[3] Internationally, Philip's ambitions made him highly influential in European affairs, and for much of his reign, he sought to place his relatives on foreign thrones.

To further strengthen the monarchy, Philip tried to tax and impose state control over the Catholic Church in France, leading to a violent dispute with Pope Boniface VIII.

His final year saw a scandal amongst the royal family, known as the Tour de Nesle affair, in which King Philip's three daughters-in-law were accused of adultery.

[5] In August 1270, when Philip was two years old, his grandfather died while on Crusade, his father became king, and his elder brother Louis became heir apparent.

Only five months later, in January 1271, Philip's mother died after falling from a horse; she was pregnant with her fifth child at the time and had not yet been crowned queen beside her husband.

[8] Joseph Strayer points out that such a deal was probably unnecessary, as Peter had little to gain from provoking a battle with the withdrawing French or angering the young Philip, who had friendly relations with Aragon through his mother.

[11] The primary administrative benefit of the marriage was Joan's inheritance of Champagne and Brie, which were adjacent to the royal demesne in Ile-de-France, and thus effectively were united to the king's own lands, expanding his realm.

[14] His reign marks the transition to a more centralized administration, characterized by the emergence or consolidation of the King's Council, the Parlement and the Court of Auditors, a move, under a certain historical reading, towards modernity.

An agreement was indeed reached; it stated that Edward would temporarily relinquish Gascony to Philip as a sign of submission in his capacity as the duke of Aquitaine.

The ensuing 1294–1303 Gascon War was the inevitable result of the competitive expansionist monarchies, but the direct campaigns between the two countries in Aquitaine and Flanders were inconclusive.

Meanwhile, England assisted Flanders in its own war against France; the decimation of a generation of French nobility at the Battle of the Golden Spurs forced Philip to abandon his occupation of Aquitaine.

Meant to further seal a lasting peace, it eventually produced an English claimant to the French throne itself, leading to the Hundred Years' War.

[citation needed] Philip suffered a major setback when an army of 2,500 noble men-at-arms (knights and squires) and 4,000 infantry he sent to suppress an uprising in Flanders was defeated in the Battle of the Golden Spurs near Kortrijk on 11 July 1302.

[20] Béthune, first of the Flemish cities to yield, was granted to Mahaut, Countess of Artois, whose two daughters, to secure her fidelity, were married to Philip's two sons.

Philip had various contacts with the Mongol power in the Middle East, including reception at the embassy of the Uyghur monk Rabban Bar Sauma, originally from the Yuan dynasty of China.

Philip seemingly responded positively to the request of the embassy by sending one of his noblemen, Gobert de Helleville, to accompany Bar Sauma back to Mongol lands.

Under Philip IV, the annual ordinary revenues of the French royal government totalled approximately 860,000 livres tournois, equivalent to 46 tonnes of silver.

[30] After 1289, a decline in Saxony's silver production, combined with Philip's wars against Aragon, England and Flanders, drove the French government to fiscal deficits.

[29] To cover the deficit, Pope Nicholas IV in 1289 granted Philip permission to collect a tithe of 152,000 LP (livres parisis) from the Church lands in France.

[27] The constant deficits led Philip to order the arrest of the Lombard merchants, who had earlier made him extensive loans on the pledge of repayment from future taxation.

[32] As warfare continued and fiscal deficits persisted, Philip had no remedy but to use debasement of coinage as an alternative tool to meet his military expenditures.

[34][35] As people attempted to move their wealth out of the country in non-monetary form, Philip banned merchandise exports without royal approval.

[37] Perhaps seeking to control the silver of the Jewish mints to put the revaluation to effect, Philip ordered the expulsion of the Jews on 22 July 1306 and confiscated their property on 23 August, collecting at least 140,000 LP with this measure.

Philip was substantially in debt to the Knights Templar, a monastic military order whose original role as protectors of Christian pilgrims in the Latin East had been largely replaced by banking and other commercial activities by the end of the 13th century.

[42] As the popularity of the Crusades had decreased, support for the military orders had waned, and Philip used a disgruntled complaint against the Knights Templar as an excuse to move against the entire organization as it existed in France, in part to free himself from his debts.

The Temple case was the last step of the process of appropriating these foundations, which had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII.

[44] At daybreak on Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of Templars in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of Philip the Fair, to be later tortured into admitting heresy in the Order.

The canons pronounced that a relapsed heretic was to be burned without a hearing; the facts were notorious and no formal judgment by the papal commission need be waited for.

[55] It is possible that Dante hides further the person of the king behind 7 figures: Cerbero, Pluto, Filippo Argenti (Philippe de l'argent), Capaneo, Gerione, Nembrot, in the Inferno, and the Giant in the Purgatorio killed by the "515".

These representations are centred around Capaneo, referring to the myth of the Seven against Thebes, and are related to the Beast from the Sea in the Revelation of St. John, whose seventh head, like the Giant, is also killed.