Philip VI of France

Philip VI (Philippe VI) (1293 – 22 August 1350), called the Fortunate (le Fortuné) and of Valois, was the first King of France from the House of Valois. He reigned from 1328 until his death.

Philip's reign was dominated by the consequences of a succession dispute. When King Charles IV the Fair died without a male heir in 1328, the nearest male relative was his nephew Edward III of England, who inherited his claim through his mother Isabella of France, the sister of the dead king. It was held in France, however, that Edward was ineligible to inherit the French throne through the female line according to the ancient Salic Law. At first, Edward seemed to accept Philip's accession as the nearest male relative of Charles IV descended through the male line, however 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, Philip VI bought the Dauphiné from its ruined ruler Humbert II and entrusted the government of this province to his grandson Charles. Philip VI died in 1350 and was succeeded by his son John II the Good.

Accession to the throne
Little is recorded about Philip's childhood and youth, in large part because he was not of royal birth. Philip's father Charles, Count of Valois, the younger brother of King Philip IV of France, had striven throughout his life to gain a 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.



In 1328, Philip's first cousin Charles IV died without a son, his widow Jeanne d'Évreux pregnant at the time of his death. Philip was one of the two chief claimants to the throne. The other was King Edward III of England, who was the late king's closest male relative through his mother Isabella, the late king's sister. The question arose of whether Isabella should have been able to transmit a claim that she herself did not possess. 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 Philip III of France through the male line, he became king instead of Edward, who was a matrilineal grandson of Philip IV of France and great-grandson of Philip III.

During the period in which Charles IV's widow was waiting to deliver her child, Philip rose to the regency with support of the French magnates, following the pattern set up by Philip V's succession over his niece Joan II of Navarre. After Jeanne d'Évreux gave birth to a girl named Blanche, Philip was crowned as king on 29 May 1328 at the Cathedral in Reims.

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 the 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 almost 50 years and had long been administered by the same royal machinery established by 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 Louis X's surviving daughter, 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 her husband Philip's fief in Évreux) in compensation, and he kept Champagne as part of the French crown lands.

Reign
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. His 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. By 1336, they were enemies, although not yet openly at war.

Philip successfully prevented an arrangement between the papacy in Avignon and Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV, although in July 1337 Louis concluded an alliance with Edward III. The final breach with England came when Edward offered refuge to Robert III of Artois, formerly one of Philip's trusted advisers. However, after Robert committed forgery to try to obtain an inheritance, he barely escaped France with his life, and he was hounded by Philip throughout Europe. Edward made him Earl of Richmond and honoured him. In retaliation, Philip declared that Edward had forfeited Aquitaine for rebellion and disobedience on 24 May 1337. 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
Philip entered the Hundred Years' War in a position of comparative strength. France was richer and more populous than England and was then at the height of her 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. The English made some retaliatory raids, including the burning of a fleet in the harbour of Boulogne-sur-Mer, but the French largely had the upper hand. With his sea power established, Philip gave orders in 1339 to prepare an invasion of England (the Ordinance of Normandy) and began 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.

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. Again, Philip brought up a relieving army that harassed the besiegers but did not offer open battle, and Edward was again forced to return home, fleeing the Low Countries secretly to escape his creditors.

So far, the war had gone quite well for Philip and the French. While often stereotyped as chivalry-besotten blockheads, 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 before retreating before the army Philip 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 not to be handled: 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 well-nigh 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 Philip dare not deliver. It was Philip who marched away in August, and the city capitulated shortly thereafter.

Final years
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, which 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 de-stabilising the country. His second marriage to his son's betrothed Blanche of Navarre alienated his son and many nobles from the king.

Philip's last major achievement was the purchase 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.

Marriages and Children


In July, 1313, Philip married Joan the Lame (Jeanne), daughter of Robert II, Duke of Burgundy, and Agnes of France, the youngest daughter of Louis IX. In an ironic twist to his "male" ascendancy to the throne, the intelligent, strong-willed Joan, an able regent of France during the king's long military campaigns, was said to be the brains behind the throne and the real ruler of France.

Their children were the following:
 * Philip (b. 1315) Died in infancy.
 * Joan (b. 1317) Died in infancy.
 * John II (26 April 1319 – 8 April 1364)
 * Marie (1326–1333), who married John of Brabant, the son and heir of John III, Duke of Brabant, but died shortly afterwards.
 * Louis (17 January 1328 – 17 January 1328)
 * Louis (8 June 1330 – 23 June 1330)
 * John (2 October 1333)
 * son (28 May 1335). Presumably died the same day, or a few days later.
 * Philip of Valois (1336–1376), Duke of Orléans
 * Joan (November 1337)
 * son (summer 1343)

After Joan died in 1348, Philip married Blanche of Navarre, daughter of Joan II and Philip III of Navarre, on 11 January 1350. They had one daughter: Joan, who was intended to marry John I of Aragon, but who died during the journey.

Philip VI died at Nogent-le-Roi, Eure-et-Loir, on 22 August 1350 and is interred with his second wife, Blanche of Navarre, in Saint Denis Basilica. He was succeeded by his first son by Joan of Burgundy, who became John II.