CHARLES IV., le Bel (the Handsome), third sou of Philippe IV., le Bel, succeeded his brother, Philippe V., le Long, in 1322. He had received In the lifetime of his father the county of La Marche as an appanage. He had in the commencement of his late brother's reign vindicated the right of a female claimant to the throne, but that brother had succeeded in procuring from the states-general of the nation a declaration that females could not succeed to the crown of France; and upon Philippe's death without male issue the principle thus recognised led to the undisputed succession of his brother Charles.
The reign of Charles was short (1322.28), and not marked by any great events. His first taro was to divorce his wife Blanche, daughter of Otho, count of Bourgogne, who had been convicted of adultery, and shut up in prison. He procured a divorce, ou the ground not of adultery, but on that of consanguinity, and married Marie of Luxem bourg, daughter of the Emperor Henry VII. He proceeded to con siderable severities against the financiers who had managed the revenues of the late king, causing the chief of them, Girard la Guetc, to he put to the torture, of which he died. He also put to death Lille Jourdain, a noble of Languedoc, accused of murder and other crimes; and is said to have used great severity towards unjust judges. He was engaged
in war with Edward II. of England, who had married Isabella, sister of Charles. Isabella being sent to the court of Franca to compromise the quarrel, succeeded in that object, but obtained from Charles support both of money and men in the armament which she prepared against her husband, and hie favourite, Le Deapenser. Charles intrigued also with the pope in order to obtain the imperial crown, then disputed between Frederic of Austria and Louis of Bavaria; and his gold led to the invasion of Germany by a horde of pagan barbarians, Lithuanians, Wallachians, and Russians. It was on occasion of a visit paid by Charles to Toulouse (1323), that the people of that city sought to revive the ancient Provençal poetry by the institution of a yearly concourse of poets at the Floral Games: this institution, with modi fications, continued down to the revolution. Charles lost his wife and an infant son in 1324. Within three months he married a third wife, Jeanne, daughter of his uncle, the Count of Evreux ; but he bad no male issue by her. He died in 1328; and.in him ended the direct succession of the line of Capet, the crown passing into the collateral branch of Valois.