Philip VI of France

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Philip VI

Philip VI in a contemporary miniature depicting the trial of Robert III

of Artois, c. 1336

King of France 
(more...)

Reign 1 April 1328 – 22 August 1350

Coronation 29 May 1328

Predecessor Charles IV

Successor John II

Born 1293

Fontainebleau, Paris, France

Died 22 August 1350 (aged 57)

Coulombes Abbey, Nogent-le-Roi, Eure-et-Loir,
 France

Burial Saint Denis Basilica

Joan of Burgundy
Spouse

(m. 1313; died 1349)

Blanche of Navarre

(m. 1350)

 John II of France
Issue
 Philip, Duke of Orléans
among others
 Joan of France

House Valois

Father Charles, Count of Valois

Mother Margaret, Countess of Anjou

Philip VI (French: Philippe; 1293 – 22 August 1350), called the Fortunate (French: le

Fortuné) and of Valois, was the first King of France from the House of Valois, reigning
from 1328 until his death in 1350.
Philip's reign was dominated by the consequences of a succession dispute. When King
Charles IV of France died in 1328, the nearest male relative was his nephew King
Edward III of England, but the French nobility preferred Charles's paternal cousin Philip.
At first, Edward seemed to accept Philip's succession, but he pressed his claim to the
throne of France after a series of disagreements with Philip. The result was the
beginning of the Hundred Years' War in 1337.
After initial successes at sea, Philip's navy was annihilated at the Battle of Sluys in
1340, ensuring that the war would occur on the continent. The English took another
decisive advantage at the Battle of Crécy (1346), while the Black Death struck France,
further destabilizing the country.
In 1349, King Philip VI bought the Province of Dauphiné from its ruined ruler
the Dauphin Humbert II and entrusted the government of this province to his
grandson King Charles V. Philip VI died in 1350 and was succeeded by his son King
John II, the Good.
 Contents

 1Early life
 2Accession to the throne
 3Reign
o 3.1Hundred Years' War
o 3.2Final years
 4Marriages and children
 5In fiction
 6References
 7Sources

Early life[edit]
Little is recorded about Philip's childhood and youth, in large part because he was of
minor royal birth. Philip's father Charles, Count of Valois, the younger brother of
King Philip IV of France,[1] had striven throughout his life to gain the throne for himself
but was never successful. He died in 1325, leaving his eldest son Philip as heir to the
counties of Anjou, Maine, and Valois.[2]

Accession to the throne[edit]

Edward III of England pays homage to Philip VI of France in Amiens, from a 1370–75 manuscript of
the Grandes Chroniques de France
Philip VI of France

In 1328, Philip VI's first cousin King Charles IV died without a son, leaving his
widow Jeanne of Évreux pregnant.[2] Philip was one of the two chief claimants to the
throne of France. The other was King Edward III of England, who was the son of
Charles's sister Isabella of France and his closest male relative. The Estates General
had decided 20 years earlier that women could not inherit the throne of France. The
question arose as to whether Isabella should have been able to transmit a claim that
she herself did not possess.[3] The assemblies of the French barons and prelates and
the University of Paris decided that males who derive their right to inheritance through
their mother should be excluded according to Salic law. As Philip was the eldest
grandson of King Philip III of France, through the male line, he became regent instead
of Edward, who was a matrilineal grandson of King Philip IV and great-grandson of King
Philip III.[4]
During the period in which Charles IV's widow was waiting to deliver her child, Philip VI
rose to the regency with support of the French magnates, following the pattern set up by
his cousin King Philip V who succeeded the throne over his niece Joan II of Navarre.
[3]
 He formally held the regency from 9 February 1328 until 1 April, when Jeanne of
Évreux gave birth to a daughter named Blanche of France, Duchess of Orléans.[5] Upon
this birth, Philip was named king and crowned at the Cathedral in Reims on 29 May
1328.[6] After his elevation to the throne, Philip sent the Abbot of Fécamp, Pierre Roger,
to summon Edward III of England to pay homage for the duchy of
Aquitaine and Gascony.[7] After a subsequent second summons from Philip, Edward
finally arrived at the Cathedral of Amiens on 6 June 1329 and worded his vows in such
a way to cause more disputes in later years. [7]
The dynastic change had another consequence: Charles IV had also been King of
Navarre, but, unlike the crown of France, the crown of Navarre was not subject to Salic
law. Philip VI was neither an heir nor a descendant of Joan I of Navarre, whose
inheritance (the kingdom of Navarre, as well as the counties
of Champagne, Troyes, Meaux, and Brie) had been in personal union with the crown of
France for almost fifty years and had long been administered by the same royal
machinery established by King Philip IV, the father of French bureaucracy. These
counties were closely entrenched in the economic and administrative entity of the crown
lands of France, being located adjacent to Île-de-France. Philip, however, was not
entitled to that inheritance; the rightful heiress was the surviving daughter of his
cousin King Louis X, the future Joan II of Navarre, the heir general of Joan I of Navarre.
Navarre thus passed to Joan II, with whom Philip struck a deal regarding the counties in
Champagne: she received vast lands in Normandy (adjacent to the fief in Évreux that
her husband Philip III of Navarre owned) as compensation, and he kept Champagne as
part of the French crown lands.

