← Table of contents
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Chariot" to "Chatelaine", Volume 5, Slice 8

VOLUME V SLICE VIII Chariot to Chatelaine (continued 8)

Reading edition

See J.E. Sars, Norges politiske historia (Christiania, 1899); Yngvar Nielsen, Carl Johan som han virkelig var (Christiania, 1897); Johan Almén, Ätten Bernadotte (Stockholm, 1893); C. Schefer, Bernadotte roi (Paris, 1899); G.R. Lagerhjelm, Napoleon och Carl Johan under Kriget i Tyskland, 1813 (Stockholm, 1891).

(R. N. B.)

CHARLES XV. (1826-1872), king of Sweden and Norway, eldest son of Oscar I., king of Sweden and Norway, and Josephine Beauharnais of Leuchtenberg, was born on the 3rd of May 1826. On the 19th of June 1850 he married Louisa, daughter of Prince Frederick of the Netherlands. He became regent on the 25th of September 1857, and king on the death of his father (8th of July 1859). As crown-prince, Charles’s brusque and downright manners had led many to regard his future accession with some apprehension, yet he proved to be one of the most popular of Scandinavian kings and a constitutional ruler in the best sense of the word. His reign was remarkable for its manifold and far-reaching reforms. Sweden’s existing communal law (1862), ecclesiastical law (1863) and criminal law (1864) were enacted appropriately enough under the direction of a king whose motto was: “Build up the land upon the laws!” Charles XV. also materially assisted De Geer (q.v.) to carry through his memorable reform of the constitution in 1863. Charles was a warm advocate of “Scandinavianism” and the political solidarity of the three northern kingdoms, and his warm friendship for Frederick VII., it is said, led him to give half promises of help to Denmark on the eve of the war of 1864, which, in the circumstances, were perhaps misleading and unjustifiable. In view, however, of the unpreparedness of the Swedish army and the difficulties of the situation, Charles was forced to observe a strict neutrality. He died at Malmö on the 18th of September 1872. Charles XV. was highly gifted in many directions. He attained to some eminence as a painter, and his Digte show him to have been a true poet. He left but one child, a daughter, Louisa Josephina Eugenia, who in 1869 married the crown-prince Frederick of Denmark.

See Cecilia Bååth-Holmberg, Carl XV., som enskild man, konung och konstnär (Stockholm, 1891); Yngvar Nielsen, Det norske og svenske Kongehus fra 1818 (Christiania, 1883).

(R. N. B.)

CHARLES (c. 1319-1364), duke of Brittany, known as Charles of Blois and Charles of Châtillon, was the son of Guy of Châtillon, count of Blois (d. 1342), and of Marguerite of Valois, sister of Philip VI. of France. In 1337 he married Jeanne of Penthièvre (d. 1384), daughter of Guy of Brittany, count of Penthièvre (d. 1331), and thus acquired a right to the succession of the duchy of Brittany. On the death of John III., duke of Brittany, in April 1341, his brother John, count of Montfort-l’Amaury, and his niece Jeanne, wife of Charles of Blois, disputed the succession. Charles of Blois, sustained by Philip VI., captured John of Montfort, who was supported by King Edward III. at Nantes, besieged his wife Jeanne of Flanders at Hennebont, and took Quimper and Guérande (1344). But next year his partisans were defeated at Cadoret, and in June 1347 he was himself wounded and taken prisoner at Roche-Derrien. He was not liberated until 1356, when he continued the war against the young John of Montfort, and perished in the battle of Auray, on the 29th of September 1364. Charles bore a high reputation for piety, and was believed to have performed miracles. The Roman Church has canonized him.

See Siméon Luce, Histoire de Bertrand du Gueselin el de son époque (Paris, 1876).

CHARLES, called The Bold (1433-1477), duke of Burgundy, son of Philip the Good of Burgundy and Isabella of Portugal, was born at Dijon on the 10th of November 1433. In his father’s lifetime he bore the title of count of Charolais. He was brought up under the direction of the seigneur d’Auxy, and early showed great application to study and also to warlike exercises. Although he was on familiar terms with the dauphin (afterwards Louis XI.), when the latter was a refugee at the court of Burgundy, he could not but view with chagrin the repurchase by the king of France of the towns on the Somme, which had been temporarily ceded to Philip the Good by the treaty of Arras; and when his father’s failing health enabled him to take into his hands the reins of government (which Philip abandoned to him completely by an act of the 12th of April 1465), he entered upon his lifelong struggle against Louis XI., and became one of the principal leaders of the League of the Public Weal. His brilliant bravery at the battle of Montlhéry (16th of July 1465), where he was wounded and was left master of the field, neither prevented the king from re-entering Paris nor assured Charles a decisive victory. He succeeded, however, in forcing upon Louis the treaty of Conflans (1466), by which the king restored to him the towns on the Somme, and promised him the hand of his infant daughter Catherine, with Champagne as dowry. In the meanwhile the count of Charolais obtained the surrender of Ponthieu. The revolt of Liége and Dinant intervened to divert his attention from the affairs of France. On the 25th of August 1466 Charles took possession of Dinant, which he pillaged and sacked, and succeeded in treating at the same time with the Liégeois. After the death of Philip the Good (15th June 1467), the Liégeois renewed hostilities, but Charles defeated them at St Trond, and made a victorious entry into Liége, which he dismantled and deprived of some of its privileges.

Alarmed by these early successes of the duke of Burgundy, and anxious to settle various questions relating to the execution of the treaty of Conflans, Louis requested a meeting with Charles and placed himself in his hands at Péronne. In the course of the negotiations the duke was informed of a fresh revolt of the Liégeois secretly fomented by Louis. After deliberating for four days how to deal with his adversary, who had thus maladroitly placed himself at his mercy, Charles decided to respect the parole he had given and to treat with Louis (October 1468), at the same time forcing him to assist in quelling the revolt. The town was carried by assault and the inhabitants were massacred, Louis not having the courage to intervene on behalf of his ancient allies. At the expiry of the one year’s truce which followed the treaty of Péronne, the king accused Charles of treason, cited him to appear before the parlement, and seized some of the towns on the Somme (1471). The duke retaliated by invading France with a large army, taking possession of Nesle and massacring its inhabitants. He failed, however, in an attack on Beauvais, and had to content himself with ravaging the country as far as Rouen, eventually retiring without having attained any useful result.

Other matters, moreover, engaged his attention. Relinquishing, if not the stately magnificence, at least the gay and wasteful profusion which had characterized the court of Burgundy under the preceding duke, he had bent all his efforts towards the development of his military and political power. Since the beginning of his reign he had employed himself in reorganizing his army and the administration of his territories. While retaining the principles of feudal recruiting, he had endeavoured to establish a system of rigid discipline among his troops, which he had strengthened by taking into his pay foreign mercenaries, particularly Englishmen and Italians, and by developing his artillery. Furthermore, he had lost no opportunity of extending his power. In 1469 the archduke of Austria, Sigismund, had sold him the county of Ferrette, and the landgraviate of Alsace and some other towns, reserving to himself the right to repurchase. In 1472-1473 Charles bought the reversion of the duchy of Gelderland from its old duke, Arnold, whom he had supported against the rebellion of his son. Not content with being “the grand duke of the West,” he conceived the project of forming a kingdom of Burgundy or Arles with himself as independent sovereign, and even persuaded the emperor Frederick to assent to crown him king at Trier. The ceremony, however, did not take place owing to the emperor’s precipitate flight by night (September 1473), occasioned by his displeasure at the duke’s attitude. In the following year Charles involved himself in a series of difficulties and struggles which ultimately brought about his downfall. He embroiled himself successively with Sigismund of Austria, to whom he refused to restore his possessions in Alsace for the stipulated sum; with the Swiss, who supported the free towns of Alsace in their revolt against the tyranny of the ducal governor, Peter von Hagenbach (who was condemned and executed by the rebels in May 1474); and finally, with René of Lorraine, with whom he disputed the succession of Lorraine, the possession of which had united the two principal portions of Charles’s territories—Flanders and the duchy and county of Burgundy. All these enemies, incited and supported as they were by Louis, were not long in joining forces against their common adversary. Charles suffered a first rebuff in endeavouring to protect his kinsman, the archbishop of Cologne, against his rebel subjects. He spent ten months (July 1474-June 1475) in besieging the little town of Neuss on the Rhine, but was compelled by the approach of a powerful imperial army to raise the siege. Moreover, the expedition he had persuaded his brother-in-law, Edward IV. of England, to undertake against Louis was stopped by the treaty of Picquigny (29th of August 1475). He was more successful in Lorraine, where he seized Nancy (30th of November 1475). From Nancy he marched against the Swiss, hanging and drowning the garrison of Granson in spite of the capitulation. Some days later, however, he was attacked before Granson by the confederate army and suffered a shamful defeat, being compelled to fly with a handful of attendants, and leaving his artillery and an immense booty in the hands of the allies (February 1476). He succeeded in raising a fresh army of 30,000 men, with which he attacked Morat, but he was again defeated by the Swiss army, assisted by the cavalry of René of Lorraine (22nd of June 1476). On the 6th of October Charles lost Nancy, which was re-entered by René. Making a last effort, Charles formed a new army and arrived in the depth of winter before the walls of Nancy. Having lost many of his troops through the severe cold, it was with only a few thousand men that he met the joint forces of the Lorrainers and the Swiss, who had come to the relief of the town (6th of January 1477). He himself perished in the fight, his mutilated body being discovered some days afterwards.

Charles the Bold has often been regarded as the last representative of the feudal spirit—a man who possessed no other quality than a blind bravery—and accordingly has often been contrasted with his rival Louis XI. as representing modern politics. In reality, he was a prince of wide knowledge and culture, knowing several languages and austere in morals; and although he cannot be acquitted of occasional harshness, he had the secret of winning the hearts of his subjects, who never refused him their support in times of difficulty. He was thrice married—to Catherine (d, 1446), daughter of Charles VII. of France, by whom he had one daughter, Mary, afterwards the wife of the Emperor Maximilian I.; to Isabella (d. 1465), daughter of Charles I., duke of Bourbon; and to Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV. of England, whom he married in 1468.

