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45-458: The Armagnac Faction took its name from Charles' father-in-law, Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac (1360–1418), who guided the young Duke during his teens and provided much of the financing and some of the seasoned Gascon troops that besieged Paris before their defeat at Saint-Cloud . In 1407, Louis of Orléans was assassinated on the order of John the Fearless. Fearing Burgundian ambitions,

90-524: A Parlement in Poitiers . On 11 July of that same year, Charles and John the Fearless attempted a reconciliation on a small bridge near Pouilly-le-Fort , not far from Melun where Charles was staying. They signed the Treaty of Pouilly-le-Fort in which they would share authority of the government, assist each other and not to form any treaties without the other's consent. Charles and John also decided that

135-654: A bared sword into Charles' bed, according to one source. Eventually, in 1446, after Charles's last son, also named Charles, was born, the king banished the Dauphin to the Dauphiné . 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 (an early symptom, perhaps, of diabetes or another condition) refused to heal, and

180-657: A ceremony at the Louvre Palace . Charles claimed the title King of France for himself, but 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

225-508: A further meeting should take place the following 10 September. On that date, they met 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. Charles's level of involvement has remained uncertain to this day. Although he claimed to have been unaware of his men's intentions, this

270-714: A number of years. As the Burgundians were allied with the English from 1419, and the Armagnacs supported the Dauphin, the factional rivalry became part of the larger dispute between the French and English monarchies. The terms remained in use until they were outlawed by Charles VII toward the close of the Hundred Years' War, as part of efforts to heal the factional rift. Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac (1360 – 12 June 1418)

315-475: 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 an abscess in his mouth. The swelling caused by this became so large that, for the last week of his life, Charles

360-494: 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 (namely his father Charles VI, his grandfather Charles V , his great-grandfather John II and great-great grandfather Philip VI ) failed to do –

405-711: The Armagnacs (supporters of the House of Valois ) and the Burgundian party (supporters of the House of Valois-Burgundy , which was allied to the English). With his court removed to Bourges , south of the Loire river, Charles was disparagingly called the "King of Bourges", because the area around this city was one of the few remaining regions left to him. However, his political and military position improved dramatically with

450-553: The Duke of Bedford (the uncle of Henry VI ), 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. Then in the little village of Domrémy , on the border of Lorraine and Champagne , a teenage girl named Joan of Arc ( French : Jeanne d'Arc ), demanded that the garrison commander at Vaucouleurs, Robert de Baudricourt , collect

495-468: The duke of Burgundy occupied Guyenne and northern France, including Paris , the capital and most populous city, and Reims , the city in which French kings were traditionally crowned . In addition, his father, Charles VI , had disinherited him in 1420 and recognized Henry V of England and his heirs as the legitimate successors to the French crown. At the same time, a civil war raged in France between

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540-521: The "Dauphin", or derisively as the "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. 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,

585-534: The Armagnacs suffered a second reverse at the Treaty of Bourges . The Armagnacs offered Henry IV full sovereignty in Gascony in return for an army of 4,000 men. Thomas, Duke of Clarence , a fiery cavalry general, demanded considerable territorial concessions including Normandy in return for aid to Burgundy. Now desperate to save the honour of the Oriflamme , the Armagnacs resorted to seeking English arbitration in

630-641: The English-Burgundian alliance by signing the Treaty of Arras with Burgundy, followed by the recovery of Paris in 1436 and the steady reconquest of Normandy in the 1440s using a newly organized professional army and advanced siege cannons. Following the Battle of Castillon in 1453, the French expelled the English from all their continental possessions except the Pale of Calais . The last years of Charles VII were marked by conflicts with his turbulent son,

675-535: The Fearless. As consequence, John's son Philip the Good allied with England as Henry V advanced without opposition to Paris. The Armagnac faction, together with the Dauphin Charles, established a separate jurisdiction in central and southern France. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Burgundian alliance controlled the north, including Paris. Sporadic warfare continued between the Armagnacs and Burgundians for

