See Béla Kerékgyartó,The Hungarian Royal Court under the House of Anjou(Hung.) (Budapest, 1881);Rationes Collectorum Pontif. in Hungaria(Budapest, 1887);Diplomas of the Angevin Period, edited by Imre Nagy (Hung. and Lat.), vols. i.-iii. (Budapest, 1878, &c.).
See Béla Kerékgyartó,The Hungarian Royal Court under the House of Anjou(Hung.) (Budapest, 1881);Rationes Collectorum Pontif. in Hungaria(Budapest, 1887);Diplomas of the Angevin Period, edited by Imre Nagy (Hung. and Lat.), vols. i.-iii. (Budapest, 1878, &c.).
(R. N. B.)
CHARLES I.(1226-1285), king of Naples and Sicily and count of Anjou, was the seventh child of Louis VIII. of France and Blanche of Castile. Louis died a few months after Charles’s birth and was succeeded by his son Louis IX. (St Louis), and on the death in 1232 of the third son John, count of Anjou and Maine, those fiefs were conferred on Charles. In 1246 he married Beatrice, daughter and heiress of Raymond Bérenger V., the last count of Provence, and after defeating James I. of Aragon and other rivals with the help of his brother the French king, he took possession of his new county. In 1248 he accompanied Louis in the crusade to Egypt, but on the defeat of the Crusaders he was taken prisoner with his brother. Shortly afterwards he was ransomed, and returned to Provence in 1250. During his absence several towns had asserted their independence; but he succeeded in subduing them without much difficulty and gradually suppressed their communal liberties. Charles’s ambition aimed at wider fields, and when Margaret, countess of Flanders, asked help of the French court against the German king William of Holland, by whom she had been defeated, he gladly accepted her offer of the county of Hainaut in exchange for his assistance (1253); this arrangement was, however, rescinded by Louis of France, who returned from captivity in 1254, and Charles gave up Hainaut for an immense sum of money. He extended his influence by the subjugation of Marseilles in 1257, then one of the most important maritime cities of the world, and two years later several communes of Piedmont recognized Charles’s suzerainty. In 1262 Pope Urban IV. determined to destroy the power of the Hohenstaufen in Italy, and offered the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, in consideration of a yearly tribute, to Charles of Anjou, in opposition to Manfred, the bastard son of the late emperor Frederick II. The next year Charles succeeded in getting himself elected senator of Rome, which gave him an advantage in dealing with the pope. After long negotiations he accepted the Sicilian and Neapolitan crowns, and in 1264 he sent a first expedition of Provençals to Italy; he also collected a large army and navy in Provence and France with the help of King Louis, and by an alliance with the cities of Lombardy was able to send part of his force overland. Pope Clement IV. confirmed the Sicilian agreement on conditions even more favourable to Charles, who sailed in 1265, and conferred on the expedition all the privileges of a crusade. After narrowly escaping capture by Manfred’s fleet he reached Rome safely, where he was crowned king of the Two Sicilies. The land army arrived soon afterwards, and on the 26th of February 1266 Charles encountered Manfred at Benevento, where after a hard-fought battle Manfred was defeated and killed, and the whole kingdom was soon in Charles’s possession. Then Conradin, Frederick’s grandson and last legitimate descendant of the Hohenstaufen, came into Italy, where he found many partisans among the Ghibellines of Lombardy and Tuscany, and among Manfred’s former adherents in the south. He gathered a large army consisting partly of Germans and Saracens, but was totally defeated by Charles at Tagliacozzo (23rd of August 1268); taken prisoner, he was tried as a rebel and executed at Naples. Charles, in a spirit of the most vindictive cruelty, had large numbers of Conradin’s barons put to death and their estates confiscated, and the whole population of several towns massacred.
He was now one of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe, for besides ruling over Provence and Anjou and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, he was imperial vicar of Tuscany, lord of many cities of Lombardy and Piedmont, and as the pope’s favourite practically arbiter of the papal states, especially during the interregnum between the death of Clement IV. (1268) and the election of Gregory X. (1272). But his ambition was by no means satisfied, and he even aspired to the crown of the East Roman empire. In 1272 he took part with Louis IX. in a crusade to north Africa, where the French king died of fever, and Charles, after defeating the soldan of Tunis, returned to Sicily. The election of Rudolph of Habsburg as German king after a long interregnum, and that of Nicholas III. to the Holy See (1277), diminished Charles’s power, for the new pope set himself to compose the difference between Guelphs and Ghibellines in the Italian cities, but at his death Charles secured the election of his henchman Martin IV. (1281), who recommenced persecuting the Ghibellines, excommunicated the Greek emperor, Michael Palaeologus, proclaimed a crusade against the Greeks, filled every appointment in the papal states with Charles’s vassals, and reappointed the Angevin king senator of Rome. But the cruelty of the French rulers of Sicily drove the people of the island to despair, and a Neapolitan nobleman, Giovanni da Procida, organized the rebellion known as the Sicilian Vespers (seeVespers, Sicilian), in which the French in Sicily were all massacred or expelled (1282). Charles determined to subjugate the island and sailed with his fleet for Messina. The city held out until Peter III. of Aragon, whose wife Constance was a daughter of Manfred, arrived in Sicily, and a Sicilian-Catalan fleet under the Calabrese admiral, Ruggiero di Lauria, completely destroyed that of Charles. “If thou art determined, O God, to destroy me,” the unhappy Angevin exclaimed, “let my fall be gradual!” He was forced to abandon all attempts at reconquest, but proposed to decide the question by single combat between himself and Peter, to take place at Bordeaux under English protection. The Aragonese accepted, but fearing treachery, as the French army was in the neighbourhood, he failed to appear on the appointed day. In the meanwhile Ruggiero di Lauria appeared before Naples and destroyed another Angevin fleet commanded by Charles’s son, who was taken prisoner (May 1284). Charles came to Naples with a new fleet from Provence, and was preparing to invade Sicily again, when he contracted a fever and died at Foggia on the 7th of January 1285. He was undoubtedly an extremely able soldier and a skilful statesman, and much of his legislation shows a real political sense; but his inordinate ambition, his oppressive methods of government and taxation, and his cruelty created enemies on all sides, and led to the collapse of the edifice of dominion which he had raised.