The original authorities for the life and times of Charles the Bold are the numerous French, Burgundian and Flemish chroniclers of the latter part of the 15th century. Special mention may be made of the Mémoires of Philippe de Comines, and of the Mémoires and other writings of Olivier de la Marche. See also A. Molinier, Les Sources de l’histoire de France, tome iv. (1904), and the compendious bibliography in U. Chevalier’s Répertoire des sources historiques, part iii. (1904). Charles the Bold, by J.F. Kirk (1863-1868), is a good English biography for its date; a more recent life is R. Putnam’s Charles the Bold (1908). For a general sketch of the relations between France and Burgundy at this time see E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, tome iv. (1902).

(R. Po.)

CHARLES, called The Good (le Bon), or The Dane (c. 1084-1127), count of Flanders, only son of St Canute or Knut IV., king of Denmark, by Adela, daughter of Robert the Frisian, count of Flanders, was born about 1084. After the assassination of Canute in 1086, his widow took refuge in Flanders, taking with her her son. Charles was brought up by his mother and grandfather, Robert the Frisian, on whose death he did great services to his uncle, Robert II., and his cousin, Baldwin VII., counts of Flanders. Baldwin died of a wound received in battle in 1119, and, having no issue, left by will the succession to his countship to Charles the Dane. Charles did not secure his heritage without a civil war, but he was speedily victorious and made his position secure by treating his opponents with great clemency. He now devoted himself to promoting the welfare of his subjects, and did his utmost to support the cause of Christianity, both by his bounty and by his example. He well deserved the surname of Le Bon, by which he is known to posterity. He refused the offer of the crown of Jerusalem on the death of Baldwin, and declined to be nominated as a candidate for the imperial crown in succession to the emperor Henry V. He was murdered in the church of St Donat at Bruges on the 2nd of March 1127.

See J. Perneel, Histoire du règne de Charles le Bon, précedé d’un résumé de l’histoire de Flandres (Brussels, 1830).

CHARLES I. (c. 950-c. 992), duke of Lower Lorraine, was a younger son of the Frankish king Louis IV., and consequently a member of the Carolingian family. Unable to obtain the duchy of Burgundy owing to the opposition of his brother, King Lothair, he went to the court of his maternal uncle, the emperor Otto the Great, about 965, and in 977 received from the emperor Otto II. the duchy of Lower Lorraine. His authority in Lorraine was nominal; but he aided Otto in his struggle with Lothair, and on the death of his nephew, Louis V., made an effort to secure the Frankish crown. Hugh Capet, however, was the successful candidate and war broke out. Charles had gained some successes and had captured Reims, when in 991 he was treacherously seized by Adalberon, bishop of Laon, and handed over to Hugh. Imprisoned with his wife and children at Orleans, Charles did not long survive his humiliation. His eldest son Otto, duke of Lower Lorraine, died in 1005.

CHARLES II. (d. 1431), duke of Lorraine, called The Bold, is sometimes referred to as Charles I. A son of Duke John I., he succeeded his father in 1390; but he neglected his duchy and passed his life in warfare. He died on the 25th of January 1431, leaving two daughters, one of whom, Isabella (d. 1453), married René I. of Anjou (1409-1450), king of Naples, who succeeded his father-in-law as duke of Lorraine.

CHARLES III. or II. (1543-1608), called The Great, duke of Lorraine, was a son of Duke Francis I. (d. 1545), and a descendant of René of Anjou. He was only an infant when he became duke, and was brought up at the court of Henry II. of France, marrying Henry’s daughter Claude in 1559. He took part in the wars of religion in France, and was a member of the League; but he was overshadowed by his kinsmen the Guises, although he was a possible candidate for the French crown in 1589. The duke, who was an excellent ruler of Lorraine, died at Nancy on the 14th of May 1608. He had three sons: Henry (d. 1624) and Francis (d. 1632), who became in turn dukes of Lorraine, and Charles (d. 1607), bishop of Metz and Strassburg.

CHARLES IV. or III. (1604-1675), duke of Lorraine, was a son of Duke Francis II., and was born on the 5th of April 1604. He became duke on the abdication of his father in 1624, and obtained the duchy of Bar through his marriage with his cousin Nicole (d. 1657), daughter of Duke Henry. Mixing in the tortuous politics of his time, he was in continual conflict with the crown of France, and spent much of his time in assisting her enemies and in losing and regaining his duchies (see Lorraine). He lived an adventurous life, and in the intervals between his several struggles with France fought for the emperor Ferdinand II. at Nordlingen and elsewhere; talked of succouring Charles I. in England; and after the conclusion of the treaty of Westphalia in 1648 entered the service of Spain. He died on the 18th of September 1675, leaving by his second wife, Beatrix de Cusance (d. 1663), a son, Charles Henry, count of Vaudemont (1642-1723).

CHARLES V. or IV. (1643-1690), duke of Lorraine, nephew of Duke Charles IV., was born on the 3rd of April 1643, and in 1664 received a colonelcy in the emperor’s army. In the same year he fought with distinction at the battle of St Gotthard, in which he captured a standard from the Turks. He was a candidate for the elective crown of Poland in 1668. In 1670 the emperor made him general of horse, and during the following years he was constantly on active service, first against the Turks and subsequently against the French. At Seneff (1674) he was wounded. In the same year he was again a candidate for the Polish crown, but was unsuccessful, John Sobieski, who was to be associated with him in his greatest feat of arms, being elected. In 1675, on the death of Charles IV., he rode with a cavalry corps into the duchy of Lorraine, then occupied by the French, and secured the adhesion of the Lorraine troops to himself; a little after this he succeeded Montecucculi as general of the imperial army on the Rhine, and was made a field marshal. The chief success of his campaign of 1676 was the capture of Philipsburg, after a long and arduous siege. The war continued without decisive result for some time, and the fate of the duchy, which was still occupied by the French, was the subject of endless diplomacy. At the general peace Charles had to accept the hard conditions imposed by Louis XIV., and he never entered into effective possession of his sovereignty. In 1678 he married the widowed queen of Poland, Eleonora Maria of Austria, and for nearly five years they lived quietly at Innsbruck. The Turkish invasion of 1683, the last great effort of the Turks to impose their will on Europe, called Charles into the field again. At the head of a weak imperial army the duke offered the best resistance he could to the advance of the Turks on Vienna. But he had to fall back, contesting every position, and the Turks finally invested Vienna (July 13th, 1683). At this critical moment other powers came to the assistance of Austria, reinforcements poured into Charles’s camp, and John Sobieski, king of Poland, brought 27,000 Poles. Sobieski and Charles had now over 80,000 men, Poles, Austrians and Germans, and on the morning of the 12th of September they moved forward to the attack. By nightfall the Turks were in complete disorder, Vienna was relieved, and the danger was at an end. Soon the victors took the offensive and reconquered part of the kingdom of Hungary. The Germans and Poles went home in the winter, but Charles continued his offensive with the imperialists alone. Ofen (Buda) resisted his efforts in 1684, but in the campaign of 1685 Neuhaüsel was taken by storm, and in 1686 Charles, now reinforced by German auxiliaries, resumed the siege of Ofen. All attempts to relieve the place were repulsed, and Ofen was stormed on the 2nd of September. In the following campaign the Austrians won a decisive victory on the famous battle-ground of Mohacs (August 18th, 1687). In 1689 Charles took the field on the Rhine against the forces of Louis XIV., the enemy of his house. Mainz and Bonn were taken in the first campaign, but Charles in travelling from Vienna to the front died suddenly at Wels on the 18th of April 1690.

His eldest son, Leopold Joseph (1679-1729), at the peace of Ryswick in 1697 obtained the duchy, of which his father had been dispossessed by France, and was the father of Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine, who became the husband of Maria Theresa (q.v.), and of Charles (Karl Alexander), a distinguished Austrian commander in the wars with Frederick the Great. The duchy was ceded by Francis Stephen to Stanislaus Leczynski, the dethroned king of Poland, in 1736, Francis receiving instead the grand-duchy of Tuscany.

CHARLES II. [Charles Louis de Bourbon] (1799-1883), duke of Parma, succeeded his mother, Maria Louisa, duchess of Lucca, as duke of Lucca in 1824. He introduced economy into the administration, increased the schools, and in 1832 as a reaction against the bigotry of the priests and monks with which his mother had surrounded him, he became a Protestant. He at first evinced Liberal tendencies, gave asylum to the Modenese political refugees of 1831, and was indeed suspected of being a Carbonaro. But his profligacy and eccentricities soon made him the laughing-stock of Italy. In 1842 he returned to the Catholic Church and made Thomas Ward, an English groom, his prime minister, a man not without ability and tact. Charles gradually abandoned all his Liberal ideas, and in 1847 declared himself hostile to the reforms introduced by Pius IX. The Lucchesi demanded the constitution of 1805, promised them by the treaty of Vienna, and a national guard, but the duke, in spite of the warnings of Ward, refused all concessions. A few weeks later he retired to Modena, selling his life-interest in the duchy to Tuscany. On the 17th of October Maria Louisa of Austria, duchess of Parma, died, and Charles Louis succeeded to her throne by the terms of the Florence treaty, assuming the style of Charles II. His administration of Parma was characterized by ruinous finance, debts, disorder and increased taxation, and he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Austria. But on the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 there were riots in his capital (19th of March), and he declared his readiness to throw in his lot with Charles Albert, the pope, and Leopold of Tuscany, repudiated the Austrian treaty and promised a constitution. Then he again changed his mind, abdicated in April, and left Parma in the hands of a provisional government, whereupon the people voted for union with Piedmont. After the armistice between Charles Albert and Austria (August 1848) the Austrian general Thurn occupied the duchy, and Charles II. issued an edict from Weistropp annulling the acts of the provisional government. When Piedmont attacked Austria again in 1849, Parma was evacuated, but reoccupied by General d’Aspre in April.

