, which had been conferred free,
but were now put up to auction; duties were imposed on exported
merchandise and on goods brought into Paris; the practice of exacting
heavy fines was encouraged by making the salaries of the magistrates
dependent on them; and on the pretext of a crusade to free Armenia from
the Turks, Charles obtained from the pope a tithe levied on the clergy,
the proceeds of which he kept for his own use; he also confiscated the
property of the Lombard bankers who had been invited to France by his
father at a time of financial crisis. The history of the assemblies
summoned by Charles IV. is obscure, but in 1326, on the outbreak of war
with England, an assembly of prelates and barons met at Meaux.
Commissioners were afterwards despatched to the provinces to state the
position of affairs and to receive complaints. The king justified his
failure to summon the estates on the ground of the expense incurred by
provincial deputies. The external politics of his reign were not marked
by any striking events. He maintained excellent relations with Pope John
XXII., who made overtures to him, indirectly, offering his support in
case of his candidature for the imperial crown. Charles tried to form a
party in Italy in support of the pope against the emperor Louis IV. of
Bavaria, but failed. A treaty with the English which secured the
district of Agenais for France was followed by a feudal war in Guienne.
Isabella, Charles's sister and the wife of Edward II., was sent to
France to negotiate, and with her brother's help arranged the final
conspiracy against her husband. Charles's first wife was Blanche,
daughter of Otto IV., count of Burgundy, and of Matilda (Mahaut),
countess of Artois, to whom he was married in 1307. In May 1314, by
order of King Philip IV., she was arrested and imprisoned in the
Chateau-Gaillard with her sister-in-law Marguerite, daughter of Robert
II., duke of Burgundy, and wife of Louis Hutin, on the charge of
adultery with two gentlemen of the royal household, Philippe and Gautier
d'Aunai. Jeanne, sister of Marguerite and wife of Philip the Tall, was
also arrested for not having denounced the culprits, and imprisoned at
Dourdan. The two knights were put to the torture and executed, and their
goods confiscated. It is impossible to say how far the charges were
true. Tradition has involved and obscured the story, which is the origin
of the legend of the _tour de Nesle_ made famous by the drama of A.