(1) Isabella of France was never supposed to become the first Queen Regnant of France. After the crown had passed through three of her maternal uncles - Francis II, Charles IX and Henri III - the closest male line relative to the Valois-Angouleme was Henri, King of Navarre, tenth cousin to the last King and a protestant. The likelihood that the Valois-Angouleme male line would become extinct had been anticipated - though the assassination that had removed Henri III had been unexpected - and a Pragmatic Sanction in 1585 stated that male preference primogeniture would be adopted. By this declaration, the French succession fell to Henri III's niece, Archduchess Isabella of Austria. The decision to hand France over to the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire was not a popular one, but it was one that Emperor Rudolf II and Isabella's father, Phillip II, King of Spain, fully endorsed.
In 1589, Isabella was crowned as Queen of France at Reims Cathedral. She was unmarried, but the support of Emperor Rudolf and the Holy Roman Empire to hold her throne was conditional on her marriage to Archduke Albert, the Emperor's brother - both were brothers of Anna of Austria, the Queen's late step-mother. The Habsburg Band had been formed from the Iberian Peninsula across France to the eastern-most holdings of the Empire. And the rest of Europe did not like this one iota.
The English Succession had long been unclear - but even Elizabeth could see that the personal union of England and Scotland that she, her father and their ministers had long wanted to avoid, would be of benefit when facing the Habsburg Band. With Isabella's succession, Elizabeth formally acknowledged her cousin, James VI of Scotland as legitimate heir to England, investing him as Prince of Wales to further emphasise her belief in his succession.
Isabella and Albert produced six children from 1590 to 1602, the latter born when she was thirty-six - all girls (for the first eighteen months of her reign, her heirs under the Pragmatic Sanction were her sister, Catherine, Duchess of Savoy, and Catherine's three children - Victor, Emmanuel and Margaret). Therefore the Dauphinate of Viennois lay vacant and Henri of Navarre, who continued to claim the throne of France began to style himself as King of Navarre and Dauphin of Viennois. But surrounded by Habsburgs, there was little that Henri and the Navarese could do to enforce the claim itself.
As a wedding gift to his daughter, the King of Spain had ceded the Spanish Netherlands to France. France found itself preoccupied with the United Provinces until an uneasy peace was agreed in 1612 which also required that France display some religious tolerance after the mass protestant persecution of the Religious Wars of Isabella's uncles reigns.
By 1633, Isabella was 67, had given birth to six surviving daughters (and a number of other children who did not survive infancy) and seen those children age and yield grandchildren for her. After it's somewhat rocky start, Habsburg France seemed stable for the moment, but if either Spain or the Holy Roman Empire fell out with the other, or France fell out with either, its position would become more fraught.
Isabella was succeeded by her eldest daughter, Jeanne.
[2] Princess Jeanne was the oldest daughter of Queen Isabella of France and her husband, Archduke Albert of Austria. Habsburg on both sides, Jeanne was *famously* not born with the Habsburg chin, contrary to all of her sisters. The physical difference to her family soon grew to become one based also in personality as the harsh and rigid education her mother inflicted on her made the young Dauphine of Viennois quickly grew to hate the rest of her family. Jeanne soon grew to be a bull-headed, stubborn and defiant young woman, who was keen on contradicting everything her mother seemed to put forward for her. This, in turn, made her deeply popular with the french people, whom hated both King Albert and King Elizabeth for their foreign origins, and saw in young Jeanne "Frenchness".
They were not wrong. Historians have come to claim that the reason a revolt against Isabella did not happen is because the French nobility stacked behind her daughter and heir, and mother and daughter formed two different courts, with Jeanne soon heading out to the Loire, where she spent time in the Summer and to Viennois in the winter. In a fit to unite the french people behind her and as a declaration of independence against her mother, Isabella would famously marry Louis de Soissons, a member of the House of Bourbon. When her first child was born, Jeanne styled him as "De Soissons", taking the name of her husband for herself. While French historians have classified her as a member of the House of Habsburg, Jeanne never did identify herself as an Habsburg after her marriage. She and her husband, Louis, would go on to have six children.