CHARLES II.(1250-1309), king of Naples and Sicily, son of Charles I., had been captured by Ruggiero di Lauria in the naval battle at Naples in 1284, and when his father died he was still a prisoner in the hands of Peter of Aragon. In 1288 King Edward I. of England had mediated to make peace, and Charles was liberated on the understanding that he was to retain Naples alone, Sicily being left to the Aragonese; Charles was also to induce his cousin Charles of Valois to renounce for twenty thousand pounds of silver the kingdom of Aragon which had been given to him by Pope Martin IV. to punish Peter for having invaded Sicily, but which the Valois had never effectively occupied. The Angevin king was thereupon set free, leavingthree of his sons and sixty Provençal nobles as hostages, promising to pay 30,000 marks and to return a prisoner if the conditions were not fulfilled within three years. He went to Rieti, where the new pope Nicholas IV. immediately absolved him from all the conditions he had sworn to observe, crowned him king of the Two Sicilies (1289), and excommunicated Alphonso, while Charles of Valois, in alliance with Castile, prepared to take possession of Aragon. Alphonso III, the Aragonese king, being hard pressed, had to promise to withdraw the troops he had sent to help his brother James in Sicily, to renounce all rights over the island, and pay a tribute to the Holy See. But Alphonso died childless in 1291 before the treaty could be carried out, and James took possession of Aragon, leaving the government of Sicily to the third brother Frederick. The new pope Boniface VIII., elected in 1294 at Naples under the auspices of King Charles, mediated between the latter and James, and a most dishonourable treaty was signed: James was to marry Charles’s daughter Bianca and was promised the investiture by the pope of Sardinia and Corsica, while he was to leave the Angevin a free hand in Sicily and even to assist him if the Sicilians resisted. An attempt was made to bribe Frederick into consenting to this arrangement, but being backed up by his people he refused, and was afterwards crowned king of Sicily. The war was fought with great fury on land and sea, but Charles, although aided by the pope, by Charles of Valois, and by James II. of Aragon, was unable to conquer the island, and his son the prince of Taranto was taken prisoner at the battle of La Falconara in 1299. Peace was at last made in 1302 at Caltabellotta, Charles II. giving up all rights to Sicily and agreeing to the marriage of his daughter Leonora to King Frederick; the treaty was ratified by the pope in 1303. Charles spent his last years quietly in Naples, which city he improved and embellished. He died in August 1309, and was succeeded by his son Robert.
Bibliography.—A. de Saint-Priest,Histoire de la conquête de Naples par Charles d’Anjou(4 vols., Paris, 1847-1849), is still of use for the documents from the archives of Barcelona, but it needs to be collated with more recent works; S. de Sismondi, in vol. ii. of hisHistoire des republiques italiennes(Brussels, 1838), gives a good general sketch of the reigns of Charles I. and II., but is occasionally inaccurate as to details; the best authority on the early life of Charles I. is R. Sternfeld,Karl von Anjou als Graf von Provence(Berlin, 1888); Charles’s connexion with north Italy is dealt with in Merkel’sLa Dominazione di Carlo d’Angio in Piemonte e in Lombardia(Turin, 1891), while the R. Deputazione di Storia Patria Toscana has recently published aCodice diplomatico delle relazioni di Carlo d’Angio con la Toscana; the contents of the Angevin archives at Naples have been published by Durrien,Archives angevines de Naples(Toulouse, 1866-1867). M. Amari’sLa Guerra del Vespro Siciliano(8th ed., Florence, 1876) is a valuable history, but the author is too bitterly prejudiced against the French to be quite impartial; his work should be compared with L. Cadier’sEssai sur l’administration du royaume de Sicile sous Charles I et Charles II d’Anjou(Paris, 1891,Bibl. des écoles françaises d’Athenes et de Rome,fasc. 59), which contains many documents, and tends somewhat to rehabilitate the Angevin rule.
Bibliography.—A. de Saint-Priest,Histoire de la conquête de Naples par Charles d’Anjou(4 vols., Paris, 1847-1849), is still of use for the documents from the archives of Barcelona, but it needs to be collated with more recent works; S. de Sismondi, in vol. ii. of hisHistoire des republiques italiennes(Brussels, 1838), gives a good general sketch of the reigns of Charles I. and II., but is occasionally inaccurate as to details; the best authority on the early life of Charles I. is R. Sternfeld,Karl von Anjou als Graf von Provence(Berlin, 1888); Charles’s connexion with north Italy is dealt with in Merkel’sLa Dominazione di Carlo d’Angio in Piemonte e in Lombardia(Turin, 1891), while the R. Deputazione di Storia Patria Toscana has recently published aCodice diplomatico delle relazioni di Carlo d’Angio con la Toscana; the contents of the Angevin archives at Naples have been published by Durrien,Archives angevines de Naples(Toulouse, 1866-1867). M. Amari’sLa Guerra del Vespro Siciliano(8th ed., Florence, 1876) is a valuable history, but the author is too bitterly prejudiced against the French to be quite impartial; his work should be compared with L. Cadier’sEssai sur l’administration du royaume de Sicile sous Charles I et Charles II d’Anjou(Paris, 1891,Bibl. des écoles françaises d’Athenes et de Rome,fasc. 59), which contains many documents, and tends somewhat to rehabilitate the Angevin rule.