In May 1849 Charles confirmed his abdication, and was succeeded by his son Charles III. (1823-1854), who, protected by Austrian troops, placed Parma under martial law, inflicted heavy penalties on the members of the late provisional government, closed the university, and instituted a regular policy of persecution. A violent ruler, a drunkard and a libertine, he was assassinated on the 26th of March 1854. At his death his widow Maria Louisa, sister of the comte de Chambord, became regent, during the minority of his son Robert. The duchess introduced some sort of order into the administration, seemed inclined to rule more mildly and dismissed some of her husband’s more obnoxious ministers, but the riots of the Mazzinians in July 1854 were repressed with ruthless severity, and the rest of her reign was characterized by political trials, executions and imprisonments, to which the revolutionists replied with assassinations.

Bibliography.—Massei, Storia civile di Lucca, vol. ii. (Lucca, 1878); Anon., Y Borboni di Parma ... del 1847 al 1859 (Parma, 1860); N. Bianchi, Storia della diplomazia europea in Italia (Turin, 1865, &c.); C. Tivaroni, L’Italia sotto il dominio austriaco, ii. 96-101, i. 590-605 (Turin, 1892), and L’Italia degli Italiani, i. 126-143 (Turin, 1895) by the same; S. Lottici and G. Sitti, Bibliografia generale per la storia parmense (Parma, 1904).

CHARLES [Karl Ludwig] (1771-1847), archduke of Austria and duke of Teschen, third son of the emperor Leopold II., was born at Florence (his father being then grand-duke of Tuscany) on the 5th of September 1771. His youth was spent in Tuscany, at Vienna and in the Austrian Netherlands, where he began his career of military service in the war of the French Revolution. He commanded a brigade at Jemappes, and in the campaign of 1793 distinguished himself at the action of Aldenhoven and the battle of Neerwinden. In this year he became Statthalter in Belgium and received the army rank of lieutenant field marshal, which promotion was soon followed by that to Feldzeugmeister. In the remainder of the war in the Low Countries he held high commands, and he was present at Fleurus. In 1795 he served on the Rhine, and in the following year was entrusted with the chief control of all the Austrian forces on that river. His conduct of the operations against Jourdan and Moreau in 1796 marked him out at once as one of the greatest generals in Europe. At first falling back carefully and avoiding a decision, he finally marched away, leaving a mere screen in front of Moreau; falling upon Jourdan he beat him in the battles of Amberg and Würzburg, and drove him over the Rhine with great loss. He then turned upon Moreau’s army, which he defeated and forced out of Germany. For this campaign, one of the most brilliant in modern history, see French Revolutionary Wars. In 1797 he was sent to arrest the victorious march of General Bonaparte in Italy, and he conducted the retreat of the over-matched Austrians with the highest skill. In the campaign of 1799 he was once more opposed to Jourdan, whom he defeated in the battles of Osterach and Stokach, following up his success by invading Switzerland and defeating Masséna in the (first) battle of Zürich, after which he re-entered Germany and drove the French once more over the Rhine. Ill-health, however, forced him to retire to Bohemia, whence he was soon recalled to undertake the task of checking Moreau’s advance on Vienna. The result of the battle of Hohenlinden had, however, foredoomed the attempt, and the archduke had to make the armistice of Steyer. His popularity was now such that the diet of Regensburg, which met in 1802, resolved to erect a statue in his honour and to give him the title of saviour of his country; but Charles refused both distinctions.

In the short and disastrous war of 1805 the archduke Charles commanded what was intended to be the main army, in Italy, but events made Germany the decisive theatre of operations, and the defeats sustained on the Danube neutralized the success obtained by the archduke over Masséna in the desperately fought battle of Caldiero. With the conclusion of peace began his active work of army reorganization, which was first tested on the field in 1809. As generalissimo of the army he had been made field marshal some years before. As president of the Council of War, and supported by the prestige of being the only general who had proved capable of defeating the French, he promptly initiated a far-reaching scheme of reform, which replaced the obsolete methods of the 18th century, the chief characteristics of the new order being the adoption of the “nation in arms” principle and of the French war organization and tactics. The new army was surprised in the process of transition by the war of 1809, in which Charles commanded in chief; yet even so it proved a far more formidable opponent than the old, and, against the now heterogeneous army of which Napoleon disposed (see Napoleonic Campaigns) it succumbed only after a desperate struggle. Its initial successes were neutralized by the reverses of Abensberg, Landshut and Eckmühl; but, after the evacuation of Vienna, the archduke won the great battle of Aspern-Essling (q.v.) and soon afterwards fought the still more desperate battle of Wagram (q.v.), at the close of which the Austrians were defeated but not routed; they had inflicted upon Napoleon a loss of over 50,000 men in the two battles. At the end of the campaign the archduke gave up all his military offices, and spent the rest of his life in retirement, except a short time in 1815, when he was governor of Mainz. In 1822 he succeeded to the duchy of Saxe-Teschen. The archduke Charles married, in 1815, Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg (d. 1829). He had four sons, the eldest of whom, the archduke Albert (q.v.) became one of the most celebrated generals in Europe, and two daughters, the elder of whom became queen of Naples. He died at Vienna on the 30th of April 1847. An equestrian statue was erected to his memory in Vienna, 1860.

The caution which the archduke preached so earnestly in his strategical works, he displayed in practice only when the situation seemed to demand it, though his education certainly prejudiced him in favour of the defensive at all costs. He was at the same time capable of forming and executing the most daring offensive strategy, and his tactical skill in the handling of troops, whether in wide turning movements, as at Würzburg and Zürich, or in masses, as at Aspern and Wagram, was certainly equal to that of any leader of his time, Napoleon only excepted. The campaign of 1796 is considered almost faultless. That he sustained defeat in 1809 was due in part to the great numerical superiority of the French and their allies, and in part to the condition of his newly reorganized troops. His six weeks’ inaction after the victory of Aspern is, however, open to unfavourable criticism. As a military writer, his position in the evolution of the art of war is very important, and his doctrines had naturally the greatest weight. Nevertheless they cannot but be considered as antiquated even in 1806. Caution and the importance of “strategic points” are the chief features of his system. The rigidity of his geographical strategy may be gathered from the prescription that “this principle is never to be departed from.” Again and again he repeats the advice that nothing should be hazarded unless one’s army is completely secure, a rule which he himself neglected with such brilliant results in 1796. “Strategic points,” he says (not the defeat of the enemy’s army), “decide the fate of one’s own country, and must constantly remain the general’s main solicitude”—a maxim which was never more remarkably disproved than in the war of 1809. The editor of the archduke’s work is able to make but a feeble defence against Clausewitz’s reproach that Charles attached more value to ground than to the annihilation of the foe. In his tactical writings the same spirit is conspicuous. His reserve in battle is designed to “cover a retreat.” The baneful influence of these antiquated principles was clearly shown in the maintenance of Königgrätz-Josefstadt in 1866 as a “strategic point,” which was preferred to the defeat of the separated Prussian armies; in the strange plans produced in Vienna for the campaign of 1859, and in the “almost unintelligible” battle of Montebello in the same year. The theory and the practice of the archduke Charles form one of the most curious contrasts in military history. In the one he is unreal, in the other he displayed, along with the greatest skill, a vivid activity which made him for long the most formidable opponent of Napoleon.

His writings were edited by the archduke Albert and his brother the archduke William in the Ausgewahlte Schriften weiland Sr. K. Hoheit Erzh. Carl v. Österreich (1862; reprinted 1893, Vienna and Leipzig), which includes the Grundsatze der Kriegskunst für die Generale (1806), Grundsatze der Strategie erlautert durch die Darstellung des Feldzugs 1796 (1814), Gesch. des Feldzugs von 1799 (1819)—the two latter invaluable contributions to the history of the war, and papers “on the higher art of war,” “on practical training in the field,” &c. See, besides the histories of the period, C. von B(inder)-K(rieglstein), Geist und Stoff im Kriege (Vienna, 1895); Caemmerer, Development of Strategical Science (English transl.), ch. iv.; M. Edler v. Angeli, Erzherzog Carl v. Österr. (Vienna and Leipzig, 1896); Duller, Erzh. Karl v. Österr. (Vienna, 1845); Schneidawind, Karl, Erzherzog v. Österr. und die österr. Armee (Vienna, 1840); Das Buch vom Erzh. Carl (1848); Thielen, Erzh. Karl v. Österr. (1858); Wolf, Erzh. Carl (1860); H. von Zeissberg, Erzh. Karl v. Österr. (Vienna, 1895); M. von Angeli, Erzh. Karl als Feldherr und Organisator (Vienna, 1896).

CHARLES (1525-1574), cardinal of Lorraine, French statesman, was the second son of Claude of Lorraine, duke of Guise, and brother of Francis, duke of Guise. He was archbishop of Reims in 1538, and cardinal in 1547. At first he was called the cardinal of Guise, but in 1550, on the death of his uncle John, cardinal of Lorraine, he in his turn took the style of cardinal of Lorraine. Brilliant, cunning and a master of intrigue, he was, like all the Guises, devoured with ambition and devoid of scruples. He had, said Brantôme, “a soul exceeding smirched,” and, he adds, “by nature he was exceeding craven.” Together with his brother, Duke Francis, the cardinal of Lorraine was all-powerful during the reigns of Henry II. and Francis II.; in 1558 and 1559 he was one of the negotiators of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis; he fought and pitilessly persecuted the reformers, and by his intolerant policy helped to provoke the crisis of the wars of religion. The death of Francis II. deprived him of power, but he remained one of the principal leaders of the Catholic party. In 1561, at the Colloquy of Poissy, he was commissioned to reply to Theodore Beza. In 1562 he went to the council of Trent, where he at first defended the rights of the Gallican Church against the pretensions of the pope; but after the assassination of his brother, he approached the court of Rome, and on his return to France he endeavoured, but without success, to obtain the promulgation of the decrees of the council (1564). In 1567, when the Protestants took up arms, he held for some time the first place in the king’s council, but Catherine de’ Medici soon grew weary of his arrogance, and in 1570 he had to leave the court. He endeavoured to regain favour by negotiating at Rome the dispensation for the marriage of Henry of Navarre with Margaret of Valois (1572). He died on the 26th of December 1574, at the beginning of the reign of Henry III. An orator of talent, he left several harangues or sermons, among them being Oraison prononcée au Colloque de Poissy (Paris, 1562) and Oratio habita in Concil. Trident. (Concil. Trident. Orationes, Louvain, 1567).

