Marriage(s) and Relationships: Married to: Duchess von Bavaria Isabella 13 JUL 1385, Amiens
Child:Princess de France Isabella Child:Princess de France Jeanne Child:Princess de France Michelle de Valois Child:Dauphine d France+Dk d Guienne Louis de Valois Child:Princess de France Catherine de Valois Child:King de France Charles VII *The Victorious*Notes: Source: Paul Thereoff.
Charles VI of France became king at the age of 12. He was a dreamy,
sentimental, agreeable and pleasure-loving young man and soon his uncles,
the dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy and Bourbon, took over the government
and plundered the treasury. The Hundred Years War with England had left
France short of funds and in 1382 revolts broke out in many parts of
France. In 1388 Charles, aided by his bother Louis of Orléans
(1371-1407), removed his uncles from power and replaced them with a group
of his father's councillors of humble origins. At the age of 16 Charles
VI had fallen in love with the beautiful Bavarian princess Isabeau
(1371-1435), who had been send to France to become his bride. For Charles
it was love at first sight and he arranged that the marriage was to take
place immediately for he could hardly sleep till the marriage was
consummated. Isabeau, however, was a selfish woman. All she wanted from
life was to have enough means to have her desires fulfilled. She had no
real interest in France and never bothered to speak French well.
Nevertheless, were happy and the young couple held lavish festivities
lasting for days.
In April 1392 Charles (to the left) suffered from a mysterious illness
which caused his hair and nails to fall
out. He was hardly recovered, still suffered from occasional bouts of
fever and behaved incoherently, when he
set out on a punitive expedition after an assassination attempt on one of
his advisors. On a hot day in August
Charles rode at the head of a group of knights, when a wild-looking man
ran up to his horse and spoke some
words of doom and betrayal. While they continued their journey, a page
accidentally dropped a lance.
Suddenly Charles rushed forward with a drawn sword and killed 4 of his
own men before he could be
overpowered. Lifted from his horse, Charles lay flat and speechless on
the ground, his eyes rolling wildly from
side to side. His attendants found an ox-cart to carry him and thus they
returned to Paris. For two days
Charles was in a coma. With the help of a physician, Guillaume de
Harcigny, he made a partial recovery.
From then on his mental health was seriously undermined.
On January 28, 1393 the queen gave a masque and Charles VI and a group of
his courtiers dressed up like
'wild men' in linen costumes. They were accidentally set alight by a
torch and four of them burned alive.
Charles was saved by the duchess of Berry, who threw her voluminous
skirts over him. Nevertheless, the
accident made a deep impression on Charles and in June he was in the
grip of another serious attack of
insanity. A surgeon drilled some holes in Charles' skull, hoping to
relieve pressure on his brain. Although
Charles felt some momentary relief after the operation, he suffered a
relapse in 1395. In 1397 Charles was
aware that his brain became clouded again and requested to have his
dagger removed. Some churchmen and
doctors of the university came to believe that Charles was the victim of
sorcery and around 1398 some attempts were made to exorcise him. Once
Charles cried out: "If there is any one of you who is an accomplice in
this evil I suffer, I beg him to torture me no longer but let me die!"
Charles' attacks of insanity became more frequent and of longer duration.
Still, there were intervals of months during which Charles was sane
except for the uncertainty of his temper, alternating between passive
listlessness and excitable gaiety. During the attacks Charles had
delusions, claiming that his name was Georges, denying that he was the
king or had a wife or any children. He ran from room to room until he
collapsed
from exhaustion, wailing that his enemies were upon him. He smashed the
furniture and urinated in his clothes. He also went through a stage of
believing that he was made of glass 1 and that if people came too near
him he would break. Thus he insisted that iron rods should be inserted
into his clothing to prevent him from breaking.
For some months in 1405 Charles refused to change his linen, to bathe or
to be shaved, and as a consequence he was afflicted by skin trouble and
lice. His physicians hoped to cure Charles with shock treatment. They
therefore arranged for some men to blacken their faces and hide in his
room. When the king entered they all jumped out, presumably shouting
"boo". As a result Charles agreed to be washed, shaved and
dressed and for a few weeks his behaviour was more reasonable.
For reasons of succession the beautiful Isabeau continued to submit to
the embraces of her mad husband until 1407. Charles' attitude to Isabeau
show the ambivalent characteristics of schizophrenia; in his derangement
Charles felt a strong resentment to his once beloved wife. His wild lusts
often kept Isabeau in fear for her life and thus she arranged for a
pretty horse-dealer's daughter to take her place. Meanwhile, Isabeau
found consolation in the arms of her brother-in-law, Louis of Orléans
(1371-1407). From the moment Isabeau had set foot in France,
this elegant, ambitious and dissolute youth had been pursuing her. Soon
they went everywhere together, often for weeks at a time, flagrantly
enjoying themselves together. The legitimacy of Isabeau's younger
children was doubted and her relationship with Louis was at its height
when Young Charles (1403-1461) was born. Isabeau lavished more care upon
this puny and sickly 11. child than upon the others.