720-432: 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

765-468: The French throne in turn. All died childless, leaving Charles with a rich inheritance of titles. Almost immediately after becoming dauphin, Charles had to face threats to his inheritance, and he was forced to flee from Paris on 29 May 1418 after the partisans of John the Fearless , Duke of Burgundy , had entered the city the previous night. By 1419, Charles had established his own court in Bourges and

810-698: The Victorious ( French : le Victorieux ) or the Well-Served ( le Bien-Servi ), was King of France from 1422 to his death in 1461. His reign saw the end of the Hundred Years' War and a de facto end of the English claims to the French throne . During the Hundred Years' War , Charles VII inherited the throne of France under desperate circumstances. Forces of the Kingdom of England and

855-528: The cause of Orléans. He married his daughter Bonne to the young Charles, Duke of Orléans in 1410. Bernard d'Armagnac became the nominal head of the faction which opposed John the Fearless in the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War , and the faction came to be called the "Armagnacs" as a consequence. Armagnac became constable of France in 1415, and was the head of the government of the Dauphin ,

900-636: 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, 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

945-518: The citizens asked the exiled John the Fearless to return to the capital. The following month he presented a long document known as The Justification of the Duke of Burgundy containing proof of the Armagnac schemes of intrigue. Orleans pleaded with the king, but Charles insisted on setting a meeting in Chartres for a reconciliation. Meanwhile, by the end of December 1409, Burgundians had filled all

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990-424: The dukes of Berry , Brittany , and Orléans , and the counts of Alençon , Clermont, and Armagnac , formed a league against the duke of Burgundy in 1410. Charles of Orléans, son of the murdered Louis, married Bonne d'Armagnac , daughter of Bernard VII, count of Armagnac. In consequence, his father-in-law became the nominal head of the family. For that reason, Orléanist were called Armagnacs. Parisian supporters of

1035-494: The emergence of Joan of Arc as a spiritual leader in France. Joan and Jean de Dunois led French troops to lift the sieges of Orléans and other strategic cities on the Loire river, and to crush the English at the Battle of Patay . With the local English troops dispersed, the people of Reims switched allegiance and opened their gates, which enabled the coronation of Charles VII at Reims Cathedral in 1429. Six years later, he ended

1080-473: The expulsion of the English and the conclusion of the Hundred Years' War . Charles created France's first standing army since Roman times. In The Prince , Niccolò 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

1125-540: 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 . Charles's 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

1170-413: The future Charles VII , until the Burgundians invaded Paris on the night of 28–29 May 1418. On 12 June 1418, he was one of the first victims of the massacres, in which anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 of his real or suspected followers were killed over a period of weeks throughout the summer. Bernard and Bonne had: Charles VII of France Charles VII (22 February 1403 – 22 July 1461), called

1215-558: The future Louis XI . Born at the Hôtel Saint-Pol , the royal residence in Paris, Charles was given the title of Count of Ponthieu six months after his birth in 1403. He was the eleventh child and fifth son of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria . His four elder brothers, Charles (1386), Charles (1392–1401), Louis (1397–1415) and John (1398–1417) had each held the title of Dauphin of France as heirs apparent to

1260-490: 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

1305-465: The internal dispute. At the Treaty of Buzancais the English demanded a punitively large ransom from the Armagnacs. In a series of humiliating encounters their leading general, Louis, Duke of Guyenne (then the Dauphin), was outmanoeuvred, defeated, and forced into the Treaty of Auxerre . Later, John the Fearless was sent back to his lands, and Bernard of Armagnac remained in Paris and, some said, in

1350-739: The nobles adopted the name "Armagnac" in the struggle for control of the city against the Burgundians. It was composed of two elements: the Orleanists and those following the Count who gradually infiltrated the noble opposition. Armagnac became an outspoken adherent of the Orleanist Faction in the Valois Court. His Gascon raiders hired to impose order on Paris wore their white shoulder sash. But Armagnac's brutal tactics made his administration very unpopular among Parisians. In February

