Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaronminkie. Listener discretion is advised. It was January of thirteen ninety three and the Queen of France, Queen Isabel, was throwing a ball. Ostensibly, the ball was to celebrate the third marriage of a twice widowed lady in waiting, but really the party's purpose was a little broader. The Queen's husband, King Charles the sixth, was often ill, prone to fits and bouts of insanity
that would last months. Queen Isabeau liked to hold plenty of events at court to distract and entertain the King and hopefully keep him in his right mind. The main event of this ball would be a shivery featuring six senior nights. The knights would dress up in costumes as wild men from the forest and then delight the attendees at the party by dancing and howling and screaming in their faces, gesticulating at them, running around in a frenzy,
and inviting the party guests to guess their identities. If you've never dressed as a wild man from the forest before, or if you're planning on doing it, next Halloween. The costumes involved covering the men from head to toe in linen soaked in pitch, and then sticking on enough flax so they looked terry and well wild. Their faces were also covered in masks made of the same linen soaked in pitch covered in dried flax. No one, not even the Queen, knew that one of the six mysterious dancing
wild men was actually King Charles the sixth. The raucous celebration began, and women in the crowd screamed as the half dozen men leapt around them, and then late to the party came the Duke of Orleans, the King's brother. The Duke of Orleans was drunk and holding a torch. Part of the game of the chivery was guessing which nights were hidden beneath the layers of extremely flammable linen and pitch and dried flax, and so the Duke leaned in closer to get a better look. Maybe you see
where this is going. The wild man burst into flames. As he flailed, he quickly ignited the other wild men around him. A young duchess only fourteen, recognized the king and managed to protect him from the sparks with her skirts. But for the rest of the men, it was a gruesome scene. The smell of burning pitch and then charred flesh filled the room. A cardinal wrote that he watched the burnt genitals of one of the men fall to
the floor, releasing a stream of blood. One of the other nights was able to save himself by jumping into a barrel of wine, but aside from the King, the rest of the men perished from the flames. The evening would come to be known as the Bal de Sardin Ball of the Burning Men, it's a grisly chapter that unfortunately seems to represent the reign of Charles the sixth. His reign was an era of chaos and voices shouting
over each other for control. As king, Charles would betrayaled by tragedy, by civil war, and foreign invasion, but his most pernicious enemy would be his own mind. For thirty years, the king would suffer alternating periods of lucidity and madness as his kingdom fell into disarray around him. The king would be as powerless as he was that night the Ball of the Burning Men, as he watched his friends fall and burn death at what should have been a party.
I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood. Charles's father died when he was just eleven years old, a few weeks before his twelfth birthday. The age of majority for taking over a kingdom in the thirteen hundreds was fourteen, and so in the meantime in came Charles's uncle's The duties of the king them were divided up. Amongst them, his paternal uncles, the brothers of the former king, were the most important. They were the Duke of Anjou, the Duke of Burgundy, also known as Philip the Bold, and
the Duke of Barry. Duke of Anjou became regent. Burgundy took over the royal household, and Barry was given the governorships of the regions of Langu, Duck and Aquitaine. Charles is one maternal uncle, the Duke of Bourbon, assisted with the royal household. As you can imagine, chaos ensued. Like
evil uncles out of a fairy tale. The group of them, known as the Sires de flour de Lis, were selfish and avaricious, less interested in running the country and more interested in using their new found power to benefit themselves, undoing all of the good work that the dead King Charles five had done lowering taxes. In the meantime, the regent, the Duke of Anjou, first snatched whatever treasures he could
from the dead king's private treasury. Then, to make more money for himself and also to fund the increasingly expensive Hundred Years War, he raised sales taxes and withheld payment from troops. The troops didn't take that very well. In retaliation, soldiers flocked to Paris in protest. To quote W. H. Jervis's A History of France, the furious and underpaid troops took to the streets to commit quote every kind of excess. More details about what those excesses are aren't given, so unfortunately,
