northwestern France and apparently tried to subvert the dauphin, John’s eldest son, into
rebelling against his father.
Increasingly bitter toward his son-in-law, John II suddenly arrested Charles at Rouen
in April 1356, executing several of his followers and placing him in prison. Normandy
was swept by civil war, and in September John and his supporters suffered devastating
defeat by the Prince of Wales near Poitiers. With John II now a captive, the dauphin’s
weakened government faced a large array of critics, some of whom demanded the release
of Charles the Bad.
Released by his friends in November 1357, Charles resumed his role as a leader of
forces opposed to the crown, yet within a year his position had eroded. Nobles in
particular and reformers generally became attracted to the dauphin’s camp after the
hostility of the Parisians toward nobles drove a wedge between noble and bourgeois
reformers. Charles the Bad became suspect because he cooperated with the Parisians and
because his negotiations with the English indicated an interest in partitioning France. He
and his supporters failed to prevent the release of John II via the Treaty of Brétigny. An
uneasy peace with John ended when the king bestowed Burgundy on his son Philip the
Bold in 1363. Charles asserted a claim to Burgundy, and with the new hostilities
thousands of unemployed soldiers (routiers) claimed to be fighting in his name.
At the end of 1363, the Estates General of northern France established a tax to support
a regular salaried army. In the spring of 1364, as Charles V was succeeding John II on the
French throne, this new army, commanded by Bertrand du Guesclin, won a crushing
victory over the forces of Charles the Bad at Cocherel in Normandy. This campaign
broke the power of the Navarrese party in Normandy and around Paris. Charles was
forced to accept the southern barony of Montpellier and relinquish some of his family’s
Norman strongholds.
After this time, Charles played a diminished role in French politics, although a scandal
came to light in 1378 that implicated him in plots against the crown. With the dissidents
who formerly supported him now firmly in the royal camp, Charles was restricted to his
role as ruler of a minor Spanish kingdom.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
[See also: CHARLES V THE WISE; ÉVREUX; GUESCLIN, BERTRAND DU]
Bessen, David M. Charles of Navarre and John II: Disloyalty in Northern France 1350–1360.
Diss. University of Toronto, 1983.
Cazelles, Raymond. Société politique, noblesse et couronne sous Jean le Bon et Charles V. Geneva:
Droz, 1982.
Henneman, John Bell. Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century France: The Captivity and Ransom of
John II 1356–1370. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976.
Secousse, Denis F. Recueil de ptèces servant de preuves aux Mémoires sur les troubles excités en
France par Charles II dit le Mauvais, roi de Navarre et comte d’Évreux. Paris: Durand, 1755.
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