CHARLES II.(1332-1387), calledThe Bad, king of Navarre and count of Evreux, was a son of Jeanne II., queen of Navarre, by her marriage with Philip, count of Evreux (d. 1343). Having become king of Navarre on Jeanne’s death in 1349, he suppressed a rising at Pampeluna with much cruelty, and by this and similar actions thoroughly earned his surname of “The Bad.” In 1352 he married Jeanne (d. 1393), a daughter of John II., king of France, a union which made his relationship to the French crown still more complicated. Through his mother he was a grandson of Louis X. and through his father a great-grandson of Philip III., having thus a better claim to the throne of France than Edward III. of England; and, moreover, he held lands under the suzerainty of the French king, whose son-in-law he now became. Charles was a man of great ability, possessing popular manners and considerable eloquence, but he was singularly unscrupulous, a quality which was revealed during the years in which he played an important part in the internal affairs of France. Trouble soon arose between King John and his son-in-law. The promised dowry had not been paid, and the county of Angoulême, which had formerly belonged to Jeanne of Navarre, was now in the possession of the French king’s favourite, the constable Charles la Cerda. In January 1354 the constable was assassinated by order of Charles, and preparations for war were begun. The king of Navarre, who defended this deed, had, however, many friends in France and was in communication with Edward III.; and consequently John was forced to make a treaty at Mantes and to compensate him for the loss of Angoulême by a large grant of lands, chiefly in Normandy. This peace did not last long, and in 1355 John was compelled to confirm the treaty of Mantes. Returning to Normandy, Charles was partly responsible for some unrest in the duchy, and in April 1356 he was treacherously seized by the French king at Rouen, remaining in captivity until November 1357, when John, after his defeat at Poitiers, was a prisoner in England. Charles was regarded with much favour in France, and the states-general demanded his release, which, however, was effected by a surprise. Owing to his popularity he was considered by Étienne Marcel and his party as a suitable rival to the dauphin, afterwards King Charles V., and on entering Paris he was well received and delivered an eloquent harangue to the Parisians. Subsequently peace was made with the dauphin, who promised to restore to Charles his confiscated estates. This peace was not enduring, and as his lands were not given back Charles had some ground for complaint. War again broke out, quickly followed by a new treaty, after which the king of Navarre took part in suppressing the peasant rising known as theJacquerie. Answering the entreaties of Marcel he returned to Paris on June 1358, and became captain-general of the city, which was soon besieged by the dauphin. This position, however, did not prevent him from negotiating both with the dauphin and with the English; terms were soon arranged with the former, and Charles, having lost much of his popularity, left Paris just before the murder of Marcel in July 1358. He continued his alternate policy of war and peace, meanwhile adding if possible by his depredations to the misery of France, until the conclusion of the treaty of Brétigny in May 1360 deprived him of the alliance of the English, and compelled him to make peace with King John in the following October. A new cause of trouble arose when the duchy of Burgundy was left without a ruler in November 1361, and was claimed by Charles; but, lacking both allies and money, he was unable to prevent the French king from seizing Burgundy, while he himself returned to Navarre.
In his own kingdom Charles took some steps to reform the financial and judicial administration and so to increase his revenue; but he was soon occupied once more with foreign entanglements, and in July 1362, in alliance with Peter the Cruel, king of Castile, he invaded Aragon, deserting his new ally soon afterwards for Peter IV., king of Aragon. Meanwhile the war with the dauphin had been renewed. Still hankering after Burgundy, Charles saw his French estates again seized; but after some desultory warfare, chiefly in Normandy, peace was made in March 1365, and he returned to his work of interference in the politics of the Spanish kingdoms. In turn he made treaties with the kings of Castile and Aragon, who were at war with each other; promising to assist Peter the Cruel to regain his throne, from which he had been driven in 1366 by his half-brother Henry of Trastamara, and then assuring Henry and his ally Peter of Aragon that he would aid them to retain Castile. He continued this treacherous policy when Edward the Black Prince advanced to succour Peter the Cruel; then signed a treaty with Edward of England, and then in 1371 allied himself with Charles V. of France. His next important move was to offer his assistance to Richard II. of England for an attack upon France. About this time serious charges were brought against him. Accused of attempting to poison the king of France and other prominent persons, and of other crimes, his French estates were seized by order of Charles V., and soon afterwards Navarre was invaded by the Castilians. Won over by the surrender of Cherbourg in July 1378, the English under John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, came to his aid; but a heavy price had to be paid for the neutrality of the king of Castile. After the death of Charles V. in 1380, the king of Navarre did not interfere in the internal affairs of France, although he endeavoured vainly again to obtain aid from Richard II., and to regain Cherbourg. His lands in France were handedover to his eldest son Charles, who governed them with the consent of the new king Charles VI. Charles died on the 1st of January 1387, and many stories are current regarding the manner of his death. Froissart relates that he was burned to death through his bedclothes catching fire; Secousse says that he died in peace with many signs of contrition; another story says he died of leprosy; and a popular legend tells how he expired by a divine judgment through the burning of the clothes steeped in sulphur and spirits in which he had been wrapped as a cure for a loathsome disease caused by his debauchery. He had three sons and four daughters, and was succeeded by his eldest son Charles; one of his daughters, Jeanne, became the wife of Henry IV. of England.
See Jean Froissart,Chroniques, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869-1897); D.F. Secousse,Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Charles II, roi de Navarre(Paris, 1755-1768); E. Meyer,Charles II, roi de Navarre et la Normandie au XIVe siècle(Paris, 1898); F.T. Perrens,Étienne Marcel(Paris, 1874); R. Delachenal,Premières negotiations de Charles le Mauvais avec les Anglais(Paris, 1900); and E. Lavisse,Histoire de France, tome iv. (Paris, 1902).
See Jean Froissart,Chroniques, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869-1897); D.F. Secousse,Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Charles II, roi de Navarre(Paris, 1755-1768); E. Meyer,Charles II, roi de Navarre et la Normandie au XIVe siècle(Paris, 1898); F.T. Perrens,Étienne Marcel(Paris, 1874); R. Delachenal,Premières negotiations de Charles le Mauvais avec les Anglais(Paris, 1900); and E. Lavisse,Histoire de France, tome iv. (Paris, 1902).