we'll have to use our imagination. Their outrage was directly against the regent, and they demanded that the Duke of Anjou lower the new taxes. Of course, faced with an angry mob of soldiers, the Duke conceded, but his concession was only temporary. There would be another tax on cloth and another right, this time in Rua. But this time the regent was ready to put the riot down with swift and immediate force. The leaders of the revolt were executed,
and the duty on cloth continued. Now that he had tasted victory in subduing the masses, the Duke of Anjou would no longer concede or back down. He enacted a new tax in Paris, an exercise duty on the produce sold in markets. That led to another massive insurrection, in which people stormed government offices and released the prisoners at the Chatelai. But the group of protesters called the Melotines didn't have a natural leader, and so the fervor and
energy of the riots eventually dissipated. Terms could be negotiated. The court declared that the tax would be abandoned and that there would be amnesty for the riders. For a moment, there was calm, until the court started with arrests and executions. Amnesty be damned. Finally, the city's advocate general arranged to pay the Duke of Anjou a hundred thousand francs if there would be no more retaliation for the protests. The
Duke happily agreed. Almost immediately after this strategic and domestic disaster, the Duke of Anjou got word from his cousin Joanna of Naples that she was making him her successor, So as one does, he waved goodbye to France and bounded off with a small army to Naples, where he was all ready to beat out a competing heir to the throne. But before he did that, the Duke of Anjou died suddenly in Italy, one uncle down, but no matter, Philip, the Bold, Duke of Burgundy took over duties as regions.
The Duke of Burgundy had married the heiress of Flanders. He used the power of France to control that region against insurrection with a brutal fist. The people of Ghent, who had been rebellious, were met with the full power of what Jervis calls quote rapacious and brutal aristocracy. Wanting another ally to defend Flanders, particularly against the threat from the English, the Duke of Burgundy arranged for his nephew, the King, to marry Isabeau of Bavaria. Charles the sixth
was sixteen, Isabeau was a few years younger. You might recall that the age of majority in France was fourteen, and that by this point Charles was well past it. So why then did he keep letting his uncle's control the country's affairs. Well, we don't really know. Charles didn't seem that interested in being king. It seems as though he thought that his uncles were doing the hard parts of his job for him, and he was free to
hunt and ride and drink with his friends. But soon his uncle's mounting military failures would leave Charles no choice but to finally accept his crown. First, there was a disastrously failed invasion of England. One fleet was hit by a devastating storm off the coast of Brittany, and then the Duke of Berry, having not supported the invasion in the first place, delayed until the tide and season meant it was too late to sail. England swept in, attacked
and destroyed several friendships easily. But there was more that Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, wanted his nephew to do. They didn't call him the Bold for nothing. The Duke of Burgundy said that the king needed to mount an expedition against a man named Duke William Girous, who had somehow insulted Charles, Burgundy said, but who had absolutely insulted
Burgundy's wife's aunt. In other words, it was a petty family squabble, and the Duke of Burgundy wanted to use the power of the King of France, and so young Charles mounted the expedition like his uncle asked. But in the end it led to nothing. Charles lost a number of troops and in the end, when he did win, all he asked for was for William of Gudrus to apologize, which he did. The Cardinal Bishop of Land spoke up
at the next Council board meeting. By now the king was twenty one years old, it was time for him to terminate the regency and cut free his selfish, battle hungry uncles. Charles agreed. He told his uncle's he would be taking over, and with all of the grace and charm in the world, his uncle's respectfully conceded their power over to him. That very same day, Cardinal Bishop Land died of suspected poisoning, but that could just be, you know,
complete coincidence. As official King Charles the Six reinstalled the incredibly competent and wonkish ministers that his father had used, a group both affectionately and mockingly called the Marmose the Marmosetts. Together they brought back the sensible tax policies and laws that had disappeared in the confusion and selfishness of the Four Way Regency. It's at this point that Charles gets his first nickname, Charles le bien Army Charles the Beloved.
