(1289–1316). King of France. Later known as le Hutin, the Quarrelsome, Louis was the eldest son of Philip IV the Fair and Jeanne of Champagne and Navarre. Affianced to Jeanne of Burgundy and Artois before 1300, Louis was married to Marguerite of Burgundy, a granddaughter of Louis IX, on September 23, 1305. At his mother’s death in 1305, he became count of Champagne and king of Navarre. During Philip’s reign, Louis was dominated by his father, and his stature was compromised when the adultery scandal of 1314, shortly before he ascended the throne, resulted in his wife’s imprisonment. Louis’s desire to secure annulment of his marriage and replace Marguerite with a suitable wife led him to press for the election of a pope to nullify his marriage. Simultaneously, he began wooing Clemence of Hungary. Marguerite’s death in April 1315 was suspiciously fortuitous, and Louis married Clemence on July 31, 1315.
Perhaps because of his marital problems, Louis did not begin using the great seal of France until April 1315, and he was not crowned until August 3, four days after his marriage to Clemence.
Like his personal problems, the political difficulties that Louis inherited from his father dominated his brief reign. Confronted by alliances of subjects discontented by the monarchy’s financial policies and infringement of traditional rights, Louis issued numerous charters and dispatched reforming officials in an attempt to satisfy the allies’ demands. Hostility toward his father’s unpopular ministers, especially Enguerran de Marigny, was galvanized by Louis’s uncle Charles of Valois and led to Marigny’s execution in April 1315. Conflict with Flanders continued; the French army of 1315 came to be known as “the muddy host” because of its ignominious retreat in the face of ruinous storms.
When Louis died on June 5, 1316, Clemence was pregnant. But before dying the king declared the legitimacy of the daughter, Jeanne, whom Marguerite had borne him in 1312. The succession thus remained unclear, since there was no legal bar to Jeanne’s accession. Clemence’s son, John I, lived for less than a week, and the throne passed to Louis’s brother Philip.
