Charles VII of France ended his life the way he had begun it, in weakness and humiliation, but the two decades between were among the most dramatic in French history. When he was born, he was the eleventh child of a mad king, so far from the throne that no one expected anything of him. By the time he died, he had driven the English from his kingdom and earned the name Charles the Victorious. Yet his final days were spent starving to death in his own bed, betrayed by his son, his body consumed by infection, his mind shattered.
The man who saved France could not save himself. His father, Charles VI, was remembered as Charles the Mad, a king so afflicted by delusion that he once believed he was made of glass and might shatter at any touch. His reign was catastrophic. England’s Henry V carved through northern France, and rival factions tore the kingdom apart from within.
By the time the young Charles became the Dauphin, the heir to the throne, he was not inheriting a kingdom so much as a corpse. Each of his older brothers had died before him, leaving the forgotten eleventh child as the last hope of the Valois line. The most dangerous of his enemies was John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, who stormed Paris and forced the Dauphin to flee. Charles set up his own court at Bourges, a teenager playing at kingship while his father sat useless on the throne and the English ravaged the countryside.
He had to act. He arranged a meeting with John the Fearless on a bridge to negotiate a truce, and the terms were humiliating. The Dauphin of France, heir by divine right, was forced to bargain with a duke. But Charles agreed, and another meeting was scheduled at Montereau.
John the Fearless came with confidence and a small escort, certain he had the young prince under his control. He was wrong. Charles brought armed men, and when they saw the Duke’s meager party, they attacked. John the Fearless was slaughtered on the bridge, and France erupted in fury.
His son, Philip the Good, swore vengeance, and the Burgundian alliance with England grew stronger than ever. Charles was not yet king. His father still lived, and his mind was deteriorating. Then came the ultimate betrayal.
In a desperate attempt to pacify Henry V, Charles VI signed the Treaty of Troyes, disinheriting his own son and naming the English king heir to the French throne. Charles VII was stripped of everything by the man who should have protected him. He fled south across the Loire River to Bourges, under the protection of Yolande of Aragon, one of the most powerful women in Europe and the mother of his betrothed, Marie of Anjou. From the outside, Charles looked like a fool.
He called himself King of France while his father still lived and the English controlled half the kingdom. His enemies mockingly called him the King of Bourges, a ruler trapped in a provincial town while his realm burned. Then two deaths changed everything. Henry V died suddenly in 1422, and Charles VI followed weeks later.
Instead of facing one of the most capable rulers in Europe, Charles VII only had to face an infant, Henry VI. It should have been his moment, but he could not press his advantage. He could not retake Paris. He could not drive the English out.
Years passed, and the Dauphin who had once seemed cunning began to look defeated. He planned to flee to Spain and abandon France entirely. What saved him was a teenage girl from a backwater village. Joan of Arc walked up to the local garrison commander, demanded an escort, and claimed that saints and angels had given her a mission from God to save France and crown Charles.
To him, she was just another lunatic claiming divine visions. He devised a test. If she was truly sent by God, she would recognize him on sight. He hid among his courtiers, dressed as one of them.
When Joan arrived, she walked straight past the nobles and knelt before him, crying, “God give you a happy life, sweet king. ” She told him things, he later claimed, that no one could have known except through God. He gave her command of his armies. In a matter of months, Joan led the French to victory after victory, driving the English back for the first time in years.
In 1429, Charles was officially crowned King of France. Joan was captured not long after, handed over to the English, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake. She gets the credit for his triumph, and she deserves much of it, but she would not have succeeded without Yolande of Aragon financing the campaigns with her own gold. Marrying Marie of Anjou was the best decision Charles ever made, and he repaid her with fourteen children and endless humiliation.
By his forties, he had taken a mistress nearly twenty years his junior. Agnes Sorel began as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie and rose to become the most powerful woman in France. She shocked the court with her daringly low-cut gowns, and she bore the king three more children. Even more bizarrely, one of those children, a girl named Charlotte, became a favorite of Queen Marie, who apparently chose to look the other way.
The real trouble was his eldest son, Louis. The Dauphin demanded power, and Charles, who had bled for his crown, refused to give him any. Louis despised his father and his father’s mistress, and he worked tirelessly to turn the nobles against the king. After the birth of his final son, Charles banished Louis to southern France, hoping to teach him a lesson.
He never saw his son again. In 1450, Agnes Sorel, pregnant with her fourth child, traveled across France in the middle of winter to join Charles on campaign. She grew horribly sick, delivered her child, and died soon after, along with the infant. The death was suspiciously sudden.
In 2005, forensic scientist Philippe Charlier examined her remains and suggested mercury poisoning as a possible cause. Agnes had many enemies at court, and Louis, known for his intrigues, despised her more than anyone. Many have speculated that he had a hand in her death. Charles mourned her for almost no time at all.
He quickly took up with her sixteen-year-old cousin, Antoinette de Maignelais, who became the second official royal mistress. To keep her close, Charles married her off to his first gentleman of the bedchamber. She seemed harmless, a bright-eyed teenager with no political weight, but she was in the Dauphin’s pocket. She secretly spied for Louis, feeding him information on everything Charles did.
By 1458, Charles the Victorious was falling apart. A mysterious sore appeared on his leg, followed by a terrible fever. He lingered for two agonizing years, praying for a reconciliation with his son that never came. As the infection spread, his mind broke completely.
He raved that he was surrounded by traitors loyal to Louis. The infection reached his jaw and formed a gruesome abscess that swelled until he could not swallow food or water. For the final days of his life, he starved to death, crying out for his son. The Dauphin waited in the north, cold and patient, until he heard his father was dead before making his move.
Charles VII had risen from nothing, the forgotten eleventh child of a mad king, to end a century-long conflict and reclaim his kingdom. None of it saved him in the end. He died abandoned, starving, and fully aware that his own son had betrayed him.
The Victorious King of France could not even swallow the food that might have kept him alive.