But it wouldn't last. Just a few years later, disaster and death would reach Charles and cling to him for the rest of his life. Into one of the King's closest advisers and allies, a man named Oliver de Clesson had an attack on his life by another gentleman named Pierre de Krome. Kraw was a young cousin of the Duke of Brittany, and recently he had been distanced from court.
He blamed Oliver de Clisso for his change in fortunes, and so one evening, when Oliver de Clissen was walking home, Kraw and a few friends ambushed him in the street and left him for dead. Fortunately, Oliver de Clisson lived. Kraw, on the other hand, fled to the safety of his cousin in Brittany, who took him under his protective custody. Well, that would not stand for King Charles the Six. He needed justice for his friend, and so on July one,
the king mounted an expedition towards Brittany. The summer was sweltering and the pace of the party traveling was excruciatingly slow. A few week into their journey, at the northwestern city of Lament, the king came down with an illness that kept him in bed for three weeks. The king's physicians wanted to keep him in bed for longer, but Charles refused. Even though he still had a fever. He mounted his horse and demanded that the party continue. That day was
August five, and it was swelteringly hot. They rode for a few quiet hours while the sun basted down on them from directly overhead, and then a man appeared on the road. He sometimes described as a leper or a beggar, but either way, this man jumped in front of the horses and started waving his arms. Ride no further, noble King, He shouted, turned back, thou Art betrayed. He kept repeating that over and over again, thou Art betrayed, thou Art betrayed.
The King's guards forced the man out of the road and shook him off, but the man wouldn't leave. He continued to walk behind the horses shouting up at the royal procession. Thou art betrayed. The man was mad, clearly the king ignored him. In fact, the king found that he could ignore most things. In the hot august heat, with the gentle, lulling stride of his horse beneath him, the king felt himself sinking into something of a stupor
until a crash. A page had fallen asleep on his horse and dropped a lance, which struck a helmet with a loud bang. Charles the sixth went mad. He pulled his sword and started whipping it back and forth at his own men. You're all traders, he cried. The king stabbed at his knights and men, flailing wildly. By the time they were able to disarm the king, he had already murdered one of his own soldiers and wounded several others.
After a few days, when the king came to and his fever broke, he was deeply regretful and ashamed of what he had done. He was haunted by it. His uncles would take over again, just for a bit, just until the king was well again, if he ever got well again, they said in private. Just a few years later, more of Charles's friends suffered grim accidental deaths at the ball of the burning Men. What was meant to be a lighthearted romp to lighten the king's spirits became a
living nightmare. Of the four men who eventually died from their burns, only one died that evening. The other three died slow and painful deaths, with burns covering most of their bodies. For his part, the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans, felt horribly guilty for being the one who had held the initial torch. The people of France were outraged when word of the tragedy reached them. Was it attempted regicide? How had anyone allowed the king to be
put in such a position of danger. In order to appease the public, the Duke of Orleans and several of the king's advisers embarked on a literal walk of shame, while the King rode on horseback beside them to the Notre Dame Cathedral to do public penance. The Duke of Orleans also paid for a chapel to be built at a nearby monastery. The people still loved their king, Charles the Beloved, but he would test that love for the rest of his reign, and eventually he would take on
a new epithet, Charles Leafu or Charles the Mad. For three to five months, Charles would be completely lucid and sane, and then for anywhere from three to nine months, he would lose his tether to reality, forgetting his own name, forgetting he was king, unable to recognize any of his
children or his wife Isabell. Once, when his wife came to his bed chamber hoping to um personally remind her husband of who she was, and exasperated, Charles just told his servants to take care of whatever it was that this woman seemed to want. He didn't realize why that was funny, when it wasn't indifference towards loved ones, it was outright animosity. The only family member he seemed able to recognize was his sister in law, the Duchess of Orleans.
