King Charles VI, once known as Charles the Beloved, later known as Charles the Mad, died of what were probably natural causes in 1422, at the age of 61. Basically, Charles’ weakness encouraged every ambitious murderer in what was left of the country to wring the other murderers’ necks, actually starting a full-scale civil war, while the English laughed and occupied whichever parts of France looked worth invading. To get a reasonably accurate picture of the maneuvering going on all around Charles, try binge-watching Game of Thrones dubbed in French. Medieval politics have a way of being absurdly complicated. The treasury was empty, despite the crushing taxes, the war was going as badly as it possibly could, and forces were gathering to pull the plug on the king.
And Worseĭuring Charles’ reign, the affairs of France unsurprisingly went to hell. Interestingly, this isn’t an uncommon delusion, and Charles may have been the first person known to have harbored it. To control the king’s wild sprints around the palace, which often ended in the Royal Gardens, where the Royal Person was found in his Royal Nudity squatting in the Royal Dirt, and court attendants had the corridors walled up.Īccording to Pope Pius II, King Charles VI of France spent several months in 1405 refusing to bathe and threatened to kill anyone who touched him, as he was made of glass and might break.
In 1393, one year after the hunting trip, Charles appeared to forget his own name and didn’t recognize his wife when she was brought to him, which was about the only mental health treatment anyone could think to try, apart from the enemas, of course.īy the way, don’t feel bad for the queen – that same year, she authored a decree forcing French Jews to sell their belongings and leave the country, mostly for Poland (fun fact: she was German).Ĭharles spent much of the winter of 1395-96 claiming to be Saint George and insisting that his family crest be redesigned to reflect that.
While sources all agree that he was a fine leader during his lucid periods, those moments became increasingly rare over the years. Things went from bad to worse during the rest of Charles’ reign. Officially, Charles was eligible to become king in his own right at 14, but the regency lasted until he was 21, letting him finish his education and fully prepare to lead France out of the darkness. On his father’s death, the 11-year-old Charles became king, with a regency shared among his four uncles. Charles VI was bred to be that hero, and as a child he was given the best education a Medieval prince could expect. In this context, with plague stalking the starving peasantry and an English invasion threatening to gobble up what little was left under the Crown’s authority, France needed a great leader. The world Charles was born into had spent the previous 50 years falling apart, and most of the horrible things we today associate with the Middle Ages – plague, famine, ignorance, bandits roaming the countryside, constant war – really date to this period alone. The general prosperity of the previous century had collapsed in shrieking disaster for France with repeated weather-induced crop failures a few decades earlier, which provoked a struggle over land that became the Hundred Years’ War, which was nicely accented by the 1346 arrival of the Black Death and the attendant loss of around one-third to half of the population. Unfortunately for him, that was a bad time, and a bad house, to be born into. Charles was born into the House of Valois on December 3, 1368.