Ralph IV of Valois

Ralph IV of Valois — latest news, discussion & facts — IJR

Second marriage and excommunication

In 1053 or 1054, Adela died. By 1060, Ralph had married a woman nicknamed or surnamed Haquenez, and possibly named Eleanor.

Haquenez has been called the heiress of the county of Montdidier and suzerain over the county of Péronne, but there is no proof of this. Her parentage is unknown. If she brought Ralph a claim to Montdidier, their marriage must have taken place no later than 1054, since he was in control of Montdidier in that year. Ralph did not relinquish his control over the counties of Montdidier and Péronne after repudiating Haquenez in 1060 or 1061. The wording of Guibert of Nogent concerning the succession at Montdidier after Ralph's death has been taken as evidence that Ralph merely seized Montdidier and ruled it by right of conquest: "the castle in which the site of his burial he had prepared", that is, Montdidier, "he had stolen from its possessors and held as his own" and "in that castle, which came to Simon [his son] by use rather than by [rightful] inheritance, the remains of his father came to rest." If this is correct, then he may have seized Montdidier any time between 1033 and 1054. Its rightful ruler was Hilduin IV, who continued to use the title of count—but not Count of Montdidier—until his death in 1063.

Ralph later accused his second wife of adultery and repudiated her. In 1061 or 1062, he married the princess Anna Yaroslavna of Kievan Rus', the widow of King Henry I and mother of the reigning king, Philip I. Haquenez appealed to Gervase, archbishop of Reims, who wrote to Pope Alexander II explaining the situation. According to the archbishop, "the marriage of our queen to Count Ralph (Comiti Radulpho) grieves our king most of all" (rex noster ... maxime dolet). Haquenez then went to Rome to appeal to the pope in person.

The pope's response, addressed to Gervase, his suffragans and to the unnamed archbishop of Sens, was brought back to France by Haquenez. She had apparently reported to the pope that Ralph had stolen everything she owned (by which she perhaps meant the counties), and the pope instructed Gervase and the archbishop of Sens to open an investigation and preside as judges. The purpose of the inquiry was to return Haquenez's property to her and clear her name of the false accusation of adultery. In the end, Ralph was excommunicated from the church. In March 1062, Mainard, archbishop of Sens, died and by April he had been succeeded by Richer. It is possible that Alexander did not name the archbishop because the letter was drafted in the interim, when the name of the new archbishop was not yet known in Rome.

Third marriage and co-regency

The Chronicle of the abbey of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif records the death of Henry and the re-marriage of Anna in the same sentence, fuelling speculation that the queen and Ralph had been involved in a love affair. In fact, Henry's death came in 1060, a year or two before Anna's second marriage. There is no hint in any contemporary source that the queen and Ralph were involved before their marriage. Nor is there any evidence that she was abducted or otherwise forced into marriage.

At the time of her marriage to Ralph, Anna was about thirty years old. Since Philip, the eldest of her four children with Henry, was not yet of age, she has been accused by modern historians of abandoning her children. Contemporaries made no such charge. Ralph, however, was accused of bigamy, since his repudiation of Haquenez had been illegal under both civil and ecclesiastical law, and consanguinity, since he was related to the Capetian house within the prohibited degree. As a result it seems, Ralph and Anna did not attend the French court regularly again until 1065, although she continued to be acknowledged as co-regent with Count Baldwin V of Flanders. The marriage had at least three advantages for Ralph: it brought him a dowry that included an abbey at Laon, it brought him influence at court and it brought him enhanced prestige because of Anna's high rank and even "exoticism".

Ralph was, however, "Baldwin's greatest rival in north-eastern France and a potential threat to his influence over the young king." This may explain why at least one later source, the Annales sancti Benigni Divonensis, the chronicle of the cathedral of Dijon, claims that Philip's younger brother Hugh acted as his "coadjutor". Keeping Hugh close prevented any split in the royal family. After the reconciliation of Philip and his mother, Ralph was the second most important counsellor to the king after Baldwin. He is cited as a witness in thirty royal diplomas, and is explicitly called a counsellor of the royal court in one of 1062. In 1065, Ralph and Anna were with Philip as the royal court visited Soissons, Orléans, Laon and Corbie. In 1067, Philip paid a visit to Amiens, which lay in Ralph's county. In 1069, Ralph was calling himself the king's step-father.

Relations with Normandy

In the 1050s, Ralph supported King Henry against Duke William II of Normandy. He was present on the king's side at the battle of Mortemer in February 1054, when the Normans routed the royal army. Ralph himself escaped the slaughter and took shelter in the castle of Mortemer. According to Orderic Vitalis, writing about 75 years later, Ralph was aided in his escape by one of the Norman commanders, Roger, castellan of Mortemer, "on account of the fealty he [Roger] had formerly sworn to him [Ralph]." After entertaining Ralph as his guest for three days, Roger escorted him back to his own lands. For this Roger was banished, but soon reconciled, although the castle of Mortemer was never restored to him.