CHARLES III.(1361-1425), calledThe Noble, king of Navarre and count of Evreux, was the eldest son of Charles II. the Bad, king of Navarre, by his marriage with Jeanne, daughter of John II., king of France, and was married in 1375 to Leonora (d. 1415), daughter of Henry II., king of Castile. Having passed much of his early life in France, he became king of Navarre on the death of Charles II. in January 1387, and his reign was a period of peace and order, thus contrasting sharply with the long and calamitous reign of his father. In 1393 he regained Cherbourg, which had been handed over by Charles II. to Richard II. of England, and in 1403 he came to an arrangement with the representatives of Charles VI. of France concerning the extensive lands which he claimed in that country. Cherbourg was given to the French king; certain exchanges of land were made; and in the following year Charles III. surrendered the county of Evreux, and was created duke of Nemours and made a peer of France. After this his only interference in the internal affairs of France was when he sought to make peace between the rival factions in that country. Charles sought to improve the condition of Navarre by making canals and rendering the rivers navigable, and in other ways. He died at Olite on the 8th of September 1425 and was buried at Pampeluna. After the death of his two sons in 1402 the king decreed that his kingdom should pass to his daughter Blanche (d. 1441), who took for her second husband John, afterwards John II., king of Aragon; and the cortes of Navarre swore to recognize Charles (q.v.), prince of Viana, her son by this marriage, as king after his mother’s death.
CHARLES(Karl Eitel Zephyrin Ludwig; in Rum.Carol), king of Rumania (1839- ), second son of Prince Karl Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, was born on the 20th of April 1839. He was educated at Dresden (1850-1856), and passed through his university course at Bonn. Entering the Prussian army in 1857, he won considerable distinction in the Danish war of 1864, and received instruction in strategy from General von Moltke. He afterwards travelled in France, Italy, Spain and Algeria. He was a captain in the 2nd regiment of Prussian Dragoon Guards when he was electedhospodaror prince of Rumania on the 20th of April 1866, after the compulsory abdication of Prince Alexander John Cuza. Regarded at first with distrust by Turkey, Russia and Austria, he succeeded in gaining general recognition in six months; but he had to contend for ten years with fierce party struggles between the Conservatives and the Liberals.
During this period, however, Charles displayed great tact in his dealings with both parties, and kept his country in the path of administrative and economic reform, organizing the army, developing the railways, and establishing commercial relations with foreign powers. The sympathy of Rumania with France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and the consequent interruption of certain commercial undertakings, led to a hostile movement against Prince Charles, which, being fostered by Russia, made him resolve to abdicate; and it was with difficulty that he was persuaded to remain. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 he joined the Russians before Plevna (q.v.), and being placed in command of the combined Russian and Rumanian forces, forced Osman Pasha to surrender. As a consequence of the prince’s vigorous action the independence of Rumania, which had been proclaimed in May 1877, was confirmed by various treaties in 1878, and recognized by Great Britain, France and Germany in 1880. On the 26th of March 1881 he was proclaimed king of Rumania, and, with his consort, was crowned on the 22nd of May following. From that time he pursued a successful career in home and foreign policy, and greatly improved the financial and military position of his country; while his appreciation of the fine arts was shown by his formation of an important collection of paintings of all schools in his palaces at Sinaïa and Bucharest. For a detailed account of his reign, seeRumania. On the 1st of November 1869 he married Princess Elizabeth (q.v.), a daughter of Prince Hermann of Wied, widely known under her literary name of “Carmen Sylva.” As the only child of the marriage, a daughter, died in 1874, the succession was finally settled upon the king’s nephew, Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who was created prince of Rumania on the 18th of March 1889, and married, on the 10th of January 1893, Princess Marie, daughter of Alfred, duke of Saxe-Coburg, their children being Prince Carol (b. 1893) and Princess Elizabeth (b. 1894).
The official life of King Charles, mainly his own composition,Aus dem Leben Konig Karls von Rumänien(Stuttgart, 1894-1900, 4 vols.), deals mainly with political history. See for an account of his domestic life, M. Kremnitz,König Karl von Rumänien. Ein Lebensbild(Breslau, 1903).
The official life of King Charles, mainly his own composition,Aus dem Leben Konig Karls von Rumänien(Stuttgart, 1894-1900, 4 vols.), deals mainly with political history. See for an account of his domestic life, M. Kremnitz,König Karl von Rumänien. Ein Lebensbild(Breslau, 1903).
