Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/421

] scorn, and even with familiarity In short, the court of Charles was the most scandalous which England has seen. Yet, being affable and witty, and -free from all vindictive- ness, Charles enjoyed a good deal of popularity, if nothing of respect. In 1662 Charles married Catherine, princess of Portugal, who brought him half a million of money, Bombay, and the fortress of Tangiers. He died, probably of apoplexy, without legitimate issue for there is no evidence to sup port the popular belief in the legitimacy of Monmouth on the 6th February 1685. after receiving extreme unction from a Roman Catholic priest named Huddlestone. Throughout his whole reign, and especially by his secret neguciations with Louis XIV. of France, whose pensioner he was not ashamed to be, Charles exerted a powerful and harmful influence on English politics ; but his political action is matter of history, and is treated elsewhere.

1em  CHARLES I., the Bald (823-877), king of France and emperor of the Romans, was son of Louis le Debonnaire, by his second wife Judith. To furnish him with a king dom, his father deprived his elder brothers of some of the territory he had previously assigned to them, and war ensued, at the end of which, after many failures and successes, Charles was left in possession of a great kingdom in the west of the empire. On the death of his father in 840, Charles sought to succeed as emperor, and allied himself with his brother, Louis the German. In 841, in a battle at Fontenai, remarkable for the number of the slain and the fierceness with which it was contested, Charles s rival and eldest brother Lothaire was defeated ; but such had been the loss even of the victor that it was impossible to follow up the victory. The alliance between Louis and Charles was renewed, the former taking his oath in words which form one of the earliest specimens of the Romance language ; and in 843 the treaty of Verdun confirmed to Charles the possession of his kingdom, which comprised France to the west of the Meuse, Saone, and Rhone, and Spain from the Ebro to the Pyrenees. The weakness of Charles s government was, however, extreme. The Xormans, sailing up the rivers in small companies of a few hundreds, pillaged the country almost without resistance ; at length in 858 the people in despair, calling in the aid of his brother Louis, drove the king from the country for a time. Charles was entirely under the control of the bishops, and his submission did not go without reward ; in 875 he was crowned emperor by the Pope. But Louis attacked him with great success ; and his power was far from stable when, having been summoned into Italy by the Pope against the Saracens, he died in 877 near Mont Cenis. The last and perhaps most important act of his reign was the decree of Chiersi, by which the tenure of the counties was made hereditary.  CHARLES II., the Fat (832-888), king of France and emperor of the Romans, was the third son of Louis the German. Swabia he inherited from his father ; the death of his brother Carlonian of Bavaria made him king of Italy in 880; in 881 he was crowned emperor; the death of another brother, Louis of Saxony, gave him possession of all Germany in. 882 ; and that of Carloman the French king in 885 left him the kingdom of France. Thus, by no effort of his own, he became sovereign of all the dominions of Charlemagne. But he was soon found to be utterly incapable of ruling. He was, in fact, given up to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the table. When the Northmen besieged Paris, he made not the least attempt to repulse them by means of the vast army which he led against them, but bought them off with disgraceful presents. He was, therefore, justly rejected by the people ; in 887 he was deposed at Tribur ; and he died in the cloister during the following year.  CHARLES III., the Simple (879-029), king of France, was a posthumous son of Louis the Stammerer. On the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887, he was excluded from the throne by his youth; but during the reign of Eucles, who had succeeded Charles, he obtained the alliance of the emperor, and forced the former to cede Neustria. In b98, by tlr&amp;gt; death of his rival he obtained possession of the whole kingdom. His most important act was the treaty which he made with the Xormans in 911. They were baptized ; the territory which was afterwards known as the duchy of Normandy was ceded to them ; and their chief, Rollo, married the sister of the king, and was created duke. In 922 the barons, jealous of the growth of the royal authority, rebelled and elected Robert, brother of the late king, in place of Charles. Robert was killed in the battle of Soissons by Charles s own hand, but the victory remained with his party, who elected Raoul, duke of Burgundy, king. In his extremity Charles trusted him self to Herbert, count of Vermaudois, who deceived him, and threw him into confinement. Released by his old enemy, Raoul, he died at Peronne in 929.  CHARLES IV., the Fair (1294-1328), king of France and Navarre, was the third son of Philip the Fair. In 1322 he succeeded his brother Philip V. on the throne of France and Navarre. The chief aim of his domestic policy was to free the country from the Lombards and from the exactions of the barons and the judges ; and he did something to improve the condition of the Jews. He assisted his sister Isabella in her contest with her husband r Edward II. of England. In 1325, being supported by the Pope, Charles sought the imperial crown, but without the least success.  CHARLES V. (1337-1380), king of France, born in 1337, was the son of John II. His physical weakness, precluding him from the usual ambitions of his rank, led him to cultivate the taste for literature and the political ability which gained for him the title of &quot; the Wise.&quot; From the age of nineteen to that of twenty -three, during the exile of his father, a period of great disturbance and difficulty, he ruled as lieutenant of the kingdom. The first States-General which he summoned, led by Stephen Marcel, president of the tiers-etat, and Robert le Coq, president of the clergy, refused to raise levies or subsidies, and demanded, first, the trial before judges nominated by themselves of the ministers of justice and of finance, whom they accused of corruption ; secondly, the establishment of a council chosen from the three chambers to be consulted in all cases by the dauphin ; and lastly, the release of the king of Navarre. Next year (1357) they were equally determined ; they forced the dauphin to give his assent to an ordinance which greatly extended the authority of the States, and the commission appointed to carry it out ruled for some time with dictatorial power. The authority of Marcel also was such that he was bold enough to enter the palace- of the dauphin, and slay two of his chief officers, the marshals of Champagne and Normandy. At the same time another enemy, Charles, the king of Navarre, was enjoying unbounded popularity among the people of Paris, and maintaining their cause. France, indeed, seemed ripe for revolution, for its condition was wretched in the extreme. The heartless ravages of the English, of the free companies, and of the French nobles themselves had laid waste the country, and maddened the peasantry till, under the name of La Jacquerie, they burst into hideous revolts, in which they committed the most brutal outrages against the hated nobility. But after a few months, by the assas- 