Philip IV of France

Philip IV of France

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Philip IV of France

Philip IV (April-June 1268 – November 29, 1314), called the Fair (), son and successor of Philip III, reigned as King of France from 1285 until his death. He was the husband of Joan I of Navarre, by virtue of which he was King of Navarre (as Philip I) and Count of Champagne from 1284 to 1305. The nickname Philip "the Fair" comes from his handsome appearance; it had nothing to do with his actions as King.

Youth
Consolidation of the royal demesne
Contacts with the Mongols
War With the English
The drive for income
In Flanders
Suppression of the Knights Templar
Tour de Nesle affair
Death
Ancestors
Children
See also
Notes
References
External links

Youth

A member of the House of Capet, Philip was born at the Palace of Fontainebleau at Seine-et-Marne, the son of King Philip III and Isabella of Aragon. Philip was nicknamed the Fair (le Bel) because of his handsome appearance, but his inflexible personality gained him other epithets, from friend and foe alike. His fierce opponent Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, said of him, "He is neither man nor beast. This is a statue"^[1]

His education was guided by Guillaume d'Ercuis the almoner of his father.

As prince, just before his father's death, he negotiated the safe passage of the royal family out of Aragon after the unsuccessful Aragonese Crusade.

Consolidation of the royal demesne

As a king, Philip was determined to strengthen the monarchy at any cost. He relied, more than any of his predecessors, on a professional bureaucracy of legalists. Because to the public he kept aloof and left specific policies, especially unpopular ones, to his ministers, he was called a "useless owl" by his contemporaries. His reign marks the French transition from a charismatic monarchy ? which could all but collapse in an incompetent reign ? to a bureaucratic kingdom, a move towards modernity.

Philip married queen Joan of Navarre (1271?1305) on August 16, 1284. The primary administrative benefit of this was the inheritance of Joan in Champagne and Brie, which were adjacent to the royal demesne in Ile-de-France and became thus effectively united to the king's own lands, forming an expansive area. During the reigns of Joan herself, and her three sons (1284?1328), these lands belonged to the person of the king; but by 1328 they had become so entrenched in the royal domain that king Philip VI of France (who was not an heir of Joan) switched lands with the then rightful heiress, Joan II of Navarre, with the effect that Champagne and Brie remained part of the royal demesne and Joan received compensation with lands in western Normandy.

The Kingdom of Navarre in the Pyrenees was not so important to contemporary interests of the French crown. It remained in personal union 1284?1329, after which it went its separate way. Philippe gained Lyon for France in 1312.

Contacts with the Mongols

Philip had various contacts with the Mongol power in the Middle East, who were trying to obtain the cooperation of Christian powers to fight against the Muslims. He received the embassy of the Mongolian Chinese monk Rabban Bar Sauma, and an elephant as a present.^[2] Philip seemingly responded positively to the request of the embassy:

Philip led Rabban Bar Sauma in a visit of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

Philip also gave the embassy numerous presents, and sent one of his noblemen, Gobert de Helleville, to accompany Bar Sauma back to Mongol lands:

Gobert de Helleville departed on February 2, 1288, with two clercs Robert de Senlis and Guillaume de Bruyères, as well as arbaletier Audin de Bourges. They joined Bar Sauma in Rome, and accompanied him to Persia.^[3]

The Mongol ruler Arghun, based in Baghdad, further wrote to him a letter in 1289, in answer to a letter sent by Philip to him in 1288,^[4] specifically outlining military cooperation:

Extract of the letter of Arghun to Philip IV, in the Uyghur script, dated 1289. French National Archives.

