Four of them burned to death: Charles was saved when a noblewoman smothered the flames with her skirts. But then in January 1393, at a costume ball in the palace, Charles and several of his courtiers were accidentally set alight by a torch. When he recovered, all seemed well again. As his eyes rolled wildly, he went into a coma and was unconscious for two days. ![]() Drawing his sword and declaring that he was under attack by traitors, he suddenly turned and struck at his own men, killing four of them before being pulled from his horse. As they continued down the road, one of the men-at-arms accidentally dropped his lance, and Charles, perhaps shaken by the incident, seemed to go into some sort of trance. (Modern scholars have attributed this illness to everything from encephalitis to porphyria to schizophrenia.) A short while later, as he was leading a band of knights to put down a rebellious nobleman, he was accosted by an old man who screamed at him that he was being betrayed. ![]() It also seems to have affected his brain. In 1392 Charles fell ill with a fever that made his hair and nails fall out and brought on convulsions. He became known as Charles the Beloved.īut then things started to go wrong. Charles was graceful and polite and treated even the commoners with respect, and his decisions were well-thought out. Three years later, having received the best education that medieval Europe could provide, Charles dismissed his regents and took over as King.Īt first, all was well. He was 16, she was 14, and although she did not speak a word of French and they couldn’t even talk with each other, he was besotted with her. ![]() In 1385, the Princess Isabeau of Bavaria was sent to France in an arranged marriage for Charles. On top of that, the Black Death had devastated all of Europe just forty years before, and France had still not recovered.įrance needed a strong leader, and young Charles VI was groomed to be that figure. The war had drained the French treasury, and the Dukes of Anjou, Burgundy, Berry and Bourbon, Charles’ uncles who were serving as regents for the young King, had already raised taxes several times, provoking a rebellion amongst the peasantry. Through a convoluted line of intermarriages, the English Kings had staked a claim to the French throne and also asserted ownership of large portions of French territory. When Charles VI became King of France in 1380 at the age of eleven, the Hundred Years War with England had already been raging for decades.
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