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On 23 February 1429, a teenage girl from the village of Donrémy in northeastern France arrived at Chinon requesting an interview with Charles VII, king of France. Charles agreed to meet with the young girl, Joan of Arc, who claimed to have received divine visions telling her that she would lead the French army to save Orléans, which was under siege from English forces, and that Charles would be crowned at Reims. Joan successfully fulfilled her mission by forcing the English to withdraw from Orléans two months later, paving the way for King Charles VII's coronation
at Reims Cathedral in July 1429. While Charles owed Joan his crown, he made little effort to save her after she was captured and handed over to the English. While Joan was burned at the stake for heresy in 1431, Charles himself would remain on the throne for three more decades, during which he centralised royal power and enacted military reforms that enabled the French to achieve final victory in the Hundred Years' War after defeating the English at the Battle of Castillon in July 1453. By the time of Charles' death in 1461, France was in its strongest position in over
a century. This is the story of Charles VII, the victor of the Hundred Years' War. The man known to history as King Charles VII of France was born on 22 February 1403 in Paris, the capital of the kingdom of France. His father was King Charles VI of France, who reigned between 1380 and 1422. Charles VI is often known as Charles the Mad and suffered from mental illness for much of his reign. His mother Isabeau of Bavaria married Charles VI
in 1385. The couple would go on to have six sons and six daughters, several of whom died young. The future Charles VII was the eleventh of twelve children and the third of his parents' sons to be named Charles. Charles was born approximately halfway through the Anglo-French conflict known to history as the Hundred Years' War. The war had begun in 1337 when King Edward III of England asserted his rights to the French crown through his mother, Isabella of France, following the extinction of the male line of the French royal dynasty. Rather than a period of continuous warfare between England and France, the 116 years of the Hundred
Years' War was punctuated by lengthy periods of peace. At the turn of the 15th century, both countries were preoccupied with internal political instability. In England, the unpopular King Richard II was dethroned in 1399 by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who seized the throne as King Henry IV and spent much of his reign suppressing rebellions against him. In France, the advent of Charles VI's mental illness in 1392 precipitated a political crisis as the king's relatives vied for power and influence in Paris. The king's uncle Philip II, Duke of Burgundy, assumed the
dominant role within the regency council and used French resources to further the interests of his hereditary lands in Burgundy and the Low Countries. Nicknamed Philip the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy's authority was challenged by the king's younger brother Louis, Duke of Orleans, whose close association with Queen Isabeau inspired rumours that the pair were having an affair. The queen's relationship with her brother-in-law would later cast doubt on the paternity of the future Charles VII, but at the time of his birth the prince was third in line to the
throne and widely accepted as the king's son. In April 1404, Philip of Burgundy died and was succeeded by his son, known to history as John the Fearless. The new Burgundian duke lacked his father's political skills, enabling his cousin Louis of Orleans to assume the leading role in the French government. The quarrelling dukes agreed to set aside their differences on 20 November 1407, but three days later Louis was brutally assassinated in the streets of Paris. The killer had been one of the Duke of Burgundy's household servants, and since the city of Paris was sympathetic to the Burgundians, John the Fearless made no effort to disguise his
role in his cousin's murder. The assassination provoked a blood feud between Burgundy and the supporters of Louis. In 1410, Louis' son, Charles of Orleans, married the daughter of Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac, who inherited leadership of the feud. The Armagnac-Burgundian civil war would have profound repercussions for France and the young prince Charles. On 18 December, the 10-year-old Charles was betrothed to Marie of Anjou, the daughter of Duke Louis II of Anjou and Yolande of Aragon. The House of Anjou was a branch of the French royal dynasty that
laid claim to the Italian kingdom of Sicily and Naples. The Angevins had recently switched their allegiances from the Burgundians to the Armagnacs, and Marie's betrothal to Charles was a sign that the Armagnacs were in the ascendancy. While Charles was educated in Paris by royal tutors, his teenage years were strongly influenced by his future in-laws. Among the Angevins, Charles formed a lifelong friendship with René of Anjou, the second son of Louis and Yolande. The prince's strong association with the Angevin household was partly the result of the French