1395-545: The offices of the city government. The Armagnacs withdrew altogether from city politics to form the League of Gien . They were joined by disaffected Princes of the Blood: John, Duke of Berry , youngest brother of King Charles V; Louis II, Duke of Anjou ; John I, Duke of Bourbon ; John I, Duke of Alençon ; John V, Duke of Brittany ; Charles d'Albret , Constable of France; and John, Count of Clermont. These nobles formed

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1440-581: The political and military elite of the Armagnac faction. The Burgundians met them at the Peace of Bicetres , an attempted truce designed to iron out their differences. It largely failed because as the Armagnacs laid siege to Paris, a small English force landed at Calais to assist the Burgundian government. In October 1411 they marched towards Paris. Both parties in the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War sought support from King Henry IV of England . In May 1412,

1485-508: The queen's bed. Burgundy gained control of Paris in 1419. The Count of Armagnac was assassinated in the same year. In the same year, Henry V conquered Normandy . For both parties, it was clear that England was the main threat. There was an attempt at reconciliation between Armagnacs and Burgundians. However, in a meeting on the bridge at Montereau in September 1419, followers of the Dauphin Charles (who had succeeded in 1417) assassinated John

1530-550: The red, white, and blue that represented his family; his heraldic device was a mailed fist clutching a naked sword. On 25 June 1421, he took Gallardon and executed, as traitors, the garrison, and by the end of June Charles had invested Chartres. He then went south of the Loire River under the protection of Yolande of Aragon , known as "Queen of the Four Kingdoms" and, on 18 December 1422, married her daughter, Marie of Anjou , to whom he had been engaged since December 1413 in

1575-468: The regions of France that they occupied. Northern France, including Paris, was thus ruled by an English regent, Henry V's brother, John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford , based in Normandy (see Dual monarchy of England and France ). 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

1620-601: 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. Second-hand testimony by witnesses who were not present when Joan and the Dauphin met state 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

1665-510: The succession was cast into doubt. Under the Treaty of Troyes , signed by Charles VI on 21 May 1420, the throne would pass to Henry V or his heir. Henry had died in July 1422: his heir was the infant King Henry VI of England , son of Henry and Charles VI's daughter Catherine of Valois . However, Frenchmen loyal to the Valois regarded the treaty as invalid on grounds of coercion and Charles VI's diminished mental capacity. Those who did not recognize

1710-495: The treaty and believed the Dauphin Charles to be of legitimate birth considered him the rightful heir to the throne. Those who considered Charles illegitimate recognized as the rightful heir 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, enforced Henry's claim in

1755-399: Was Bonne , the daughter of John, Duke of Berry , and widow of Count Amadeus VII, Count of Savoy . He first gained influence at the French court when Louis, Duke of Orléans married Valentina Visconti , the daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti , Duke of Milan . Bernard's sister Beatrice married Valentina's brother Carlo. After Louis' assassination in 1407, Armagnac remained attached to

1800-568: Was Count of Armagnac and Constable of France . He was the son of John II , Count of Armagnac, and Jeanne de Périgord. He succeeded in Armagnac at the death of his brother, John III , in 1391. After prolonged fighting, he also became Count of Comminges in 1412. When his brother, who claimed the Kingdom of Majorca , invaded northern Catalonia late in 1389 in an attempt to seize the kingdom's continental possessions (the County of Roussillon ), Bernard commanded part of his forces. Bernard's wife

1845-401: Was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431. Nearly 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

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1890-484: Was considered unlikely by those who heard of the murder. The assassination marked the end of any attempt of a reconciliation between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions, thus playing into the hands of Henry V of England. Charles was later required by a treaty with Philip the Good , the son of John the Fearless, to pay penance for the murder, which he never did. At the death of Charles' father Charles VI in October 1422,

1935-514: Was crowned King Charles VII of France in Reims Cathedral on 17 July 1429. Joan was later captured by Burgundian troops under John of Luxembourg 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

1980-492: Was his mistress, Agnès Sorel . Charles VII and Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, then signed the 1435 Treaty of Arras , by which the Burgundian faction rejected their English alliance and became reconciled with Charles VII, 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

2025-540: 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 . Although Charles VII's legacy

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