over to his eldest son Charles, who governed them with the consent of the new king Charles VI. Charles died on the 1st of January 1387, and many stories are current regarding the manner of his death. Froissart relates that he was burned to death through his bedclothes catching fire; Secousse says that he died in peace with many signs of contrition; another story says he died of leprosy; and a popular legend tells how he expired by a divine judgment through the burning of the clothes steeped in sulphur and spirits in which he had been wrapped as a cure for a loathsome disease caused by his debauchery. He had three sons and four daughters, and was succeeded by his eldest son Charles; one of his daughters, Jeanne, became the wife of Henry IV. of England.
See Jean Froissart, Chroniques, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869–1897); D. F. Secousse, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Charles II, roi de Navarre (Paris, 1755–1768); E. Meyer, Charles II, roi de Navarre et la Normandie au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1898); F. T. Perrens, Étienne Marcel (Paris, 1874); R. Delachenal, Premières negotiations de Charles le Mauvais avec les Anglais (Paris, 1900); and E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, tome iv. (Paris, 1902).
CHARLES III. (1361–1425), called The Noble, king of Navarre and count of Evreux, was the eldest son of Charles II. the Bad, king of Navarre, by his marriage with Jeanne, daughter of John II., king of France, and was married in 1375 to Leonora (d. 1415), daughter of Henry II., king of Castile. Having passed much of his early life in France, he became king of Navarre on the death of Charles II. in January 1387, and his reign was a period of peace and order, thus contrasting sharply with the long and calamitous reign of his father. In 1393 he regained Cherbourg, which had been handed over by Charles II. to Richard II. of England, and in 1403 he came to an arrangement with the representatives of Charles VI. of France concerning the extensive lands which he claimed in that country. Cherbourg was given to the French king; certain exchanges of land were made; and in the following year Charles III. surrendered the county of Evreux, and was created duke of Nemours and made a peer of France. After this his only interference in the internal affairs of France was when he sought to make peace between the rival factions in that country. Charles sought to improve the condition of Navarre by making canals and rendering the rivers navigable, and in other ways. He died at Olite on the 8th of September 1425 and was buried at Pampeluna. After the death of his two sons in 1402 the king decreed that his kingdom should pass to his daughter Blanche (d. 1441), who took for her second husband John, afterwards John II., king of Aragon; and the cortes of Navarre swore to recognize Charles (q.v.), prince of Viana, her son by this marriage, as king after his mother’s death.
CHARLES (Karl Eitel Zephyrin Ludwig; in Rum. Carol), king of Rumania (1839– ), second son of Prince Karl Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, was born on the 20th of April 1839. He was educated at Dresden (1850–1856), and passed through his university course at Bonn. Entering the Prussian army in 1857, he won considerable distinction in the Danish war of 1864, and received instruction in strategy from General von Moltke. He afterwards travelled in France, Italy, Spain and Algeria. He was a captain in the 2nd regiment of Prussian Dragoon Guards when he was elected hospodar or prince of Rumania on the 20th of April 1866, after the compulsory abdication of Prince Alexander John Cuza. Regarded at first with distrust by Turkey, Russia and Austria, he succeeded in gaining general recognition in six months; but he had to contend for ten years with fierce party struggles between the Conservatives and the Liberals.
During this period, however, Charles displayed great tact in his dealings with both parties, and kept his country in the path of administrative and economic reform, organizing the army, developing the railways, and establishing commercial relations with foreign powers. The sympathy of Rumania with France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and the consequent interruption of certain commercial undertakings, led to a hostile movement against Prince Charles, which, being fostered by Russia, made him resolve to abdicate; and it was with difficulty that he was persuaded to remain. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 he joined the Russians before Plevna (q.v.), and being placed in command of the combined Russian and Rumanian forces, forced Osman Pasha to surrender. As a consequence of the prince’s vigorous action the independence of Rumania, which had been proclaimed in May 1877, was confirmed by various treaties in 1878, and recognized by Great Britain, France and Germany in 1880. On the 26th of March 1881 he was proclaimed king of Rumania, and, with his consort, was crowned on the 22nd of May following. From that time he pursued a successful career in home and foreign policy, and greatly improved the financial and military position of his country; while his appreciation of the fine arts was shown by his formation of an important collection of paintings of all schools in his palaces at Sinaïa and Bucharest. For a detailed account of his reign, see Rumania. On the 1st of November 1869 he married Princess Elizabeth (q.v.), a daughter of Prince Hermann of Wied, widely known under her literary name of “Carmen Sylva.” As the only child of the marriage, a daughter, died in 1874, the succession was finally settled upon the king’s nephew, Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who was created prince of Rumania on the 18th of March 1889, and married, on the 10th of January 1893, Princess Marie, daughter of Alfred, duke of Saxe-Coburg, their children being Prince Carol (b. 1893) and Princess Elizabeth (b. 1894).
The official life of King Charles, mainly his own composition, Aus dem Leben Konig Karls von Rumänien (Stuttgart, 1894–1900, 4 vols.), deals mainly with political history. See for an account of his domestic life, M. Kremnitz, König Karl von Rumänien. Ein Lebensbild (Breslau, 1903).
CHARLES II. (1661–1700), king of Spain, known among Spanish kings as “The Desired” and “The Bewitched,” was the son of Philip IV. by his second marriage with Maria, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand III., his niece. He was born on the 11th of November 1661, and was the only surviving son of his father’s two marriages—a child of old age and disease, in whom the constant intermarriages of the Habsburgs had developed the family type to deformity. His birth was greeted with joy by the Spaniards, who feared the dispute as to the succession which must have ensued if Philip IV. left no male issue. The boy was so feeble that till the age of five or six he was fed only from the breast of a nurse. For years afterwards it was not thought safe to allow him to walk. That he might not be overtaxed he was left entirely uneducated, and his indolence was indulged to such an extent that he was not even expected to be clean. When his brother, the younger Don John of Austria, a natural son of Philip IV., obtained power by exiling the queen mother from court he insisted that at least the king’s hair should be combed. Charles made the malicious remark that nothing was safe from Don John—not even vermin. The king was then fifteen, and, according to Spanish law, of age. But he never became a man in body or mind. The personages who ruled in his name arranged a marriage for him with Maria Louisa of Orleans. The French princess, a lively young woman of no sense, died in the stifling atmosphere of the Spanish court, and from the attendance of Spanish doctors. Again his advisers arranged a marriage with Maria Ana of Neuburg. The Bavarian wife stood the strain and survived him. Both marriages were merely political—the first a victory for the French, and the second for the Austrian party. France and Austria were alike preparing for the day when the Spanish succession would have to be fought for. The king was a mere puppet in the hands of each alternately. By natural instinct he hated the French, but there was no room in his nearly imbecile mind for more than childish superstition, insane pride of birth, and an interest in court etiquette. The only touch of manhood was a taste for shooting which he occasionally indulged in the preserves of the Escorial. In his later days he suffered much pain, and was driven wild by the conflict between his wish to transmit his inheritance to “the illustrious house of Austria,” his own kin, and the belief instilled into him by the partisans of the French claimant that only the power of Louis XIV. could avert the dismemberment of the empire. A silly fanatic made the discovery that the king was bewitched, and his confessor Froilan Diaz supported the
