As noted above, Charles VI asserted his rule in 1388. But Philip seized power again with the onset of Charles VI’s madness in 1392, sending the marmousets fleeing once more.42 During a long lucid period in 1393, Charles VI attempted to dislodge his uncle with an ordinance granting administracion of the kingdom to his brother, who preceded his uncles, as Guenée explains, who could boast that they were son, brother, and uncle of kings of France, but only uncles of the reigning king.43 In another ordinance, Charles VI awarded guardianship to the queen, assisted by the princes of the blood, including Philip and Jean of Berry. The result was conflict. Over the years, Philip protested Louis’s preeminence in the government, citing the duke’s youth. The chronicle of Juvénal des Ursins reports that in 1401 Philip (along with several notable people) was still complaining that it was neither reasonable nor honorable that Louis should be governing, given his age—he was thirty years old at the time.44
The Burgundian power grabs, part of the long history of factionalism and reform in France, were nourished by nostalgia for a golden past of seigneurial liberties.45 The gist of Philip’s claim can be gleaned from later accounts of Burgundian activity. Pierre Cochon’s chronicle, for example, associates Jean of Burgundy’s regency claim with an ancient principle of governance through the three estates.46 University representatives speaking before the king in 1410 also proposed government by the three estates. The king of Navarre, speaking for the Duke of Burgundy, evinced eagerness to adopt such a rule.47
Because I am arguing that Christine’s vision of kingship and regency follows Charles V’s rather than the Burgundians’, it will be useful to consider how the king formed his view. During his reign, Charles V successfully negotiated multiple baronial threats, increasing the prestige of the monarchy by regaining most of the territory lost to the English during the first two Valois reigns and keeping his brothers under control. However, his hold on his own throne and, during his regency, the throne of his imprisoned father, King Jean, was often tenuous. Indeed, when King Jean died in 1364, it was not a given that his son would succeed him.48 The dauphin’s doubt as to his succession is betrayed by his interest in astrology, apparent from 1358 on. One astrological guide written for him in 1361 purported to answer such questions as “whether a kingdom will have a certain man as its leader” and “whether a man will have a kingdom.”49
What Raymond Cazelles referred to as the “crisis of royalty,” brought on by a succession crisis that extended from roughly 1314 to 1364, created in Charles V a lifelong mistrust of ambitious barons, including his own relatives.50 The principal threat throughout his regency and kingship came from “barons from the west,” as they have been designated by Graeme Small and others, strong princes whose territories lay within or adjacent to the French kingdom but who did not recognize the king of France as their superior. Most dangerous was King Edward III of England, who demanded sovereignty over his French territories, and, for many years, Edward III’s sometime ally Charles Le Mauvais, or the Bad, king of Navarre (1332–1387), a pretender to the French throne who controlled large areas of Normandy as well as his own kingdom.
The basis for Edward III’s challenge was the transfer of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s French territories to the English Crown. But, more immediately, the challenges of both Edward III and Charles of Navarre reached back to Philip IV (1268–1314), great-uncle of the wise king. When Philip IV’s first son, Louis X, died in 1316, leaving a four-year-old daughter, Jeanne, his second son, Philip V, assumed regency, initially promising to consider succession when little Jeanne came of age. The promise was forgotten when Philip later negotiated his niece’s renunciation of the throne with her maternal relatives, the dukes of Burgundy. Philip then became King Philip V, basing his claim on feudal law.51 He construed the kingdom as a sort of fief, and feudal law concerning female succession varied, though male preference prevailed. In some cases, only males could inherit; in others, a woman might inherit in the absence of a male heir. However, as Ralph Giesey observes, “political and patriotic pressures ultimately tipped the balance in favor of one and not another rule.”52 The idea that women could not succeed to the throne solved a pressing problem by delaying the succession of an heir who was only a child, and it avoided the succession threat of the heir’s maternal relatives who were hostile to the royal family.53 The same idea was marshalled to solve the next problem of succession, which arose when Philip V died in 1322, leaving only daughters. His brother Charles IV succeeded without challenge.54
But when Charles IV also died without a male heir, Edward III of England, grandson of Philip IV of France, challenged the 1328 succession of Philip VI of Valois. Although Edward III accepted that women could not rule France, he argued that the right to succession could pass through a woman, in this case his mother Isabella, daughter of Philip IV. So viewed, Edward III’s claim was stronger than that of the French claimant, Philip VI, son of Philip IV’s brother, Charles of Valois. An English king on the French throne was unacceptable to Philip VI’s followers, and thus it was decided that succession could not pass through a woman. It seems in any case that Edward III was more interested in forcing the Valois to cede him sovereignty over his territories in France than in assuming the French throne, and that he used the challenge to the throne as a bargaining chip.
As for Charles of Navarre, his claim through his mother, Jeanne, whose father, Louis X, had been Philip IV’s first son, was still greater, if one assumed that succession passed through women. For decades, the king of Navarre menaced Valois kings Jean and Charles V, drawing support from power bases in Normandy, Champagne, and Brie, although his precise goal is not as clear as that of Edward III.55 King Jean married his daughter to the aggressive young man in 1352 in an attempt to manage him, but then failed to pay the dowry and ceded Angoulême to his new connétable, Charles of Spain, without compensating Charles of Navarre for his rights there. Thus in 1354 Charles of Navarre had the connétable murdered, an affront that the king accepted for fear of an alliance between his son-in-law and the English.56 In late 1355, Charles of Navarre seems to have won over the dauphin Charles, persuading him to take part in a mysterious visit to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, uncle of the dauphin. King Jean foiled the visit. Although historians dispute the significance of the incident, some believe that the two Charleses were hatching a plot to replace King Jean with the dauphin.57 The king reconciled with the dauphin, making him Duke of Normandy, but remained suspicious: on April 5, 1356, in a fury, the king had Charles of Navarre arrested in the dauphin’s castle at Rouen and thrown in prison.58 But this was not the end of Charles of Navarre. In September 1356, King Jean was taken prisoner when the English defeated the French at the Battle of Poitiers. The dauphin summoned the Estates General to gain consent for taxes to raise the exorbitant ransom demanded by the English. The consequent loss of prestige, coupled with the new taxes, led to popular revolts in 1357–58; Charles of Navarre, liberated in November, eventually joined up with the prévôt of the merchants of Paris, Étienne Marcel, to take possession of Paris throughout part of 1358. The 1358 peasant uprising known as the Jacquerie, instigated by Marcel, shook the area around Paris, but the dauphin regained control.59 As Autrand observes, the dauphin’s power was contested by well-established members of King Jean’s administration, like Jean de Craon, who proposed “purging” his counselors because the dauphin “has a great and heavy duty to govern given the present state of France, and he is very young,” meaning that he needed to be strictly guided.60 Charles of Navarre continued to agitate, rebelling again in 1364, just before the death of King Jean. As Charles V made his way to his coronation in Rheims, he received word that the royal army under Breton Bertrand du Guesclin had decisively beaten the Navarrese at the Battle of Cocherel.61
The new king embarked on the “gradual re-establishment of royal power which was the salient characteristic” of his reign.62 Charles of Navarre, losing noble support, was less of a threat after 1364; many Breton lords, including Olivier de Clisson, joined Charles V, increasing the king’s influence in Brittany. Although the Treaty of Brétigny