Jealous of her relative power over the king, the king's uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, remember him, took advantage of the era's superstitions and said that the Duchess had only made herself known to the king with sorcery. Burgundy had her banished from court. This tension between Burgundy and Orleans would become an important pattern in King Charles spent weeks claiming that he was Saint George. He ran around a lot
of the time. His staff would have to wall off entrances to the King's residences so that he wouldn't get lost and they wouldn't lose track of him. In fourteen o five, Charles did bathe or change his clothes for five months. It was around this time that he saw for it from the glass delusion, the idea that he himself was made of glass and that he could shatter
at any moment. He was obsessed with protecting himself from shattering, insisting on having iron rods sewn into his clothing so he could say straight and unharmed when he might be forced to interact with anyone, just as it had been during his childhood. Having no clear regent for the king meant that the kingdom fell into confusion and chaos, nearing anarchy as rival factions the Queen, the king's oldest son, the Daufin, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of
Orleans were all vying for power. After the Duke of Burgundy died in his sixties, his claim to power is taken up by his son, John the Fearless, the new Duke of Burgundy. In fourteen o seven, while the Queen was recovering from an illness, the Duke of Orleans visited her every day. At the end of November, the Duke received a message from the King saying that he needed
him at the palace. Immediately, the Duke of Orleans left to go heed his brother's request, but the message was a fake, meant to lure him out onto the street, where he was attacked and killed. So who killed the King's brother, Well, John the Fearless, the new Duke of Burgundy didn't really deny that he did. In order to avenge his father's death, the new Duke of Orleans enlisted the support of his father in law, the Duke of Amagnac,
and thus began the Amagnac Burgundian Civil War. All of this was happening at the same time as the ongoing hundred Deer War with England, and as a rule, you don't want to have a civil war at the same time you're also fighting off an external enemy. It gets a little complicated with the battles and rival factions, but the cliff notes version is that in all of the chaos, Henry the five of Kenneth Branas Shakespeare fame, swept into
France and won the Battle of Agincourts. In fourteen fifteen, during a period of lucidity, Charles six signed the Treaty of Trois, which named Henry the fifth as charles successor and married Henry to one of Charles's daughters. In the Shakespeare version of the story, the treaty happened right after Agincore, but really these things are slow and undramatic. It was five years later. Charles the sixth is the unnamed French king in the Shakespeare play, but none of Charles's madness
is referenced. Instead, if you've read Henry five, the French king is portrayed as just indecisive, dominated by the overbearing presence of his ministers and advisers. When Charles the six finally does die, it's met with whales in the streets. They cry for him in a way that they didn't at all for his uncle's or his brother. Even after thirty years of madness, he was still Charles the beloved. That's the story of Charles the six. But keep listening.
After a brief sponsor break to hear, a little bit of what happened in France after his death, and a quick personal note. If you want to support the show, you can do so on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Noble Blood Tales, where I'll be posting episode scripts and bibliographies and announcing things like merch drops, because guess
what we're getting merch. The Treaty of Twas made Henry the Fifth of England next in line for the French throne, but Henry died before Charles did, which made Henry's son, Henry the sixth the next French king. Upon Charles's death, the baby was crowned in Paris at Notre Dame, but Charles's son, the Dauphin, who should have gotten the throne, didn't take that line down. He fought to win back his crown from the English usurpation, and the defa had
an advantage. You see, there was this peasant who led a siege at Orleans that lasted only nine days, and then this peasant led the troops through another handful of quick and miraculous victories and allowed the Daufin to make it to Rhyme, where he would be crowned Charles the Seven. Eventually, this peasant, who bolstered the French troops to victory, would be captured by the Burgundian sect of French nobles who were allied with the English. I told you it got
a little complicated between the Burgundians and Orleans. After being put on trial, the peasant was burned at the stake, but she was later canonized as a Catholic saint. She's sometimes called the Maid of Orleans, but you probably know her as Joan of Arc. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show was written and hosted by Danis Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young.
Noble Blood is on Social Idea at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. MHM