King of France and Navarre (1314–1316), whose brief reign is remembered for an edict freeing serfs and the scandal of the Tour de Nesle; his death opened a succession crisis.
Louis X, nicknamed "the Quarrelsome" (le Hutin), was king of France and Navarre from 1314 to 1316. The eldest son of Philip IV the Fair, he inherited a monarchy strained by his father's harsh government and reigned for less than two years before dying suddenly at twenty-six.
His short reign is remembered for a famous edict proclaiming that "France signifies freedom" and offering serfs the chance to buy their liberty, for the scandal of the Tour de Nesle affair that disgraced his first wife, and above all for the succession crisis his death provoked. He left a pregnant queen; the posthumous son she bore, John I, lived only five days, and the crown passed to Louis's brother.
Louis was born in 1289, the eldest son of Philip IV the Fair and Joan I of Navarre. Through his mother he became king of Navarre in 1305, some years before he inherited France. His first marriage, to Margaret of Burgundy, ended in disaster when she was convicted in the Tour de Nesle affair of 1314 — a scandal of royal adultery that broke over the court just as his father lay dying — and imprisoned; she died in captivity soon after.
On Philip IV's death in November 1314 Louis succeeded to a France seething with noble resentment against the late king's ministers.
Louis X is a faintly drawn figure, his character glimpsed mostly through his nickname "le Hutin" — variously rendered as the Quarrelsome, the Headstrong, or the Stubborn — and through the turbulence of his brief reign. He appears as a young king of no great ability, buffeted by forces larger than himself: a hostile nobility, an inherited crisis of government, and a scandal that struck at his own marriage bed.
What little the reign reveals suggests a ruler more reactive than commanding. He appeased the angry nobles by sacrificing his father's hated minister Enguerrand de Marigny to the gallows, and issued populist measures freeing serfs and recalling the Jews as much to raise money and goodwill as from conviction. He is remembered less for what he did than for the dynastic catastrophe that his early death set in motion.
Faced with a noble reaction against Philip IV's regime, Louis gave way: he had the powerful minister Enguerrand de Marigny hanged and granted charters restoring privileges to the aristocracy. To fill the treasury and win favour, he issued the celebrated 1315 edict declaring that any serf might purchase his freedom, "according to the principle that all men are born free", and he readmitted the Jews, expelled by his father, under regulated terms.
These measures did little to steady the reign. In 1316 Louis died suddenly at Vincennes, reportedly after drinking chilled wine following a strenuous game of jeu de paume — an early ancestor of tennis — leaving his second wife, Clementia of Hungary, pregnant.
Louis X's death in June 1316 left the succession open, for his only living child was a daughter, Joan, whose legitimacy was clouded by the Tour de Nesle scandal. The kingdom waited on the queen's pregnancy: she bore a son, John I "the Posthumous", who was king from birth but lived only five days. The crown then passed to Louis's brother, Philip V, who set aside the claim of Louis's daughter — a decision that hardened into the principle that women could not inherit the French throne.
Louis X's reign is remembered chiefly for its consequences. His edict on serfdom left a noble statement of principle, if limited effect, but it was his death that changed history: the five-day life of his son John I and the passing of the crown to his brother established the exclusion of female succession that would later be invoked to bar the English kings from the French throne, one of the roots of the Hundred Years' War.