military disaster at the Battle of Agincourt in October 1415. After coming to the throne in 1413, King Henry V of England resumed hostilities with France by raiding the north of that country in 1415. Near the end of the campaigning season, Henry's army was obliged to fight a pitched battle with a larger French army at Agincourt. Henry's longbowmen proceeded to cut down the flower of French chivalry, who were either killed outright or taken to England as prisoners for ransom. While the Duke of Orleans was among the English prisoners, John the Fearless of Burgundy
deliberately avoided joining the French army at Agincourt. The loss of leading Armagnacs at Agincourt duly strengthened the Burgundian cause. A few weeks after Agincourt, Charles' elder brother Louis died in Paris in December 1415. The new heir, Prince Jean, died less than two years later. Accordingly, Charles became dauphin or heir to the French throne on 5 April 1417 aged 14. The kingdom he stood to inherit risked being much smaller when Henry V of England launched a campaign in 1417 to conquer Normandy in northern France. As the Armagnacs struggled
to defend France from the English incursion, the Burgundians launched a coup in Paris on 29 May 1418 and seized control of Charles VI. The dauphin was hastily evacuated from Paris, where he had spent his entire life to date. Two weeks later, the Burgundians purged hundreds of Armagnacs, including their leader Bernard VII of Armagnac. With his father now a puppet of the Burgundians, Dauphin Charles inherited the leadership of the Armagnac faction. The 15-year-old Charles assumed the title of lieutenant-general of France and led the anti-Burgundian cause from his power
base around the cities of Bourges and Tours. While the dauphin is often characterised by posterity as being indecisive and weak-willed, Charles' biographer Malcolm Vale cites the dauphin's declaration that "those who get power should be careful how they rule, because one day we'll come back against them." As John the Fearless struggled to maintain order in Paris, he sought a rapprochement with the dauphin and agreed the Treaty of Saint Maur with Queen Isabeau in September 1418. Under the terms of the treaty, Charles would be recognised as his father's regent
but would return to Paris under Burgundian control. The dauphin refused to recognise the treaty and the civil war continued. Amidst the political stability in France, Henry V continued his successful conquest of Normandy. By 1419, France was divided between Henry, John the Fearless, and Dauphin Charles, each of whom sought to play the other two off against each other. John the Fearless was in two minds whether to form an alliance with the English to strengthen his control over Paris, or to come to terms with the dauphin and expel the English from France. Between late May and early July, the English and Burgundians were engaged
in drawn-out negotiations that frustrated Henry V. Before making any firm commitments, the Duke of Burgundy opened talks with Dauphin Charles at Pouilly-le-Fort near Melun. The two parties quickly agreed to share power and not to make any treaties with third parties without each other's consent. The Duke of Burgundy also accepted the Dauphin's proposal to meet two months later to iron out their remaining differences. On 10 September 1419, John the Fearless and Dauphin Charles arrived at opposite banks of the bridge over the River Yonne at Montereau. As John crossed
the bridge with a small escort and knelt before the dauphin, Charles' loyal adviser Tanneguy du Chastel felled the Duke of Burgundy with an axe. As Tanneguy escorted Charles to safety, several Armagnac knights lunged at the fallen duke and stabbed him repeatedly. The extent of the dauphin's involvement in the assassination of John the Fearless continues to be debated among historians. According to the testimony of Jean de Poitiers, bishop of Valence, before the fatal encounter Charles' chancellor Robert le Macon had warned the dauphin against killing the Duke of
Burgundy. The brutal murder of John the Fearless is often likened to Louis of Orleans' death in Paris twelve years earlier, although the incident at Montereau bridge was more likely motivated by the massacre of Count Bernard and other leaders of the Armagnac faction in June 1418. John the Fearless was succeeded by his son Philip III, known to history as Philip the Good, who quickly entered into a formal alliance with the English. The king of France was outraged by his son's actions, and on 21 May 1420 Charles VI signed the Treaty of Troyes with Henry V that
