Charles II (, , , 10 October 1332 – 1 January 1387), known as the Bad, was King of Navarre beginning in 1349, as well as Count of Évreux beginning in 1343, holding both titles until his death in 1387.
Besides the Kingdom of Navarre nestled in the Pyrenees, Charles had extensive lands in Normandy, inherited from his father, Count Philip of Évreux, and his mother, Queen Joan II of Navarre, who had received them as compensation for resigning her claims to France, Champagne, and Brie in 1328. Thus, in Northern France, he possessed Évreux, Mortain, parts of Vexin, and a portion of Cotentin. Charles was a major player at a critical juncture in the Hundred Years' War between France and England, repeatedly switching sides in order to further his own agenda. He was accidentally burned alive in 1387.
Life Early life Charles was born in Évreux, the son of Philip III and Joan II of Navarre. His father was first cousin to King Philip VI of France, while his mother, Joan, was the only daughter of Louis X of France. Charles was 'born of the fleur-de-lys on both sides', as he liked to point out, but he succeeded to a shrunken inheritance as far as his French lands were concerned. He was raised in France during childhood and up to the moment he was declared king at 17, so he probably had no command of the Romance language of Navarre at the moment of his coronation.
In October 1349, Charles' mother died. In order to take his coronation oath and be anointed, he visited his kingdom in summer 1350. For the first time, the oath was taken in a language other than the customary Latin or Occitan, i.e. Navarro-Aragonese. Apart from short visits paid the first 12 years of his reign, Charles spent his time almost entirely in France; he regarded Navarre principally as a source of manpower with which to advance his designs on the throne of France. He hoped for a long time for recognition of his claim to the crown of France (as the heir-general of Philip IV through his mother, and a Capetian through his father). However, he was unable to wrest the throne from his Valois cousins, who were senior to him by agnatic primogeniture.
Murder of Charles de la Cerda and relations with John II (1351–1356) Charles II served as Royal Lieutenant in Languedoc in 1351 and commanded the army which captured Port-Sainte-Marie on the Garonne in 1352. The same year he married Joan of Valois, the daughter of King John II of France. He soon became jealous of the Constable of France, Charles de La Cerda, who was to be a beneficiary of the fiefdom of Angoulême. Charles of Navarre felt he was entitled to these territories as they had belonged to his mother, the Queen of Navarre, but they had been taken from her by the French kings for a paltry sum in compensation.
After publicly quarrelling with Charles de la Cerda in Paris at Christmas 1353, Charles arranged the assassination of the Constable, which took place at the village of l'Aigle on 8 January 1354, with his brother Philip, Count of Longueville, leading the murderers. Charles made no secret of his role in the murder, and within a few days was intriguing with the English for military support against his father-in-law King John II, whose favourite the Constable had been. John was preparing to attack his son-in-law's territories, but Charles' overtures of alliance to King Edward III of England led John to instead make peace with Charles with the Treaty of Mantes, enacted on 22 February 1354, by which Charles enlarged his possessions and was outwardly reconciled with John. The English, who had been preparing to invade France for a joint campaign with Charles against the French, felt they had been double-crossed: not for the last time, Charles had used the threat of an English alliance to wrest concessions out of the French king.
Relations between Charles and John once more deteriorated; in late 1354, John invaded Charles's territories in Normandy, while Charles intrigued with the Duke of Lancaster, serving as emissary for Edward III, at fruitless peace negotiations between England and France held in the winter of 1354–55 at Avignon. Once again, Charles changed sides: the threat of a renewed English invasion forced John to make a new agreement of reconciliation with him, which was ultimately sealed by the Treaty of Valognes on 10 September 1355.
This agreement, too, did not last. Charles befriended and was thought to be trying to influence the Dauphin—the future Charles V—and was apparently involved in a botched coup d'état in December 1355, whose purpose appears to have been to replace John with the Dauphin. John amended matters by making his son Duke of Normandy, but Charles of Navarre continued to advise the Dauphin how to govern that province.
There were also continued rumours of his plots against the king, and on 5 April 1356 John II and a group of supporters burst unannounced into the Dauphin's castle at Rouen, arrested Charles of Navarre and imprisoned him. Four of his principal supporters—two of whom had been among de la Cerda's assassins—were beheaded, and their bodies suspended from chains. Charles was taken to Paris, and once there he was moved from prison to prison for greater security.
