Charles II of Navarre
Charles II | |
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Cathedral of Pamplona | |
Predecessor | Joan II |
Successor | Charles III |
Regents | See list
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Born | 10 October 1332 Évreux |
Died | 1 January 1387 Pamplona | (aged 54)
Burial | |
Spouse | |
Issue more... |
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House | Évreux |
Father | Philip III of Navarre |
Mother | Joan II of Navarre |
Charles II (10 October 1332 – 1 January 1387), known as the Bad,
Besides the
Life
Early life
Charles was born in
In October 1349, Charles's mother died.
Murder of Charles de la Cerda and relations with John II (1351–1356)
Charles II served as Royal Lieutenant in Languedoc in 1351 and commanded the army which captured
After publicly quarrelling with Charles de la Cerda in Paris at Christmas 1353, Charles arranged the assassination of the Constable, which took place at the village of l'Aigle on 8 January 1354, with his brother Philip, Count of Longueville leading the murderers. Charles made no secret of his role in the murder, and within a few days was intriguing with the English for military support against his father-in-law King John II, whose favourite the Constable had been.[8] John was preparing to attack his son-in-law's territories, but Charles's overtures of alliance to King Edward III of England led John to instead make peace with Charles with the Treaty of Mantes, enacted on 22 February 1354, by which Charles enlarged his possessions and was outwardly reconciled with John. The English, who had been preparing to invade France for a joint campaign with Charles against the French, felt they had been double-crossed: not for the last time, Charles had used the threat of an English alliance to wrest concessions out of the French king.
Relations between Charles and John once more deteriorated; in late 1354, John invaded Charles's territories in Normandy, while Charles intrigued with the
This agreement, too, did not last. Charles befriended and was thought to be trying to influence the Dauphin—the future Charles V—and was apparently involved in a botched coup d'état in December 1355, whose purpose appears to have been to replace John with the Dauphin.[9] John amended matters by making his son Duke of Normandy, but Charles of Navarre continued to advise the Dauphin how to govern that province.
There were also continued rumours of his plots against the king, and on 5 April 1356 John II and a group of supporters burst unannounced into the Dauphin's castle at Rouen, arrested Charles of Navarre and imprisoned him. Four of his principal supporters—two of whom had been among de la Cerda's assassins—were beheaded, and their bodies suspended from chains. Charles was taken to Paris, and once there he was moved from prison to prison for greater security.[10]
Versus the Dauphin (1356–1358)
After John was captured by the English following his defeat at the
He addressed the populace on 30 November, listing his grievances against those who had imprisoned him. Étienne Marcel led a 'demand for justice for the King of Navarre' which the Dauphin was unable to resist. Charles demanded an indemnity for all damage done to his territories while he had been imprisoned, free pardon for all his crimes and those of his supporters, and honourable burial for his associates executed by John II at Rouen. He also demanded the Dauphin's own Duchy of Normandy and the County of Champagne, which would have made him the effective ruler of northern France.
The Dauphin was virtually powerless, but he and Charles were still in negotiations when news reached them that Edward and John were reaching a peace agreement. Knowing this could only be to his disadvantage, Charles had all the prisons in Paris opened to create anarchy, and left Paris to build up his strength in Normandy.[13] In his absence the Dauphin tried to assemble a military force of his own. Charles meanwhile gave his executed followers a solemn state funeral in Rouen Cathedral on 10 January 1358 and effectively declared civil war, leading a combined Anglo-Navarrese force against the Dauphin's garrisons.
Revolution in Paris and the Jacquerie (1358)
Meanwhile Paris was in the throes of revolution. On 22 February the Dauphin's chief military officers, the marshals
Etienne Marcel implored Charles to intercede with the Dauphin but he achieved nothing and the land around Paris began to be plundered both by Charles's forces and by the Dauphin's. In the last days of May the peasant rebellion of the Jacquerie erupted to the north of Paris as a spontaneous expression of hatred for the nobility that had brought France so low. Etienne Marcel publicly declared Parisian support for the Jacquerie. Unable to get help from the Dauphin, the knights of northern France appealed to Charles of Navarre to lead them against the peasants.
