1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Philip V., king of France

PHILIP V. (c. 1294–1322), “the Tall,” king of France, second son of Philip the Fair and Jeanne of Navarre, received the county of Poitiers as an appanage, and was affianced when a year old to Jeanne, daughter and heiress of Otto IV., count of Burgundy. The marriage took place in 1307 when he was thirteen years of age. When his elder brother, Louis X., died, on the 5th of July 1316, leaving his second wife, Clemence of Hungary, with child, Philip was appointed regent for eighteen years by the parliament of Paris, even in the event of a male heir being born. Clemence’s son, born on the 15th of November, lived only four days, and Philip immediately proclaimed himself king, though several of the great barons declared that the rights of Jeanne, daughter of Louis X. by his first wife, Margaret of Burgundy, ought to be examined before anything else was done. The coronation at Reims, on the 9th of January 1317, took place with the gates of the city closed for fear of a surprise. The states-general of the 2nd of February 1317, consisting of the nobles, prelates, and the burgesses of Paris, approved the coronation of Philip, swore to obey him, and declared that women did not succeed to the Crown of France. The university of Paris approved this declaration, but its members did not take the oath. The Salic law was not involved, and it was later that the lawyers of the 14th century tried to connect this principle to an article of the Salic law, which accords inheritance in land (i.e. property) to males. In the Frankish law the article refers to private property, not to public law. The death of Philip’s son Louis, in 1317, disarmed the opposition of Charles, count of La Marche, who now hoped to succeed to the Crown himself. Odo or Eudes IV., duke of Burgundy, was married to Jeanne, Philip’s daughter, and received the county of Burgundy as her dower. The barons all did homage except Edward II. of England, and Philip’s position was secured. The War with Flanders, which had begun under Philip IV. the Fair, was brought to an end on the 2nd of June 1320. The revolt of the Pastoureaux who assembled at Paris in 1320 to go on a crusade was crushed by the seneschal of Carcassonne, whither they marched. One of the special objects of their hatred, the Jews, were also mulcted heavily by Philip, who extorted 150,000 livres from those of Paris alone. He died at Longchamp on the night of the 2nd of January 1322.

Philip was a lover of poetry, surrounded himself with Provençal poets and even wrote in Provençal himself, but he was also one of the most hard-working kings of the house of Capet. The insecurity of his position made him seek the support of national assemblies and of provincial estates. His reign in some ways resembled that of Edward I. of England. He published a series of ordinances organizing the royal household and affecting the financial administration, the “parlement” and the royal forests. He abolished all garrisons in the towns except those on the frontier and provided for public order by allowing the inhabitants of his towns to arm themselves under the command of captains. He tried hard to procure a unification of coinage and weights and measures, but failed owing to the opposition of the estates, who were afraid of the new taxation necessary to meet the loss involved in raising the standard of the coinage, and who held to their local measures and currency partly from conservatism, partly as a relic of local liberty. Philip as a reformer was in many ways before his time, but his people failed to understand him, and he died under the reproach of extortion.

See P. Lehugeur, Histoire de Philippe le Long (Paris, 1897); E Lavisse, Histoire de France (Tome III, 2); and sources indicated in A. Molinier, Répertoire des sources de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1903).