CHARLES VII, King of France, known as the Victorious. Son of the preceding and of Isabella of Bavaria, b. in Paris on 2 Feb. 1403, d. at Melun-sur-Yèvre on 22 July 1461.
In 1417 he assumed the regency of the kingdom on behalf of his father and in 1422 succeeded him, while the English occupied almost all of France north of the Loire and in the south held the western part of Guyenne. The Duke of Burgundy was allied with the Duke of Bedford, who ruled France on behalf of King Henry VI of England, and Charles found himself in extremely difficult circumstances. But the Estates General and provincial assemblies provided him with the most urgent financial means, while the city of Orléans stubbornly resisted the invader. Joan of Arc, overcoming the hostility and incomprehension of the court and even of the king himself, succeeded in having him crowned at Reims; but when the Maid fell into English hands, Charles did nothing to save her. A series of fortunate events came to his aid: the Duke of Burgundy reconciled himself with him through the Treaty of Arras of 1435, Paris surrendered to the Constable de Richemont, and the English, weary and themselves on the brink of civil war, signed the truce of 1444.
Relations with the Church at the close of the Council of Constance were regulated in 1418 by a concordat that granted special privileges to France. When the Council opened at Basel in 1431, the French clergy gathered at Bourges in February 1432 sided with the Council, despite its dissolution by Eugenius IV; and at a second assembly it issued a "Pragmatic Sanction" which the king signed on 7 July 1438, reaffirming the principle of the superiority of the Council over the Pope, regulating relations with the Pope, and safeguarding the "commendable customs of the Church of France." At a third assembly in Bourges in June 1447, before the sad schism stirred up by Felix V was concluded, King Charles, in agreement with envoys of the German princes, the King of England, Savoy, and the Fathers of Basel, demanded that a new council be convened in a city of France. But these and other negotiations came to nothing; instead, the spirit of opposition continued in much of the French clergy against the prerogatives of the Holy See.
Between 1445 and 1448 Charles reorganized the state, laid the foundations of a regular army, and permanently restored the finances. In 1449 war with England recommenced. Normandy was reconquered within a year, and after three years the struggle, which had lasted more than a century, ended victoriously for France. Only Calais remained in English hands.
The triumph over every aristocratic opposition, the swift suppression of the rebellion known as the Praguerie, the campaigns in Switzerland and Lorraine, the alliances with German princes, and the rebirth of the country’s economic prosperity all reaffirmed under Charles the royal authority and the prestige of France.
Luigi Michelini Tocci