Although he was allied with the Parisians, Charles was no lover of the peasantry and felt Marcel had made a fatal mistake. He could not resist the chance to appear as a leader of the French aristocracy and led the suppression of the Jacquerie at the Battle of Mello, 10 June 1358 and the subsequent massacres of rebels. He then returned to Paris and made an open bid for power urging the populace to elect him as 'Captain of Paris'.[15]
This move lost Charles the support of many of the nobles who had supported him against the Jacquerie, and they began to abandon him for the Dauphin while he recruited soldiers—mainly English mercenaries—for the 'defence' of Paris, though his men, picketed outside the city, raided and plundered far and wide. Realizing the Dauphin's forces were much stronger than his, Charles opened negotiations with the Dauphin, who made him substantial offers of cash and land if he could induce the Parisians to surrender. They, however, distrusted this deal between princes and refused the terms outright; Charles agreed to fight on as their captain but demanded that his troops be billeted in the city.
Before long there were anti-English riots in the city and Charles, with Etienne Marcel, was forced by the mob to lead them against the marauding garrisons to the north and west of the city—against his own men. He led them (no doubt deliberately) into an English ambush in the woods near the bridge of Saint-Cloud and about 600 Parisians were killed.[16]
Capitulation (1359–60)
After this debacle Charles stayed outside Paris at the
Burgundian inheritance and the loss of Normandy (1361–1365)
In 1361, after the death of his second cousin the young Duke
To have become Duke of Burgundy would have given Charles the position at the centre of French politics that he had always craved, and the abrupt dismissal of his claim provoked fresh bitterness. After the failure of an attempt to win
John II of France had returned to London to negotiate with Edward III, and the defence of France was once more in the hands of the Dauphin. There was already a royal army in Normandy besieging the town of
Undeterred by this resounding defeat, Charles of Navarre persisted in his grand design. In August 1364 his men began a fight back in Normandy while a small Navarrese army under
At the end of 1365 Séguin de Badefol arrived in Navarre to claim the considerable sums Charles had pledged to pay him for his services in Burgundy, even though he had achieved nothing of substance. Charles was not pleased to see him, received him in private and poisoned him with a crystallised pear.[24]
Charles and the Spanish Wars (1365–1368)
The cessation of war in France left vast numbers of French, English, Gascon and Navarrese soldiers and freebooters in search of mercenary employment, and many of these soon became involved in the wars of Castille and Aragon, both of which bordered Navarre. Charles typically tried to exploit the situation by making agreements with both sides that would enlarge his territory while leaving Navarre itself relatively untouched. Officially he was ally of Peter of Castile, but at the end of 1365 he concluded a secret agreement with Peter IV of Aragon to allow the marauding army led by Bertrand du Guesclin and Hugh Calveley invade Castile through southern Navarre in order to depose Pedro I and supplant him with his half-brother Henry of Trastámara. He then reneged on his agreements to both sides and attempted to hold the Navarrese borders intact, but was unable to do so and instead paid the invaders a large sum to keep their plundering to a minimum.
After
With the resumption of war between France and England in 1369 Charles saw fresh opportunities to increase his status in France. He left Navarre and met Duke
Having gained little or nothing from these activities, he returned to Navarre in early 1372. He was subsequently involved in at least two attempts to have Charles V poisoned and encouraged various plots by others against the French King.
In 1377 he proposed to the English that he would return to Normandy and put the harbours and castles he still controlled there at their disposal for a joint attack on France; he also proposed that his daughter should be married to the new English king, the young
From June–July 1378 the armies of Castile, commanded by John of Trastámara, invaded Navarre and laid the country waste. Charles II retreated over the Pyrenees to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and in October he made his way to Bordeaux to plead for military aid from Sir John Neville, the Lieutenant of Gascony. Neville despatched a small force to Navarre under the knight Sir Thomas Trivet, but the English achieved little over the winter and in February Henry of Trastámara announced his son would re-invade Navarre in the spring. Having no options or allies left Charles II asked for a truce, and by the Treaty of Briones on 31 March 1379 agreed to Henry's demands that he agree to be bound in perpetual military alliance with Castile and France against the English, and to surrender 20 fortresses of southern Navarre, including the city of Tudela, to Castilian garrisons.[34]
Charles of Navarre's remarkably slippery and devious political career was at an end. He retained his crown and his country but he was effectively a humiliated client of his enemies, he had lost his French territories and his Pyrenean realm was devastated and impoverished by war. Though he continued to scheme and even still to consider himself the rightful King of France, he was essentially neutralized and impotent for the years that remained until his gruesome death.
