CHARLES IV. king of France, called THE FAIR, was the third and youngest son of Philip IV. the Fair and Jeanne of Navarre. In 1316 he was created count of La Marche, and succeeded his brother Philip V. as king of France and Navarre early in 1322. He followed the policy of his predecessors in enforcing the royal authority over the nobles, but the machinery of a strong centralized government increased the royal expendi ture, to meet which Charles had recourse to doubtful financial expedients. Civil offices were put up to auction; duties were im posed on exported merchandise and on goods brought into Paris; the salaries of the magistrates were made dependent on the ex action of heavy fines; on the pretext of a crusade to free Armenia from the Turks, Charles obtained from the pope a tithe levied on the clergy, the proceeds of which he kept for his own use; he also confiscated the property of the Lombard bankers who had been invited to France by his father at a time of financial crisis. The history of the assemblies summoned by Charles IV. is obscure, but in 1,326, on the outbreak of war with England, an assembly of prelates and barons met at Meaux. Commissioners were afterwards despatched to the provinces to state the position of affairs and to receive complaints. The king justified his failure to summon the estates on the ground of the expense incurred by provincial deputies.
Charles IV. maintained excellent relations with Pope John XXII., who made overtures to him, indirectly, offering his sup port in case of his candidature for the imperial crown. He tried to form a party in Italy in support of the pope against the emperor Louis IV. of Bavaria, but failed. A treaty with the English which secured the district of Agenais for France was followed by a feudal war in Guienne. Isabella, Charles's sister and the wife of Edward II., was sent to France to negotiate, and with her brother's help arranged the final conspiracy against her husband. Charles's first wife was Blanche, daughter of Otto IV., count of Burgundy. In May 1314, by order of King Philip IV., she was arrested and imprisoned in the Château-Gaillard with her sister in-law Marguerite, daughter of Robert II., duke of Burgundy, and wife of Louis Hutin, on a charge of adultery. Tradition has in volved and obscured the story, which is the origin of the legend of the Tour de Nesle made famous by the drama of A. Dumas the elder. Blanche died in 1326. In 1322, freed from his first mar riage, by papal decree on the ground of kinship, Charles married his cousin Mary of Luxemburg, daughter of the emperor Henry VII., and upon her death, two years later, Jeanne, daughter of Louis, count of Evreux. Charles IV. died at Vincennes on Feb. r, 1328. He left no issue by his first two wives to succeed him, and daughters only by Jeanne of Evreux. He was the last of the direct line of Capetians.