The death of her mother was joyously celebrated, both by Jeanne (privatelly) and by the vast majority of the french people, whom never took a liking to their Spanish Queen. Jeanne's start to life as Queen took a vastly different turn from her mother's, whom had kept France mostly internally focused and served as a pin between the more influential Habsburg realms of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Despite not breaking off immediatelly from her alliance with her Habsburg cousins, Jeanne rapidly took to treking a different path from her mother. The first of her choices was to return her father to Vienna, where he would be made ambassador to the Imperial court in what was effectivelly exile from France. Her younger sisters, however, Jeanne quickly married to various Italian and German princes, forming commercial and military alliances in much of central-western Europe and restoring french influence abroad.
Jeanne, was, however, a true Habsburg in her obcession with the lands of the New World. Perhaps the only thing Jeanne had kept from her Spanish tutors in her youth were their stories of the New World and how it had altered the destiny of the Spanish realms. Thus, is it to no-one's surprise that Jeanne is considered the matron of the French navy and the founder of the French colonial Empire. The founding of the colonies of Acadia, Canada and Louisiane (named after King-Consort Louis) happened during her reign, due to the patronage of many navigators and explorers by the Queen in Paris. An edict was put forth allowing privileges to Catholics whom immigrated to the new world, such as parcels of lands and freedom from serfdom, while protestants were famously given freedom of religion overseas. Thus, thousands of Frenchmen, mainly of Breton, Norman, Gascon and Flemish origin would emigrate to the new world in massive waves during these times, with the Acadian cities of Port-Royal in Gaspé (Otl Halifax, Nova Scotia) and Montreine (OTL Moncton, New Brunswick), the Canadian cities of Québec, Montreal and Brule (Otl Ottawa and Gatineau, on the border between OTL Ontario and Quebec). These cities became the main urban centers of northern New France and the main sources of authority in the rapidly expanding French colonial settlements there. In Louisiane, which was located in the Gulf of Mexico, Nouvelle Calais (Otl New Orleans, Louisiana) and La Roche (OTL Little Rock, Arkansas) quickly became the main centers of French control over the Missisipi. By the end of Jeanne's reign, french explorers were trying to find a connection alongside the Ohio basin to the Missisipi, and would discover the "Illinois territory" just before her death.
Jeanne died in 1678, finishing a vast program of internal reform meant to tackle the power of both the clergy and the nobility, renovate the French financial system and break much of the power of the old parliaments. She was widely celebrated as a Queen by her people. She was suceeded by ___________.
(3) Isabella de Soissons, only surviving child of Louis, Duke of Soissons, Crown Prince of France and his wife, Louisa Christina of Savoy. Her fathers birth and her grandmother's succession to the throne made it clear that whilst France still held the territory of Viennois, the title of Dauphin, still claimed by the Bourbons in Navarre, was sullied by their claim and despite her grandmother's vague attempt to style herself as Dauphine, France would not use it. Her parents were second cousins - Isabella I and Catherine Micaela, Duchess of Savoy had been sisters - but this catered to his grandmother's anti-pro-Habsburg policies (not anti-Habsburg - just not pro-Habsburg). But as much as Jeanne had tried to fight it, the Habsburg support from the Empire and Spain was still fundamental in maintaining France's male preference primogeniture, despite the build-up in colonial assets and her naval forces to rival the British.
Her father was shot when Isabella II was only ten and she grew up, shuffled between her grandmother's court in Paris, her mother's court in Vienne and her maternal uncle's court in Turin. In 1678 when she became Queen after the death of her 88 year old grandmother, Isabella II was clearly more influenced by the Savoyard Court than either of the French ones. She continued the pro-colonial policies of her grandmother, invested heavily in French ports and related infrastructure including roads that connected France and Savoy. She created a French standing army and constructed a number of coastal fortifications both on the Channel and the Mediterranean.
She did not however embrace her uncles persecution of Waldensians, and continued the French policy of religious tolerance and encouragement of emigration of protestants to the colonies.
Isabella II had married her cousin, Francis Hyacinth, Duke of Aosta (her uncle, Charles Emmanuel II's, second son) and the pair had six children. In 1713 she died at the age of fifty seven (born 1656) after reigning for thirty five years, an autopsy revealed that she died of gall bladder occlusion and liver failure - and would be succeeded by her daughter, Isabella.