A large amount of correspondence is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. See also René de Bouillé, Histoire des ducs de Guise (Paris, 1849); H. Forneron, Les Guises et leur époque (Paris, 1877); Guillemin, Le Cardinal de Lorraine (1847).

CHARLES [Karl Alexander] (1712-1780), prince of Lorraine, was the youngest son of Leopold, duke of Lorraine, and grandson of Charles V., duke of Lorraine (see above), the famous general. He was born at Lunéville on the 12th of December 1712, and educated for a military career. After his elder brother Francis, the duke, had exchanged Lorraine for Tuscany and married Maria Theresa, Charles became an Austrian officer, and he served in the campaigns of 1737 and 1738 against the Turks. At the outbreak of the Silesian wars in 1740 (see Austrian Succession, War of the), the queen made her brother-in-law a field marshal, though he was not yet thirty years old, and in 1742 Charles encountered Frederick the Great for the first time at the battle of Chotusitz (May 17th). The victory of the Prussians on that field was far from decisive, and Charles drew off his forces in good order. His conduct of the successful campaign of 1743 against the French and Bavarians heightened his reputation. He married, in January 1744, Marianne of Austria, sister of Maria Theresa, who made them jointly governors-general of the Austrian Netherlands. Very soon the war broke out afresh, and Charles, at the head of the Austrian army on the Rhine, won great renown by his brilliant crossing of the Rhine. Once more a Lorraine prince at the head of Austrian troops invaded the duchy and drove the French before him, but at this moment Frederick resumed the Silesian war, all available troops were called back to oppose him, and the French maintained their hold on Lorraine. Charles hurried to Bohemia, whence, aided by the advice of the veteran field marshal Traun, he quickly expelled the Prussians. At the close of his victorious campaign he received the news that his wife, to whom he was deeply attached, had died in childbirth on the 16th of December 1744 at Brussels. He took the field again in 1745 in Silesia, but this time without the advice of Traun, and he was twice severely defeated by Frederick, at Hohenfriedberg and at Soor. Subsequently, as commander-in-chief in the Low Countries he received, at Roucoux, a heavy defeat at the hands of Marshal Saxe. His government of the Austrian Netherlands during the peace of 1749-1756 was marked by many reforms, and the prince won the regard of the people by his ceaseless activity on their behalf. After the first reverses of the Seven Years’ War (q.v.), Maria Theresa called Charles again to the supreme command in the field. The campaign of 1757 opened with Frederick’s great victory of Prague, and Prince Charles was shut up with his army in that fortress. In the victory of the relieving army under Daun at Kolin Charles had no part. Nevertheless the battle of Breslau, in which the Prussians suffered a defeat even more serious than that of Kolin, was won by him, and great enthusiasm was displayed in Austria over the victory, which seemed to be the final blow to Frederick. But soon afterwards the king of Prussia routed the French at Rossbach, and, swiftly returning to Silesia, he inflicted on Charles the complete and crushing defeat of Leuthen (December 5, 1757). A mere remnant of the Austrian army reassembled after the pursuit, and Charles was relieved of his command. He received, however, from the hands of the empress the grand cross, of the newly founded order of Maria Theresa. For a year thereafter Prince Charles acted as a military adviser at Vienna, he then returned to Brussels, where, during the remainder of his life, he continued to govern in the same liberal spirit as before. The affection of the people for the prince was displayed during his dangerous illness in 1765, and in 1775 the estates of Brabant erected a statue in his honour at Brussels. He died on the 4th of July 1780 at the castle of Tervoeren, and was buried with his Lorraine ancestors at Nancy.

CHARLES (1270-1325), count of Valois, of Maine, and of Anjou, third son of Philip III., king of France, surnamed the Bold, and of Isabella of Aragon, was born on the 12th of March 1270. By his father’s will he inherited the four lordships of Crépy, La Ferté-Milon, Pierrefonds and Béthisy, which together formed the countship of Valois. In 1284 Martin IV., having excommunicated Pedro III., king of Aragon, offered that kingdom to Charles. King Philip failed in an attempt to place his son on this throne, and died on the return of the expedition. In 1290 Charles married Margaret, daughter of Charles II., king of Naples, and renounced his pretensions to Aragon. In 1294, at the beginning of the hostilities against England, he invaded Guienne and took La Réole and Saint-Sever. During the war Flanders (1300), he took Douai, Béthune and Dam, received the submission of Guy of Dampierre, and aided King Philip IV., the Fair, to gain the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle, on the 18th of August 1304. Asked by Boniface VIII. for his aid against the Ghibellines, he crossed the Alps in June 1301, entered Florence, and helped Charles II., the Lame, king of Sicily, to reconquer Calabria and Apulia from the house of Aragon, but was defeated in Sicily. As after the death of his first wife Charles had married Catherine de Courtenay, a granddaughter of Baldwin II., the last Latin emperor of Constantinople, he tried to assert his rights to that throne. Philip the Fair also wished to get him elected emperor; but Clement V. quashed his candidature in favour of Henry of Luxemburg, afterwards the emperor Henry VII. Under Louis X. Charles headed the party of feudal reaction, and was among those who compassed the ruin of Enguerrand de Marigny. In the reign of Charles IV., the Fair, he fought yet again in Guienne (1324), and died at Perray (Seine-et-Oise) on the 16th of December 1325. His second wife had died in 1307, and in July 1308 he had married a third wife, Mahaut de Châtillon, countess of Saint-Pol. Philip, his eldest son, ascended the French throne in 1328, and from him sprang the royal house of Valois.

See Joseph Petit, Charles de Valois (Paris, 1900).

CHARLES (1421-1461), prince of Viana, sometimes called Charles IV. king of Navarre, was the son of John, afterwards John II., king of Aragon, by his marriage with Blanche, daughter and heiress of Charles III., king of Navarre. Both his grandfather Charles and his mother, who ruled over Navarre from 1425 to 1441, had bequeathed this kingdom to Charles, whose right had also been recognized by the Cortes; but when Blanche died in 1441 her husband John seized the government to the exclusion of his son. The ill-feeling between father and son was increased when in 1447 John took for his second wife Joanna Henriquez, a Castilian princess, who soon bore him a son, afterwards Ferdinand I. king of Spain, and who regarded her stepson as an interloper. When Joanna began to interfere in the internal affairs of Navarre civil war broke out; and in 1452 Charles, although aided by John II., king of Castile, was defeated and taken prisoner. Released upon promising not to take the kingly title until after his father’s death, the prince, again unsuccessful in an appeal to arms, took refuge in Italy with Alphonso V., king of Aragon, Naples and Sicily. In 1458 Alphonso died and John became king of Aragon, while Charles was offered the crowns of Naples and Sicily. He declined these proposals, and having been reconciled with his father returned to Navarre in 1459. Aspiring to marry a Castilian princess, he was then thrown into prison by his father, and the Catalans rose in his favour. This insurrection soon became general and John was obliged to yield. He released his son, and recognized him as perpetual governor of Catalonia, and heir to the kingdom. Soon afterwards, however, on the 23rd of September 1461, the prince died at Barcelona, not without a suspicion that he had been poisoned by his stepmother. Charles was a cultured and amiable prince, fond of music and literature. He translated the Ethics of Aristotle into Spanish, a work first published at Saragossa in 1509, and wrote a chronicle of the kings of Navarre, Crónica de los reyes de Navarra, an edition which, edited by J. Yangues y Miranda, was published at Pampeluna in 1843.

See J. de Moret and F. de Aleson, Anales del reyno de Navarra, tome iv. (Pampeluna, 1866); M.J. Quintana, Vidas de españoles célebres (Paris, 1827); and G. Desdevises du Dézert, Carlos d’Aragon (Paris, 1889).

CHARLES, ELIZABETH (1828-1896), English author, was born at Tavistock on the 2nd of January 1828, the daughter of John Rundle, M.P. Some of her youthful poems won the praise of Tennyson, who read them in manuscript. In 1851 she married Andrew Paton Charles. Her best known book, written to order for an editor who wished for a story about Martin Luther, The Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family, was published in 1862, and was translated into most of the European languages, into Arabic, and into many Indian dialects. Mrs Charles wrote in all some fifty books, the majority of a semi-religious character. She took an active part in the work of various charitable institutions, and among her friends and correspondents were Dean Stanley, Archbishop Tait, Charles Kingsley, Jowett and Pusey. She died at Hampstead on the 28th of March 1896.

CHARLES, JACQUES ALEXANDRE CÉSAR (1746-1823), French mathematician and physicist, was born at Beaugency, Loiret, on the 12th of November 1746. After spending some years as a clerk in the ministry of finance, he turned to scientific pursuits, and attracted considerable attention by his skilful and elaborate demonstrations of physical experiments. He was the first, in 1783, to employ hydrogen for the inflation of balloons (see Aeronautics), and about 1787 he anticipated Gay Lussac’s law of the dilatation of gases with heat, which on that account is sometimes known by his name. In 1785 he was elected to the Academy of Sciences, and subsequently he became professor of physics at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. He died in Paris on the 7th of April 1823. His published papers are chiefly concerned with mathematical topics.

CHARLES, THOMAS (1755-1814), Welsh Nonconformist divine, was born of humble parentage at Longmoor, in the parish of Llanfihangel Abercywyn, near St Clears, Carmarthenshire, on the 14th of October 1755. He was educated for the Anglican ministry at Llanddowror and Carmarthen, and at Jesus College, Oxford (1775-1778). In 1777 he studied theology under the evangelical John Newton at Olney. He was ordained deacon in 1778 on the title of the curacies of Shepton Beauchamp and Sparkford, Somerset; and took priest’s orders in 1780. He afterwards added to his charge at Sparkford, Lovington, South Barrow and North Barrow, and in September 1782 was presented to the perpetual curacy of South Barrow by the Rev. John Hughes, Coln St Denys. But he never left Sparkford, though the contrary has been maintained, until he resigned all his curacies in June 1783, and returned to Wales, marrying (on August 20th) Sarah Jones of Bala, the orphan of a flourishing shopkeeper. He had early fallen under the influence of the great revival movement in Wales, and at the age of seventeen had been “converted” by a sermon of Daniel Rowland’s. This was enough to make him unpopular with many of the Welsh clergy, and being denied the privilege of preaching for nothing at two churches, he helped his old Oxford friend John Mayor, now vicar of Shawbury, Shropshire, from October until January 11th, 1784. On the 25th of January he took charge of Llan yn Mowddwy (14 m. from Bala), but was not allowed to continue there more than three months. Three influential people, among them the rector of Bala, agitated some of the parishioners against him, and persuaded his rector to dismiss him. His preaching, his catechizing of the children after evensong, and his connexion with the Bala Methodists—his wife’s step-father being a Methodist preacher—gave great offence. After a fortnight more at Shawbury, he wrote to John Newton and another clergyman friend in London for advice. The Church of England denied him employment, and the Methodists desired his services. His friends advised him to return to England, but it was too late. By September he had crossed the Rubicon, Henry Newman (his rector at Shepton Beauchamp and Sparkford) accompanying him on a tour in Carnarvonshire. In December, he was preaching at the Bont Uchel Association; so that he joined the Methodists (see Calvinistic Methodists) in 1784.