The reason for the oath of fealty is not explained in any primary source. Roger's wife, Hadewisa, however, had inherited the villa of Mers at the mouth of the Bresle, which lay within the diocese of Amiens and may have been under Ralph's suzerainty. The 19th-century historian J. R. Planché has even suggested that Hadewisa was Ralph's daughter.

In 1058, Ralph was with King Henry's army at the siege of Thimert.

In 1063, Ralph's cousin, Walter III of Vexin, died and Ralph inherited the counties of Vexin, with its seat at Mantes, and Amiens. Sometime between 1061 and 1066, Duke William entrusted Hugh de Grandmesnil with the castle of Neuf-Marché, possibly to defend against Ralph after the latter's acquisition of Vexin. Ralph and Hugh fought several skirmishes, and on one occasion, outnumbered, Hugh's army was routed and forced to flee. Then, between 1063 and 1067, Maurilius, archbishop of Rouen, granted the lordship of Gisors, which he held from the duke in Normandy, to Ralph as a life lease. This may have been approved by the duke to assure Ralph's cooperation or non-interference with the upcoming English expedition. Gisors was not restored to Rouen until 1075.

Later, Ralph's relations with Normandy improved and he sent his son Simon to be brought up at William's court. After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, King William returned to Normandy with captives and booty. He held an Easter court at Fécamp on 8 April 1067 to display his spoils and Ralph was in attendance. Ralph then attended the Whitsun court of King Philip I of France in Paris, witnessing a royal charter on 27 May. In June or July, he was again at the king's court in Melun. On either of these occasions, he would have met Bishop Guy of Amiens, whose diocese lay within Ralph's lordship. Ralph, having been to William's celebratory court at Fécamp and having a son raised in the Norman household, was well-positioned to pass along information about the battle of Hastings to the bishop, who began work on his poem Carmen de Hastingae Proelio shortly after.

Death and legacy

Ralph died, still excommunicated, in 1074 and was buried in the church of Saint-Pierre in Montdidier. Since Montdidier had rightfully belonged to Ralph's abandoned second wife, and the count of Vermandois also had a claim, Pope Gregory VII requested that his body be moved. His son Simon had it removed to the priory of Saint-Arnoul at Crépy. The sight of his father's decaying corpse is said to have motivated Simon to first contemplate the vanity of seeking after worldly glory. In 1077, he retired to become a monk at Saint-Oyend. The Vita beati Simoni comitis Crespeiensis (Life of Blessed Simon, Count of Crépy), a hagiography written by an anonymous monk of Saint-Oyend in the generation after Simon's death, is an important source for Ralph's life. Since Ralph's eldest son, Walter, had died before him, all his lands passed to Simon.

Ralph himself began his career with only one county owing homage to the count of Troyes and ended it with seven counties and a further seven owing homage to him. France was more stable in the eleventh century than the tenth, and in the first century of Capetian rule relatively fewer noblemen than in the previous century were successful at building up principalities by a combination of inheritance, marriage, usurpation and force. Jean Dunbabin argues there were only two such ephemeral principalities formed in the eleventh century: Ralph's northern principality and a southern one forged by the marriage of Robert II of Auvergne and Bertha of Rouergue in 1064/66. After Ralph's death, Robert II tried to arrange a marriage between his daughter Judith and Ralph's son, but the arrangements fell through when Simon became a monk and Judith a nun.

The breakup of Ralph's principality followed quickly on his death. His stepson Hugh claimed a part of his lands, sparking a war with Simon in which the king took part as Hugh's ally. In the end, "Ralph's budding principality", "the nearest approximation to a principality to emerge" in Picardy, was broken up. The crown acquired Vexin and the advocacies of Corbie and Saint-Denis, Amiens returned to the bishop and Simon granted his brother-in-law Herbert of Vermandois both Valois and Montdidier. These then passed on Herbert's death in 1080 to his daughter, Adelaide, who married Simon's step-brother Hugh, brother of the king. Much of the counties of Amiens and Valois had belonged to the county of Vermandois in the tenth century.

The monk Guibert of Nogent, whose father fought at Mortemer, wrote in the first quarter of the twelfth century that he had spoken to many who had known Ralph. According to the monk, "They can say to what degree he increased his power, what authority he acquired and what despotism he used. If he found a castle convenient to him, he besieged it. Site attacked, site taken: so great was his ability in the art of sieges. Of all the places he took, he never returned one. His birth gave him an illustrious rank among the great lords of the kingdom."

Ralph IV of Valois

Ralph IV of Valois

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Name and number

Early life

First marriage and children

Second marriage and excommunication

Third marriage and co-regency

Private wars

Relations with Normandy

King Philip's wars

Death and legacy