accepted the latter's demands. The English king would marry Charles' daughter Catherine of Valois and inherit the French throne upon the death of Charles VI. The dauphin was formally deprived of his rights of succession in the winter of 1420-1421 when he was found guilty of the murder of John the Fearless. This was a pivotal moment in Charles' life, and while he argued that the king did not have the right to disinherit him, he also began having doubts about his paternity. He sought military support from Scotland, and in March 1421 a Franco-Scottish army defeated an
English army at the Battle of Baugé in the Loire Valley. The English army was commanded by Thomas, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Henry V, who was killed during the battle. The victory encouraged Charles to take to the field himself, and by the end of June his army was besieging the city of Chartres. Henry V soon appeared on the scene and forced Charles to withdraw. Charles' prospects seemed to improve when Henry V died of dysentery at the end of August 1422, leaving behind a nine-month old son who became Henry VI of England. Less than three months later, King Charles VI of
France died on 21 October 1422, leaving the infant king of England as king of France under the Treaty of Troyes. While the dauphin proclaimed himself King Charles VII in opposition to Henry VI, his opponents derisively labelled him "king of Bourges" due to his limited territorial possessions. On 18 December 1422, the 19-year-old Charles formally married Marie of Anjou nine years after their betrothal. Their first child, the future King Louis XI, was born on 3 July 1423. Although Henry V was dead, Charles faced a formidable enemy in Henry's younger brother John,
Duke of Bedford, who was named Regent of France after the death of Charles VI. On 31 July 1423, a Franco-Scottish army was defeated decisively by an Anglo-Burgundian army half its size at the Battle of Cravant in Burgundy. Defeats such as these enabled the English and Burgundians to consolidate their control of northern, eastern, and southwestern France. Charles' ability to fight back against the Anglo-Burgundian coalition was also undermined by the factionalism in his court. By 1427 the three factions consisted of the Angevins led by Charles' mother-in-law Yolande
of Aragon, the Bretons led by Arthur de Richemont, Constable of France, and the Gascons under Jean I, count of Foix. When Richemont's brother, the Duke of Brittany, signed a peace treaty with the English in 1427, Charles' Grand Chamberlain Georges de la Trémoille persuaded the king to dismiss Richemont from court. This prompted the constable to lead a rebellion against Charles which the king put down in July 1428. Charles remained in a desperate situation when the English laid siege to Orleans on 12 October 1428. The city was of vital strategic importance,
and Charles reportedly considered fleeing to Spain or Scotland if it fell to the English. The English commander, the earl of Salisbury, was mortally wounded early in the siege, and the garrison continued to resist over the winter. However, the defeat of a French relief army at the Battle of Rouvray on 12 February suggested that it would be a matter of time before the city was captured. Joan of Arc claimed that she had been receiving divine visions about her mission to enthrone Charles VII since May 1428, but it had taken her several months to persuade Robert de Baudricourt,
the garrison commander at Vaucouleurs, to escort her to meet Charles at Chinon. Joan arrived on 23 February 1429 and was received by Charles on 25 February. Historians continue to debate how Charles was convinced to place his hopes in the young teenage girl to lift the Siege of Orleans. In addition to being a devout Christian, Charles VII was also interested in prophecies and mysticism. Joan's strength of belief in the legitimacy of her mission, together with various prophecies concerning a virgin who would save France, encouraged Charles to take her seriously. In March, he sent her to Poitiers for an examination by a
council of theologians who declared that she was a pious believer. Upon Joan's return to Chinon, she received a suit of armour from the king and designed a banner carrying an image of Christ and the names "Jhesus Maria." She arrived before Orleans at the end of April and was conducted inside the city walls by Jean de Dunois, the illegitimate son of Louis of Orleans who commanded the city's garrison. Although she was not given any formal command, her presence on the frontlines raised the morale of the defenders. Joan often gave tactical advice to Armagnac commanders and
participated in several actions in which the French expelled the English from strongpoints around Orleans. The French success was not down to Joan alone, since the besieging army was severely weakened after the Burgundians withdrew from the siege earlier in April following a dispute with the English. Nevertheless, Joan instilled a renewed sense of belief among the Armagnacs, and their successes on the field led the English to abandon the siege on 8 May. Joan convinced the Armagnac forces to continue the offensive towards Reims so that Charles could be crowned.
