Editing Salic law (section)

===In France===
{{Further|Fundamental laws of the Kingdom of France}}

The Merovingian kings divided their realm equally among all living sons, leading to much conflict and fratricide among the rival heirs. The Carolingians did likewise, but they also possessed the imperial dignity, which was indivisible and passed to only one person at a time. Primogeniture, or the preference for the eldest line in the transmission of inheritance, eventually emerged in France, under the Capetian kings. The early Capetians had only one heir, the eldest son, whom they [[Coronation of the French monarch#Coronation of the heir|crowned during their lifetimes]]. Instead of an equal portion of the inheritance, the younger sons of the Capetian kings received an [[appanage]], which is a feudal territory under the suzerainty of the king. Feudal law allowed the transmission of fiefs to daughters in default of sons, which was also the case for the early appanages. Whether feudal law also applied to the French throne, no one knew, until 1316.

====The succession in 1316====
For a remarkably long period, from the inception of the Capetian dynasty in 987 until the death of [[Louis X of France|Louis X]] in 1316, the eldest living son of the King of France succeeded to the throne upon his demise. No prior occasion existed to demonstrate whether or not females were excluded from the succession to the crown. Louis X died without a son, but left his wife pregnant. The king's brother, [[Philip V of France|Philip, Count of Poitiers]], became regent. Philip prepared for the contingencies with [[Odo IV, Duke of Burgundy]], maternal uncle of Louis X's daughter and prospective heiress, [[Joan II of Navarre|Joan]]. If the unborn child were<!-- subjunctive --> male, he would succeed to the French throne as king; if female, Philip would maintain the regency until the daughters of Louis X reached their majority. The opportunity remained for either daughter to succeed to the French throne.

The unborn child proved to be male, [[John I of France|John I]], to the relief of the kingdom, but the infant lived for only a few days. Philip saw his chance and broke the agreement with the Duke of Burgundy by having himself anointed at Reims in January 1317 as [[Philip V of France]]. [[Agnes of France, Duchess of Burgundy|Agnes of France]], daughter of [[Louis IX of France|Louis IX]], mother of the Duke of Burgundy, and maternal grandmother of the Princess Joan, considered it a usurpation and demanded an assembly of the peers, which Philip V accepted.

An assembly of prelates, lords, the bourgeois of Paris, and doctors of the university, known as the [[Estates General (France)|Estates-General]] of 1317, gathered in February. Philip V asked them to write an argument justifying his right to the throne of France. These "general statements" agreed in declaring that "Women do not succeed in the kingdom of France", formalizing Philip's usurpation and the impossibility for a woman to ascend the throne of France, a principle that remains in force to this day. The Salic law, at the time, was not yet invoked; the arguments put forward in favor of Philip V relied only on the degree of proximity of Philip V with Louis X. Philip had the support of the nobility and had the resources for his ambitions.

Philip won over the Duke of Burgundy by giving him his daughter, also named [[Joan III, Countess of Burgundy|Joan]], in marriage, with the counties of [[County of Artois|Artois]] and [[County of Burgundy|Burgundy]] as her eventual inheritance. On March 27, 1317, a treaty was signed at [[Laon]] between the Duke of Burgundy and Philip V, wherein Joan renounced her right to the throne of France.

====The succession in 1328====
Philip, too, died without a son, and his brother Charles succeeded him as [[Charles IV of France|Charles IV]] unopposed. Charles, too, died without a son, but also left his wife pregnant. It was another succession crisis, the same as that in 1316; it was necessary both to prepare for a possible regency (and choose a regent) and prepare for a possible succession to the throne. At this point, it had been accepted that women could not claim the crown of France (without any written rule stipulating it yet).