Before taking this step, he had been wont in his enforced leisure to gather the poor children of Bala into his house for instruction, and so thickly did they come that he had to adjourn with them to the chapel. This was the origin of the Welsh Circulating Schools, which he developed on the lines adopted by Griffith Jones (d. 1761), formerly vicar of Llanddowror. First one man was trained for the work by himself, then he was sent to a district for six months, where, (for £8 a year) he taught gratis the children and young people (in fact, all comers) reading and Christian principles. Writing was added later. The expenses were met by collections made in the Calvinistic Methodist Societies, and as the funds increased masters were multiplied, until in 1786 Charles had seven masters to whom he paid £10 per annum; in 1787, twelve; in 1789, fifteen; in 1794, twenty. By this time the salary had been increased to £12; in 1801 it was £14. He had learnt of Raikes’s Sunday Schools before he left the Establishment, but he rightly considered the system set on foot by himself far superior; the work and object being the same, he gave six days’ tuition for every one given by them, and many people not only objected to working as teachers on Sunday, but thought the children forgot in the six days what they learnt on the one. But Sunday Schools were first adopted by Charles to meet the case of young people in service who could not attend during the week, and even in that form much opposition was shown to them because teaching was thought to be a form of Sabbath breaking. His first Sunday School was in 1787. Wilberforce, Charles Grant, John Thornton and his son Henry, were among the philanthropists who contributed to his funds; in 1798 the Sunday School Society (established 1785) extended its operations to Wales, making him its agent, and Sunday Schools grew rapidly in number and favour. A powerful revival broke out at Bala in the autumn of 1791, and his account of it in letters to correspondents, sent without his knowledge to magazines, kindled a similar fire at Huntly. The scarcity of Welsh bibles was Charles’s greatest difficulty in his work. John Thornton and Thomas Scott helped him to secure supplies from the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge from 1787 to 1789, when the stock became all but exhausted. In 1799 a new edition was brought out by the Society, and he managed to secure 700 copies of the 10,000 issued; the Sunday School Society got 3000 testaments printed, and most of them passed into his hands in 1801.

In 1800, when a frost-bitten thumb gave him great pain and much fear for his life, his friend, Rev. Philip Oliver of Chester, died, leaving him director and one of three trustees over his chapel at Boughton; and this added much to his anxiety. The Welsh causes at Manchester and London, too, gave him much uneasiness, and burdened him with great responsibilities at this juncture. In November 1802 he went to London, and on the 7th of December he sat at a committee meeting of the Religious Tract Society, as a country member, when his friend, Joseph Tarn—a member of the Spa Fields and Religious Tract Society committees—introduced the subject of a regular supply of bibles for Wales. Charles was asked to state his case to the committee, and so forcibly did he impress them, that it was there and then decided to move in the matter of a general dispersion of the bible. When he visited London a year later, his friends were ready to discuss the name of a new Society, and the sole object of which should be to supply bibles. Charles returned to Wales on the 30th of January 1804, and the British and Foreign Bible Society was formally and publicly inaugurated on March the 7th. The first Welsh testament issued by that Society appeared on the 6th of May 1806, the bible on the 7th of May 1807—both being edited by Charles.

Between 1805 and 1811 he issued his Biblical Dictionary in four volumes, which still remains the standard work of its kind in Welsh. Three editions of his Welsh catechism were published for the use of his schools (1789, 1791 and 1794); an English catechism for the use of schools in Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion was drawn up by him in 1797; his shorter catechism in Welsh appeared in 1799, and passed through several editions, in Welsh and English, before 1807, when his Instructor (still the Connexional catechism) appeared. From April 1799 to December 1801 six numbers of a Welsh magazine called Trysorfa Ysprydol (Spiritual Treasury) were edited by Thomas Jones of Mold and himself; in March 1809 the first number of the second volume appeared, and the twelfth and last in November 1813.

The London Hibernian Society asked him to accompany Dr David Bogue, the Rev. Joseph Hughes, and Samuel Mills to Ireland in August 1807, to report on the state of Protestant religion in the country. Their report is still extant, and among the movements initiated as a result of their visit was the Circulating School system. In 1810, owing to the growth of Methodism and the lack of ordained ministers, he led the Connexion in the movement for connexionally ordained ministers, and his influence was the chief factor in the success of that important step. From 1811 to 1814 his energy was mainly devoted to establishing auxiliary Bible Societies. By correspondence he stimulated some friends in Edinburgh to establish charity schools in the Highlands, and the Gaelic School Society (1811) was his idea. His last work was a corrected edition of the Welsh Bible issued in small pica by the Bible Society. As a preacher he was in great request, though possessing but few of the qualities of the popular preacher. All his work received very small remuneration; the family was maintained by the profits of a business managed by Mrs Charles—a keen, active and good woman. He died on the 5th of October 1814. His influence is still felt, and he is rightly claimed as one of the makers of modern Wales.

(D. E. J.)

CHARLES ALBERT [Carlo Alberto] (1798-1849), king of Sardinia (Piedmont), son of Prince Charles of Savoy-Carignano and Princess Albertine of Saxe-Courland, was born on the 2nd of October 1798, a few days before the French occupied Piedmont and forced his cousin King Charles Emmanuel to take refuge in Sardinia. Although Prince and Princess Carignano adhered to the French Republican régime, they soon fell under suspicion and were summoned to Paris. Prince Charles died in 1800, and his widow married a Count de Montléart and for some years led a wandering existence, chiefly in Switzerland, neglecting her son and giving him mere scraps of education, now under a devotee of J.J. Rousseau, now under a Genevan Calvinist. In 1802 King Charles Emmanuel abdicated in favour of his brother Victor Emmanuel I.; the latter’s only son being dead, his brother Charles Felix was heir to the throne, and after him Charles Albert. On the fall of Napoleon in 1814 the Piedmontese court returned to Turin and the king was anxious to secure the succession for Charles Albert, knowing that Austria meditated excluding him from it in favour of an Austrian archduke, but at the same time he regarded him as an objectionable person on account of his revolutionary upbringing. Charles Albert was summoned to Turin, given tutors to instruct him in legitimist principles, and on the 1st of October 1817 married the archduchess Maria Theresa of Tuscany, who, on the 14th of March 1820, gave birth to Victor Emmanuel, afterwards king of Italy.

The Piedmontese government at this time was most reactionary, and had made a clean sweep of all French institutions. But there were strong Italian nationalists and anti-Austrian tendencies among the younger nobles and army officers, and the Carbonari and other revolutionary societies had made much progress.

Their hopes centred in the young Carignano, whose agreeable manners had endeared him to all, and who had many friends among the Liberals and Carbonari. Early in 1820 a revolutionary movement was set on foot, and vague plans of combined risings all over Italy and a war with Austria were talked of. Charles Albert no doubt was aware of this, but he never actually became a Carbonaro, and was surprised and startled when after the outbreak of the Neapolitan revolution of 1820 some of the leading conspirators in the Piedmontese army, including Count Santorre di Santarosa and Count San Marzano, informed him that a military rising was ready and that they counted on his help (2nd March 1821). He induced them to delay the outbreak and informed the king, requesting him, however, not to punish anyone. On the 10th the garrison of Alessandria mutinied, and two days later Turin was in the hands of the insurgents, the people demanding the Spanish constitution. The king at once abdicated and appointed Charles Albert regent. The latter, pressed by the revolutionists and abandoned by his ministers, granted the constitution and sent to inform Charles Felix, who was now king, of the occurrence. Charles Felix, who was then at Modena, repudiated the regent’s acts, accepted Austrian military assistance, with which the rising was easily quelled, and exiled Charles Albert to Florence. The young prince found himself the most unpopular man in Italy, for while the Liberals looked on him as a traitor, to the king and the Conservatives he was a dangerous revolutionist. At the Congress of Verona (1822) the Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, tried to induce Charles Felix to set aside Charles Albert’s rights of succession. But the king was piqued by Austria’s interference, and as both the grand-duke of Tuscany and the duke of Wellington supported him, Charles Albert’s claims were respected. France having decided to intervene in the Spanish revolution on the side of autocracy, Charles Albert asked permission to join the duc d’Angoulême’s expedition. The king granted it and the young prince set out for Spain, where he fought with such gallantry at the storming of the Trocadero (1st of September 1823) that the French soldiers proclaimed him the “first Grenadier of France.” But it was not until he had signed a secret undertaking binding himself, as soon as he ascended the throne, to place himself under the tutelage of a council composed of the higher clergy and the knights of the Annunziata, and to maintain the existing forms of the monarchy (D. Berti, Cesare Alfieri, xi. 77, Rome, 1871), that he was allowed to return to Turin and forgiven.