Contrary to Saint Louis, Philip apparently did not pursue with such military plans in the Middle East in the form of a Crusade. He did however organize a military collaboration with the Mongols through the Knights Templar and their leader Jacques de Molay against the Mamluks. The plan was to coordinate actions between the Christian military orders, the King of Cyprus, the aristocracy of Cyprus and Little Armenia and the Mongols of the khanate of Ilkhan (Persia). In 1298 or 1299, Jacques de Molay halted a Mamluk invasion with military force in Armenia possibly because of the loss of Roche-Guillaume, the last Templar stronghold in Cilicia, to the Mamluks. However, when the Mongol khan of Persia, Ghâzân, defeated the Mamluks in the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar in December 1299, the Christian forces were not ready to take an advantage of the situation.

In 1300, Jacques de Molay made his order commit raids along the Egyptian and Syrian coasts to weaken the enemy's supply lines as well as to harass them, and in November that year he joined the occupation of the tiny fortress island of Ruad (today called Arwad) which faced the Syrian town of Tortosa. The intent was to establish a bridgehead in accordance with the Mongol alliance, but the Mongols were delayed for months, and the Crusaders had to retreat to Arwad. In 1300, rumors circulated in Europe that the Mongols had finally conquered the Holy Land and Jerusalem, and handed it over to the Christians, but this apparently did not happen.^[5]

In September 1302 the Templars were driven out of Ruad by the attacking Mamluk forces from Egypt, and many were massacred when trapped on the island. The island of Ruad was lost, and when Ghâzân died in 1304 dreams of a rapid reconquest of the Holy Land were destroyed.

Letter of Oljeitu to Philippe le Bel, 1305.

In April 1305, the new Mongol ruler Oljeitu sent letters to Philip,^[6] the Pope, and Edward I of England. He again offered a military collaboration between the Christian nations of Europe and the Mongols against the Mamluks. European nations accordingly prepared a crusade, but were delayed, and the crusade never took place.

In 1310, Guillaume de Nogaret wrote a memorandum about capturing the Holy Land without the Templars, but in association with the Mongols, the Greeks and the harbour cities of Italy. The expedition would be financed by the revenues of the Templars and a tax on the Hospitallers and other orders.^[7]

On April 4, 1312, a Crusade was promulgated at the Council of Vienne. In 1313, Philip "took the cross", making the vow to go on a Crusade in the Levant, thus responding to Pope Clement V's call for a Crusade. He was however warned against leaving by Enguerrand de Marigny^[8] and died soon after in a hunting accident.

War With the English

Hommage of Edward I (kneeling), to the Philippe le Bel (seated). As Duke of Aquitaine, Edward was a vassal to the French king.

As Duke of Aquitaine, the English king Edward I was a vassal to Philip, and had to pay him homage. Following the Fall of Acre in 1291 however, the former allies started to show dissent.^[9]

In 1293, following a naval incident between the Normans and the English, Philip summoned Edward to the French court, but the latter, busy with trouble in Scotland, refused to appear. Philip used this pretext to strip Edward of all his possessions in France, thereby initiating hostilities with England.^[9]

The outbreak of hostilities with England in 1294 was the inevitable result of the competitive expansionist monarchies, triggered by a secret Franco-Scottish pact of mutual assistance against Edward I, who was Philip's brother-in-law, having married Philip's sister Marguerite; inconclusive campaigns for the control of Gascony to the southwest of France were fought in 1294?98 and 1300?03. Philippe gained Guienne but was forced to return it. No major war had been fought in Europe since the 'teens, and in the interim the nature of warfare had changed: it had become more professional, technologically more advanced and much more expensive. The search for income to cover military expenditures set its stamp on Philip's reign and his contemporary reputation. Pursuant to the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1303), the marriage of Philip's daughter Isabella to the Prince of Wales, heir of Philip's enemy, celebrated at Boulogne, 25 January 1308, was meant to seal a peace; instead it would produce an eventual English claimant to the French throne itself, and the Hundred Years War.

The drive for income

Gold coin of Philippe IV. Cabinet des Médailles.

