There are two kinds of dwarfs: the long-nosed, sad-faced hunchback, and the chubby, snub-nosed dwarf with the body of a giant supported on tiny, rickety legs. Philippe of Valois’ dwarf, Jean the Fool, was of the second kind. His head barely reached to the height of a table. He wore bells on his cap, and silk robes embroidered with a variety of strange little animals.
One day he came skipping and laughing to Philippe and said: ‘Do you know what the people call you, Sire?’ They call you “the Makeshift King”.’
For on Good Friday, April 1st, 1328, Madame Jeanne of Evreux, Charles IV’s widow, had been brought to bed. Rarely in history had the sex of a newborn child created such excitement. When it was known to be a girl, everyone recognized it as a sign of God’s will, and there was great relief.
The peers had no need to reconsider the choice they had made at Candlemas; they assembled at once and unanimously, except for the representative of England who objected on principle, confirmed Philippe in his right to the crown.
The people also heaved a sigh of relief. The curse of the Grand Master Jacques de Molay seemed exhausted at last. The Capet line, at any rate in its senior branch, was now extinct. During the last three hundred and forty-one years it had given France fourteen successive kings, though the last four had reigned for no more than fifteen years between them. In any family whether rich or poor, the absence of male heirs is considered, if not a disaster, at least a sign of inferiority, In the case of the royal house, the inability of Philip the Fair’s sons to produce male descendants was looked on as a punishment. But now there was going to be a change.
Sudden fevers seize on peoples, and their cause must be sought in the movements of the planets since no other explanation can be found for them. How else account for such waves of hysterical cruelty as the crusade of the pastoureaux or the massacre of the lepers? How account for the tide of delirious joy that accompanied the accession of Philippe of Valois?
The new King was tall and endowed with the majestic physique so essential to the founder of a dynasty. His elder child was a son, already nine years old and seemingly robust; he had also a daughter, and it was known (Courts make no secret of these things) that he honoured his tall, lame wife almost every night with an enthusiasm the years had in no way abated.
He had a loud and resonant voice, unlike his cousins, Louis the Hutin, and Charles IV, who had stuttered; nor was he inclined to silence as had been Philip the Fair and Philippe V. There was no one who could oppose him, no one who could be put up against him. Amid the general rejoicing, who in France was going to listen to a few lawyers paid by England to draw up objections, which they did without much conviction?
Philippe VI ascended the throne with the consent of all.
And yet he was King only by a lucky chance; he was a nephew and a cousin of kings, but there were many such; he was simply a man who had been luckier than his relations. He was not a king born of a king to be king; he was not a king designated by God and received as such, but a ‘makeshift’ king, who had been made when one was needed.
Yet the popular nickname in no way detracted from the loyalty and rejoicing; it was simply one of those ironical phrases the populace so often uses to mask its emotions and make itself feel that it is on close and familiar terms with power. When Jean the Fool told Philippe about it, he received a kick that sent him flying across the flagstones. He had, nevertheless, uttered the word that was the key to his master’s destiny.
For Philippe of Valois, like every parvenu, was determined to show that he was worthy, by his own innate distinction, of the elevated position to which he had attained, and his behaviour therefore tended to an exaggeration of all that might be expected of a king.
Since the King exercised sovereign powers of justice, he sent the treasurer of the last reign to the gallows within three weeks of his accession. Pierre Rémy had been accused of embezzlement on a large scale. A Minister of Finance suspended from the gibbet was invariably popular with the crowd. France believed she had a just king.
By both duty and office the Prince was defender of the Faith. Philippe issued an edict increasing the penalties for blasphemy and enhancing the powers of the Inquisition. As a result, the higher and lower clergy, the minor nobility and the parish bigots were all reassured: they had a pious king.
A sovereign owed it to himself to recompense services rendered; and a great many services had been rendered Philippe to assure his election. On the other hand, the King must not make enemies of the officials who had been attentive to the public interest under his predecessors. As a result, nearly every dignitary or royal officer was retained in his position, while new posts were created or those already existing duplicated to find places for the supporters of the new reign. Every application put forward by the great electors was granted. Moreover, the Valois household, which was itself of royal proportions, was superimposed on that of the old dynasty; and there was a great distribution of profitable offices. They had a generous king.
A king was also in duty bound to bring his subjects prosperity. Philippe VI hastened to reduce and indeed in some cases to suppress altogether the taxes Philippe IV and Philippe V had imposed on trade, public markets and foreign business, taxes which it was said hindered enterprise and commerce.
And what could make a king more popular than to stop the plaguing by tax-gatherers? The Lombards, who had lent his father so much money and to whom he himself still owed enormous sums, blessed him. It occurred to no one that the fiscal policy of the previous reigns had produced long-term effects and that, if France was rich, if the standard of living was higher than anywhere else in the world, if the people wore good sound cloth and often fur and if there were baths and sweating-rooms even in hamlets, all these things were due to the previous Philippes, who had established order in the realm, the unification of the currency and full employment.
And then a king must also be wise, the wisest man among his people. Philippe began to adopt a sententious tone and, in that fine voice of his, to utter weighty aphorisms in which could be distinguished something of the manner of his old tutor, Archbishop Guillaume de Trye.
‘Action should always be based on reason,’ he would say whenever he was at a loss.
And when he made a mistake, which was often enough, and found himself in the unhappy position of having to countermand what he had ordered the day before, he would declare superbly: ‘Reason lies in developing one’s ideas.’ Or again: ‘It is better to be forearmed than forestalled,’ he would announce pompously, though throughout the twenty-two years of his reign he was to be constantly at the disadvantage of having to face one disagreeable surprise after another.
No monarch ever uttered so many platitudes with so grand an air. When people supposed he was thinking, he was in fact merely pondering a sentence that would seem like thought; his head was as empty as a nut in a bad season.
Nor was it to be forgotten that a king, a true king, must be valiant, chivalrous and gallant. And, indeed, Philippe had no aptitude for anything but arms – not for war, it must be admitted, but for jousts and tournaments. He would have excelled in training young knights at the Court of a minor baron. But, being a sovereign, his house began to look like a castle in the romances of the Round Table, which were much read at the time and had taken firm hold of his imagination. Life was a round of tournaments, festivals, banquets, hunts and entertainments, followed by more tournaments amid a flurry of plumed helms and horses more richly caparisoned than were the women.
Philippe applied himself with great devotion to affairs of State for an hour a day, either on his return, drenched with sweat, from jousting or on emerging from a banquet with a full stomach and a cloudy mind. His chancellor, his treasurer and his innumerable officers made his decisions for him or went to take orders from Robert of Artois. Indeed, Robert governed far more than the Sovereign.
No difficulty arose without Philippe appealing to Robert for advice, and the Count of Artois’ orders were obeyed with confidence, for it was known that any decree of his would be approved by the King.
This was how things stood, when the crowds began to gather towards the end of May for the coronation, at which Archbishop Guillaume