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Queen Isabella III in Her Prime
[4] Isabella III was the fourth child of Queen Isabella II of France and Duke Francis Hyacinth of Aosta having been born in 1683. Isabella was for most of her life not ever expected to ascend to the throne. However some members of the court of Isabella II who believed that the line of female monarchs was not just coincidence and little happenstances but a sign from God himself that he wanted a female dominant line for the French Monarchy. To back up their reasoning two of Isabella’s three older brothers had died in childhood the first being Francis, who had been a stillborn and the second being Philippe who had died of smallpox at the age of nine. Many however dismissed these instances as what they were; tragic happenstance; and argued that Isabella’s third elder brother, Henri, who was still living and had made it to his twenties and would succeed his mother as King of France. This belief did not last long as eventually Henri succumbed to paranoia and grief and was found dead in his bedroom having drunken a lethal dose of cyanide. Many grieved the death of the prince but some took it as the now so called “Isabellaian Curse” taking another victim to make way for another female ruler. Some still however clung to the old ways and wished for Louis, the new heir apparent, to succeed his mother as King of France however he considered himself not fit to rule (combined with the paranoia of the deaths of so many brothers) and would renounce his titles to the French Throne and would announce that he would succeed his father as Duke of Aosta.
With the path now clear to the throne Isabella began to prepare herself for her reign taking the classes that any French Prince would take. She would end up being a fast learner impressing her teachers and tutors with her knowledge of geography, politics, and civil discord. With much preparation for the throne many began to search for a suitable husband to help aid in her studies. That would come in Louis of Navarre, grandson King Louis III of Navarre who was only a year older than Princess Isabella and was considered to be a good match for her. Louis’s first wife; Marie Adélaïde of Savoy; had died of measles the year earlier and he was looking for a new wife. Even though he had the acceptance of Queen Isabella II her daughter didn’t fancy the young Duke and begged her mother to reconsider the betrothal but her mind was made up and the decision was finalized when the two were married in August of 1707. Though the wedding was a joyous event the marriage was anything but with Isabella initially ignoring the advances of her husband and other than their wedding night the two did not sleep in the same bed yet the same room for the first year and a half of their marriage and it was only when her mother demanded that she have a child did she concede to her husband’s demands. After half a year of trial and error it was announced that the heir to the french throne was with child and nine months later she would give birth to a healthy daughter and would give birth to another less than two years later. Though the marriage was fruitful it was not considered a happy one and Isabella’s spouse would die after contracting measles less than five years after their marriage. While the search began for a new husband was ongoing tragedy would strike Isabella as her mother would die the following year in 1713 and she would be sent back to Paris to be made Queen of France.
Isabella would travel to Paris as quickly as possible so that she could be made Queen. After arriving she would be greeted by the lesser nobles and would be taken to the Palace of Versailles where she would be coronated in a modest but eventful fashion. Now as Queen the royal court would pressure the new monarch to find a new husband to become King-Consort but the Queen would take her time with this decision and would focus on other matters such internal improvements and improving relations with fellow monarchs. Eventually however Isabella would find a new husband on her own accord when she would attend part of the Treaties of Stockholm in 1719 after the conclusion of the Great Northern War while visiting for a royal marriage. After a break in the discussion of treaties Isabella would meet with several of the Monarchs present for the treaty one of which would be George II of Britain who also was looking for a new wife after the death of his wife to disease. The two would end up getting to know each other and would end up exchanging letters when they would go back to their countries. Eventually arrangement for a royal marriage would be finalized and the two would be married in 1721. However due to their ages the two wouldn’t have any children but it didn’t matter since both had children from their previous marriages. Isabella would spend her reign improving standard living for those in her domain and would push for an increase of women’s rights such as the choice to choose who to marry and not being forced by their peers.
Isabella would reign until her death in 1744 where she would be succeeded by Marie-Louise.
Marie-Louise at the beginning of her reign in 1744.
[5] Marie-Louise was born the second daughter of Isabella III of France on August 9th, 1712, named in honor of the Virgin Mary and her grandfather the King of Navarre. For much of her youth the expectation was that either her mother would bear a son and end the 'Reign of the Women' or that her elder sister the Princess Isabella-Jeanne would reign over the Kingdom of France.
