fme_860919 - HUGH CAPET Médaille, Hugues Capet, n°15

HUGH CAPET

(03/7/987-24/10/996)

The Capetian millennium of 1987 celebrated Hugues Capet as the first "king of France" and as the first prince of his dynasty. Neither of these two propositions is true.. Elected in 987, Hugues ascended an already ancient and prestigious throne, that of the monarchy founded by Childeric and Clovis five centuries earlier.. No one had the feeling that the "King of France" succeeded the "King of the Franks". He himself was not a new man. On the contrary, he belonged to the most prestigious lineage of the kingdom, after the Carolingian dynasty, that of Robert le Fort, count of Anjou, who died in 866 fighting against the Normans.. This lineage had already given three kings to France: Eudes (887-898), Robert I (922-923), grandfather of Hugues, and Raoul (923-936). Born around 941, Hugues bore the title of "duke of France" or "duke of the Franks", a vague appellation which gave him a kind of pre-eminence in the old Neustria, between Seine and Loire.. After the accidental death of King Louis V, in 987, he was preferred by the great to Charles of Lorraine, his Carolingian competitor, thanks to the help of the Archbishop of Reims Adalberon and undoubtedly, in the background, with the support of the Holy Roman Emperor. The new king devoted the first years of his reign to fighting against his rival, who had seized Laon, the former Carolingian capital. Imprisoned in 990, Charles died in 992. The accession of Hugh to the throne had come at a time when the great vassals of the countries between the Loire and the Seine were beginning to make themselves independent of their suzerain.. The Capetian was therefore a weak king, deprived of the means of a great policy.. Royalty, however, retained great symbolic importance, which set its holder unparalleled vis-à-vis other greats: recognized throughout the kingdom, as far as Barcelona, he was the natural head of the bishops, the interlocutor of the pope and the emperor. The chronicles say nothing of the last years of the reign. Hugues Capet died in 996, after having taken care to consecrate his eldest son, Robert: it was the first step towards the durability and the heredity of the new dynasty..