| Charles IV | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Portrait by unknown, 17th century | |||||
| Duke of Lorraine andBar | |||||
| Reign | 1 December 1625 – 19 January 1634 | ||||
| Predecessor | Francis II | ||||
| Successor | Nicholas II | ||||
| Reign | 1 April 1634 – 18 September 1675 | ||||
| Predecessor | Nicholas II | ||||
| Successor | Charles V | ||||
| Born | (1604-04-05)5 April 1604 Nancy[1] | ||||
| Died | 18 September 1675(1675-09-18) (aged 71) Allenbach[1] | ||||
| Spouse | |||||
| Issue | Anne, wife ofFrançois Marie de Lorraine Charles Henri, Prince of Vaudémont | ||||
| |||||
| House | Lorraine | ||||
| Father | Francis II, Duke of Lorraine | ||||
| Mother | Christina of Salm | ||||
Charles IV (5 April 1604 – 18 September 1675) wasDuke of Lorraine from 1624 until his death in 1675, with a brief interruption in 1634, when heabdicated under French pressure in favor of his younger brother,Nicholas Francis.
He came to lose his duchy because of his notionally anti-French policy; in 1633, French troops invadedLorraine in retaliation for Charles's support ofGaston d'Orléans—who repeatedly plotted against Richelieu's governance of France under the childlessLouis XIII and dallied dangerously with its enemies as a youngheir presumptive—and Richelieu's policies were always anti-Habsburg so as to increase the strength and prestige of France at the expense of the two dynasties. Gaston d'Orléans, frequently sided with either branch of the Habsburg family against Richelieu, who wasde facto ruler of France as its Chief Minister, and had to flee several times to avoid charges and trial for treason. His allies and confederates generally bore the price of these escapades by the young and impetuous heir and Charles IV was one such. On one visit to the ducal court at Nancy, the widowed Gaston fell in love with Charles's 15-year-old sister and married her secretly, which so infuriated the king that he convened the clergy of France and the Parlement of Paris to void the marriage, giving consent only on his death bed.
In that circumstance and sense, Charles was a casualty of the fiercefactional infighting in the French court between the King's brother Gaston d'Orléans, andCardinal Richelieu, even though technically, Lorraine was subject to theHoly Roman Empire and the EmperorFerdinand II of Austria. Forced to make humiliating concessions to France, he abdicated under the French pressure and invasion in 1634 in favor of his brother,Nicholas Francis, and entered theimperial service in theThirty Years' War and was victorious at theBattle of Nördlingen. Shortly thereafter, Nicholas Francis too fled into exile and abdicated his claims, which were now taken up once again by Charles, who remained Duke of Lorraine in exile for the next quarter century.
In 1635, he tried in vain to recapture his duchy together with an Imperial army underMatthias Gallas. The aggressive Charles and the defensive-minded Gallas did not go along well; while Charles urged to recapture his capital Nancy, Gallas preferred to entrench his troops at theSeille to give them some rest after a long march from the Rhine. An outbreak of plague ended all hopes of further approaching Nancy.[2][3] The next year, the Imperials sent Charles to the SpanishFranche-Comté, where he lifted the French siege ofDole and advanced as far asDijon. Appointed captain general of the troops in Burgundy, Charles defended the core area of the Franche-Comté aroundBesançon, Dole andSalins against the French over the next few years. He also made repeated forays into the French heartland or into Lorraine to attack French garrisons. In May 1638, he advanced intoBassigny, moved from there to Lorraine, recapturedÉpinal in August and besiegedLunéville in September. Since in the meantimeBernard of Saxe-Weimar was besieging the fortressBreisach on the Upper Rhine, Charles was called upon to relieve it and attack the besiegers from two sides at the same time, together with the Imperial and Bavarian troops on the right bank of the Rhine. Bernard, however, used the advantage of the inner line and was able to repulse Charles atThann on 15 October as well asJohann von Götzen's attack on the siege positions around Breisach a few days later. The fall of Breisach on 17 December largely cut off Franche-Comté from the Empire and the rest of the Habsburg territories. Charles gave up the post of captain general in January 1639, relieved the besieged castle of his second wife inBelvoir and went toBrussels, where he hoped for a new command.[4]
