to accept the hard conditions imposed by Louis XIV., and he never entered into effective possession of his sovereignty. In 1678 he married the widowed queen of Poland, Eleonora Maria of Austria, and for nearly five years they lived quietly at Innsbruck. The Turkish invasion of 1683, the last great effort of the Turks to impose their will on Europe, called Charles into the field again. At the head of a weak imperial army the duke offered the best resistance he could to the advance of the Turks on Vienna. But he had to fall back, contesting every position, and the Turks finally invested Vienna (July 13th, 1683). At this critical moment other powers came to the assistance of Austria, reinforcements poured into Charles’s camp, and John Sobieski, king of Poland, brought 27,000 Poles. Sobieski and Charles had now over 80,000 men, Poles, Austrians and Germans, and on the morning of the 12th of September they moved forward to the attack. By nightfall the Turks were in complete disorder, Vienna was relieved, and the danger was at an end. Soon the victors took the offensive and reconquered part of the kingdom of Hungary. The Germans and Poles went home in the winter, but Charles continued his offensive with the imperialists alone. Ofen (Buda) resisted his efforts in 1684, but in the campaign of 1685 Neuhaüsel was taken by storm, and in 1686 Charles, now reinforced by German auxiliaries, resumed the siege of Ofen. All attempts to relieve the place were repulsed, and Ofen was stormed on the 2nd of September. In the following campaign the Austrians won a decisive victory on the famous battle-ground of Mohacs (August 18th, 1687). In 1689 Charles took the field on the Rhine against the forces of Louis XIV., the enemy of his house. Mainz and Bonn were taken in the first campaign, but Charles in travelling from Vienna to the front died suddenly at Wels on the 18th of April 1690.
His eldest son, Leopold Joseph (1679–1729), at the peace of Ryswick in 1697 obtained the duchy, of which his father had been dispossessed by France, and was the father of Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine, who became the husband of Maria Theresa (q.v.), and of Charles (Karl Alexander), a distinguished Austrian commander in the wars with Frederick the Great. The duchy was ceded by Francis Stephen to Stanislaus Leczynski, the dethroned king of Poland, in 1736, Francis receiving instead the grand-duchy of Tuscany.
CHARLES II. [Charles Louis de Bourbon] (1799–1883), duke of Parma, succeeded his mother, Maria Louisa, duchess of Lucca, as duke of Lucca in 1824. He introduced economy into the administration, increased the schools, and in 1832 as a reaction against the bigotry of the priests and monks with which his mother had surrounded him, he became a Protestant. He at first evinced Liberal tendencies, gave asylum to the Modenese political refugees of 1831, and was indeed suspected of being a Carbonaro. But his profligacy and eccentricities soon made him the laughing-stock of Italy. In 1842 he returned to the Catholic Church and made Thomas Ward, an English groom, his prime minister, a man not without ability and tact. Charles gradually abandoned all his Liberal ideas, and in 1847 declared himself hostile to the reforms introduced by Pius IX. The Lucchesi demanded the constitution of 1805, promised them by the treaty of Vienna, and a national guard, but the duke, in spite of the warnings of Ward, refused all concessions. A few weeks later he retired to Modena, selling his life-interest