Under the application of the agnatic principle, the following were excluded:
*The daughters of Louis X, Philip V and Charles IV, including the possible unborn daughter of the pregnant Queen [[Jeanne d'Évreux]]
*[[Isabella of France]], sister of Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV, wife of King [[Edward II of England]]

The widow of Charles IV gave birth to a daughter. [[Isabella of France]], sister of Charles IV, claimed the throne for her son, [[Edward III of England]]. The French rejected the claim, noting that "Women cannot transmit a right which they do not possess", a corollary to the succession principle in 1316. The regent, Philip of Valois, became [[Philip VI of France]] in 1328. Philip became king without serious opposition, until his attempt to confiscate [[Gascony]] in 1337 made Edward III press his claim to the French throne.

====Emergence of the Salic law====
As far as can be ascertained, Salic law was not explicitly mentioned either in 1316 or 1328. It had been forgotten in the feudal era, and the assertion that the French crown can only be transmitted to and through males made it unique and exalted in the eyes of the French. In 1358 the monk Richard Lescot invoked it to dispute the claim of [[Charles II of Navarre]] to the French crown, an argument that would later be echoed by other jurists in defence of the Valois dynasty.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=op08AAAAIAAJ|title=Chronique de Richard Lescot, religieux de Saint-Denis (1328-1344).|last=Lemoine|first=Jean|date=1896|publisher=Librairie Renouard|pages=vj-xv|language=fr}}</ref>

In its origin, therefore, the agnatic principle was limited to the succession to the crown of France. Prior to the [[House of Valois|Valois]] succession, Capetian kings granted appanages to their younger sons and brothers, which could pass to male and female heirs. The appanages given to the Valois princes, though, in imitation of the succession law of the monarchy that gave them, limited their transmission to males. Another Capetian lineage, the [[Montfort of Brittany]], claimed male succession in the [[Duchy of Brittany]]. In this they were supported by the King of England, while their rivals who claimed the traditional female succession in Brittany were supported by the King of France. The Montforts eventually won the duchy by warfare, but had to recognize the suzerainty of the King of France.

This law was by no means intended to cover all matters of inheritance – for example, not the inheritance of movables — only to lands considered "[[Salic]]" – and debate remains as to the legal definition of this word, although it is generally accepted to refer to lands in the royal [[fisc]]. Only several hundred years later, under the [[House of Capet|direct Capetian]] kings of France and their English contemporaries who held lands in France, did Salic law become a rationale for enforcing or debating succession.

Shakespeare says that [[Charles VI of France|Charles VI]] rejected [[Henry V of England|Henry V]]'s claim to the French throne on the basis of Salic law's inheritance rules, leading to the [[Battle of Agincourt]]. In fact, the conflict between Salic and English law was a justification for [[English claims to the French throne|many overlapping claims]] between the French and English monarchs over the French throne.

More than a century later, during the [[French Wars of Religion|French wars of religion]], [[Philip II of Spain]] attempted to claim the French crown for his daughter [[Isabella Clara Eugenia]], born of his third wife, [[Elisabeth of Valois]] in order to prevent the [[Huguenots|Huguenot]] candidate [[Henry IV of France|Henry of Navarre]] from becoming king. Philip's agents were instructed to "insinuate cleverly" that the Salic law was a "pure invention". Even if the "Salic law" did not really apply to the throne of France, though, the very principle of agnatic succession had become a cornerstone of the French royal succession; they had upheld it in the [[Hundred Years' War]] with the English, and it had produced their kings for more than two centuries. The eventual recognition of Henry of Navarre as King Henry IV of France following his conversion to Catholicism, the first of the [[House of Bourbon|Bourbon]] kings, further solidified the agnatic principle in France.

Although no reference was made to the Salic law, the imperial constitutions of the [[Bonapartist]] [[First French Empire]] and [[Second French Empire]] continued to exclude women from the succession to the throne. In the lands that [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] conquered, Salic law was adopted, including the [[Kingdom of Westphalia]], the [[Kingdom of Holland]], and under Napoleonic influence, [[Sweden]] under the [[House of Bernadotte]].