Charles VII, called the Victorious or the Well-Served, was a monarch of the
House of Valois who ruled as King of France from 1422 to his death.
In 1422, Charles VII inherited the throne of France under desperate
circumstances. Forces of the Kingdom of England and Duke Philip III of Burgundy
occupied Guyenne and northern France, including Paris, the most populous city,
and Reims, the city in which the French kings were traditionally crowned. In
addition, his father Charles VI the Mad had disinherited him in 1420 and
recognized Henry V of England and his heirs as the legitimate successors of
the French crown instead. At the same time, a civil war raged in France
between the Armagnacs and the Burgundian party.
With his court removed to Bourges, south of the Loire River, Charles was
disparagingly called the “King of Bourges”, because the area around
Bourges was one of the few remaining regions left to him. However, his
political and military position improved dramatically with the emergence of Joan
of Arc as a spiritual leader in France. Joan of Arc and other charismatic
figures led French troops to several important victories that paved the way
for the coronation of Charles VII in 1429 at Reims Cathedral. This
long-awaited event boosted French morale as hostilities with England resumed. By
1453, the French had expelled the English from all their continental
possessions except for the Pale of Calais.
The last years of Charles VII were marked by conflicts with his turbulent
son, the future Louis XI of France. Early life
Born in Paris, Charles was the fifth son of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of
Bavaria. His four elder brothers, Charles, Charles, Louis and John had
each held the title of Dauphin of France in turn. Each died childless, leaving
Charles with a rich inheritance of titles.
Almost immediately after his accession to the title of Dauphin, Charles had to
face threats to his inheritance, and he was forced to flee from Paris in May
1418 after the soldiers of Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy attempted to
capture the city. By 1419, Charles had established his own court in Bourges and
a Parlement in Poitiers. The same year, Charles attempted to reconcile with the
Duke. First he met him on a bridge at Pouilly, near Melun, in July 1419, but
this proved insufficient to conclude peace, so the two met again on 10
September 1419 on the bridge at Montereau. The Duke assumed that the
meeting would be entirely peaceful and diplomatic, thus he brought only a small
escort with him. The Dauphin's men reacted to the Duke's arrival by
attacking and killing him, however. Charles' level of involvement has
remained uncertain to this day. Although he claimed to have been unaware of his
men's intentions, this was considered unlikely by those who heard of the
murder. The assassination only naturally exacerbated the feud between the family
of Charles VI and the Dukes of Burgundy. Charles himself was later required by a
treaty with Philip the Good, John's son, to pay penance for the murder, but he
never did so. In his adolescent years, Charles was
noted for his bravery and flamboyant style of leadership. At one point after
becoming Dauphin, he led an army against the English dressed in the red, white,
and blue that represented France; his heraldic device was a mailed fist
clutching a naked sword. However, two events in 1421 broke his confidence:
first, he was forced to withdraw from battle against Henry V of England, to
his great shame, and then his parents repudiated him as the legitimate heir to
the throne, claiming that he was the product of one of his mother's notorious
extramarital affairs. Humiliated, and in fear of his life, the Dauphin fled to
the protection of Yolande of Aragon, the so-called Queen of the Four Kingdoms, in
southern France, and married her daughter, Marie of Anjou.
On the death of Charles' insane father, Charles VI, the succession was cast into
doubt. The Treaty of Troyes, signed by Charles VI in 1420, mandated that the
throne pass to the infant King Henry VI of England, the son of the recently
deceased Henry V and Catherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI; however,
many Frenchmen regarded the treaty as invalid on grounds of coercion and the
French king's diminished mental capacity. For those who did not
recognize the treaty and believed the Dauphin Charles to be of legitimate
birth, he was considered to be the rightful heir to the throne. For those
who did not recognize his legitimacy, the rightful heir was recognized as
Charles, Duke of Orléans, cousin of the Dauphin, who was in English captivity.