As time passed her mother the Queen failed to bear a male heir from her unhappy marriage and the court expectation of Princess Isabella-Jeanne's reign grew, until the Crown-Princess contracted smallpox and died at age twelve, leaving the ten-year-old Princess Marie-Louise as the heir to the throne.
It was quickly discovered that the Princess's education had been severely lacking, her tutors having played favorites and focused almost all their efforts on her elder sister. The young Marie-Louise could read and write in French and do basic mathematics, but little else that was expected of an heir. Isabella III sacked the whole lot and hired new tutors with instructions to ensure that her daughter was 'the most learned woman in all of Europe'.
By the Princess Marie-Louise's 16th Birthday celebration in 1728 she was well versed in three languages and had a solid understanding of political theory, music, art, history, and the sciences and would continue to expand her knowledge, and her private library, for the rest of her life.
Discussions about the Princesses future husband were intense, the Habsburgs had few men left as their family dwindled away, while the Bourbon's in Navarre were too closely related even for a papal dispensation, and Marie-Louise's mother was not fond of Navarre due to her first marriage. A candidate was found in Gian Gastone de Medici, the second son of Cosimo III of Tuscany, and the pair were married in a lavish ceremony on April 7th, 1730. This marriage would prove fruitful in the form of four children, three daughters and one son, but also complicated due to Gian Gastone's elder brother Ferdinando having predeceased him years prior. But Ferdinando did leave a son named Cosimo behind who became the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1723.
Much to the shock of the Medici family however Cosimo IV would die seven years later at age thirteen from a ruptured appendix, making Marie Louise's husband the Grand Duke of Tuscany and her the Grand Duchess.
The couple left the French court for Florence where they found the Grand Duchy in a dire state, the coffers were empty, the army was a mere 3000 men, and the city was full of starving people, on top of this Gian Gastone's health began to fail within months of arriving.
With these challenges at hand, the new Grand Duke made his wife his Regent during the periods where he could not rule, and Marie-Louise set to work at restoring Florence and the Tuscany to glory. While her husband busied himself with treatments for his ailments (and indulging his newfound passion for young men), Marie-Louise as Regent purged both the government and the clergy of its worst corrupt elements, lifted the bans of Cosimo III on learning 'new ideas' in the schools of Tuscany and secured a grant to expand the University of Pisa.
As Regent of Tuscany, Marie-Louise also pursuit an aggressive trade policy, which to some borderline piracy, especially along the North African coast against the weakening Ottoman Empire and the Babary States.
Not even the death of her husband in 1737 could disrupt her power in Tuscany, she simply ruled in the name of her son, Grand Duke Ferdinando III.
This was seen as promising to the people of France, especially when Isabella III died in 1744, making Marie-Louise the Queen of France and her son the first male heir in decades.
Marie-Louise's return to France was a grand celebration followed by an opulent coronation to showcase her power. As the new Queen she was faced with a major European crisis when the House of Habsburg's male line was whittled down to just two men, King Charles IV of Spain, and Emperor Albert Joseph I of the Holy Roman Empire, both of whom were sickly men and neither had produced living legitimate issue.
For the Spanish Crown, the ailing Charles IV accepted his sister Catalina of Spain as heir, but for the Holy Roman Empire there was no clear successor to the Habsburg lands, much less who would be elected Holy Roman Empire. while Albert Joseph attempted to push for a 'Pragmatic Succession' to allow his Aunt Arch-Duchess Maria Caroline to inherit the Austrian lands and the title of Holy Roman Emperor to be given to her son, the young Duke of Saxony John Adolph III, the Duke of Saxony was the first Catholic ruler of Saxony in nearly two centuries and his own lands were gripped with unrest, and many in Europe desired the carving up of the Habsburg's holdings.
Marie-Louise became the first European Monarch to agree to the Pragmatic Succession, but she squeezed many conditions out of Albert Joseph, such as formally handing over the Duchy of Lorraine and the Prince-Bishopric of Liege, which was encircled by the 'French Netherlands' but part of the HRE. She also forced the Emperor to agree to end the HRE's new colonial projects in the New World, ensuring that France's only real challenger there was Spain and Britain.