Reign[edit]
Philip's reign was plagued with crises, although it began with a military success
in Flanders at the Battle of Cassel (August 1328), where Philip's forces re-seated Louis
I, Count of Flanders, who had been unseated by a popular revolution.[8] Philip's wife, the
able Joan the Lame, gave the first of many demonstrations of her competence as
regent in his absence.
Philip initially enjoyed relatively amicable relations with Edward III, and they planned a
crusade together in 1332, which was never executed. However, the status of the Duchy
of Aquitaine remained a sore point, and tension increased. Philip provided refuge
for David II of Scotland in 1334 and declared himself champion of his interests, which
enraged Edward.[9] By 1336, they were enemies, although not yet openly at war.
Philip successfully prevented an arrangement between the Avignon papacy and Holy
Roman Emperor Louis IV, although in July 1337 Louis concluded an alliance with
Edward III.[10] The final breach with England came when Edward offered refuge to Robert
III of Artois, formerly one of Philip's trusted advisers, [11] after Robert committed forgery to
try to obtain an inheritance. As relations between Philip and Edward worsened, Robert's
standing in England strengthened.[11] On 26 December 1336, Philip officially demanded
the extradition of Robert to France.[11] On 24 May 1337, Philip declared that Edward had
forfeited Aquitaine for disobedience and for sheltering the "king's mortal enemy", Robert
of Artois.[12] Thus began the Hundred Years' War, complicated by Edward's
renewed claim to the throne of France in retaliation for the forfeiture of Aquitaine.
Hundred Years' War[edit]
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Flemish leader as fish seller went to search in French camp

