Strange tales: The sport and death of kings

Louis X of France died on this day in 1316, reportedly after drinking too much chilled wine following a brisk game of real tennis.

Louis X was the first of an ill-starred succession of three French monarchs, who were also brothers, who ruled for short periods in the early 14^th century and whose collective failure to leave a male heir ended the Capetian line of kings and eventually led to the Hundred Years War.

Louis and his brothers, Charles and Philip, were the sons of one of France’s most famous medieval kings, Philip IV – also known as Philip ‘le Bel’ or ‘le Fer’.

This powerful monarch ruled from 1285 to 1314 and it was under his reign that the papal court was moved to Avignon (1309) and the knightly order of the Templars was disbanded; their property and assets seized and leaders burnt at the stake for heresy.

It was during the execution of grand master Jacques de Molay in 1314 that a curse was apparently leveled on the king and his family by the dying man.

True or not that same year the infamous ‘Tour de Nesle Affair’ broke in which the three wives of Philip’s sons were accused of adultery.

Louis’ wife, Margaret of Burgundy, and Charles’s wife, Blanche of Burgundy, were found guilty and locked up in Château Gaillard where they eventually died, possibly murdered by strangulation. The alleged lovers, two Norman squires, were tortured, flayed and executed with all the force, cruelty and violence Medieval law allowed.

Not long afterwards Philip died and Louis came to the throne. As relayed in the Encyclopedia Britannica: “Louis’s main policies were designed to allay baronial discontent and to gain support and money for a projected campaign against Flanders.”

Something of a reforming monarch he dismissed his father’s most unpopular ministers, readmitted the Jews who were expelled en masse by his father and began the process that led to the end of serfdom in France.

For players of real tennis meanwhile, of which there are a few in the trade not least the drinks business’ editor-in-chief Patrick Schmitt MW, will be interested to learn he is widely credited as one of history’s most notable early tennis players and certainly the first known by name.

Furthermore, although a keen player of ‘jeu de paume’ as it was called, he disliked playing it outside and so he is also said to have been the first to build an indoor tennis court (several in fact), a fashion which was then copied by monarchs and rulers across Europe as the game grew in popularity.

Tennis however proved the death of him. In June 1316 after a brisk match at Vincennes, while overheated and dehydrated he drank a large quantity of chilled white wine. He soon fell ill and probably died of pneumonia and possibly further complications from pleurisy soon afterwards. He was 26 and had ruled for less than two years.

A depiction of real tennis (‘jeu de paume‘) in the 15th century. Louis X was a fan of the game but disliked playing outside and is said to have been the first to build enclosed, indoor courts as a result.

He was not the only French king to die of a tennis injury in fact. Charles VIII went to watch a match at Amboise in 1498. He struck his head on a door lintel and when returning from the game, collapsed in a coma, dying a mere nine hours later of what was likely a subdural hematoma.

Given the suddenness of Louis’s death foul play was suspected, the most common theory being his wine was poisoned – a manner of death very common around kingly demises.

Louis’s wife at the time of his death, Clementia of Hungary, was pregnant with their first child. A boy was born five months later and christened John but he died after just five days and Louis’s brother Philip was crowned. He ruled for six years but died with no male heirs so the last brother, Charles, was crowned but he also died just six years later in 1328.

The last of the house of Capet which had ruled France since 987 AD, Charles was succeeded by the closest male cousin, Philip of the House of Valois.

At this juncture, however, Edward III of England objected. His mother, Isabella, was the daughter of Philip IV and sister to Louis, Philip and Charles; making Edward, as he correctly argued, the most direct male descendant of the Capetian kings and so the throne of France was his.

The problem was that Philip and then Charles had both used a fair amount of political chicanery to gain the throne at the expense of their nieces. The right of only male succession they had argued was taken up with gusto by a French nobility none-too-keen on having an English king, no matter his very real family relationship to the old ruling house.

The Hundred Years War broke out in 1337 and despite many English successes, would of course lead to the eventual fall of the great English bastion (and vineyards) of Bordeaux in 1453.

The fall of the House of Capet was chronicled in Maurice Druon’s series of books “Les Rois Maudit” (“The Accursed Kings“), which, along with the Wars of the Roses, were part of the inspiration for George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series.

And to think that had Louis lived the history of France might have been very different – and it’s all due to a glass of wine… and possibly the Templar curse.