Succession to the French throne covers the mechanism by which the French crown passed from the establishment of the Frankish Kingdom in 486 to the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870.
Merovingian dynasty
The Merovingians were a Salian Frankish dynasty that came to rule the Franks in a region (known as Francia in Latin) largely corresponding to ancient Gaul from the middle of the 5th century.
Clovis I was the first Germanic ruler to convert to Christianity. The Franks began to adopt Christianity following the baptism of Clovis, an event that inaugurated the alliance between the Frankish kingdom and the Catholic Church. Even so, the Merovingian kings were largely beyond the control of the Pope. Because they were able to worship with their Catholic neighbors, the newly-Christianized Franks found much easier acceptance from the local Gallo-Roman population than did the Arian Visigoths, Vandals or Burgundians. The Merovingians thus built what eventually proved the most stable of the successor-kingdoms in the west.
Following Frankish custom, the kingdom was partitioned among Clovis' four sons, and over the next century this tradition of partition continued. Even when several Merovingian kings simultaneously ruled their own realms, the kingdom — not unlike the late Roman Empire — was conceived of as a single entity. Externally, the kingdom, even when divided under different kings, maintained unity and conquered Burgundy in 534. After the fall of the Ostrogoths, the Franks also conquered Provence. Internally, the kingdom was divided among Clovis' sons and later among his grandsons which frequently saw war between the different kings, who allied among themselves and against one another. The death of one king created conflict between the surviving brothers and the deceased's sons, with differing outcomes. Due to frequent warfare, the kingdom was occasionally united under one king. Although this prevented the kingdom from being fragmented into numerous parts, this practice weakened royal power, for they had to make concessions to the nobility to procure their support in war.
In each Frankish kingdom the Mayor of the Palace served as the chief officer of state. From about the turn of the eighth century, the Austrasian Mayors tended to wield the real power in the kingdom, laying the foundation for a new dynasty.
Carolingian dynasty The Carolingians consolidated their power in the late seventh century, eventually making the offices of mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum hereditary and becoming the de facto rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the throne.
To legalize the power already being exercised by the mayors of the palace, Pepin requested and received from the pope a decision that whoever exercised the actual power in the kingdom should be the legal ruler. After this decision the throne was declared vacant. Childeric III was deposed and confined to a monastery.
According to ancient custom, Pepin was then elected King of the Franks by an assembly of Frankish nobles, with a large portion of his army on hand (in case the nobility inclined not to honor the Papal bull). Although such elections happened infrequently, a general rule in Germanic law stated that the king relied on the support of his leading men. These men reserved the right to choose a new leader if they felt that the old one could not lead them in profitable battle. While in later France the kingdom became hereditary, the kings of the later Holy Roman Empire proved unable to abolish the elective tradition and continued as elected rulers until the Empire's formal end in 1806. In 754 the pope reaffirmed the election of Pepin by crossing the Alps and personally anointing the new king in the Old Testament manner, as the Chosen of the Lord.
Behind the pope's action lay his need for a powerful protector. In 751 the Lombards had conquered the Exarchate of Ravenna, the center of Byzantine government in Italy, were demanding tribute from the pope, and threatened to besiege Rome. Following Pepin's coronation, the pope secured the new ruler's promise of armed intervention in Italy and his pledge to give the papacy the Exarchate of Ravenna, once it was conquered. In 756 a Frankish army forced the Lombard king to relinquish his conquests, and Pepin officially gave Ravenna to the pope. Known as the "Donation of Pepin," the gift made the pope a temporal ruler over the Papal States, a strip of territory that extended diagonally across northern Italy.
The greatest Carolingian monarch was Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III at Rome in 800. His empire, ostensibly a continuation of the Roman Empire, is referred to historiographically as the Carolingian Empire.
The Carolingians followed the Frankish custom of dividing inheritances among the surviving sons, though the concept of the indivisibility of the Empire was also accepted. The Carolingians had the practice of making their sons (sub-)kings in the various regions (regna) of the Empire, which they would inherit on the death of their father. Though the Carolingian Empire may have several kings, the imperial dignity was accorded only to the oldest son.
Charlemagne had three legitimate sons who survived infancy: Charles the Younger, King of Neustria, Pepin, King of Italy, and Louis, King of Aquitaine. In the Divisio Regnorum of 806, Charlemagne had slated Charles the Younger as his successor as emperor and chief king, ruling over the Frankish heartland of Neustria and Austrasia, while giving Pepin the throne of Lombardy, which Charlemagne possessed by conquest. To Louis's kingdom of Aquitaine, he added Septimania, Provence, and part of Burgundy. But Charlemagne's other legitimate sons died – Pepin in 810 and Charles in 811 – and Louis alone remained to be crowned co-emperor with Charlemagne in 813. Pepin, King of Italy, left behind a son, Bernard. On the death of Charlemagne in 814, Louis inherited the entire Frankish kingdom and all its possessions (the concept of successional representation was not yet well-established). But Bernard was allowed to retain control of Italy, the sub-kingdom of his father.