In the shorter term, Philip arrested Jews so he could seize their assets to accommodate the inflated costs of modern warfare: he expelled them from his French territories on July 22, 1306 (see The Great Exile of 1306). His financial victims included Lombard bankers and rich abbots. He was condemned by his enemies in the Catholic Church^[10] for his spendthrift lifestyle. He debased the coinage. When he also levied taxes on the French clergy of one half their annual income, he caused an uproar within the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy, prompting Pope Boniface VIII to issue the Bull Clericis laicos, forbidding the transference of any church property to the French Crown and prompting a drawn-out diplomatic battle with the King. In order to condemn the pope, Philip convoked an assembly of bishops, nobles and grand bourgeois of Paris, a precursor to the Etats Généraux that appeared for the first time during his reign, a measure of the professionalism and order that his ministers were introducing into government. Philip emerged victorious, after having sent his agent William Nogaret to arrest Boniface at Anagni, when the French archbishop Bertrand de Goth was elected pope as Clement V and the official seat of the papacy moved to Avignon, an enclave surrounded by French territories, commencing the captive Avignon Papacy.

In Flanders

He suffered a major embarrassment when an army of 2,500 noble men-at-arms (Knights and Squires) and 4,000 infantry he sent to suppress an uprising in Flanders was defeated in the Battle of the Golden Spurs near Kortrijk on 11 July 1302. Philip reacted with energy to the humiliation and personally defeated the Flemings at Mons-en-Pévèle two years later. Finally, in 1305, Philip forced the Flemish to accept a harsh peace treaty after his success at the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle; the peace exacted heavy reparations and humiliating penalties, and added the rich cloth cities of Lille and Douai, sites of major cloth fairs, to the royal territory. Béthune, first of the Flemish cities to yield, was granted to Mahaut, Countess of Artois, whose two daughters, to secure her fidelity, were married to Philip's two sons.

Suppression of the Knights Templar

On Friday, October 13, 1307, hundreds of Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of Philip the Fair, to be later tortured into admitting heresy in the Order^[11]. The Knights Templar were a 200-year-old military order, supposedly answerable only to the Pope. But Philip used his influence over Clement V, who was largely his pawn, to disband the order and remove its ecclesiastical status and protection in order to plunder it.

A modern historical view is that Philip seized the considerable Templar treasury and broke up the Templar monastic banking system. In 1314, he had the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, burnt at the stake in Paris. According to legend, de Molay cursed both Philip and Clement V from the flames, saying that he would summon them before God's Tribunal within a year; as it turned out, both King and Pope died within the next year.

Tour de Nesle affair

In 1314, the daughters-in-law of Philip IV were accused of adultery, and their alleged lovers tortured, flayed and executed in what has come to be known as the Tour de Nesle Affair ().

Death

Tomb of Philippe le Bel in the Saint Denis Basilica.

Philip IV's rule signaled the decline of the papacy's power from its near complete authority. His palace located on the Île de la Cité is represented today by surviving sections of the Conciergerie. He suffered a cerebral ictus during a hunt at Pont-Sainte-Maxence (Halatte Forest) and died a few weeks later in Fontainebleau, where he was born. He is buried in Saint Denis Basilica. He was succeeded by his son Louis X.

Ancestors

**Philip's ancestors in three generations**
Philip IV of France	Father: Philip III of France	Paternal Grandfather: Louis IX of France	Paternal Great-grandfather: Louis VIII of France
			Paternal Great-grandmother: Blanche of Castile
		Paternal Grandmother: Marguerite of Provence	Paternal Great-grandfather: Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence
			Paternal Great-grandmother: Beatrice of Savoy
	Mother: Isabella of Aragon	Maternal Grandfather: James I of Aragon	Maternal Great-grandfather: Peter II of Aragon
			Maternal Great-grandmother: Marie of Montpellier
		Maternal Grandmother: Violant of Hungary	Maternal Great-grandfather: Andrew II of Hungary
			Maternal Great-grandmother: Yolanda de Courtenay