Although Charles had been acclaimed king by his supporters following his father's death in 1422, a coronation at Reims would enhance his legitimacy amidst the Anglo-French contest for the French throne. Frenchmen rallied to Joan's banner as she accompanied the Armagnac forces commanded by John II, Duke of Alençon, along the course of the Loire. On 18 June, the Armagnacs defeated an English army at the Battle of Patay. This paved the way for Charles' entry into Reims alongside Joan on 16 July 1429, and the king was crowned at the cathedral the
following day. In response to Charles' coronation at Reims, the English authorities arranged for the seven-year-old Henry VI's coronation as king of England at Westminster Abbey in November 1429. Two years later, Henry travelled to France and was crowned king of France at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on 16 December 1431. While Joan later communicated that her divine mission had ended after Charles' coronation at Reims, she encouraged the Armagnacs to lay siege to Paris. After several costly and unsuccessful attacks on the French capital, the king ordered
Joan and Alençon to cease their attacks and agreed a truce with the Burgundians on 18 September 1429. The heavy losses before Paris cast doubt on Joan's legitimacy as an agent of God and she was sidelined at Charles' court. Several weeks later, Charles sent Joan to fight against Perrinet Gressart, a mercenary warrior who had carved out a fiefdom for himself to the east of Bourges. After some minor successes, the army spent four weeks besieging the fortress of La Charité to no avail. Despite these setbacks, Charles granted noble status upon Joan and her family in December 1429.
The extraordinary gesture nevertheless indicated that Joan was surplus to requirements at Charles' court. While the king extended his truce with the Burgundians, the "Maid of Orleans" continued to urge action. On 24 May 1430, Joan was with a small Armagnac army besieging Compiègne when she was captured by Burgundian troops, who sold her to the English in November. Charles VII made no effort to rescue Joan from English captivity and she was tried at the University of Paris by French clergymen serving Henry VI. Joan was found guilty of heresy and taken to Rouen in Normandy,
where she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431. Charles may have distanced himself from Joan in order not to jeopardise his diplomatic activities, but his apparent betrayal of Joan has undermined his reputation over the centuries. The early 1430s witnessed further intrigues at Charles' court. Arthur de Richemont returned to royal favour after Charles concluded a peace treaty with the Duke of Brittany in February 1431. After the Anjou and Brittany dynasties plotted to remove Charles' Chamberlain Georges de la Trémoille from office,
the king appointed his brother-in-law Charles of Anjou to the vacant post. Meanwhile, the capable Duke of Bedford was obliged to attend to political matters in England, weakening the position of the English. In late summer 1435, representatives from England, Burgundy, and France met at a peace congress in Arras. The English proposed a marriage alliance between Henry VI and one of Charles VII's daughters but refused to renounce their claim to the French crown. After the English withdrew from the congress, Charles VII and Philip of Burgundy came to an agreement that brought an end to the
Anglo-Burgundian alliance. Under the terms of the Treaty of Arras signed on 21 September 1435, Charles agreed to punish the murderers of John the Fearless, acknowledged Burgundian conquests in northeastern France, and released Philip from the obligation to render homage. In return, the Burgundians agreed not to recognise Henry VI as king of France. Although Charles was obliged to make several major concessions, the agreement brought a definitive end to the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war and gave Charles a free hand against the English. The death of the
Duke of Bedford on 14 September, one week before the signing of the treaty, further weakened the English authorities. Charles was able to take advantage of his peace with the Burgundians by retaking Paris on 13 April 1436, although he continued to govern his realm from Bourges. Throughout the 1430s, Charles faced down regular rebellions from independent minded nobles. In 1439, he sought to prevent nobles from raising their own armies by issuing a decree reserving the exclusive right to raise troops for the Crown. These reforms triggered a major military
revolt in 1440 known as the Praguerie after a similar rebellion in Prague years earlier. The noble uprising was led by Charles I, Duke of Bourbon and supported by the fallen favourite La Tremoille as well as Joan of Arc's collaborators Jean de Dunois and the Duke of Alençon. The rising began in February 1440 and gained the support of the 17-year-old dauphin Louis, whom the rebels hoped to install on the throne in his father's stead. The king acted decisively and marched into the Bourbon heartland of Auvergne, and by May Bourbon and Alençon were prepared sue for terms.