Philip VI and his first wife, Joan of Burgundy

Philip entered the Hundred Years' War in a position of comparative

strength. France was richer and more populous than England and was at the height of
its medieval glory. The opening stages of the war, accordingly, were largely successful
for the French.
At sea, French privateers raided and burned towns and shipping all along the southern
and southeastern coasts of England.[13] The English made some retaliatory raids,
including the burning of a fleet in the harbour of Boulogne-sur-Mer,[14] but the French
largely had the upper hand. With his sea power established, Philip gave orders in 1339
to begin assembling a fleet off the Zeeland coast at Sluys. In June 1340, however, in
the bitterly fought Battle of Sluys, the English attacked the port and captured or
destroyed the ships there, ending the threat of an invasion. [14]
On land, Edward III largely concentrated upon Flanders and the Low Countries, where
he had gained allies through diplomacy and bribery. A raid in 1339 (the
first chevauchée) into Picardy ended ignominiously when Philip wisely refused to give
battle. Edward's slender finances would not permit him to play a waiting game, and he
was forced to withdraw into Flanders and return to England to raise more money. In July
1340, Edward returned and mounted the siege of Tournai.[15] By September 1340,
Edward was in financial distress, hardly able to pay or feed his troops, and was open to
dialogue.[16] After being at Bouvines for a week, Philip was finally persuaded to
send Joan of Valois, Countess of Hainaut, to discuss terms to end the siege.[16] On 23
September 1340, a nine-month truce was reached. [16]
So far, the war had gone quite well for Philip and the French. While often stereotyped as
chivalry-besotten incompetents, Philip and his men had in fact carried out a
successful Fabian strategy against the debt-plagued Edward and resisted the chivalric
blandishments of single combat or a combat of two hundred knights that he offered. In
1341, the War of the Breton Succession allowed the English to place permanent
garrisons in Brittany. However, Philip was still in a commanding position: during
negotiations arbitrated by the pope in 1343, he refused Edward's offer to end the war in
exchange for the Duchy of Aquitaine in full sovereignty.
The next attack came in 1345, when the Earl of Derby overran the Agenais (lost twenty
years before in the War of Saint-Sardos) and took Angoulême, while the forces in
Brittany under Sir Thomas Dagworth also made gains. The French responded in the
spring of 1346 with a massive counter-attack against Aquitaine, where an army
under John, Duke of Normandy, besieged Derby at Aiguillon. On the advice of Godfrey
Harcourt (like Robert III of Artois, a banished French nobleman), Edward sailed
for Normandy instead of Aquitaine. As Harcourt predicted, the Normans were ill-
prepared for war, and many of the fighting men were at Aiguillon. Edward sacked and
burned the country as he went, taking Caen and advancing as far as Poissy and then
retreating before the army Philip had hastily assembled at Paris. Slipping across
the Somme, Edward drew up to give battle at Crécy.
Close behind him, Philip had planned to halt for the night and reconnoitre the English
position before giving battle the next day. However, his troops were disorderly, and the
roads were jammed by the rear of the army coming up, and by the local peasantry
furiously calling for vengeance on the English. Finding them hopeless to control, he
ordered a general attack as evening fell. Thus began the Battle of Crécy. When it was
done, the French army had been annihilated and a wounded Philip barely escaped
capture. Fortune had turned against the French.
The English seized and held the advantage. Normandy called off the siege of Aiguillon
and retreated northward, while Sir Thomas Dagworth captured Charles of Blois in
Brittany. The English army pulled back from Crécy to mount the siege of Calais; the
town held out stubbornly, but the English were determined, and they easily supplied
across the English Channel. Philip led out a relieving army in July 1347, but unlike
the Siege of Tournai, it was now Edward who had the upper hand. With the plunder of
his Norman expedition and the reforms he had executed in his tax system, he could
hold to his siege lines and await an attack that Philip dared not deliver. It was Philip who
marched away in August, and the city capitulated shortly thereafter.
Final years[edit]

King Philip's funerary procession, which was presided over by the Archbishop of Reims, illustrated by Loyset
Liédet

After the defeat at Crécy and loss of Calais, the Estates of France refused to raise
money for Philip, halting his plans to counter-attack by invading England. In 1348
the Black Death struck France and in the next few years killed one-third of the
population, including Queen Joan. The resulting labour shortage caused inflation to
soar, and the king attempted to fix prices, further destabilising the country. His second
marriage to his son's betrothed Blanche of Navarre alienated his son and many nobles
from the king.[17]
Philip's last major achievement was the acquisition of the Dauphiné and the territory
of Montpellier in the Languedoc in 1349. At his death in 1350, France was very much a
divided country filled with social unrest. Philip VI died at Coulombes Abbey, Eure-et-
Loir, on 22 August 1350[18] and is interred with his first wife, Joan of Burgundy, in Saint
Denis Basilica, though his viscera were buried separately at the now demolished church
of Couvent des Jacobins in Paris. He was succeeded by his first son by Joan of
Burgundy, who became John II.

Marriages and children[edit]

French Monarchy
 Capetian Dynasty
(House of Valois)

Philip VI

Children

John II

Philip, Duke of Orléans

John II

Children

Charles V

Louis I of Anjou

John, Duke of Berry

Philip the Bold

Charles V

Children

Charles VI

Louis, Duke of Orléans

Charles VI

Children

Isabella of Valois

Michelle of Valois

Catherine of Valois

Charles VII

Ch
arl
es
 VI
I

Ch
ild
re
n

Louis XI

Charles, Duke of Berry

Louis XI

Children

Charles VIII

Charles VIII

In July 1313, Philip married Joan the Lame (French: Jeanne), daughter of Robert II,

Duke of Burgundy,[19] and Agnes of France, the youngest daughter of King Louis IX of
France.
Their children were the following:

1. King John II of France (26 April 1319 – 8 April 1364)[20]

2. Marie of France (1326 – 22 September 1333), who married John of
Brabant, the son and heir of John III, Duke of Brabant, no issue.[21]
3. Louis (born and died 17 January 1329).
4. Louis (8 June 1330 – 23 June 1330)
5. A son [John?] (born and died 2 October 1333).
6. A son (28 May 1335), stillborn
7. Philip of Orléans (1 July 1336 – 1 September 1375), Duke of Orléans
8. Joan (born and died November 1337)
9. A son (born and died summer 1343)
After Joan died in 1349, Philip married Blanche of Navarre,[22] daughter of Queen Joan II
of Navarre and Philip III of Navarre, on 11 January 1350. They had one daughter:

 Joan (Blanche) of France (May 1351 – 16 September 1371),[20] who was

intended to marry John I of Aragon, but who died during the journey.

In fiction[edit]
Philip is a character in Les Rois maudits (The Accursed Kings), a series of
French historical novels by Maurice Druon. He was portrayed by Benoît Brione in the
1972 French miniseries adaptation of the series, and by Malik Zidi in the 2005
adaptation.[23]

References[edit]
1. ^ David Nicolle, Crécy 1346: Triumph of the Longbow, (Osprey, 2000), 12.
2. ^ Jump up to:a b Elizabeth Hallam and Judith Everard, Capetian France 987-1328, 2nd edition,
(Pearson Education Limited, 2001), 366.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle, Vol. I, (Faber &
Faber, 1990), 106-107.
4. ^ Viard, "Philippe VI de Valois. Début du règne (février-juillet 1328)", Bibliothèque de l'école
des chartes, 95 (1934), 263.
5. ^ Viard, 269, 273.
6. ^ Curry, Anne (2003). The Hundred Years' War. New York: Rutledge. pp. 18.
7. ^ Jump up to:a b Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle, 109-110.
8. ^ Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century, (The Boydell Press, 1996),
102.
9. ^ Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War:Trial by Battle, 135.
10. ^ The Hundred Years War:Not One But Many, Kelly DeVries, The Hundred Years War (part
II): Different Vistas, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon, Donald J. Kagay, (Brill, 2008), 15.
11. ^ Jump up to:a b c Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War:Trial by Battle, 171-172.
12. ^ Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War:Trial by Battle, 184.
13. ^ Oars, Sails and Guns:The English and War at Sea, c.1200-1500, Ian Friel, War at Sea in
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. John B. Hattendorf, Richard W. Unger, (The
Boydell Press, 2003), 79.
14. ^ Jump up to:a b Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War:Trial by Battle, 320-328.
15. ^ Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War:Trial by Battle, 349.
16. ^ Jump up to:a b c Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War:Trial by Battle, 354-359.
17. ^ Mortimer, Ian  (2008). The Perfect King The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation.
Vintage. p. 276.
18. ^ Jonathan Sumption, Hundred Years War:Trial by Fire, Vol. II, (University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1999), 117.
19. ^ David d'Avray, Papacy, Monarchy and Marriage 860–1600, (Cambridge University Press,
2015), 292.
20. ^ Jump up to:a b Marguerite Keane, Material Culture and Queenship in 14th-century France,
(Brill, 2016), 17.
21. ^ Henneman, John Bell (2015).  Royal Taxation in Fourteenth-Century France: The
Development of War Financing, 1322-1359. Princeton University Press. p. 91.
22. ^ Identity Politics and Rulership in France: Female Political Place and the Fraudulent Salic
Law in Christine de Pizan and Jean de Montreuil, Sarah Hanley, Changing Identities in Early
Modern France, ed. Michael Wolfe, (Duke University Press, 1996), 93 n45.
23. ^ "Les Rois maudits: Casting de la saison 1"  (in French). AlloCiné. 2005. Archived from the
original on 19 December 2014. Retrieved 25 July  2015.

 Biography portal

Sources[edit]
  Seward, Desmond (1999). The Hundred Years War. Penguin
Books. ISBN 014-02-8361-7.

Philip VI of France
House of Valois
Cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty
Born: 1293 Died: 22 August 1350

Regnal titles
Vacant
Title last held King of France Succeeded by
by 1328–1350 John II
Charles IV

French nobility
Count of Anjou Vacant
1325–1328 Title next held
Count of Maine by
Preceded by 1314–1328 John II
Charles (III)
Vacant
Count of Valois Title next held
1325–1328 by
Philip III