Versus the Dauphin (1356–1358) After John was captured by the English following his defeat at the Battle of Poitiers, Charles remained in prison. However, many of his partisans were active in the Estates General, which endeavoured to govern and reform France in the power vacuum created by the imprisonment of the king, while much of the country degenerated into anarchy. They continually pressed the Dauphin to release him. Meanwhile his brother Philip of Navarre threw in his lot with the invading English army of the Duke of Lancaster and made war on the Dauphin's forces throughout Normandy. Eventually, on 9 November 1357, Charles was sprung from his prison in the castle of Arleux by a band of 30 men from Amiens led by Jean de Picquigny. Greeted as a hero when he entered Amiens, he was invited to Paris by the Estates General. He entered Paris with a large retinue and was 'received like a newly-crowned monarch'.
He addressed the populace on 30 November, listing his grievances against those who had imprisoned him. Étienne Marcel led a 'demand for justice for the King of Navarre' which the Dauphin was unable to resist. Charles demanded an indemnity for all damage done to his territories while he had been imprisoned, free pardon for all his crimes and those of his supporters, and honourable burial for his associates executed by John II at Rouen. He also demanded the Dauphin's own Duchy of Normandy and the County of Champagne, which would have made him the effective ruler of northern France.
The Dauphin was virtually powerless, but he and Charles were still in negotiations when news reached them that Edward and John were reaching a peace agreement. Knowing this could only be to his disadvantage, Charles had all the prisons in Paris opened to create anarchy and left Paris to build up his strength in Normandy. In his absence the Dauphin tried to assemble a military force of his own. Charles meanwhile gave his executed followers a solemn state funeral in Rouen Cathedral on 10 January 1358 and effectively declared civil war, leading a combined Anglo-Navarrese force against the Dauphin's garrisons.
Revolution in Paris and the Jacquerie (1358)
Meanwhile Paris was in the throes of revolution. On 22 February the Dauphin's chief military officers, the marshals Jean de Conflans and Robert de Clermont were murdered before his eyes by a mob led by Etienne Marcel, who made the Dauphin a virtual prisoner and invited Charles of Navarre to return to the city, which he did on 26 February with a large armed retinue. The Dauphin was forced to agree to many of Charles's territorial demands and to promise to finance for him a standing army of 1,000 men for his personal use. However illness prevented Charles from escorting the Dauphin to meetings demanded by the nobility at Senlis and Provins, and the Dauphin was thus able to escape his Parisian and Navarrese guardians and open a campaign from the east against Charles and against revolutionary Paris.
Etienne Marcel implored Charles to intercede with the Dauphin but he achieved nothing and the land around Paris began to be plundered both by Charles's forces and by the Dauphin's. In the last days of May the peasant rebellion of the Jacquerie erupted to the north of Paris as a spontaneous expression of hatred for the nobility that had brought France so low. Etienne Marcel publicly declared Parisian support for the Jacquerie. Unable to get help from the Dauphin, the knights of northern France appealed to Charles of Navarre to lead them against the peasants.
Although he was allied with the Parisians, Charles was no lover of the peasantry and felt Marcel had made a fatal mistake. He could not resist the chance to appear as a leader of the French aristocracy and led the suppression of the Jacquerie at the Battle of Mello, 10 June 1358 and the subsequent massacres of rebels. He then returned to Paris and made an open bid for power urging the populace to elect him as 'Captain of Paris'.
This move lost Charles the support of many of the nobles who had supported him against the Jacquerie, and they began to abandon him for the Dauphin while he recruited soldiers—mainly English mercenaries—for the 'defence' of Paris, though his men, picketed outside the city, raided and plundered far and wide. Realizing the Dauphin's forces were much stronger than his, Charles opened negotiations with the Dauphin, who made him substantial offers of cash and land if he could induce the Parisians to surrender. They, however, distrusted this deal between princes and refused the terms outright; Charles agreed to fight on as their captain but demanded that his troops be billeted in the city.
Before long there were anti-English riots in the city and Charles, with Etienne Marcel, was forced by the mob to lead them against the marauding garrisons to the north and west of the city—against his own men. He led them (no doubt deliberately) into an English ambush in the woods near the bridge of Saint-Cloud and about 600 Parisians were killed.
Capitulation (1359–60)