Peace was made in July after the king pardoned the rebel leaders in return for their acceptance of his military reforms. Charles also agreed to grant his son Louis control over the Dauphiné, the province in southeastern France granted to heirs of the French throne, from which they derived their title of dauphin. Charles and Louis' reconciliation was crucial in the king's response to a renewed attempt by England in 1442 to find a diplomatic partner in France after the end of the Burgundian alliance. Ironically, the English sought a marriage alliance with the very Armagnacs
who had previously given their name to Charles' faction. The diplomatic proposal coincided with an English campaign to expand their foothold in Gascony in southwestern France. In June 1442, Charles and Louis hurried south and raised the local levies under the royal banner. The English abandoned their operations and the Anglo-Armagnac negotiations broke down. Charles nevertheless remained under pressure from noble magnates to appoint a noble council from which they could exert influence on the king. During the 1440s, the king replaced some of the more
influential magnates with a circle of younger advisers who made up for their lack of political experience with their close relationship to the king. They were known as the king's mignons, a French term meaning 'beloved' that subsequently entered the English language as 'minion.' Several members of this new generation of courtiers were closely associated with the household of the queen, Marie of Anjou. While Marie had given Charles thirteen children, she had little political influence. Marie's mother Yolande of Aragon continued to wield a degree of influence
over the court until her death in November 1442. The death of Yolande, who had been a formative figure in Charles' youth, may have contributed to the changes in the royal court as well as in Charles' personal life. The king is believed to have begun his affair with Agnes Sorel, a noted beauty in her early twenties, at some point in 1443, while she was a member of the household of Isabella of Lorraine, the wife of Charles' brother-in-law and lifelong friend René of Anjou. In summer 1444, Agnes is believed to have given birth to the king's illegitimate daughter
Marie. By the end of the year, she had joined the queen's household. Although little is known about Agnes' early life, she may have been introduced to the king by Pierre de Brézé, a young friend of the king who would remain his most influential courtier for the remainder of the decade. The king's extramarital relations and the presence of his young friends coincided with an increasing sense of extravagance at court which was condemned by more conservative observers. The mid-1440s also witnessed the increasing estrangement of Dauphin Louis from the king. Although the dauphin had
carried out several military assignments on his father's behalf between 1440 and 1445, he was opposed to the ascendancy to the Angevins at court. Charles was also angered by Louis' poor treatment of his wife, Margaret of Scotland, a popular figure at court who died of illness in August 1445 at the age of 20. However, another cause of the hostility between father and son appears to have been Agnes Sorel. Louis was initially well-disposed to Agnes and it was rumoured that he had also shared her bed. Louis' denunciation of his father's affair with Agnes may
have been motivated by his own sense of betrayal. Malcolm Vale suggests that the animosity between Charles and Louis may have been driven by men within their households. By 1446, several of the king's courtiers claimed that the dauphin was offering them bribes to join a plot against the king. Meanwhile, Louis' household was keen to be rid of Brézé, who had been instrumental in negotiating a truce with the English at Tours in May 1444, which provided for the marriage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, the daughter of René of Anjou and the acknowledgement of English control of Normandy and Gascony. In 1445, Charles took the opportunity to
recruit the newly underemployed men-at-arms into the royal standing army. In late 1446, he agreed to provide 4,000 men to Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan in his war against Venice in return for Milanese recognition of French claims to Genoa and René of Anjou's claims to the crowns of Sicily and Naples. In January 1447, the dauphin arrived in the Dauphiné on his father's orders to take command of the French vanguard in the Italian campaign. The campaign soon fell apart after Giano de Campofregoso, the Genoese nobleman who had initially appealed for French support,
seized control of the port city and defected from the French cause. This was a major embarrassment for Brézé's policy and strengthened his critics in the dauphin's household who believed the Italian expedition was a distraction from the task of expelling the English from France. In spring 1448, Charles was persuaded by the dauphin's courtiers to launch a formal investigation into Brézé for aiming to drive a wedge between the king and the dauphin, but the royal favourite was cleared of all charges and reinstated. This led to a further deterioration in relations between Charles and