The Pragmatic Succession was put to the test in 1745 when Emperor Albert Joseph I died and the Electors were unable to choose a successor. This saw the War of the Austrian Succession (1745 - 1748) break out. It was the last of the 'cabinet wars' in which armies tried to avoid pitch battles while negotiations took place in the courts of the Kings of Europe. But some major battles did take place, such as the Battle of Meissen in which the join Franco-Austrian forces defeated the Prussian led collation, but tasted bitter defeat at the Battle of Prague, but this battle was considered a crowning glory of Prussia's military history.
The end of the war saw a vastly changed Europe in which Prussia was granted full independence from the HRE proper, while Saxony gained a new Protestant Duke in the form of the Prussian King's third son, while the new Emperor John Adolph I now lived in Vienna. However the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary were now independent, having been granted new kings by the Peace of Pilsen from minor German houses, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany expanded its Italian lands and the Duchy of Savoy became part of France.
This was came with a cost, for the young Grand Duke of Tuscany, the son of Marie-Louise and heir to France was injured during the war and lost his right leg. His health never fully recovered and Ferdinando III of Tuscany died two years later, leaving only three illegitimate children by his favorite mistress and ending the hope of a male successor.
The death of her son hurt Marie-Louise deeply, even while the Queen threw herself into her work as monarch to cope, expanding French holdings in the America's and encouraging further settling by Frenchmen who wished for lands of their own. France also purchased the Tuscan holdings in North Africa, setting the state for French colonization of Africa to truly begin.
Marie-Louise also sent an unofficial ambassador to the British Thirteen Colonies to stir up trouble, for the British colonials were beginning to chafe under a brutal tax regime under the British Monarchs, for the War of Austrian Succession had played out in the New World in form of the 'War of Madness' (for the British had been part of the Prussian Collation). This would bear fruit in the future, but not in Marie-Louise's lifetime and have consequences that would be very farreaching indeed.
Marie-Louise also had a secret love affair with Philippe Auguste, Prince of Dombes in the later period of her reign, the aging Queen spry young lover who was nearly two decades her junior was a source of much humor in the courts of Europe. But rumors persisted that there was a secret marriage between the pair, but it is now believed that these were stirred up by the Prince of Dombes himself out of pride, and a desire to perhaps become King-Consort himself.
Marie-Louise would die at age 59 of pneumonia and was succeeded by Maddalena.
(6) Maddalena, named after Maria Maddalena of Austria, her paternal ancestor, was born in 1734, in the Pitti Palace in Florence. She remained unmarried until her thirties, which was unusual at the time, buy eventually married the Prince of Dombes - this was, to say the least, controversial: her mother had reportedly had an affair with Philippe Auguste before his death, may have even contracted a secret marriage in an attempt to install himself as King-Consort (a request for papal dispensation from the Pope certainly suggests that Maddalena wasn't above taking precautions, and historians take this as a sign the illicit marriage of Marie-Louise and Dombes was real). Dombes was a descendant of the illegitimate son of Louis III, the King of Navarre. This made Maddalena and Dombes related as her grandfather, Louis of Navarre, was also a descendant of Louis II of Navarre, albeit a legitimate one. It is unclear why exactly Maddalena married her mothers lover, but they seemed genuinely happy and the King of Navarre gifted France the title of Dauphin of Viennois, which meant that it could be recreated upon the birth of Maddalena's son.
But France was now on its sixth consecutive Queen and those who had supported the move to female preference primogeniture made their case again. But nobody liked this - it was true that God had gifted France with a series of female monarchs, but to place a daughter above a son in the line of succession was unacceptable. However, a compromise was reached - one which shocked most of Europe: France would adopt absolute primogeniture, therefore the eldest child, whether male or female, would inherit first the Dauphinate and then the French crown. This also meant that when the Bourbon line of Navarre became extinct, it collapsed into the French line, but was claimed by the illegitimate son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose father's death he argued had only ruled him out of his French claim and not the Navarese one (they argued that his father and mother had, in fact, married but it was a matter of her religion that had ruled the marriage illegitimate).
With the curious matter of Queen Marie Louise's second marriage to Maddalena's husband that was still popular court rumour, and the papal dispensation intended purely to head off any accusation of impropriety, the possibility that the late Grand Duke of Tuscany had in fact contracted a marriage deemed legal in Navarre (but not in France) was deemed entirely possible. And the case was supported by the current regimes in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire who saw the absolute primogeniture adoption as a thread to their own rules of succession.
