August, 1492, and in October of the same year died Charles VI., after a disastrous reign of forty-two years.—J. S., G.
CHARLES VII., le Victorieux, fifth son of the preceding, and of Isabella of Bavaria, born at Paris in 1403; died in 1461. He became dauphin in 1416, on the death of John, fourth son of Charles VI. Two years afterwards, the party of the duke of Burgundy having surprised Paris, and by the most sanguinary means exterminated the party of the Armagnacs, with whom Charles was allied in the factious movements of the time, he fled to Poitiers in Languedoc, and there having convened a parliament, assumed the title of regent of the kingdom. This was a bold and hazardous proceeding; and the hatred it evoked on the part of his mother and the Burgundian party, now in favour with the queen, he had the temerity to inflame, by shielding the murderers of Jean-sans-peur, duke of Burgundy. The consequence of this atrocious deed was to throw the party of the murdered duke into the hands of Henry V. of England, who now found no difficulty in securing, by diplomacy, all that he had failed to extort by the victory of Agincourt. After the conclusion of the treaty of Troyes (see Charles VI.), Charles, disowned by his parents, and derided as a bastard by the partisans of England, led a vagrant life in the southern provinces of the kingdom, which, with Henry V. at Paris, were far from offering security as well as subsistence; but on the death of Henry in 1422, an event which was followed at an interval of a few months by that of Charles VI., the partisans of native royalty took a bolder attitude, and in the autumn of that year Charles was proclaimed king at Bourges. At the same time Henry VI., the infant son of Henry V., was crowned with all solemnity at Paris by his uncle the duke of Bedford, to whom the late king had confided the tutelage of his son and the regency of France. By the year 1428, the English having prosecuted the war with all but uniform success, hardly one fourth part of the realm owned the authority of Charles. In that year, Orleans, the most important of the towns on which he reckoned for assistance, was besieged by an English force, under leaders of high renown. The place was defended by Dunois, a bastard of the family of Orleans, by Xaintrailles, La Hire, and other famous captains, who, receiving little aid from Charles, disputed the attacks of the English with less and less success. The fall of Orleans must have been fatal to the hopes of Charles and his adherents; but at this juncture appeared the famous Joan of Arc (see Joan), and at once, and as it proved conclusively, t urned the scale of victory in their favour. From this time onwards, in his struggle with the English, and especially after the treaty of Arras had secured him the assistance of Burgundy, Charles, although in general cautious of exposing his own person to the risks of war, pursued by his generals an almost uninterrupted career of victory. In the same year in which Joan raised the siege of Orleans, he was again solemnly crowned at Reims, principally in obedience to the demands of the Maid of Orleans, who for a brief period ruled the court no less than the camp. In 1436 the English surrendered Paris, in 1450 quitted Normandy, and in 1456 Guienne; thus relinquishing within a brief period the whole of their possessions in France, except Calais and the surrounding territory. To this glorious period, besides the assertion of the national independence, are to be referred two great events of the reign of Charles—the issuing of the Pragmatic Sanction, and the organization of a standing army, but on neither of these points have we space to dwell. The victorious monarch had need of his well-appointed regiments when the wars of the "Praguerie," and the repeated defections of the dauphin his son, afterwards Louis XI. (see that name), threatened to subvert his throne, and for a period endangered his person. The latter years of his life, although not free from the stains of debauchery, and of a too facile forgiveness of the crimes perpetrated by the rapacious and sanguinary ministers who from time to time gained the ascendant in his councils, were little chargeable with the indolence and effeminacy of his youth and early manhood—a remarkable metamorphosis of character, which is properly ascribed, perhaps, to the influence of his wife, Mary of Anjou, but is more frequently, although erroneously, attributed to the eloquence and the graces of his mistress, Agnes Sorel; having occurred to him about the time when his affairs began to assume a hopeful aspect after the first triumph of the Maid of Orleans. His treatment of Joan, however, even in the absence of all other subjects of reproach—and, unfortunately, the long career of Charles furnishes not a few—would always seriously impair his title to the veneration, although he cannot be denied the gratitude of his countrymen. Charles, who was at last afflicted with a kind of monomania, that manifested itself in a dread of being poisoned by his family, died of exhaustion, after seven days' abstinence from food—J. S., G.