On the death of Charles Felix (27th of April 1831) Charles Albert succeeded; he inherited a kingdom without an army, with an empty treasury, a chaotic administration and medieval laws. His first task was to set his house in order; he reorganized the finances, created the army, and started Piedmont on a path which if not liberalism was at least progress. “He was,” wrote his reactionary minister, Count della Margherita, “hostile to Austria from the depths of his soul and full of illusions as to the possibility of freeing Italy from dependence on her.... As for the revolutionaries, he detested them but feared them, and was convinced that sooner or later he would be their victim.” In 1833 a conspiracy of the Giovane Italia Society, organized by Mazzini, was discovered, and a number of its members punished with ruthless severity. On the election in 1846 of Pius IX., who appeared to be a Liberal and an Italian patriot, the eyes of all Italy were turned on him as the heaven-born leader who was to rescue the country from the foreigner. This to some extent reconciled the king to the Liberal movement, for it accorded with his religious views. “I confess,” he wrote to the marquis of Villamarina, in 1847, “that a war of national independence which should have for its object the defence of the pope would be the greatest happiness that could befall me.” On the 30th of October he issued a decree granting wide reforms, and when risings broke out in other parts of Italy early in 1848 and further liberties were demanded, he was at last induced to grant the constitution (8th February).

When the news of the Milanese revolt against the Austrians reached Turin (19th of March) public opinion demanded that the Piedmontese should succour their struggling brothers; and after some hesitation the king declared war. But much time had been wasted and many precious opportunities lost. With an army of 60,000 Piedmontese troops and 30,000 men from other parts of Italy the king took the field, and after defeating the Austrians at Pastrengo on the 30th of April, and at Goito on the 30th of May, where he was himself slightly wounded, more time was wasted in useless operations. Radetzky, the Austrian general, having received reinforcements, drove the centre of the extended Italian line back across the Mincio (23rd of July), and in the two days’ fighting at Custozza (24th and 25th of July) the Piedmontese were beaten, forced to retreat, and to ask for an armistice. On re-entering Milan Charles Albert was badly received and reviled as a traitor by the Republicans, and although he declared himself ready to die defending the city the municipality treated with Radetzky for a capitulation; the mob, urged on by the demagogues, made a savage demonstration against him at the Palazzo Greppi, whence he escaped in the night with difficulty and returned to Piedmont with his defeated army. The French Republic offered to intervene in the spring of 1848, but Charles Albert did not desire foreign aid, the more so as in this case it would have had to be paid for by the cession of Nice and Savoy. The revolutionary movement throughout Italy was breaking down, but Charles Albert felt that while he possessed an army he could not abandon the Lombards and Venetians, and determined to stake all on a last chance. On the 12th of March 1849 he denounced the armistice and took the field again with an army of 80,000 men, but gave the chief command to the Polish general Chrzanowski. General Ramorino commanding the Lombard division proved unable to prevent the Austrians from crossing the Ticino (20th of April), and Chrzanowski was completely out-generalled and defeated at La Bicocca near Novara on the 23rd. The Piedmontese fought with great bravery, and the unhappy king sought death in vain. After the battle he asked terms of Radetzky, who demanded the occupation by Austria of a large part of Piedmont and the heir to the throne as a hostage. Thereupon, feeling himself to be the obstacle to better conditions, Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel. That same night he departed alone and made his way to Oporto, where he retired into a monastery and died on the 28th of July 1849.

Charles Albert was not a man of first-rate ability; he was of a hopelessly vacillating character. Devout and mystical to an almost morbid degree, hating revolution and distrusting Liberalism, he was a confirmed pessimist, yet he had many noble qualities: he was brave to the verge of foolhardiness, devoted to his country, and ready to risk his crown to free Italy from the foreigner. To him the people of Italy owe a great debt, for if he failed in his object he at least materialized the idea of the Risorgimento in a practical shape, and the charges which the Republicans and demagogues brought against him were monstrously unjust.

Bibliography.—Besides the general works on modern Italy, see the Marquis Costa de Beauregard’s interesting volumes La Jeunesse du roi Charles Albert (Paris, 1899) and Novare et Oporto (1890), based on the king’s letters and the journal of Sylvain Costa, his faithful equerry, though the author’s views are those of an old-fashioned Savoyard who dislikes the idea of Italian unity; Ernesto Masi’s Il Segreto del Re Carlo Alberto (Bologna, 1891) is a very illuminating essay; Domenico Perrero, Gli Ultimi Reali di Savoia (Turin, 1889); L. Cappelletti, Storia di Carlo Alberto (Rome, 1891); Nicomede Bianchi, Storia della diplomazia europea in Italia (8 vols., Turin, 1865, &c.), a most important work of a general character, and the same author’s Scritti e lettere di Carlo Alberto (Rome, 1879) and his Storia della monarchia piemontese (Turin, 1877); Count S. della Margherita, Memorandum storico-politico (Turin, 1851).

CHARLES AUGUSTUS [Karl August] (1757-1828), grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar, son of Constantine, duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and Anna Amalia of Brunswick, was born on the 3rd of September 1757. His father died when he was only nine months old, and the boy was brought up under the regency and supervision of his mother, a woman of enlightened but masterful temperament. His governor was Count Eustach von Görz, a German nobleman of the old strait-laced school; but a more humane element was introduced into his training when, in 1771, Wieland was appointed his tutor. In 1774 the poet Karl Ludwig von Knebel came to Weimar as tutor to the young Prince Constantine; and in the same year the two princes set out, with Count Görz and Knebel, for Paris. At Frankfort, Knebel introduced Karl August to the young Goethe: the beginning of a momentous friendship. In 1775 Karl August returned to Weimar, and the same year came of age and married Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt.

One of the first acts of the young grand-duke was to summon Goethe to Weimar, and in 1776 he was made a member of the privy council. “People of discernment,” he said, “congratulate me on possessing this man. His intellect, his genius is known. It makes no difference if the world is offended because I have made Dr Goethe a member of my most important collegium without his having passed through the stages of minor official professor and councillor of state.” To the undiscerning, the beneficial effect of this appointment was not at once apparent. With Goethe the “storm and stress” spirit descended upon Weimar, and the stiff traditions of the little court dissolved in a riot of youthful exuberance. The duke was a deep drinker, but also a good sportsman; and the revels of the court were alternated with break-neck rides across country, ending in nights spent round the camp fire under the stars. Karl August, however, had more serious tastes. He was interested in literature, in art, in science; critics, unsuspected of flattery, praised his judgment in painting; biologists found in him an expert in anatomy. Nor did he neglect the government of his little state. His reforms were the outcome of something more than the spirit of the “enlightened despots” of the 18th century; for from the first he had realized that the powers of the prince to play “earthly providence” were strictly limited. His aim, then, was to educate his people to work out their own political and social salvation, the object of education being in his view, as he explained later to the dismay of Metternich and his school, to help men to “independence of judgment.” To this end Herder was summoned to Weimar to reform the educational system; and it is little wonder that, under a patron so enlightened, the university of Jena attained the zenith of its fame, and Weimar became the intellectual centre of Germany.

Meanwhile, in the affairs of Germany and of Europe the character of Karl August gave him an influence out of all proportion to his position as a sovereign prince. He had early faced the problem presented by the decay of the Empire, and began to work for the unity of Germany. The plans of the emperor Joseph II., which threatened to absorb a great part of Germany into the heterogeneous Habsburg monarchy, threw him into the arms of Prussia, and he was the prime mover in the establishment of the league of princes (Furstenbund) in 1785, by which, under the leadership of Frederick the Great, Joseph’s intrigues were frustrated. He was, however, under no illusion as to the power of Austria, and he wisely refused the offer of the Hungarian crown, made to him in 1787 by Prussia at the instance of the Magyar malcontents, with the dry remark that he had no desire to be another “Winter King.” In 1788 Karl August took service in the Prussian army as major-general in active command of a regiment. As such he was present, with Goethe, at the cannonade of Valmy in 1792, and in 1794 at the siege of Mainz and the battles of Pirmasenz (September 14) and Kaiserslautern (October 28-30). After this, dissatisfied with the attitude of the powers, he resigned; but rejoined on the accession of his friend King Frederick William III. to the Prussian throne. The disastrous campaign of Jena (1806) followed; on the 14th of October, the day after the battle, Weimar was sacked; and Karl August, to prevent the confiscation of his territories, was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine. From this time till after the Moscow campaign of 1812 his contingent fought under the French flag in all Napoleon’s wars. In 1813, however, he joined the Grand Alliance, and at the beginning of 1814 took the command of a corps of 30,000 men operating in the Netherlands.

At the congress of Vienna Karl August was present in person, and protested vainly against the narrow policy of the powers in confining their debates to the “rights of the princes” to the exclusion of the “rights of the people.” His services in the war of liberation were rewarded with an extension of territory and the title of grand-duke; but his liberal attitude had already made him suspect, and his subsequent action brought him still further into antagonism to the reactionary powers. He was the first of the German princes to grant a liberal constitution to his state under Article XIII. of the Act of Confederation (May 5, 1816); and his concession of full liberty to the press made Weimar for a while the focus of journalistic agitation against the existing order. Metternich dubbed him contemptuously “der grosse Bursche” for his patronage of the “revolutionary” Burschenschaften; and the celebrated “festival” held at the Wartburg by his permission in 1818, though in effect the mildest of political demonstrations, brought down upon him the wrath of the great powers. Karl August, against his better judgment, was compelled to yield to the remonstrances of Prussia, Austria and Russia; the liberty of the press was again restricted in the grand-duchy, but, thanks to the good understanding between the grand-duke and his people, the régime of the Carlsbad Decrees pressed less heavily upon Weimar than upon other German states.

Karl August died on the 14th of June 1828. Upon his contemporaries of the most various types his personality made a great impression. Karl von Dalberg, the prince-primate, who owed the coadjutorship of Mainz to the duke’s friendship, said that he had never met a prince “with so much understanding, character, frankness and true-heartedness”; the Milanese, when he visited their city, called him the “uomo principe”; and Goethe himself said of him “he had the gift of discriminating intellects and characters and setting each one in his place. He was inspired by the noblest good-will, the purest humanity, and with his whole soul desired only what was best. There was in him something of the divine. He would gladly have wrought the happiness of all mankind. And finally, he was greater than his surroundings,... Everywhere he himself saw and judged, and in all circumstances his surest foundation was in himself.” He left two sons: Charles Frederick (d. 1853), by whom he was succeeded, and Bernhard, duke of Saxe-Weimar (1792-1862), a distinguished soldier, who, after the congress of Vienna, became colonel of a regiment in the service of the king of the Netherlands, distinguished himself as commander of the Dutch troops in the Belgian campaign of 1830, and from 1847 to 1850 held the command of the forces in the Dutch East Indies. Bernhard’s son, William Augustus Edward, known as Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar (1823-1902), entered the British army, served with much distinction in the Crimean War, and became colonel of the 1st Life Guards and a field marshal; in 1851 he contracted a morganatic marriage with Lady Augusta Gordon-Lennox (d. 1904), daughter of the 5th duke of Richmond and Gordon, who in Germany received the title of countess of Dornburg, but was granted the rank of princess in Great Britain by royal decree in 1866. Karl August’s only daughter, Caroline, married Frederick Louis, hereditary grand-duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and was the mother of Helene (1814-1858), wife of Ferdinand, duke of Orleans, eldest son of King Louis Philippe.