Louis, who chose to remain in the Dauphiné and resisted his father's summons to court. Despite the truce of Tours, which had been extended beyond its initial two-year timeframe, both sides continued to engage in low-level hostilities. Alongside military activities, Charles VII considered attempts by the English to negotiate an alliance with Duke François I of Brittany as a violation of French royal sovereignty. In August 1449, Charles' armies invaded Normandy claiming that the English had broken the truce. The king delegated tactical matters to his commanders but stayed close to the frontline to supervise military
operations. While French military capabilities had been strengthened by Charles' centralising reforms, the English cause was undermined by increasing tensions between Henry VI and his senior nobles. By the end of 1449, the French had already reoccupied much of Normandy through a combination of military force and liberal payment of bribes to local garrison commanders. An English relief army was assembled during the winter and met the conquering army in battle at Formigny on 15 April 1450. Although the English initially enjoyed the upper hand, the unexpected
appearance of Arthur de Richemont at the head of 1,200 Breton cavalry devastated the English ranks. The reconquest of Normandy also enabled the king to break his silence on the case of Joan of Arc. Following the capture of Rouen in November 1449, Charles asked the theologian Guillaume Bouillé to re-examine the facts surrounding Joan's trial and execution in February 1450. Charles did not immediately seek a reversal of the verdict as several of the Frenchmen involved in the trial had since switched their allegiance to the French crown. The verdict against Joan had
also been sanctioned by the Papacy, but the papal legate Cardinal D'Estouteville had been a longtime supporter of the king's cause and urged him to rehabilitate Joan. Since Charles was reluctant to revive memories of the old Armagnac-Burgundian struggle, he denied Estouteville's request. The cardinal continued to gather evidence to reverse the sentence and may have encouraged Joan's mother and brothers to send an appeal to the new Pope Callixtus III for her rehabilitation in spring 1455. The Pope appointed a panel of senior French clerics to oversee a rehabilitation trial. On 7
July 1456, the commissioners declared that Joan had been subject to "false articles of accusation" but stopped short of penalising anyone who had been involved in the original trial. While Joan's rehabilitation enhanced the legitimacy of Charles VII, the king's control of France was already beyond doubt. Following the successful conquest of Normandy in 1450, French armies turned their attention to Gascony and recaptured the provincial capital of Bordeaux from the English in June 1451. Having lost their territories in southwestern France,
the English focused on fortifying Calais, their sole remaining French outpost. However, the French were surprised in October 1452 when the English general John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, landed in Gascony with 3,000 men and retook Bordeaux with the assistance of the townspeople. As Talbot expanded English rule into the Gascon countryside, Charles VII raised an army over the winter and prepared to counterattack. By 8 July, French forces were besieging the town of Castillon to the east of Bordeaux. Talbot rode out to relieve the garrison without waiting
for reinforcements and ran into the French army entrenched outside Castillon on 17 July. Despite being heavily outnumbered, Talbot attacked the French positions and he and his men were cut down by French cavalry and artillery. Castillon fell to the French within days, and by October the French had retaken Bordeaux after a two-month siege. News of the defeat at Castillon may have contributed to Henry VI's mental breakdown in late 1453, which further destabilised the English polity and led to the outbreak of the civil war known as the Wars of the Roses in 1455. The
conflict ensured that there would be no English attempt to reconquer Normandy or Gascony. The final victory in the Hundred Years' War had been gained at great expense for Charles VII's treasury. Heavy taxes alone were insufficient to make up the shortfall, and Charles was heavily indebted to the businessman Jacques Coeur, who invested his large fortune as a tax farmer and royal financier into a large fleet of merchant ships trading throughout Europe. Coeur was held in high favour by the king until July 1451 when he was unexpectedly imprisoned and charged with
poisoning the king's mistress Agnes Sorel, who died in February 1450. When the king issued his edict of condemnation in May 1453, the main accusation was counterfeiting money, trading with Muslims, and stealing tax revenues that were owed to the king. The royal authorities confiscated Coeur's physical wealth and property, imposed heavy fines on him, and banished him from France. While Coeur may have helped himself to a greater share of the proceeds than he was due, the highly indebted king profited handsomely by engineering the banker's downfall. Despite Charles