After Charles fought in theSpanish Netherlands in 1640, where he took part in therelief attempt of the Spanish army forArras, he re-entered negotiations with France in early 1641, which returned his duchy to him as a French protectorate in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 2 April 1641, on condition that he refrain from alliances detrimental to France. Charles's confidantJohann Wilhelm von Hunolstein, who was serving in the Bavarian military, announced the Lorraine negotiations with France to EmperorFerdinand III and theBavarian Elector at theRegensburg Imperial Diet.[5] However, as Charles continued to work against Richelieu and cover up the conspiracy of theCount of Soissons, he should be arrested after the Cardinal caught the conspirators. In July 1641, he managed to evade this by fleeing. He re-entered military service, fighting first on the side of the Spanish in Flanders, later in the south-west of the empire, where he took part in theBattle of Tuttlingen in November 1643, in which he defeated the French together withFranz von Mercy andJohann von Werth.[6]
In 1651 Charles IV was approached by an Irish delegation who were seeking his support to defend Ireland from theinvasion of theParliamentarian army of England. Traditional accounts of the Cromwellian wars often dismiss the appeal to Lorraine as an act of desperation, but recently one historian has argued that the stateless Duke was in fact seriously interested in becoming the Protector of Ireland.[7] In the summer of 1652, a number of ships sent by Charles arrived atInishbofin island with supplies, one of the last strongholds of the Irish. Unfortunately Charles faced great opposition by the Irish LeadersClanricarde andOrmonde, both of whom were arch-royalists loyal toCharles II of England. Lorraine eventually concluded that Ireland had been destroyedby the jealousy of those who desired the loss of it, than they should be obliged for its recovery to the protection of his said Highness.
In 1661, the French withdrew from Lorraine, and Charles was able to return to the Duchy for the first time. In 1670, the duchy was again occupied by the French under KingLouis XIV. Charles served in the Imperial armies in both the Thirty Years' War and theFranco-Dutch War (1672–1678), both of which secured French dominance on the Continent.
In 1675 he defeatedFrançois de Créquy atKonzer Brucke, and died the same year in Austrian service.
The duchy was not restored to his family until more than twenty years later.
He is sometimes numbered asCharles III of Lorraine.
Charles married firstNicolette of Lorraine, whom he deposed and replaced as monarch of Lorraine in 1625. They had no children and Charles abandoned her.
On 2 April 1637, he marriedBéatrice de Cusance, Princess de Cantecroix (1614–1663), daughter and heiress of Claude-François de Cusance, Baron de Belvoir, (1590–1633) and of Ernestine de Witthem, Countess van Walhain (before 1588–1649), who had become the widow of Eugene Perrenot de Granvelledit d'Oiselet, Prince de Cantecroix (1615-1637), earlier that year; and had three children;
His marriage to Béatrice de Cusance was not deemed valid by the Roman Catholic church, which had not authorised his divorce from Nicole. The couple separated in April 1642 following hisexcommunication, which was the consequence of his second marriage; it was also the month in which she bore a son whom Charles recognised. More than 20 years later, on 20 May 1663, Charles married Béatrice de Cusance a second time, to allowlegitimation of their children. She died two weeks after this second marriage.
Charles married a fourth time at the age of 61. The bride was CountessMarie Louise of Aspremont-Lynden (1652–1692), the 18-year-old daughter of Charles ofAspremont-Lynden, Count ofReckheim (1590-1671) and his wife, Marie Françoise deMailly (1625-1702). They had no children and in 1679, a widow, she married CountHeinrich Franz von Mansfeld, Prince diFondi, by whom she had two daughters.
| Preceded by | Duke of Lorraine 1625–1634 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Duke of Lorraine 1661–1675 | Succeeded by |
