24. Charles IV.
CHAPTER XXIV. Charles IV.
(1322-1328)
Philip V. had left a brother named Charles, who was the next king, and is known as Charles le Bel, or the Handsome. He reigned for six years, the same time as his brother Philip. Louis X. had reigned for two years. The reigns of all the sons added together did not take up half so many years as the reign of their father, Philip IV. (, and he had reigned a much shorter time than Queen Victoria has now done.) A boy or girl born in the last year of Philip IV. 's reign would have lived in the reigns of five kings by the time he or she was fifteen. This has not happened at any other time in French history, or at any time in English history, between the reigns of William the Conqueror and of Queen Victoria. Three times over, in the course of French history, three brothers have come to be kings one after another, and each time they have come at the end of their family; none of them have left descendants. Louis X., Philip V., and Charles IV., were the first set of brothers; we shall come to the others in due time.
Charles IV.
had an unimportant reign, and very little is known about him, or the times in which he lived. It seems that at that time there was only one Frenchman who wrote history, and he wrote only about other countries, and scarcely at all about France. Many events happened in England, in Germany, and in Italy, but Charles IV. took very little part in them. In England a (very) weak and bad man, Edward II., was king, and his wife, Isabella, was the sister of Charles IV.
Isabella hated her husband, and was always writing to Charles to say how unkind Edward was to her, and to ask for help against him. In one letter she says that her husband treats her "more like a servant than like his wife." Charles was, no doubt, glad of an excuse for taking away some of the land which still belonged to the English kings in France. This land was in the south part of the country, in the province called Aquitaine. Charles made himself master of several of the towns in Aquitaine, and when Edward complained, he took no notice. At last Edward determined to send his wife Isabella to the French court, hoping that she would be able to persuade Charles to be at peace with him; but Isabella, far from trying to make peace between her husband and her brother, did all she could to persuade Charles to give her an army with which to go back and attack England.
When Edward sent for his wife to come back, she answered that she did not feel safe in England, and would rather stay in France. Charles gave her soldiers and money, and she found in Flanders a brave soldier, one of the sons of the Count, who promised to march at the head of her little army. When everything was ready she went back to England and began a war with her husband. All the people of England took her side. Edward tried to escape out of the country, but was always driven back by bad weather. He was at last taken prisoner by Isabella's friends, kept in prison for some months, and then most cruelly put to death. Isabella made her young son king under the name of Edward III., who became so well known both in England and France. Edward II. was a weak and bad man; his wife must also have been a very bad woman, and a good deal like her brothers, the three Kings of France.
Charles found both the lepers and the Jews in great distress when he came to the throne, owing to the cruel treatment of his brother Philip. He ordered that food should be given to the lepers who were shut up in their hospitals, or in deserted houses in villages. Though he still said they were never to come out themselves, their neighbours were allowed to collect food for them if they chose, and take it to their houses. Had it not been for this, all the lepers in France would probably have been starved. It was a custom for a new king, when he came to the throne, to grant favours to as many as possible of his subjects, by giving them something for which they wished, or that would please them. The only favour which Charles would grant to the lepers was, as we have seen, that some one should bring them enough food to prevent them from dying of hunger.
Most of the Jews were shut up in prison, and Philip V. had ordered them to pay him large sums of money. Charles gave orders that the Jews should be allowed to come out of their prison by day, in order to collect this money for him; and that when they had collected it all, they should be allowed to leave the country. These were the favours he showed the Jews.
During the reign of Charles IV., there was at one time an idea of going on another Crusade. Charles received some money for the purpose from the Pope, and got together a little army of men; he chose for their leader one of his noblemen, who had been put in prison a short time before for hanging one of his vassals and drowning another. There was no opportunity for finding out what kind of a general the prisoner would have made (which perhaps was as well for his soldiers), for the Crusade never came to pass.
There is so little to be read or found out about Charles IV., that we do not even know of what illness he died. It was long and it was painful, and that is all we are told. He died at the age of thirty-four. He had had two sons, both of whom were dead. He left behind him only a baby girl. Charles IV.
was the last of the Capets, the line of kings of which Hugh Capet was the first; there now began a new line of kings with a different name, though they also were descended from Hugh Capet, as cousins may have different names, although the same person is the grandfather of both.