CHARLES II.(1661-1700), king of Spain, known among Spanish kings as “The Desired” and “The Bewitched,” was the son of Philip IV. by his second marriage with Maria, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand III., his niece. He was born on the 11th of November 1661, and was the only surviving son of his father’s two marriages—a child of old age and disease, in whom the constant intermarriages of the Habsburgs had developed the family type to deformity. His birth was greeted with joy by the Spaniards, who feared the dispute as to the succession which must have ensued if Philip IV. left no male issue. The boy was so feeble that till the age of five or six he was fed only from the breast of a nurse. For years afterwards it was not thought safe to allow him to walk. That he might not be overtaxed he was left entirely uneducated, and his indolence was indulged to such an extent that he was not even expected to be clean. When his brother, the younger Don John of Austria, a natural son of Philip IV., obtained power by exiling the queen mother from court he insisted that at least the king’s hair should be combed. Charles made the malicious remark that nothing was safe from Don John—not even vermin. The king was then fifteen, and, according to Spanish law, of age. But he never became a man in body or mind. The personages who ruled in his name arranged a marriage for him with Maria Louisa of Orleans. The French princess, a lively young woman of no sense, died in the stifling atmosphere of the Spanish court, and from the attendance of Spanish doctors. Again his advisers arranged a marriage with Maria Ana of Neuburg. The Bavarian wife stood the strain and survived him. Both marriages were merely political—the first a victory for the French, and the second for the Austrian party. France and Austria were alike preparing for the day when the Spanish succession would have to be fought for. The king was a mere puppet in the hands of each alternately. By natural instinct he hated the French, but there was no room in his nearly imbecile mind for more than childish superstition, insane pride of birth, and an interest in court etiquette. The only touch of manhood was a taste for shooting which he occasionally indulged in the preserves of the Escorial. In his later days he suffered much pain, and was driven wild by the conflict between his wish to transmit his inheritance to “the illustrious house of Austria,” his own kin, and the belief instilled into him by the partisans of the French claimant that only the power of Louis XIV. could avert the dismemberment of the empire. A silly fanatic made the discovery that the king was bewitched, and his confessor Froilan Diaz supported thebelief. The king was exorcised, and the exorcists of the kingdom were called upon to put stringent questions to the devils they cast out. The Inquisition interfered, and the dying king was driven mad among them. Very near his end he had the lugubrious curiosity to cause the coffins of his embalmed ancestors to be opened at the Escorial. The sight of the body of his first wife, at whom he also insisted on looking, provoked a passion of tears and despair. Under severe pressure from the cardinal archbishop of Toledo, Portocarrero, he finally made a will in favour of Philip, duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV., and died on the 1st of November 1700, after a lifetime of senile decay.
The best picture of Charles II. is to be found inLes Mémoires de la tour d’Espagneof the Marquis de Villars (London, 1861), and theLettersof the Marquise de Villars (Paris, 1868).
The best picture of Charles II. is to be found inLes Mémoires de la tour d’Espagneof the Marquis de Villars (London, 1861), and theLettersof the Marquise de Villars (Paris, 1868).
CHARLES III.(1716-1788), king of Spain, born on the 20th January 1716, was the first son of the second marriage of Philip V. with Elizabeth Farnese of Parma. It was his good fortune to be sent to rule as duke of Parma by right of his mother at the age of sixteen, and thus came under more intelligent influence than he could have found in Spain. In 1734 he made himself master of Naples and Sicily by arms. Charles had, however, no military tastes, seldom wore uniform, and could with difficulty be persuaded to witness a review. The peremptory action of the British admiral commanding in the Mediterranean at the approach of the War of the Austrian Succession, who forced him to promise to observe neutrality under a threat to bombard Naples, made a deep impression on his mind. It gave him a feeling of hostility to England which in after-times influenced his policy.
As king of the Two Sicilies Charles began there the work of internal reform which he afterwards continued in Spain. Foreign ministers who dealt with him agreed that he had no great natural ability, but he was honestly desirous to do his duty as king, and he showed good judgment in his choice of ministers. The chief minister in Naples, Tanucci, had a considerable influence over him. On the death of his half-brother Ferdinand VI. he became king of Spain, and resigned the Two Sicilies to his third son Ferdinand. As king of Spain his foreign policy was disastrous. His strong family feeling and his detestation of England, which was unchecked after the death of his wife, Maria Amelia, daughter of Frederick Augustus II. of Saxony, led him into the Family Compact with France. Spain was entangled in the close of the Seven Years’ War, to her great loss. In 1770 he almost ran into another war over the barren Falkland Islands. In 1779 he was, somewhat reluctantly, led to join France and the American insurgents against England, though he well knew that the independence of the English colonies must have a ruinous influence on his own American dominions. For his army he did practically nothing, and for his fleet very little except build fine ships without taking measures to train officers and men.
But his internal government was on the whole beneficial to the country. He began by compelling the people of Madrid to give up emptying their slops out of the windows, and when they objected he said they were like children who cried when their faces were washed. In 1766 his attempt to force the Madrileños to adopt the French dress led to a riot during which he did not display much personal courage. For a long time after it he remained at Aranjuez, leaving the government in the hands of his minister Aranda. All his reforms were not of this formal kind. Charles was a thorough despot of the benevolent order, and had been deeply offended by the real or suspected share of the Jesuits in the riot of 1766. He therefore consented to the expulsion of the order, and was then the main advocate for its suppression. His quarrel with the Jesuits, and the recollection of some disputes with the pope he had had when king of Naples, turned him towards a general policy of restriction of the overgrown power of the church. The number of the idle clergy, and more particularly of the monastic orders, was reduced, and the Inquisition, though not abolished, was rendered torpid. In the meantime much antiquated legislation which tended to restrict trade and industry was abolished; roads, canals and drainage works were carried out. Many of his paternal ventures led to little more than waste of money, or the creation of hotbeds of jobbery. Yet on the whole the country prospered. The result was largely due to the king, who even when he was ill-advised did at least work steadily at his task of government. His example was not without effect on some at least of the nobles. In his domestic life King Charles was regular, and was a considerate master, though he had a somewhat caustic tongue and took a rather cynical view of mankind. He was passionately fond of hunting. During his later years he had some trouble with his eldest son and his daughter-in-law. If Charles had lived to see the beginning of the French Revolution he would probably have been frightened into reaction. As he died on the 14th of December 1788 he left the reputation of a philanthropic and “philosophic” king. In spite of his hostility to the Jesuits, his dislike of friars in general, and his jealousy of the Inquisition, he was a very sincere Roman Catholic, and showed much zeal in endeavouring to persuade the pope to proclaim the Immaculate Conception as a dogma necessary to salvation.
See theReign of Charles III., by M. Danvila y Collado (6 vols.), in theHistoria General de España de la Real Academia de la Historia(Madrid, 1892, &c.); and F. Rousseau,Règne de Charles III d’Espagne(Paris, 1907).
See theReign of Charles III., by M. Danvila y Collado (6 vols.), in theHistoria General de España de la Real Academia de la Historia(Madrid, 1892, &c.); and F. Rousseau,Règne de Charles III d’Espagne(Paris, 1907).