While his body remained healthy, Charles VI was soon unable to
concentrate, make decisions or govern at all. Even in his more lucid
moments he did whatever those who were with him told him to do, so French
politics became a rivalry for custody of the king. A fierce power
struggle developed between Louis of Orléans and John the fearless of
Burgundy (1371-1419)2 until John instigated the murder of Louis in
November 1407. The queen, who had recently lost her 12. child shortly
after its birth, openly joined the party of her lover's murderers and it
was
rumoured that she entered John the fearless' bed as well. The duke of
Burgundy was now opposed by count Bernard VII of Armagnac (~1362-1418)
and the power struggle intensified with both parties massacring their
enemies. When king Henry V of England (1387-1422) invaded France in 1415,
his exhausted force of 5000 men routed a French army of five times its
size in the famous Battle of Agincourt.
In the course of years queen Isabeau had become abnormally fat and as a
result she was unable to get around without a wheel chair. She lived with
her pets at Vincennes where she was free to do as she chose. Bernard of
Armagnac guarded the interests of her children and when he found out that
Isabeau was plotting with the duke of Burgundy, he took revenge by
informing the king about the queen's dissolute behaviour.
Spurred on by his heir, Young Charles, Charles VI actually decided to
make a stand, rode with his son and the count of Armagnac to Vincennes,
and arrested the queen's supposed latest lover. He was tortured,
strangled and thrown into the Seine in a leather sack. Isabeau was
officially banished for the "dissolute behaviour of her
ladies-in-waiting", but it is likely that they mainly blamed the queen
herself. She remained on good terms with John the fearless, while her
new favourite, Jean de Villiers, murdered Bernard of Armagnac in 1418 and
carved
the cross of Burgundy on his chest.
In 1419 the 16-year-old heir to the throne was discredited, when John the
fearless was hacked to death at a meeting with him. In return for a
pension queen Isabeau asserted that the crown prince, "Charles, who calls
himself the Dauphin", was illegitimate. She gave her daughter Catherine
(1401-1438) in marriage to Henry V of England and recognised them as
heirs to the throne. Henry V brought Charles VI, who had been living in a
state of neglect at Senlis, back to Paris. There he was taken ill with
fever in 1421. He recovered after eating enormous quantities of oranges
and pomegranates. In the autumn of 1422 he fell ill again and with only
strangers at hand he died. Henry V had died the same year and Henry's
baby son was crowned king Henry VI (1421-1471) of both England and France.
Charles' mysterious illness of 1392 could have been typhoid or
encephalitis. If this disease was encephalitis, then it could very likely
have been a contributory factor to the bizarre features of Charles'
behaviour, for encephalitis can cause a marked character change and give
rise to impulsive, aggressive and intemperate activity, similar in its
symptoms to those of schizophrenia. Regarding Charles' family history,
the disease
porphyria is another possible diagnose. Porphyria is a rare hereditary
disease with symptoms like an acute inflammation of the bowels,
difficulty in articulation and swallowing, a painful weakness of the
limbs, over-sensitivity and sometimes loss of the power of feeling. In
more severe attacks porphyria can result in over-activity, agitation,
visual and auditory disturbances, persistent sleeplessness, confusion,
delirium and
progressive senility.
Charles immediate ancestors were closely related to each other. His
mother was the French princess Joan of Bourbon (1338-1377, to the right).
Like her brother, father and grandfather, Joan was slightly unstable;
"elle en perdi son bon sens et son bon memore". She suffered a complete
nervous breakdown in 1373 after the birth of her 7. child. At the age of
12 Joan had been married to Charles V the wise of France (1337-1380), who
was "racked with gout" 3 in his hands and feet and died at the age of 43.
Charles VI could have inherited the disease porphyria from both his
parents.
The mental capabilities of Mad Charles' eldest son, Louis of Guyenne
(1397-1415), were questioned. He was a dissolute youth who spent his
nights in revels and his days in recovering from them. He and his brother
John of Touraine (1398-1417) both died young and under mysterious
circumstances. Charles' successor, Charles VII, was inconsistent,
capricious, irresponsible, suspicious, fearful of assassination attempts
and very insecure. He had a phobia for bridges since John the fearless
had been murdered on a bridge in his presence. Some weeks
before his death Charles VII had a psychotic reaction, refusing all food.
One of Mad Charles' daughters, Michelle (1395-1422), became melancholic
in 1419 in relation to the involvement of her brother in the murder of
her father-in-law, John the fearless. The daughter who married Henry V
probably introduced the disease porphyria into the British royal family.
Her eldest son, Henry VI of England and France, went mad too, loosing
both his French and English possessions, and her son by a Welsh lover was
an ancestor of the Tudors.
Source: Joan Bos
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