CHARLES VIII., king of France, succeeded his father Louis XI. in 1483, being then only thirteen years of age. During the minority the guardianship of the king's person was vested in his eldest sister Anne of Beaujeu. The power which she enjoyed excited the jealousy of the duke of Orleans, the next heir to the throne, who made some unsuccessful attempts to subvert the royal authority. He and his allies were finally defeated in 1488. The king was soon in new trouble, on account of his marriage with Amie of Bretagne, the betrothed of Maximilian the Austrian emperor, to make way for which he broke an engagement with the daughter of Maximilian. Henry VII. of England and Ferdinand of Spain supported the aggrieved emperor, and entered with him into a confederacy against France; but by the payment of money and cession of some provinces to the confederates, a settlement was effected in the treaty of Senlis in 1493. Thus freed from danger at home Charles set about asserting his claim to the throne of Naples, which he founded on the rights of the house of Anjou, purchased by his father Louis XI. Advancing with an army and passing through Florence and Rome, he took possession of Naples in 1495, the king retiring on his approach. He then began to conceive ambitious designs of eastern conquest, at the very time that a league was forming to intercept his return to France. Leaving a garrison in Naples he began his homeward march with a force of about nine thousand men, and was met at Fornovo, near the foot of the Apennines, by the army of the hostile confederacy, numbering forty thousand. He bravely met and vanquished this vast force, winning, however, by his victory little more than a safe retreat. Naples was soon recovered and the king restored by Gonsalvo, a Spanish general. The subsequent projects of Charles for its reconquest were never carried out. He had only three sons, none of whom survived him, so that on his death in 1498 the duke of Orleans, Louis XII., succeeded to the throne.—J. B.
CHARLES IX., king of France, succeeded his brother, Francis II. in 1560, being then in his eleventh year. The government was conducted during his minority by his mother, Catherine de Medici, assisted by Anthony, king of Navarre, who joined himself to the Huguenot party, to which Catherine also for a time showed signs of favour. In 1561 an edict being issued to prevent the preaching of the reformed religion, the Huguenots took up arms and demanded a conference, which led to no important result, except that it gave the king of Navarre a pretext for deserting to the catholic side. Through the influence of Catherine, who was jealous of this union of Navarre with the Guises, a pacific edict was issued, which procured a temporary peace. This was soon broken by a quarrel at Vassy in Champagne, which ended in a war, led on the protestant side by Prince Condé and the admiral Coligni; and on the other by the constable Montmorenci, the duke of Guise, and the marshal St. André, who were named the Triumvirate. In 1563 a peace followed the siege of Orleans and the death of the duke of Guise. As early as the following year, however, the protestants had reason to be dissatisfied with some of the edicts issued, and in 1567 Condé and Coligni attempted to seize the person of the king, and gave rise to the second religious war, in which Catherine exerted all her influence against the Huguenots. A short peace followed the battle of St. Denis, in which Montmorenci fell, but was soon broken when the king issued an edict ordering all the protestant ministers to leave the kingdom. The battle of Jarnac followed in 1569, when the protestants were defeated, and their leader, prince Condé, killed. The head of the party was now Henri of Bourbon, prince of Béarn, but the command remained with Coligni, to whose resolution and courage, as well as to the king's jealousy of his brother, the duke of Anjou, now leader of the catholic party, is to be attributed the peace of 1570, and the favourable provisions which it secured for the exercise of the protestant worship. It is not certain, indeed, that the granting of this favourable peace was not part of the deep plot for the destruction of the Huguenots, which resulted in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, two years later. This at least is sure, whether or not the king was a party to the plot, the peace was made by the conspirators the foundation of their schemes. Coligni was invited to court. Suspicious of the designs of Catherine, he
