The Bal des Ardents or Bal des Sauvages was a masquerade ball held on 28 January 1393 in Paris. Four of the dancers were killed in a fire caused by a torch brought in by a spectator, Charles’s brother Louis I, Duke of Orléans. The ball was one of a number of events intended to entertain the young king, who the previous summer had suffered an attack of insanity. Charles continued to be mentally fragile, believing he was made of glass and running down the corridors of the royal palaces like a wolf.
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The Bal des Ardents or Bal des Sauvages was a masquerade ball held on 28 January 1393 in Paris. Charles VI of France performed in a dance with five members of the French nobility. Four of the dancers were killed in a fire caused by a torch brought in by a spectator, Charles’s brother Louis I, Duke of Orléans. Charles’s wife, Isabeau of Bavaria, held the ball to honor the remarriage of a lady-in-waiting. The ball was one of a number of events intended to entertain the young king, who the previous summer had suffered an attack of insanity. The event undermined confidence in Charles’s capacity to rule; Parisians considered it proof of courtly decadence. The incident later provided inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s short story Hop-Frog. The King’s sudden onset of insanity was seen by some as a sign of divine anger and punishment and by others as the result of the onset of schizophrenia. Charles continued to be mentally fragile, believing he was made of glass and running down the corridors of the royal palaces like a wolf, according to historian Desmond Seward. In 1392 Charles suffered the first in a lifelong series of attacks of insanity, manifested by an “insatiable fury” at the attempted assassination of the Constable of France and leader of the Marmousets, Olivier de Clisson. He killed four men before his chamberlain grabbed him by the waist and subdued him, after which he fell into a coma that lasted for four days.
Few believed he would recover; his uncles, the dukes of Burgundy and Berry, took advantage of the King’s illness and quickly seized power, re-established themselves as regents. After Charles regained consciousness, and his fever subsided, he returned to Paris, moving slowly from castle to castle, with periods of rest in between. Late in September in September 1393 Charles was well enough to make a pilgrimage of Notrese de Lies, which he returned again to after he returned home to Paris. The king was returned to Le Mans, where Guillaume de Harsigny, a venerated and well-educated 92-year-old physician, was summoned to treat him. He was moved to Paris by Harsignedy, and returned slowly from Paris to Paris in December 1393. Charles died in January 1394, and was succeeded by his son Louis I of Bourbon. Charles was buried in Paris on January 14, 1394. He is buried in the Arc de Triomphe, next to his brother Orléan, who was also buried there. Charles is remembered as the first French king to be crowned in 1380, and the first king to wear a crown in 1387. He died in 1394 in Paris and was buried at the Place de la Concorde, in front of a crowd of 2,000 people, including his brother Louis II of Bourbon, the last of the Bourbon family.
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