Philip the Fair’s immediate successors, Louis X, le Hutin, the Quarreler (1314-1316), Philip V, the Long (1316-1322), and Charles IV, the Fair (1322-1328), were rulers of small account. They all did some fighting, all inherited their father’s capacity to raise financial trouble for their subjects, and all had serious domestic difficulties. Their wives were unfaithful to them, and the three women were imprisoned or forced to enter the Church. Two brothers, Pierre and Philip Gualtier d’Aulnay, the lovers of Louis’ wife, Marguerite of Burgundy and of Charles’s wife, Blanche, were executed on the Grève. Philip’s wife, Jeanne of Burgundy, was the playful lady who dropped Buridan into the Seine from the Tour de Nesle. After Marguerite had been strangled in her prison Louis le Hutin married Clémence of Hungary. His posthumous son, John I, lived but a few days, and Philip the Long claimed the confirmation of the promise which the Parliament of Paris, sitting in the palace, had made to support him rather than let the throne go to a possible daughter of Louis. This decision established the Salic law as applying to the throne. Philip the Long had no children and was succeeded by his brother, Charles the Fair. Charles was twice married after his repudiation of Blanche, but he left only a daughter, born at the Louvre after his death, and the crown therefore went to his first cousin, Philip of Valois. CHAPTER VIII PARIS OF THE EARLY VALOIS Philip of Valois ruled as Philip VI (1328-1350), thus founding the royal house of Valois. Philip was not allowed to take his throne peacefully, however. There were other claimants, the most formidable being Edward III of England, who demanded the succession through his mother, Isabelle, daughter of Philip the Fair and sister of the late king. Edward’s aspirations brought to pass the Hundred Years’ War whose weary length saw France overrun by foreign enemies and by French brigands, tortured by famine and plague, and her king (John the Good) a prisoner in England. With everything topsy-turvy it becomes hardly a matter of surprise to learn that a French queen mother sold her son’s birthright, that an English prince was crowned king of France in Notre Dame, that the citizens of Paris welcomed the English to help defend them against their own countrymen, and that a maid led men to battle.