CHARLES IV.(1748-1819), king of Spain, second son of Charles III. and his wife Maria Amelia of Saxony, was born at Portici on the 11th of November 1748, while his father was king of the Two Sicilies. The elder brother was set aside as imbecile and epileptic. Charles had inherited a great frame and immense physical strength from the Saxon line of his mother. When young he was fond of wrestling with the strongest countrymen he could find. In character he was not malignant, but he was intellectually torpid, and of a credulity which almost passes belief. His wife, Maria Luisa of Parma, his first cousin, a thoroughly coarse and vicious woman, ruled him completely, though he was capable of obstinacy at times. During his father’s lifetime he was led by her into court intrigues which aimed at driving the king’s favourite minister, Floridablanca, from office, and replacing him by Aranda, the chief of the “Aragonese” party. After he succeeded to the throne in 1788 his one serious occupation was hunting. Affairs were left to be directed by his wife and her lover Godoy (q.v.). For Godoy the king had an unaffected liking, and the lifelong favour he showed him is almost pathetic. When terrified by the French Revolution he turned to the Inquisition to help him against the party which would have carried the reforming policy of Charles III. much further. But he was too slothful to have more than a passive part in the direction of his own government. He simply obeyed the impulse given him by the queen and Godoy. If he ever knew his wife’s real character he thought it more consistent with his dignity to shut his eyes. For he had a profound belief in his divine right and the sanctity of his person. If he understood that his kingdom was treated as a mere dependence by France, he also thought it due to his “face” to make believe that he was a powerful monarch. Royalty never wore a more silly aspect than in the person of Charles IV., and it is highly credible that he never knew what his wife was, or what was the position of his kingdom. When he was told that his son Ferdinand was appealing to the emperor Napoleon against Godoy, he took the side of the favourite. When the populace rose at Aranjuez in 1808 he abdicated to save the minister. He took refuge in France, and when he and Ferdinand were both prisoners of Napoleon’s, he was with difficulty restrained from assaulting his son. Then he abdicated in favour of Napoleon, handing over his people like a herd of cattle. He accepted a pension from the French emperor and spent the rest of his life between his wife and Godoy. He died at Rome on the 20th of January 1819, probably without having once suspected that he had done anything unbecoming a king by divine right and a gentleman.
SeeHistoria del Reinado de Carlos IV., by General Gomez de Arteche (3 vols.), in theHistoria General de España de la Real Academia de la Historia(Madrid, 1892, &c.).
SeeHistoria del Reinado de Carlos IV., by General Gomez de Arteche (3 vols.), in theHistoria General de España de la Real Academia de la Historia(Madrid, 1892, &c.).
CHARLES IX.(1550-1611), king of Sweden, was the youngest son of Gustavus Vasa and Margareto Lejonhufrud. By his father’s will he got, by way of appanage, the duchy of Södermanland, which included the provinces of Neriké and Vermland; but he did not come into actual possession of them till after the fall of Eric XIV. (1569). In 1568 he was the real leader of the rebellion against Eric, but took no part in the designs of his brother John against the unhappy king after his deposition. Indeed, Charles’s relations with John III. were always more or less strained. He had no sympathy with John’s high-church tendencies on the one hand, and he sturdily resisted all the king’s endeavours to restrict his authority as duke of Södermanland (Sudermania) on the other. The nobility and the majority of theRiksdagsupported John, however, in his endeavours to unify the realm, and Charles had consequently (1587) to resign his pretensions to autonomy within his duchy; but, fanatical Calvinist as he was, on the religious question he was immovable. The matter came to a crisis on the death of John III. (1592). The heir to the throne was John’s eldest son, Sigismund, already king of Poland and a devoted Catholic. The fear lest Sigismund might re-catholicize the land alarmed the Protestant majority in Sweden, and Charles came forward as their champion, and also as the defender of the Vasa dynasty against foreign interference. It was due entirely to him that Sigismund was forced to confirm the resolutions of the council of Upsala, thereby recognizing the fact that Sweden was essentially a Protestant state (seeSweden:History). In the ensuing years Charles’s task was extraordinarily difficult. He had steadily to oppose Sigismund’s reactionary tendencies; he had also to curb the nobility, which he did with cruel rigour. Necessity compelled him to work rather with the people than the gentry; hence it was that theRiksdagassumed under his government a power and an importance which it had never possessed before. In 1595 theRiksdagof Söderköping elected Charles regent, and his attempt to force Klas Flemming, governor of Finland, to submit to his authority, rather than to that of the king, provoked a civil war. Technically Charles was, without doubt, guilty of high treason, and the considerable minority of all classes which adhered to Sigismund on his landing in Sweden in 1598 indisputably behaved like loyal subjects. But Sigismund was both an alien and a heretic to the majority of the Swedish nation, and his formal deposition by theRiksdagin 1599 was, in effect, a natural vindication and legitimation of Charles’s position. Finally, the diet of Linköping (Feb. 24, 1600) declared that Sigismund and his posterity had forfeited the Swedish throne, and, passing over duke John, the second son of John III., a youth of ten, recognized duke Charles as their sovereign under the title of Charles IX.