As Maddalena had not married until after she had become Queen of France, she produced only two children, both of whom were still in their minority when she died in 1777 after a short reign of only six years. Maddalena died in childbirth with a third child who was stillborn and was succeeded by her firstborn, Charles Xavier.
[7] The first King of France in seven generations, Charles Xavier was born in the Palace of the Tuileries to his father, the Prince of Dombes and Duc d'Anjou and his mother, Queen Madeleine of France. His education was of the classic Italian and French styles of the age, centered around Catholicism, mathematics, politics, science and the military arts. Most famously, Charles would learn the street-fighting techniques of Paris and Marseille, at the insistence of his martial tutors, members of a new generation of military leaders whom wished to completely alter the hierarchical, magnate dominated structure of the French military. Charles would become fascinated with the techniques and is considered the father of modern French Kickboxing, also known as Savate.
Being one of the first French princes in generations to live to adulthood, Charles' regency allowed him to follow his dream to become a leader of the French army, where he quickly became the leader of a whole new cadre of military officers that would eventually spearhead massive reforms of the military that would see the French military become the greatest in the world, mainly new men such as the Comte of Saint-Germain, the Comte of Guibert and Charles' himself, although the latter "Caroline" generals would end up finishing the job. It was during his tenure in the army that he would visit Prussia in a mission for the state, where he would meet the love and shadow of his life, Augusta of Prussia in Potsdam. His marriage to the Prussian princess was marked by his stay in Potsdam for half a year, where the young Prince often met with Frederick the Great of Prussia, of whom he quietly took inspiration.
His return to France was marked by great celebration, as not long after Queen Augusta would announce her pregnancy. A son, Louis Charles, was born and many around France and Europe breathed a sigh of relief as the "Isabelline curse" seemed to be at an end. But, as the tales tell, what started as an auspicious year quickly turned to ashes as the deaths of Princess Auguste and Prince Louis all rapidly followed each other from an epidemic of smallpox that struck Paris. Charles, now Charles the X, would never be the same again. The fateful year of his ascension aged the King, granting him a severity of character and a maturity of a man ten years older. The King threw himself into his work, revitalizing the French bureaucracy from the top to the bottom, starting a deep process of reform that is now remembered by French historians as the "Great Reformation". Inspired by enlightenment scholars all his life, encouraged by a need to reform the "Ancient Régime" and the clamor of the people, The Estates General of 1789 would prove to be a step into a new light for the French people, as the first constitution of the Kingdom of France was promulgated then, with many of the privileges of the upper classes torn away in the reformist fervor. As described by the great French Diplomat, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, "The France Charles X left behind can be in no way compared to the France he inherited. Never has a King in the history of this continent imprinted upon his people completely new ideals, objectives and aspirations". Despite the many new rights, reforms and changes that would follow the Estates General all throughout Charles X's reign, few if none dared chip at the power of the King, with the newly-founded French Senate a "legislative-advisory" body. While the King's reign remained semi-absolute, Charles' enlightened rule saw few if any revolts arise against him.
The question of French succession was one that shook this changing France deeply. The King had proved that he could sire an heir, but the Palace of the Tuilleries remained quiet on the matter of the King's remarriage. In a session of the French senate in 1791, "Jacobite" Maximilien Robespierre, the representatitive of the District of Arras in the Province of Artois, and leader of the "Parti Jacobin", one of the first parties of French history that represented, at the time, a more "revolutionary" reformation and even republicanism, directly asked the session and the King, who was present, why "His majesty continues to refuse to do his duty to Kingdom and people - the realm remains without a Queen and the King without an heir". In perhaps one of the most remembered moments of early French parliamentarism, a painting by Jacques-Louis David eternalizes the moment. The great commotion that followed the statement, with deputies left and right rising in either indignation or support, until the massive figure of the King stood from his throne. As recorded by Robespierre himself, the King's eleven minute speech served to end his carrer and tore whatever goodwill the Jacobins had. The Comte of Penthievre, the King's bastard brother by his father, mentions that the whole room when silent after the King's last phrase, and that it remained so various minutes after he left - "I am married to France."