Karl August’s correspondence with Goethe was published in 2 vols. at Weimar in 1863. See the biography by von Wegele in the Allgem. deutsche Biographie.

CHARLES EDWARD [Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart] (1720-1788), English prince, called the “Young Pretender” and also the “Young Chevalier,” was born at Rome on December 31st, 1720. He was the grandson of King James II. of England and elder son of James, the “Old Pretender,” by whom (as James III.) he was created at his birth prince of Wales, the title he bore among the English Jacobites during his father’s lifetime. The young prince was educated at his father’s miniature court in Rome, with James Murray, Jacobite earl of Dunbar, for his governor, and under various tutors, amongst whom were the learned Chevalier Ramsay, Sir Thomas Sheridan and the abbé Légoux. He quickly became conversant with the English, French and Italian languages, but all his extant letters written in English appear singularly ill-spelt and illiterate. In 1734 his cousin, the duke of Liria, afterwards duke of Berwick, who was proceeding to join Don Carlos in his struggle for the crown of Naples, passed through Rome. He offered to take Charles on his expedition, and the boy of thirteen, having been appointed general of artillery by Don Carlos, shared with credit the dangers of the successful siege of Gaeta.

The handsome and accomplished youth, whose doings were eagerly reported by the English ambassador at Florence and by the spy, John Walton, at Rome, was now introduced by his father and the pope to the highest Italian society, which he fascinated by the frankness of his manner and the grace and dignity of his bearing. In 1737 James despatched his son on a tour through the chief Italian cities, that his education as a prince and man of the world might be completed. The distinction with which he was received on his journey, the royal honours paid to him in Venice, and the jealous interference of the English ambassador in regard to his reception by the grand-duke of Tuscany, show how great was the respect in which the exiled house was held at this period by foreign Catholic powers, as well as the watchful policy of England in regard to its fortunes. The Old Pretender himself calculated upon foreign aid in his attempts to restore the monarchy of the Stuarts; and the idea of rebellion unassisted by invasion or by support of any kind from abroad was one which it was left for Charles Edward to endeavour to realize. Of all the European nations France was the one on which Jacobite hopes mainly rested, and the warm sympathy which Cardinal Tencin, who had succeeded Fleury as French minister, felt for the Old Pretender resulted in a definite scheme for an invasion of England to be timed simultaneously with a prearranged Scottish rebellion. Charles was secretly despatched to Paris in January 1744. A squadron under Admiral Roquefeuil sailed from the coast of France. Transports containing 7000 troops, to be led by Marshal Saxe, accompanied by the young prince, were in readiness to set sail for England. A severe storm effected, however, a complete disaster without any actual engagement taking place.

The loss in ships of the line, in transports, and in lives was a crushing blow to the hopes of Charles, who remained in France for over a year in a retirement which he keenly felt. He had at Rome already made the acquaintance of Lord Elcho and of John Murray of Broughton; at Paris he had seen many supporters of the Stuart cause; he was aware that in every European court the Jacobites were represented in earnest intrigue; and he had now taken a considerable share in correspondence and other actual work connected with the promotion of his own and his father’s interests. Although dissuaded by all his friends, on the 13th of July 1745 he sailed from Nantes for Scotland on board the small brig “La Doutelle,” which was accompanied by a French man-of-war, the “Elisabeth,” laden with arms and ammunition. The latter fell in with an English man-of-war, the “Lion,” and had to return to France; Charles escaped during the engagement, and at length arrived on the 2nd of August off Erisca, a little island of the Hebrides. Receiving, however, but a cool reception from Macdonald of Boisdale, he set sail again and arrived at the bay of Lochnanuagh on the west coast of Inverness-shire.

The Macdonalds of Clanranald and Kinloch Moidart, along with other chieftains, again attempted to dissuade him from the rashness of an unaided rising, but they yielded at last to the enthusiasm and charm of his manner, and Charles landed on Scottish soil in the company of the “Seven Men of Moidart” who had come with him from France. Everywhere, however, he met with discouragement among the chiefs, whose adherence he wished to secure; but at last, by enlisting the support of Cameron of Lochiel, he gained a footing for a serious rebellion. With secrecy and speed communications were entered into with the known leaders of the Highland clans, and on the 19th of August, in the valley of Glenfinnan, the standard of James III. and VIII. was raised in the midst of a motley but increasing crowd. On the same day Sir John Cope at the head of 1500 men left Edinburgh in search of Charles; but, fearing an attack in the Pass of Corryarrick, he changed his proposed route to Inverness, and Charles thus had the undefended south country before him. In the beginning of September he entered Perth, having gained numerous accessions to his forces on his march. Crossing the Forth unopposed at the Fords of Frew and passing through Stirling and Linlithgow, he arrived within a few miles of the astonished metropolis, and on the 16th of September a body of his skirmishers defeated the dragoons of Colonel Gardiner in what was known as the “Canter of Coltbrig.” His success was still further augmented by his being enabled to enter the city, a few of Cameron’s Highlanders having on the following morning, by a happy ruse, forced their way through the Canon-gate. On the 18th he publicly proclaimed James VIII. of Scotland at the Market Cross and occupied Holyrood.

Cope had by this time brought his disappointed forces by sea to Dunbar. On the 20th Charles met and defeated him at Prestonpans, and returned to prosecute the siege of Edinburgh Castle, which, however, he raised on General Guest’s threatening to lay the city in ruins. In the beginning of November Charles left Edinburgh, never to return. He was at the head of at least 6000 men; but the ranks were being gradually thinned by the desertion of Highlanders, whose traditions had led them to consider war merely as a raid and an immediate return with plunder. Having passed through Kelso, on the 9th of November he laid siege to Carlisle, which capitulated in a week. Manchester received the prince with a warm welcome and with 150 recruits under Francis Towneley. On the 4th of December he had reached Derby and was within ten days’ march of London, where the inhabitants were terror-struck and a commercial panic immediately ensued. Two armies under English leadership were now in the field against him, one under Marshal Wade, whom he had evaded by entering England by the west, and the other under William, duke of Cumberland, who had returned from the continent. London was not to be supposed helpless in such an emergency; Manchester, Glasgow and Dumfries, rid of his presence, had risen against him, and Charles paused. There was division among his advisers and desertion among his men, and on the 6th of December he reluctantly was forced to begin his retreat northward. Closely pursued by Cumberland, he marched by way of Carlisle across the border, and at last stopped to invest Stirling Castle. At Falkirk, on the 17th of January 1746, he defeated General Hawley, who had marched from Edinburgh to intercept his retreat. A fortnight later, however, Charles raised the siege of Stirling, and after a weary though successful march rested his troops at Inverness. Having taken Forts George and Augustus, and after varying success against the supporters of the government in the north, he at last prepared to face the duke of Cumberland, who had passed the early spring at Aberdeen. On the 8th of April the duke marched thence to meet Charles, whose little army, exhausted with a futile night march, half-starving, and broken by desertion, was completely worsted at Culloden on the 16th of April 1746.

This decisive and cruel defeat sealed the fate of Charles Edward and the house of Stuart. Accompanied by the faithful Ned Burke and a few other followers, Charles at last gained the wild western coast. Hunted hither and thither, he wandered on foot or cruised restlessly in open boats among the many barren isles of the Scottish shore, enduring the greatest hardships with marvellous courage and cheerfulness. Charles, upon whose head a reward £30,000 had a year before been set, was thus for over five months relentlessly pursued by the troops and spies of the government. Disguised in female attire and aided by a passport obtained by the devoted Flora Macdonald, he passed through Skye and parted from his gallant conductress at Portree. Towards the end of July he took refuge in the cave of Coiraghoth in the Braes of Glenmoriston, and in August he joined Lochiel and Cluny Macpherson, with whom he remained in hiding until the news was brought that two French ships were in waiting for him at the place of his first arrival in Scotland—Lochnanuagh. He embarked with speed and sailed for France, reaching the little port of Roscoff, near Morlaix, on the 29th of September 1746. He was warmly welcomed by Louis XV., and ere long he was again vigorously intriguing in Paris, and even in Madrid. So far as political assistance was concerned, his efforts proved fruitless, but he became at once the popular hero and idol of the people of Paris. So enraged was he with his brother Henry’s acceptance of a cardinal’s hat in July 1747, that he deliberately broke off communication with his father in Rome (who had approved the step), nor did he ever see him again. The enmity of the British government to Charles Edward made peace with France an impossibility so long as she continued to harbour the young prince. A condition of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, concluded in October 1748, was that every member of the house of Stuart should be expelled the French dominions. Charles had forestalled the proclamation of the treaty by an indignant protest against its injustice, and a declaration that he would not be bound by its provisions. But his indignation and persistent refusal to comply with the request that he should voluntarily leave France had to be met at last with force: he was apprehended, imprisoned for a week at Vincennes, and on the 17th of December conducted to the French border. He lingered at Avignon; but the French, compelled to hard measures by the English, refused to be satisfied; and Pope Benedict XIV., alarmed by the threat of a bombardment of Civita Vecchia, advised the prince to withdraw. Charles quietly disappeared; for years Europe watched for him in vain. It is now established, almost with certainty, that he returned to the neighbourhood of Paris; and it is supposed that his residence was known to the French ministers, who, however, firmly proclaimed their ignorance. In 1750, and again, it is thought, in 1754, he was in London, hatching futile plots and risking his safety for his hopeless cause, and even abjuring the Roman Catholic faith in order to further his political interests.

