three, to undertake one. His plans were thwarted first by the king’s difficult negotiations
with the pope on how to finance an expedition and then by Anglo-French hostilities.
Charles appears to have been a literate and cultured prince who patronized a number
of authors and may have been an author of verses himself, but it was in politics that he
wanted to make his mark. Although he was the son and brother of kings, the uncle of
three kings, and the father of Philip VI, who established the Valois line on the French
throne, Charles himself, despite his many claims, died in December 1325 without ever
gaining a royal title.
William Chester Jordan
[See also: ANJOU, HOUSES OF; PHILIP IV THE FAIR; VALOIS DYNASTY]
Petit, Joseph. Charles de Valois (1270–1325). Paris: Picard, 1900.
CHARLES THE BOLD
(1433–1477). Duke of Burgundy. Charles was the last of the four Valois dukes of
Burgundy, whose state, based in the Netherlands, became a European power in the 15th
century. Although his French sobriquet,“le Téméraire,” means “the Rash,” Charles has
usually been called “the Bold” in English, and his most recent biographer has emphasized
the greater appropriateness of the latter name.
The historiography of Charles, inextricably bound up with that of his great antagonist,
Louis XI of France, has long relied on colorful but inaccurate narrative sources. Charles
hated and feared Louis, but his international ambitions were almost all directed toward
the empire rather than France, and it was enemies in the empire, not Louis XI, who
eventually caused his ruin.
Charles succeeded his father, Philip the Good, on June 15, 1467, inheriting a state that
included most of the Low Countries and a southern cluster of lands around the duchy of
Burgundy. Between these two large parcels lay Alsace and Lorraine, both of which
Charles tried to acquire, although not placing great emphasis on linking up his lands into
a compact territory. He also pursued territorial ambitions in the northern Low Countries
and in Savoy to the south. His great desire was to gain a crown, preferably the imperial
title. In his elaborate diplomacy, his only child, Mary, was a valuable pawn as Europe’s
most marriageable heiress.
Allied with Edward IV of England, Charles waged inconclusive border warfare with
France in the years 1471–75 while he pursued his imperial ambitions. He gradually
overhauled the Burgundian army, turning it into a professional body. By 1475, he had
occupied Lorraine and had a virtual protectorate over Savoy and the Vaud. Throughout
his career, his treatment of towns was harsh, as at Liège in 1468. Townsmen feared him
greatly and resisted him bitterly, as at Beauvais in 1472 and Neuss in 1475. A coalition of
imperial cities at last determined to drive him from Alsace and Lorraine. At the beginning
of March 1476, a largely Swiss army defeated him at Grandson on Lake Neuchâtel. On
June 22, a far more serious defeat at Morat (Murten) removed Savoy from Burgundian
control. To recover Lorraine, Charles rebuilt his forces and laid siege to Nancy in
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