It was thus that the succession crisis ended. The Senate never mentioned it again and the King's young sister, Caroline Marie, was made Madame Royale and Dauphine to the throne in an extravagant ceremony in 1797, where the "Caroline Laws" were added to the constitution to codify succession, finally certifying absolute primogeniture. Madame Royale, who would unfortunately die in 1809 before the her brother, the King, himself left the earth, but her marriage to the Louis-Phillipe de Condé, the second son of the Prince of Condé would leave at least six heirs behind. The matter of internal reform and the succession left behind, Charles decided to put forth "his more ambitious projects".
The series of wars Charles engaged in during his reign are many, but a few proved essential to France. The war for Navarre of 1800-1801 saw finally the Navarrese thorne ended and Charles' cousins descended from bastardy "ended". For the first time in centuries, the King of France was finally also King of Navarre. Navarre was rapidly integrated into France and became a part of the realm. France's colonial efforts also expanded greatly during his reign, with the division of the Ohio, Illinois and Upper Louisiana (renamed Caroline) territories finally formalized during his reign, with each of the various colonies (Acadie, Louisiane, Caroline, Illinois and Canada) being given representation in the french senate. The British and the American colonists would come to an agreement on the autonomy of the newly-born "Dominion of Columbia" and both mainland and colonies seethed for war against France. France itself would give Britain the excuse when it would invade the left bank of the Rhine "in a manifestation of destiny". The war would start as a war against the Dutch republic for a perceived blockade of Antwerpian merchants, France's principal Flemish port city and it's Rhenish allies. Britain and Prussia, both of whom held interests respectivelly in the Netherlands and in the Rhineland would back the Republic against the French, starting the "Rhenish war of 1803-1807". France would, using it's new tactics, armaments and weapons, decidedly beat the Prussians and Dutch on land, overruning the Netherlands and occupying Prussian West Germany and British Hannover, utilizing a new, ruthless type of warfare that called for the destruction of opposing armies. The Prussians would sign an armistice in 1805, although the British would keep fighting on. The colonial theater of the war was, in a way, balanced. While the British colonies were smaller, they were more heavily populated with five million British Americans, while the combined might of the New French colonies had a manpower of seven million, but heavily dispersed through the vast lands New France was composed of. The British superiority at sea until the famous "Battle of Biscay" severely hampered the French effort in North America, although the French colonies already had semi-professional armies reinforced with professional metropolitan battalions compared to the British forces, that were mainly composed of militiamen. The entry of Spain in the war on the British side also put the scales against the French, but France's reforms had paid through. A rising new contigent of marshalls, including Condé, Bonaparte, Kellerman, Kléber, Davout and Moreau led a magnificent invasion of Spain that saw Spain pushed out of the war, while in America, the French managed to survive long enough against both British and Spanish until the "Armée de la Columbie" landed in Louisiana. It was the most important war of Charles' reign, which solidified France's position as the senior European power. France expanded all the way to the Rhine, from north to south, which became France's frontier, annexed Catalonia and the Balearic islands from Spain, created the "United Kingdom of Sardinia and Sicily" and the "Grand Duchy of Lombardy" out of Spain's remaining Italian holdings, both with French "blood" princes, related to the Royal house, with the youngest Condé becoming King of the Sicilies while Milan was given to a member of the Véndome family. In America, the whole of Hispaniola was annexed, alongside many islands in the lesser Antilles, Barbados and the Turk islands. Texas was annexed from New Spain to New France, turned into another "Province-Colony" and the British were finally pushed off the Appalachians. South Africa was annexed from the Dutch and turned into the new colony of "Antartique", while the British and Dutch were both expelled from Southern India, which became a french domain. Of Prussian and British German holdings, the Kingdoms of Westphalia and Hannover were carved out, with both being given rulers amongst French-friendly German princes.
With his great victory achieved, Charles focused on solidifying the realm and his new conquests, both in Europe and abroad. The rest of Europe shook at what France had become, but none dared to do nothing after the Spanish and British had been so humbled. Charles would continue his military adventures abroad, invading Ottoman North Africa in a bid to secure French hegemony over the Mediterranean. It did not go as well as expected, as the objective had been Egypt and funds had started running out before then, but Algeria became part of France while Tunisia was given to France's "Sicilian" puppet.
Charles would die in 1811, from the same illness that claimed his wife and son, with one of his successors being one of his sister's daughters, Marie Charlotte.