Only the supporters of Henry VI and the Dauphin Charles were able to enlist
sufficient military force to press effectively for their candidates. The
English, already in control of northern France, were able to enforce the claim
of their king in the regions of France that they occupied. Northern France,
including Paris, was thus ruled by an English regent based in Normandy.
Charles, unsurprisingly, claimed the title King of France for himself, but he
failed to make any attempts to expel the English from northern France out of
indecision and a sense of hopelessness. Instead, he remained south of the Loire
River, where he was still able to exert power, and maintained an itinerant court
in the Loire Valley at castles such as Chinon. He was still customarily known
as "Dauphin," or derisively as "King of Bourges," after the town where he
generally lived. Periodically, he considered flight to the Iberian
Peninsula, which would have allowed the English to advance their occupation of
France. The Maid of Orléans
Political conditions in France took a decisive turn in the year 1429 just as
the prospects for the Dauphin began to look hopeless. The town of Orléans had
been under siege since October 1428. The English regent, the Duke of Bedford, was
advancing into the Duchy of Bar, ruled by Charles's brother-in-law, René. The
French lords and soldiers loyal to Charles were becoming increasingly
desperate. But then, in the little village of
Domrémy, on the border of Lorraine and Champagne, a teenage girl named Joan of
Arc, demanded that the garrison commander at Vaucouleurs, Robert de
Baudricourt, collect the soldiers and resources necessary to bring her to the
Dauphin at Chinon, stating that visions of angels and saints had given her a
divine mission. Granted an escort of five veteran soldiers and a letter of
referral to Charles by Lord Baudricourt, Joan rode to see Charles at Chinon. She
arrived on 23 February 1429. What followed would become famous. When
Joan appeared at Chinon, Charles wanted to test her claim to be able to
recognise him despite never having seen him, and so he disguised himself as one
of his courtiers. He stood in their midst when Joan entered the chamber in
which the court was assembled. Joan identified Charles immediately. She
bowed low to him and embraced his knees, declaring "God give you a happy life,
sweet King!" Despite attempts to claim that another man was in fact the king,
Charles was eventually forced to admit that he was indeed such. Thereafter Joan
referred to him as "Dauphin" or "Noble Dauphin" until he was crowned in Reims
four months later. After a private conversation between the two, Charles
became inspired and filled with confidence.
After her encounter with Charles in March 1429, Joan of Arc set out to lead
the French forces at Orléans. She was aided by skilled commanders such as
Étienne de Vignolles, known as La Hire, and Jean Poton de Xaintrailles. They
compelled the English to lift the siege on 8 May 1429, thus turning the tide of
the war. The French won the Battle of Patay on 18 June, at which the English
field army lost about half its troops. After pushing further into English and
Burgundian-controlled territory, Charles was crowned King Charles VII of France
in Reims Cathedral on 17 July 1429. Joan was later captured by the
Burgundians at the siege of Compiègne on 24 May 1430. The Burgundians handed her
over to their English allies. Tried for heresy by a court composed of
pro-English clergy such as Pierre Cauchon, who had long served the English
occupation government, she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431.
French Victory As important as Joan of Arc in the cause
of Charles was the support of the powerful and wealthy family of his wife
Marie d'Anjou, particularly his mother-in-law, Queen Yolande of Aragon.
But whatever affection he may have had for his wife, or whatever gratitude he
may have felt for the support of her family, the great love of Charles VII's
life was his mistress, Agnès Sorel. Charles VII and Philip the Good, Duke of
Burgundy, then signed the 1435 Treaty of Arras, which allowed the Burgundians to
return to the side of the French just as things were going badly for their
English allies. With this accomplishment, Charles attained the
essential goal of ensuring that no Prince of the Blood recognised Henry VI
as King of France. Over the following two decades, the
French recaptured Paris from the English and eventually recovered all of France
with the exception of the northern port of Calais.
