Philip VI

Philip VI of Valois (reigned 1328–50), grandson of Philip III, was of mature age when he became regent of France in 1328. Upon the birth of a daughter to the widow of his cousin Charles IV, the familiar issue of the succession was posed anew. It was the regent’s experience, together with the circumstance that Edward III of England, grandson of Philip the Fair, was under the influence of his disreputable mother, Isabella of France, that probably disposed the council at Vincennes to recognize Philip as king (April 1328).

Philip’s reign began well. Within months he crushed a revolt of the Flemish cloth towns that concluded at the Battle of Cassel in August 1328, thereby recovering the effective suzerainty over Flanders that had eluded his predecessors for a generation. And in 1329 he obtained Edward III’s personal homage for the duchy of Aquitaine, an act that not only secured Philip’s leadership but also nullified Edward’s claim to the crown of France.

This initial success was soon undone. Jurisdictional questions in Gascony remained unsettled. In 1336 Philip VI appeared to be preparing massive support for David II, the Scottish king at war with Edward; and in 1337, alleging defaults in feudal service, Philip ordered the confiscation of Aquitaine. Edward III renounced his homage and again laid claim to the crown of France, starting the period of conflict that would come to be known as the Hundred Years’ War. Despite the new Plantagenet pretensions, the basic causes of conflict were feudal and jurisdictional, not dynastic.

Edward proceeded deliberately and ominously. He fomented discontent among the Flemish cloth workers and then treated with the towns; in so doing he negated the count’s fidelity to France; he also purchased the fidelity and service of many princes in the Rhineland and Low Countries. But, to succeed, the English needed a prompt and massive victory on French soil, something Philip VI was able to prevent. Despite Edward’s naval triumph off Sluys (1340), which confirmed English control of the seas, his initial advantage was lost as his resources and allies melted away. A truce in September 1340 was extended for several years, during which time Edward intervened in a disputed succession to the duchy of Brittany, while Philip’s officials increased their pressure on Gascony. In 1345 English armies counterattacked French posts on the duchy’s borders; their success emboldened Edward. Landing in Normandy (July 1346) with a well-disciplined army, he captured Caen, only to be overtaken in Picardy by a much larger French army as he moved to join his Flemish allies. At Crécy (August 26, 1346), despite serious disadvantages, the English forces won the first major battle of the war. Their victory, however, proved difficult to exploit; Edward moved on to capture Calais after a long siege, but he could then only return to England with more glory than accomplishment to his credit.

Nevertheless, Philip’s failures were proving costly in money and political support. In 1340–41 he had been able to raise “extraordinary” revenue through taxes on sales, salt, and hearths, despite regional protests. The continuance of sales and salt taxes in 1343 could be extracted from the Estates of Paris only in return for the restoration of a stable coinage; in the following years regional assemblies in the north proved even more obstinate. In the Estates of Paris in November 1347 the king heard ringing denunciations of his mismanagement and defeats and was fortunate to obtain new subsidies to support an invasion of England. But that prospect, like the war itself, evaporated when the Black Death struck Europe late in 1347, destroying life, fiscal resources, and resolve for several years thereafter.

Philip VI cannot be judged by his military failures alone. The royal domain was significantly enlarged by his acquisition of Dauphiné (technically an endowment for his grandson; 1343–49) and the city of Montpellier, the last (and wealthiest) Aragonese fief in Languedoc. As administrative expertise continued to progress, the services, such as Parlement and the treasury, were regulated. Within the departments of the court and notably in the Chambre des Comptes (Chamber of Accounts), power came increasingly into the hands of royal favourites, whose rivalries were stimulated by the courtly predilections of the king. Their influence and embezzlement together with the familiar injustices of local government came under attack in the Estates of 1343 and 1347, which, in their conditional grants of subsidy, asserted a more nearly constitutional authority than French assemblies had yet enjoyed; the fiscal powers of the provincial Estates likewise originated during this reign.