Marriage and children
He married Joan of France (1343–1373), daughter of King John II of France. He had the following children by Joan:
- Marie (1360, Puente la Reina – aft. 1400), married in Tudela on 20 January 1393 Alfonso d'Aragona, Duke of Gandia
- Charles III of Navarre (1361–1425)
- Bonne (1364 – aft. 1389)
- Peter II of Alençon. He had a son out of wedlock named Pedro Perez de Peralta 1400-1451.
- Philip (b. 1368), d. young
- Joanna of Navarre (1370–1437), married firstly John IV, Duke of Brittany, married secondly Henry IV of England
- Blanche (1372–1385, Olite)
Death
Charles died in Pamplona, aged 54. His horrific death became famous all over Europe, and was often cited by moralists, and sometimes illustrated in illuminated manuscript chronicles.[36] There are several versions of the story, varying in the details. This is Francis Blagdon's English account, of 1803:
Charles the Bad, having fallen into such a state of decay that he could not make use of his limbs, consulted his physician, who ordered him to be wrapped up from head to foot, in a linen cloth impregnated with brandy, so that he might be inclosed [sic] in it to the very neck as in a sack. It was night when this remedy was administered. One of the female attendants of the palace, charged to sew up the cloth that contained the patient, having come to the neck, the fixed point where she was to finish her seam, made a knot according to custom; but as there was still remaining an end of thread, instead of cutting it as usual with scissors, she had recourse to the candle, which immediately set fire to the whole cloth. Being terrified, she ran away, and abandoned the king, who was thus burnt alive in his own palace.[37]
John Cassell's moralistic version states:
He was now sixty years of age, and a mass of disease, from the viciousness of his habits. To maintain his warmth his physician ordered him to be swathed in linen steeped in spirits of wine, and his bed to be warmed by a pan of hot coals. He had enjoyed the benefit of this singular prescription some time in safety, but now, as he was perpetrating his barbarities on the representatives of his kingdom, "by the pleasure of God, or of the devil," says Froissart, "the fire caught to his sheets, and from that to his person, swathed as it was in matter highly inflammable." He was fearfully burnt, but lingered nearly a fortnight, in the most terrible agonies.[38]
Family tree
Notes
- ^ Although the nickname (French le Mauvais, Spanish el Malo) has stuck, it was first used by Diego Ramírez de Ávalos de La Piscina in his manuscript chronicle Crónica de los muy excelentes Reyes de Navarra in 1534. It did not appear in print until 1571.[1]
References
- ^ Morby 1978, p. 5.
- ^ Henneman 1971, p. xvii.
- ^ González Olle 1987, p. 706.
- ^ a b Sumption 1999, p. 107.
- ^ a b sheldon, Natasha (8 June 2017). "King Charles II Died a Horrible, Unfortunate Death". Retrieved 2023-08-06.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 107–108.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 103.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 124–125.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 199–200.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 206–207.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 294–295.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 295–296.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 302.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 314–315.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 317–337.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 338–344.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 348.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 400–401.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 418–421.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 453.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 504–505.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 508–511.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 520–523.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 525.
- ^ Sumption 1999, p. 545, 548–549.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 64–67.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 72–74.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 312.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 179–180.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 201–202.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 313.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 314.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 317–321.
- ^ Sumption 2009, p. 333–339.
- ^ Sumption 2015, p. 317.
- ISBN 9780394400266.
- ^ Francis William Blagdon (1803). Paris as it was and as it is. C. and R. Baldwin. pp. 273-274.
- ^ John Cassell (1857). Illustrated History of England. Vol. 1. London: W. Kent & Co. p. 404.
Sources
- González Olle, Fernando (1987). "Reconocimiento del Romance Navarro bajo Carlos II (1350)". Príncipe de Viana. 1 (182). Gobierno de Navarra; Institución Príncipe de Viana. ISSN 0032-8472.
- Henneman, John Bell (1971). Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century France. Princeton University Press.
- Morby, John E. (1978). "The Sobriquets of Medieval European Princes". Canadian Journal of History. 13 (1): 1–16. .
- Sumption, Jonathan (1999). Trial by Fire: The Hundred Years War. Vol. II. Faber & Faber.
- Sumption, Jonathan (2009). Divided Houses: The Hundred Years War. Vol. III. Faber & Faber.
- Sumption, Jonathan (2015). Cursed Kings: Hundred Years War. Vol. IV. Faber & Faber.