Philip VI of France was the first Valois king and the French ruler during the opening phase of the Hundred Years’ War.
Philip VI of France was the first Valois king and the French ruler during the opening phase of the Hundred Years’ War. His accession in 1328 excluded Edward III’s claim through the female line, and his reign was tested by naval defeat at Sluys, disaster at Crécy, and the early pressures of plague and war finance.
Philip VI of France was born 1293, associated with Fontainebleau. The early evidence is uneven, so precise details should be treated carefully.
Philip VI of France, first of the Valois kings, is remembered as a ruler whose reign opened with promise and collapsed into disaster, and the sources present a king more comfortable with the trappings of chivalry than with the hard realities that overwhelmed him. He came to a contested throne and initially cut an impressive figure, but the chroniclers record a monarch outmatched by the crises of the early Hundred Years' War.
His defeat by Edward III at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 — where French chivalric impetuosity shattered against English discipline — and the loss of Calais, followed by the arrival of the Black Death, fixed his reign in memory as a sequence of catastrophes. The sources suggest a ruler of conventional aristocratic instincts who lacked the strategic grasp to counter a more innovative enemy.
The portrait is shaped by hindsight and by the contrast with his able opponent, so it leans toward blame. What the record supports is a king of ordinary chivalric outlook caught in extraordinary times, unable to master the military, financial, and epidemic disasters of his reign. He is remembered as the unlucky founder of the Valois line, presiding over the opening defeats of a long war.
Philip’s accession was challenged by Edward III’s claim to the French throne. His reign faced war, financial strain, and the disaster of Crécy.
Battle of Crecy gives Philip VI of France's career a specific military and political setting: his choices, command, defeat, or death affected the outcome remembered in that article.
Died at Nogent-le-Roi in 1350 after the early disasters of the Hundred Years’ War and the arrival of plague in France.
Philip’s reign marks the beginning of the Valois monarchy and the dynastic conflict with England that became the Hundred Years’ War.