Close of reign Charles' later years were marked by
hostile relations with his heir, Louis, who demanded real power to accompany his
position as the Dauphin. Charles consistently refused him. Accordingly,
Louis stirred up dissent and fomented plots in attempts to destabilise his
father's reign. He quarrelled with his father's mistress, Agnès Sorel, and on
one occasion drove her with a bared sword into Charles' bed, according to
one source. Eventually, in 1446, after Charles' last son, also named Charles,
was born, the king banished the Dauphin to the Dauphiny. The two never met
again. Louis thereafter refused the king's demands to return to court, and
he eventually fled to the protection of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in
1456. In 1458, Charles became ill. A sore on
his leg refused to heal, and the infection in it caused a serious fever.
The king summoned Louis to him from his exile in Burgundy, but the Dauphin
refused to come. He employed astrologers to foretell the exact hour of his
father's death. The king lingered on for the next two and a half years,
increasingly ill, but unwilling to die. During this time he also had to deal
with the case of his rebellious vassal John V of Armagnac.
Finally, however, there came a point in July 1461 when the king's physicians
concluded that Charles would not live past August. Ill and weary, the king
became delirious, convinced that he was surrounded by traitors loyal only to his
son. Under the pressure of sickness and fever, he went mad. By now another
infection in his jaw had caused a tumor or abscess in his mouth. The swelling
caused by this became so large that, for the last week of his life, Charles was
unable to swallow food or water. Although he asked the Dauphin to come to
his deathbed, Louis refused, instead waiting at Avesnes, in Burgundy, for his
father to die. At Mehun-sur-Yèvre, attended by his younger son, Charles,
and aware of his elder son's final betrayal, the King starved to death. He
died on 22 July 1461, and was buried, at his request, beside his parents in
Saint-Denis. Legacy
Although Charles VII's legacy is far overshadowed by the deeds and eventual
martyrdom of Joan of Arc and his early reign was at times marked by
indecisiveness and inaction, he was responsible for successes unprecedented
in the history of the Kingdom of France. He succeeded in what four generations of
his predecessors failed to do — the expulsion of the English and the
conclusion of the Hundred Years' War. He had created France's first standing
army since Roman times. In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli asserts that if his
son Louis XI had continued this policy, then the French would have become
invincible. Charles VII secured himself against
papal power by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. He also established the
University of Poitiers in 1432, and his policies brought some economic
prosperity to his subjects. Ancestry
Children Charles married his second cousin Marie
of Anjou on 18 December 1422. They were both great-grandchildren of King John II
of France and his first wife Bonne of Bohemia through the male-line. They had
fourteen children: Mistresses
Agnès Sorel, by whom he had three illegitimate daughters.
Antoinette de Maignelais, cousin of Agnès Sorel.
Charles VII in the arts Appears as Charles, The Dauphin in Jean
Anouilh's play The Lark Appears as Charles the Dauphin in George
Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan Appears as the Dauphin in Maxwell
Anderson's Joan of Lorraine Appears as a significant character in
Thomas Keneally's novel "Blood Red, Sister Rose".
Appears as 'The Dauphin' in William Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 1, and as
'King Charles' in Henry VI Part III. Two Russian operas from the late 19th
century portray Charles VII among the dramatis personæ. These are Pyotr
Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orléans and César Cui's The Saracen.
Appears as a main character in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Giovanna d'Arco. His part
is written for a lyric tenor. The libretto is by Temistocle Solera.
Charles VII's relationship with Joan of Arc is imagined fancifully in the 1975
Broadway musical Goodtime Charley. Charles VII has been represented in the
movies by Raymond Hatton, Jean Debucourt, Gustaf Gründgens, Emlyn
Williams, Max Adrian, José Ferrer, Paul Colline, Richard Widmark, Daniel Gélin,
Keith Drinkel, Oleg Kulko, John Malkovich, Neil Patrick Harris
Sources Hanawalt, Barbara. The Middle Ages: An
Illustrated History. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510359-9.
Taylor, Aline. Isabel of Burgundy: The Duchess who played Politics in the Age
of Joan of Arc, 1397–1471. Madison Books. ISBN 1-56833-227-0.
References and notes External links
"Charles VII". The New Student's Reference Work. 1914.