Charles’s short reign was an uninterrupted warfare. The hostility of Poland and the break up of Russia involved him in two overseas contests for the possession of Livonia and Ingria, while his pretensions to Lapland brought upon him a war with Denmark in the last year of his reign. In all these struggles he was more or less unsuccessful, owing partly to the fact that he had to do with superior generals (e.g.Chodkiewicz and Christian IV.) and partly to sheer ill-luck. Compared with his foreign policy, the domestic policy of Charles IX. was comparatively unimportant. It aimed at confirming and supplementing what had already been done during his regency. Not till the 6th of March 1604, after Duke John had formally renounced his rights to the throne, did Charles IX. begin to style himself king. The first deed in which the title appears is dated the 20th of March 1604; but he was not crowned till the 15th of March 1607. Four and a half years later Charles IX. died at Nyköping (Oct. 30, 1611). As a ruler he is the link between his great father and his still greater son. He consolidated the work of Gustavus Vasa, the creation of a great Protestant state: he prepared the way for the erection of the Protestant empire of Gustavus Adolphus. Swedish historians have been excusably indulgent to the father of their greatest ruler. Indisputably Charles was cruel, ungenerous and vindictive; yet he seems, at all hazards, strenuously to have endeavoured to do his duty during a period of political and religious transition, and, despite his violence and brutality, possessed many of the qualities of a wise and courageous statesman. By his first wife Marie, daughter of the elector palatine Louis VI., he had six children, of whom only one daughter, Catherine, survived; by his second wife, Christina, daughter of Adolphus, duke of Holstein-Gottorp, he had five children, including Gustavus Adolphus and Charles Philip, duke of Finland.
SeeSveriges Historia, vol. iii. (Stockholm, 1878); Robert Nisbet Bain,Scandinavia(Cambridge, 1905), caps. 5-7.
SeeSveriges Historia, vol. iii. (Stockholm, 1878); Robert Nisbet Bain,Scandinavia(Cambridge, 1905), caps. 5-7.
(R. N. B.)
CHARLES X.[Charles Gustavus] (1622-1660), king of Sweden, son of John Casimir, count palatine of Zweibrücken, and Catherine, sister of Gustavus Adolphus, was born at Nyköping Castle on the 8th of November 1622. He learnt the art of war under the great Lennart Torstensson, being present at the second battle of Breitenfeld and at Jankowitz. From 1646 to 1648 he frequented the Swedish court. It was supposed that he would marry the queen regnant, Christina, but her unsurmountable objection to wedlock put an end to these anticipations, and to compensate her cousin for a broken half-promise she declared him (1649) her successor, despite the opposition of the senate headed by the venerable Axel Oxenstjerna. In 1648 he was appointed generalissimo of the Swedish forces in Germany. The conclusion of the treaties of Westphalia prevented him from winning the military laurels he so ardently desired, but as the Swedish plenipotentiary at the executive congress of Nuremberg, he had unrivalled opportunities of learning diplomacy, in which science he speedily became a past-master. As the recognized heir to the throne, his position on his return to Sweden was not without danger, for the growing discontent with the queen turned the eyes of thousands to him as a possible deliverer. He therefore withdrew to the isle of Öland till the abdication of Christina (June 5, 1654) called him to the throne.
The beginning of his reign was devoted to the healing of domestic discords, and the rallying of all the forces of the nation round his standard for a new policy of conquest. He contracted a political marriage (Oct. 24, 1654) with Hedwig Leonora, the daughter of Frederick III., duke of Holstein-Gottorp, by way of securing a future ally against Denmark. The two great pressing national questions, war and the restitution of the alienated crown lands, were duly considered at theRiksdagwhich assembled at Stockholm in March 1655. The war question was decided in three days by a secret committee presided over by the king, who easily persuaded the delegates that a war with Poland was necessary and might prove very advantageous; but the consideration of the question of the subsidies due to the crown for military purposes was postponed to the followingRiksdag(seeSweden:History). On the 10th of July Charles quitted Sweden to engage in his Polish adventure. By the time war was declared he had at his disposal 50,000 men and 50 warships. Hostilities had already begun with the occupation of Dünaburg (Dvinsk) in Polish Livonia by the Swedes (July 1, 1655), and the Polish army encamped among the marshes of the Netze concluded a convention (July 25) whereby the palatinates of Posen and Kalisz placed themselves under the protection of the Swedish king. Thereupon the Swedes entered Warsaw without opposition and occupied the whole of Great Poland. The Polish king, John Casimir, fled to Silesia. Meanwhile Charles pressed on towards Cracow, which was captured after a two months’ siege. The fall of Cracow extinguished the last hope of the boldest Pole; but before the end of the year an extraordinary reaction began in Poland itself. On the 18th of October the Swedes invested the fortress-monastery of Czenstochowa, but the place was heroically defended; and after a seventy days’ siege the besiegers were compelled to retire with great loss.
This astounding success elicited an outburst of popular enthusiasm which gave the war a national and religious character. The tactlessness of Charles, the rapacity of his generals, the barbarity of his mercenaries, his refusal to legalize his position by summoning the Polish diet, his negotiations for the partition of the very state he affected to befriend, awoke the long slumbering public spirit of the country. In the beginning of 1656 John Casimir returned from exile and the Polish army was reorganizedand increased. By this time Charles had discovered that it was easier to defeat the Poles than to conquer Poland. His chief object, the conquest of Prussia, was still unaccomplished, and a new foe arose in the elector of Brandenburg, alarmed by the ambition of the Swedish king. Charles forced the elector, indeed, at the point of the sword to become his ally and vassal (treaty of Königsberg, Jan. 17, 1656); but the Polish national rising now imperatively demanded his presence in the south. For weeks he scoured the interminable snow-covered plains of Poland in pursuit of the Polish guerillas, penetrating as far south as Jaroslau in Galicia, by which time he had lost two-thirds of his 15,000 men with no apparent result. His retreat from Jaroslau to Warsaw, with the fragments of his host, amidst three converging armies, in a marshy forest region, intersected in every direction by well-guarded rivers, was one of his most brilliant achievements. But his necessities were overwhelming. On the 21st of June Warsaw was retaken by the Poles, and four days later Charles was obliged to purchase the assistance of Frederick William by the treaty of Marienburg. On July 18-20 the combined Swedes and Brandenburgers, 18,000 strong, after a three days’ battle, defeated John Casimir’s army of 100,000 at Warsaw and reoccupied the Polish capital; but this brilliant feat of arms was altogether useless, and when the suspicious attitude of Frederick William compelled the Swedish king at last to open negotiations with the Poles, they refused the terms offered, the war was resumed, and Charles concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the elector of Brandenburg (treaty of Labiau, Nov. 20) whereby it was agreed that Frederick William and his heirs should henceforth possess the full sovereignty of East Prussia.