VII's political and military achievements as king, his final years on the throne were defined by court scandal and continued animosity with his heir. After Agnes Sorel's death, Charles did not take a new royal mistress until April 1454 following the death of his courtier André de Villequier. Villequier's widow Antoinette de Maignelais, who also happened to be Agnes Sorel's cousin, became the king's mistress. It was later rumoured that Antoinette presided over a royal brothel of young women, and that the king sought to avoid scrutiny of his hedonistic lifestyle by
avoiding large population centres such as Paris in favour of smaller royal establishments at Bourges and Tours. On the other hand, records of Charles' itineraries during the final decade of his life indicate that he was a hardworking monarch who travelled extensively throughout his domains to attend to military matters, assert royal authority, and answer petitions from the common people. The king regularly demonstrated his magnanimity by pardoning petitioners convicted of violent crimes. Charles was less magnanimous towards nobles who had frequently defied royal
authority. In 1456 the Duke of Alençon was arrested engaging in secret communications with the English. He was found guilty of treason in 1458 and sentenced to death. The king commuted the sentence to imprisonment but annexed most of Alençon's properties to the royal domain. The year 1456 also witnessed the final breakdown of relations between Charles and his son Louis. The two men had not seen each other since January 1447, though father and son continued to exchange gifts until 1451. In March 1451, Louis angered his father defying his wishes to marry Charlotte
of Savoy, the 10-year-old daughter of the Duke of Savoy. The French king responded by threatening to invade Savoy in 1452, and the dauphin hoped to mend relations with his father by offering to lead the campaign to retake Gascony from the English. However, Louis' refusal to dismiss certain members of his household and his unwillingness to answer his father's summons to court caused negotiations to break down. In 1456, Charles sent an army to the Dauphiné, prompting Louis to send several embassies begging for his father's forgiveness. When the king refused Louis' terms,
Louis abandoned the Dauphiné and sought refuge at the Burgundian court in August 1456. Philip the Good of Burgundy agreed to host the dauphin at Genappe in present-day Belgium. In April 1457, Charles confiscated the Dauphiné from Louis and resumed direct rule over the province. Many senior courtiers at the French court urged Charles to invade Burgundy and gain custody of Louis, since they feared that Louis would take vengeance on them upon the king's death. While the king favoured his younger son Charles over the dauphin, he refused to disinherit his eldest son. Given the circumstances of his own accession to the throne, Charles VII
was unwilling to entertain the prospect of another succession crisis after his death. Charles VII had remained in good health until his early fifties. He had experienced two bouts of serious ill health in March 1454 and September 1455, though the precise nature of these illnesses is unknown. In late December 1457, the king suffered from a sore on his leg which would plague him for the remainder of his life. Despite having special garments made for him, Charles remained in considerable pain. The ailment that affected his leg may also have contributed
to a mouth infection, and Malcolm Vale suggests that the king may have suffered from syphilis. The pain was intermittent enough for the king to continue attending to political matters, Charles' illness prompted a further round of negotiations with Dauphin Louis in early 1461. Although the king urged the dauphin to come to court and assured him of his magnanimity, Louis believed it was safer to wait for his father to die. On 22 July 1461, King Charles VII of France died at the age of 58 at Mehun-sur-Yèvre in central France. The dead king's body was
brought to Paris and buried at the Basilica of St-Denis, the royal mausoleum of the kings of France. The new king Louis XI left his Burgundian exile and was crowned at Reims on 15 August. King Charles VII of France was one of the most consequential monarchs in French history. Disinherited by his father for his role in the dramatic assassination of John the Fearless of Burgundy, Charles is best known for his association with Joan of Arc, whose appearance in 1429 facilitated his victory at Orleans and his coronation at Reims. Although he has been condemned for his failure to prevent Joan's execution, Charles instituted military
reforms and supervised the campaigns that resulted in final victory over the English in the Hundred Years War. While Charles suppressed several noble rebellions against his centralising policies, he was criticised for being under the influence of royal favourites and mistresses, leading to his estrangement with his son and heir during the final decade of his life. What do you think of Charles VII? Was he one of the most effective kings in French history, or was he a weak monarch who allowed himself to be controlled by his royal favourites? Please
let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