During the next ten years of his life Charles Edward’s illicit connexion with Miss Clementina Walkinshaw (d. 1802), whom he had first met at Bannockburn House while conducting the siege of Stirling, his imperious fretful temper, his drunken habits and debauched life, could no longer be concealed. He wandered over Europe in disguise, alienating the friends and crushing the hopes of his party; and in 1766, on returning to Rome at the death of his father, he was treated by Pope Clement XIII. with coldness, and his title as heir to the British throne was openly repudiated by all the great Catholic powers. It was probably through the influence of the French court, still intriguing against England, that the marriage between Charles (now self-styled count of Albany) and Princess Louise of Stolberg was arranged in 1772. The union proved childless and unhappy, and in 1780 the countess fled for refuge from her husband’s drunken violence to a convent in Florence, where Charles had been residing since 1774. Later, the countess of Albany (q.v.) threw herself on the protection of her brother-in-law Henry, Cardinal York, at Rome, and the formal separation between the ill-matched pair was finally brought about in 1784, chiefly through the kind offices of King Gustavus III. of Sweden. Charles, lonely, ill, and evidently near death, now summoned to Florence his natural daughter, Charlotte Stuart, the child of Clementina Walkinshaw, born at Liége in October 1753 and hitherto neglected by the prince. Charlotte Stuart, who was declared legitimate and created duchess of Albany, tended her father for the remaining years of his life, during which she contrived to reconcile the two Stuart brothers, so that in 1785 Charles returned to Rome, where he died in the old Palazzo Muti on the 30th of January 1788. He was buried in his brother’s cathedral church at Frascati, but in 1807 his remains were removed to the Grotte Vaticane of St Peter’s. His daughter Charlotte survived her father less than two years, dying unmarried at Bologna in November 1789, at the early age of thirty-six.

See A.C. Ewald, Life and Times of Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender (2 vols., 1875); C.S. Terry, Life of the Young Pretender, and The Rising of 1745; with Bibliography of Jacobite History 1689—1788 (Scott. Hist. fr. Contemp. Writers, iii.) (1900); Earl Stanhope, History of England (1836) and Decline of the Last Stuarts (1854); Bishop R. Forbes, The Lyon in Mourning (1895-1896); Andrew Lang, Pickle, the Spy (1897), and Prince Charles Edward (1900); R. Chambers, History of the Rebellion in Scotland, &c. &c.

(H. M. V.)

CHARLES EMMANUEL I. [Carlo Emanuele] (1562-1630), duke of Savoy, succeeded his father, Emmanuel Philibert, in 1580. He continued the latter’s policy of profiting by the rivalry of France and Spain in order to round off and extend his dominions. His three chief objects were the conquest of Geneva, of Saluzzo and of Monferrato. Saluzzo he succeeded in wresting from France in 1588. He intervened in the French religious wars, and also fought with Bern and other Swiss cantons, and on the murder of Henry III. of France in 1580 he aspired to the French throne on the strength of the claims of his wife Catherine, sister of Henry of Navarre, afterwards King Henry IV. In 1590 he sent an expedition to Provence in the interests of the Catholic League, and followed it himself later, but the peace of 1593, by which Henry of Navarre was recognized as king of France, put an end to his ambitions. In the war between France and Spain Charles sided with the latter, with varying success. Finally, by the peace of Lyons (1601), he gave up all territories beyond the Rhone, but his possession of Saluzzo was confirmed. He now meditated a further enterprise against Geneva; but his attempt to capture the city by treachery and with the help of Spain (the famous escalade) in 1602 failed completely. The next few years were filled with negotiations and intrigues with Spain and France which did not lead to any particular result, but on the death in 1612 of Duke Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, who was lord of Monferrato, Charles Emmanuel made a successful coup de main on that district. This arrayed the Venetians, Tuscany, the Empire and Spain against him, and he was obliged to relinquish his conquest. The Spaniards invaded the duchy from Lombardy, and although the duke was defeated several times he fought bravely, gained some successes, and the terms of the peace of 1618 left him more or less in the status quo ante. We next find Charles Emmanuel aspiring to the imperial crown in 1619, but without success. In 1628 he was in alliance with Spain in the war against France; the French invaded the duchy, which, being abandoned by Spain, was overrun by their armies. The duke fought desperately, but was taken ill at Savigliano and died in 1630. He was succeeded by his son Victor Amedeo I., while his third son Tommaso founded the line of Savoy-Carignano from which the present royal house of Italy is descended. Charles Emmanuel achieved a great reputation as a statesman and warrior, and increased the prestige of Savoy, but he was too shifty and ingenious, and his schemes ended in disaster.

See E. Ricotti, Storia della monarchia piemontese, vols. iii. and iv. (Florence, 1865); T. Raulich, Storia di Carlo Emanuele I. (Milan, 1896-1902); G. Curti, Carlo Emanuele I. secondo; più recenti studii (Milan, 1894).

CHARLES MARTEL1 (c. 688-741), Frankish ruler, was a natural son of Pippin II., mayor of the palace, and Chalpaïda. Charles was baptized by St Rigobert, bishop of Reims. At the death of his father in 714, Pippin’s widow Plectrude claimed the government in Austrasia and Neustria in the name of her grandchildren, and had Charles thrown into prison. But the Neustrians threw off the Austrasian yoke and entered into an offensive alliance with the Frisians and Saxons. In the general anarchy Charles succeeded in escaping, defeated the Neustrians at Amblève, south of Liége, in 716, and at Vincy, near Cambrai, in 717, and forced them to come to terms. In Austrasia he wrested the power from Plectrude, and took the title of mayor of the palace, thus prejudicing the interests of his nephews. According to the Frankish custom he proclaimed a king in Austrasia in the person of the young Clotaire IV., but in reality Charles was the sole master—the entry in the annals for the year 717 being “Carolus regnare coepit.” Once in possession of Austrasia, Charles sought to extend his dominion over Neustria also. In 719 he defeated Ragenfrid, the Neustrian mayor of the palace, at Soissons, and forced him to retreat to Angers. Ragenfrid died in 731, and from that time Charles had no competitor in the western kingdom. He obliged the inhabitants of Burgundy to submit, and disposed of the Burgundian bishoprics and countships to his leudes. In Aquitaine Duke Odo (Eudes) exercised independent authority, but in 719 Charles forced him to recognize the suzerainty of northern France, at least nominally. After the alliance between Charles and Odo on the field of Poitiers, the mayor of the palace left Aquitaine to Odo’s son Hunald, who paid homage to him. Besides establishing a certain unity in Gaul, Charles saved it from a very great peril. In 711 the Arabs had conquered Spain. In 720 they crossed the Pyrenees, seized Narbonensis, a dependency of the kingdom of the Visigoths, and advanced on Gaul. By his able policy Odo succeeded in arresting their progress for some years; but a new vali, Abdur Rahman, a member of an extremely fanatical sect, resumed the attack, reached Poitiers, and advanced on Tours, the holy town of Gaul. In October 732—just 100 years after the death of Mahomet—Charles gained a brilliant victory over Abdur Rahman, who was called back to Africa by the revolts of the Berbers and had to give up the struggle. This was the last of the great Arab invasions of Europe. After his victory Charles took the offensive, and endeavoured to wrest Narbonensis from the Mussulmans. Although he was not successful in his attempt to recover Narbonne (737), he destroyed the fortresses of Agde, Béziers and Maguelonne, and set fire to the amphitheatre at Nîmes. He subdued also the Germanic tribes; annexed Frisia, where Christianity was beginning to make progress; put an end to the duchy of Alemannia; intervened in the internal affairs of the dukes of Bavaria; made expeditions into Saxony; and in 738 compelled some of the Saxon tribes to pay him tribute. He also gave St Boniface a safe conduct for his missions in Thuringia, Alemannia and Bavaria.

During the government of Charles Martel important changes appear to have been made in the internal administration. Under him began the great assemblies of nobles known as the champs de Mars. To attach his leudes Charles had to give them church lands as precarium, and this had a very great influence in the development of the feudal system. It was from the precarium, or ecclesiastical benefice, that the feudal fief originated. Vassalage, too, acquired a greater consistency at this period, and its rules began to crystallize. Under Charles occurred the first attempt at reconciliation between the papacy and the Franks. Pope Gregory III., menaced by the Lombards, invoked the aid of Charles (739), sent him a deputation with the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the chains of St Peter, and offered to break with the emperor and Constantinople, and to give Charles the Roman consulate (ut a partibus imperatoris recederet et Romanum consulatum Carolo sanciret). This proposal, though unsuccessful, was the starting-point of a new papal policy. Since the death of Theuderich IV. in 737 there had been no king of the Franks. In 741 Charles divided the kingdom between his two sons, as though he were himself master of the realm. To the elder, Carloman, he gave Austrasia, Alemannia and Thuringia, with suzerainty over Bavaria; the younger, Pippin, received Neustria, Burgundy and Provence. Shortly after this division of the kingdom Charles died at Quierzy on the 22nd of October 741, and was buried at St Denis. The characters of Charles Martel and his grandson Charlemagne offer many striking points of resemblance. Both were men of courage and activity, and the two men are often confused in the chansons de geste.

See T. Breysig, Jahrbücher d. fränk. Reichs, 714—741; die Zeit Karl Martells (Leipzig, 1869); A.A. Beugnot, “Sur la spoliation des biens du clergé attribuée à Charles Martel,” in the Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscr. et Belles-Lettres, vol. xix. (Paris, 1853); Ulysse Chevalier, Bio-bibliographie (2nd ed., Paris, 1904).

(C. Pf.)

1 Or “The Hammer.”

CHARLESTON, a city and the county-seat of Coles county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the E. part of the state, about 45 m. W. of Terre Haute, Indiana. Pop. (1900) 5488; (1910) 5884. It is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Toledo, St Louis & Western railways, and by interurban electric lines. It is the seat of the Eastern Illinois state normal school (opened in 1899). The city is situated in an important broom-corn raising district, and has broom factories, a tile factory and planing mills. The water-works are owned and operated by the municipality. Charleston was settled about 1835, was incorporated in 1839, and was reincorporated in 1865. One of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was held here in 1858.

Explore with AITake your curiosity a little further.

Reading settings