CHARLES VII, King of France, 5th son of Charles VI: b. Paris, 22 Feb. 1403; d. Mehun, 22 July 1461. He became, by the suc cessive deaths of his elder brothers, Dauphin and heir-presumptive to the crown. On the King of England's death in 1422 his son, Henry VI, was proclaimed King of France at Paris. The war with the National party, represented by the Orleanist faction, with the Dauphin at their head, was maintained for several years by the English, under the command of the Duke of Bedford. So successfully did the lat ter conduct operations that Charles was brought to the verge of despair, and almost reduced to abandon the struggle as hopeless, when his fortunes were retrieved by the arrival in his camp of the Maid of Orleans, who by the enthusiasm which she inspired first turned the tide of success against the English. (See JoAN OF Aac). The fresh spirit thus infused into the French was heightened by mismanagement on the part of the English, whose military oper ations were conducted with greatly diminished skill after the death of the Duke of Bedford, while discord and confusion prevailed in the home councils. Through the intervention of the Earl of Suffolk a marriage was concluded between the young King Henry VI and Mar garet of Anjou, niece of Charles VII's queen. In the treaty entered into on this occasion the territory of Maine was secretly surrendered to France, and subsequently, on hostilities being resumed between the two countries, the troops of Charles conquered the whole of Guienne and finally expelled the English from all their possessions in France except Calais. The last
years of Charles' reign were embittered by domestic broils, in which his son and successor, Louis XI, took a prominent part against his father. So hemmed in at last was the latter by the emissaries of the Dauphin that he con ceived the idea of Louis having formed a deliberate plan to poison him; and so firmly was this notion rooted in his mind that he could only with the greatest difficulty be in duced to take any food. A romantic interest has been thrown around Charles VII' by his early reverses and the re-establishment of French nationality, which he effected mainly through the heroism inspired by the Maid of Orleans. His personal character, however, was weak and contemptible, without energy and without principle, and he surrendered himself continually to sensual and degrading pleasures. His share in the treacherous murder of the Duke of Burgundy, and base abandonment to her fate of Joan of Arc, are stains on his memory which cannot be effaced. Consult 'Lives' by Beau court and Vireville.