Following the death of Louis the Pious, the surviving adult Carolingians fought a three-year civil war ending only in the Treaty of Verdun, which divided the empire into three regna while imperial status and a nominal lordship was accorded to Lothair I.
The Carolingians differed markedly from the Merovingians in that they disallowed inheritance to illegitimate offspring, possibly in an effort to prevent infighting among heirs and assure a limit to the division of the realm. In the late ninth century, however, the lack of suitable adults among the Carolingians necessitated the rise of Arnulf of Carinthia, a bastard child of a legitimate Carolingian king.
The Carolingians were displaced in most of the regna of the Empire in 888. They ruled on in East Francia until 911 and they held the throne of West Francia intermittently until 987. Though they asserted their prerogative to rule, their hereditary, God-given right, and their usual alliance with the Church, they were unable to stem the principle of electoral monarchy and their propagandism failed them in the long run. Carolingian cadet branches continued to rule in Vermandois and Lower Lorraine after the last king died in 987, but they never sought thrones of principalities and made peace with the new ruling families.
Capetian dynasty
The election of Hugh Capet From 977 to 986, Hugh Capet, son of Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks, allied himself with the German emperors Otto II and Otto III and with Archbishop Adalberon of Reims to dominate the Carolingian king, Lothair. By 986, he was king in all but name. After Lothair's son Louis V died in May 987, Adalberon and Gerbert of Aurillac convened an assembly of nobles to elect Hugh Capet as their king.
Immediately after his coronation, Hugh began to push for the coronation of his son Robert. Hugh's own claimed reason was that he was planning an expedition against the Moorish armies harassing Borrel II of Barcelona, an invasion which never occurred, and that the stability of the country necessitated two kings should he die while on expedition. Ralph Glaber, however, attributes Hugh's request to his old age and inability to control the nobility. Modern scholarship has largely imputed to Hugh the motive of establishing a dynasty against the claims of electoral power on the part of the aristocracy, but this is not the typical view of his contemporaries and even some modern scholars have been less skeptical of Hugh's "plan" to campaign in Spain. Robert was eventually crowned on 25 December 987. A measure of Hugh's success is that when he died in 996, Robert continued to reign without anyone disputing his rights, but during his long reign actual royal power dissipated into the hands of the great territorial magnates.
Thus, the early Capetians made their position de facto hereditary by associating their eldest sons with the kingship while they still lived. By the death of Philip I, this hereditary feature had become established in custom. Even though Philip refused to have his son crowned during his lifetime, Louis succeeded with little trouble. Yet the association of the eldest son to the kingship continued for two more generations, with Philip II Augustus being the last king so crowned.
The succession in 1031 Henry I became sole ruler on his father's death in 1031. The succession, however, was hotly contested by his younger brother Robert. Constance of Arles, Henry's mother, preferred to place her younger son, Robert, on the throne. She allied herself with one of the more powerful counts of the time, Odo II, Count of Blois.
This alliance was particularly worrisome for Henry I. Odo II of Blois was a very powerful lord and had warred against Henry's father throughout his reign; he had enlarged his possessions to the point of encircling the royal demesne. With his alliance, the queen mother and her son Robert managed to expel King Henry from his own demesne lands, forcing him to seek refuge at the court of the duke of Normandy, Robert.
King Henry formed an alliance with the powerful duke of Normandy, Robert, by granting him the French Vexin, or the lands between the rivers Epte and Oise. Although this has been debated by modern scholarship, the fact remains that Robert fought alongside the king. Henry also managed to gain the alliance of another powerful count, Baldwin IV of Flanders.
Finally, Henry added Emperor Henry II to his camp. The emperor had personal issues with Odo II. He wished nothing more than to rid himself of a powerful foe and troublesome neighbour. Odo had invaded Henry's lands in Burgundy and took many castles and places. Henry and his allies recovered the royal lands that had been lost to the usurpers. The conflict didn't end there; there was still a chance for Robert to win the throne. Henry, to guarantee his brother's submission, granted him the vast duchy of Burgundy, which had been added to the royal demesne by Robert II.
Odo found himself in Imperial Burgundy against Henry II. At the battle of Bar-le-Duc, Odo was killed in battle in the year 1037. His lands and properties were divided amongst his sons, ending a threat against the Capetian monarchy.
Henry I had managed to maintain his royal title and dignity, but the price was great. The greatest problem to have arisen from the crisis was the growth in independence of the lords and castellans in the lands of the royal demesne. This had the effect of weakening royal authority even further. Secondly, Henry I lost a great deal of territory and land in suppressing the revolt. The French Vexin was granted away to the duke of Normandy, the duchy of Burgundy, a substantial part of the royal demesne, was given away to Robert, the king's younger brother.
The appanage system