Charles V of France - Legacy

Legacy

Charles' reputation was of great significance for posterity, especially as his conception of rulership was one which courtiers wished his successors could follow. Christine de Pisan's biography, commissioned by Philip the Bold in 1404, is a source of most of the intimate details of the king's life of which we are aware, but also provides a moral example for his successors. It draws heavily on the work of Nicole Oresme (who translated Aristotle's moral works into French) and Giles of Rome. Philipe de Mezieres in his allegorical Songe du Viel Pelerin attempts to persuade the dauphin to follow the example of his wise father, notably in piety, though also to pursue reforming zeal in all policy considerations.

Of great importance to Charles V's cultural program was his vast library, housed in his expanded Louvre, and described in great detail by the 19th century French historian Leopold Delisle. Containing over 1,200 volumes it was symbolic of the authority and magnificence of the royal person, but also of his concern with government for the common good. Charles was concerned to possess copies of works in French, in order that his councellors had access to them. Perhaps the most significant works commissioned for the library were those of Nicole Oresme, who translated Aristotle's Politics, Ethics and Economics into eloquent French for the first time (an earlier attempt had been made at the Politics, but the manuscript is now lost). If the Politics and Economics served as a manual for government, then the Ethics advised the king on how to be a good man.

Other important works commissioned for the royal library were the anonymous legal treatise the Songe du Vergier, greatly inspired by the debates of Philip IV's jurists with Boniface VIII, the translations of Raol de Presles, which included St. Augustine's City of God, and the production of the Grandes Chroniques de France edited in 1377 to emphasise the vassalage of Edward III.

Charles' kingship placed great emphasis on both royal ceremony and scientific political theory, and to contemporaries and posterity his lifestyle at once embodied the reflective life advised by Aristotle and the model of French kingship derived from St Louis, Charlemagne, and Clovis which he had illustrated in his Coronation Book of 1364, now in the British Library.

Charles V was also a builder king, and he created or rebuilt several significant buildings in the late 14th century style including the Bastille, the Château du Louvre, Château de Vincennes, and Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which were widely copied by the nobility of the day.

While he was in many ways a typical medieval king, Charles V has been praised by historians for his pragmatism, which led to the recovery of the territories lost at Bretigny.

His successes, however, proved ephemeral. Charles's brothers, who dominated the regency council that ruled in the king's name until 1388, quarrelled amongst themselves and divided the government. Charles VI, meanwhile, preferred tournaments to the duties of kingship, and his descent into madness in 1392 put his uncles back in power. By 1419, the country was divided between Armagnac and Burgundian factions and Henry V was conquering the northern part of France. The hard-won victories of Charles V had been lost through the venality of his successors.