This was an essential modification of Charles’s Baltic policy; but the alliance of the elector had now become indispensable on almost any terms. So serious, indeed, were the difficulties of Charles X. in Poland that it was with extreme satisfaction that he received the tidings of the Danish declaration of war (June 1, 1657). The hostile action of Denmark enabled him honourably to emerge from the inglorious Polish imbroglio, and he was certain of the zealous support of his own people. He had learnt from Torstensson that Denmark was most vulnerable if attacked from the south, and, imitating the strategy of his master, he fell upon her with a velocity which paralysed resistance. At the end of June 1657, at the head of 8000 seasoned veterans, he broke up from Bromberg in Prussia and reached the borders of Holstein on the 18th of July. The Danish army at once dispersed and the duchy of Bremen was recovered by the Swedes, who in the early autumn swarmed over Jutland and firmly established themselves in the duchies. But the fortress of Fredriksodde (Fredericia) held Charles’s little army at bay from mid-August to mid-October, while the fleet of Denmark, after a stubborn two days’ battle, compelled the Swedish fleet to abandon its projected attack on the Danish islands. The position of the Swedish king had now become critical. In July an offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between Denmark and Poland. Still more ominously, the elector of Brandenburg, perceiving Sweden to be in difficulties, joined the league against her and compelled Charles to accept the proffered mediation of Cromwell and Mazarin. The negotiations foundered, however, upon the refusal of Sweden to refer the points in dispute to a general peace-congress, and Charles was still further encouraged by the capture of Fredriksodde (Oct. 23-24), whereupon he began to make preparations for conveying his troops over to Fünen in transport vessels. But soon another and cheaper expedient presented itself. In the middle of December 1657 began the great frost which was to be so fatal to Denmark. In a few weeks the cold had grown so intense that even the freezing of an arm of the sea with so rapid a current as the Little Belt became a conceivable possibility; and henceforth meteorological observations formed an essential part of the strategy of the Swedes. On the 28th of January 1658, Charles X. arrived at Haderslev (Hadersleben) in South Jutland, when it was estimated that in a couple of days the ice of the Little Belt would be firm enough to bear even the passage of a mail-clad host. The cold during the night of the 29th of January was most severe; and early in the morning of the 30th the Swedish king gave the order to start, the horsemen dismounting where the ice was weakest, and cautiously leading their horses as far apart as possible, when they swung into their saddles again, closed their ranks and made a dash for the shore. The Danish troops lining the opposite coast were quickly overpowered, and the whole of Fünen was won with the loss of only two companies of cavalry, which disappeared under the ice while fighting with the Danish left wing. Pursuing his irresistible march, Charles X., with his eyes fixed steadily on Copenhagen, resolved to cross the frozen Great Belt also. After some hesitation, he accepted the advice of his chief engineer officer Eric Dahlberg, who acted as pioneer throughout and chose the more circuitous route from Svendborg, by the islands of Langeland, Laaland and Falster, in preference to the direct route from Nyborg to Korsör, which would have been across a broad, almost uninterrupted expanse of ice. Yet this second adventure was not embarked upon without much anxious consideration. A council of war, which met at two o’clock in the morning to consider the practicability of Dahlberg’s proposal, at once dismissed it as criminally hazardous. Even the king wavered for an instant; but, Dahlberg persisting in his opinion, Charles overruled the objections of the commanders. On the night of the 5th of February the transit began, the cavalry leading the way through the snow-covered ice, which quickly thawed beneath the horses’ hoofs so that the infantry which followed after had to wade through half an ell of sludge, fearing every moment lest the rotting ice should break beneath their feet. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Dahlberg leading the way, the army reached Grimsted in Laaland without losing a man On the 8th of February Charles reached Falster. On the 11th he stood safely on the soil of Sjaelland (Zealand). Not without reason did the medal struck to commemorate “the glorious transit of the Baltic Sea” bear the haughty inscription:Natura hoc debuit uni.An exploit unique in history had been achieved. The crushing effect of this unheard-of achievement on the Danish government found expression in the treaties of Taastrup (Feb. 18) and Roskilde (Feb. 26, 1658), whereby Denmark sacrificed nearly half her territory to save the rest (seeDenmark:History). But even this was not enough for the conqueror. Military ambition and greed of conquest moved Charles X. to what, divested of all its pomp and circumstance, was an outrageous act of political brigandage. At a council held at Gottorp (July 7), Charles X. resolved to wipe from the map of Europe an inconvenient rival, and without any warning, in defiance of all international equity, let loose his veterans upon Denmark a second time. For the details of this second struggle, with the concomitant diplomatic intervention of the western powers, seeDenmark:History, andSweden:History. Only after great hesitation would Charles X. consent to reopen negotiations with Denmark direct, at the same time proposing to exercise pressure upon the enemy by a simultaneous winter campaign in Norway. Such an enterprise necessitated fresh subsidies from his already impoverished people, and obliged him in December 1659 to cross over to Sweden to meet the estates, whom he had summoned to Gothenburg. The lower estates murmured at the imposition of fresh burdens; and Charles had need of all his adroitness to persuade them that his demands were reasonable and necessary. At the very beginning of theRiksdag, in January 1660, it was noticed that the king was ill; but he spared himself as little in the council-chamber as in the battle-field, till death suddenly overtook him on the night of the 13th of February 1660, in his thirty-eighth year. The abrupt cessation of such an inexhaustible fount of enterprise and energy was a distinct loss to Sweden; and signs are not wanting that, in his latter years, Charles had begun to feel the need and value of repose. Had he lived long enough to overcome his martial ardour, and develop and organize the empire he helped to create, Sweden might perhaps have remained a great power to this day. Even so she owes her natural frontiers in the Scandinavian peninsula to Charles X.