(1368-1422). Charles VI (r. 1380-1422) was born in Paris on December 3, 1368, to Charles V and Jeanne de Bourbon. He was crowned king on November 4, 1380. His father had stipulated that during his minority the oldest of his paternal uncles, Louis I of Anjou, was to be regent, but Anjou agreed under pressure, on October 2, 1380, that Charles VI be declared of age and the kingdom ruled in his name according to the advice of all four royal uncles. In 1388, influenced by a plan set in motion by Olivier de Clisson, Charles VI took control of the government himself. The counselors he then favored, scornfully called Marmousets by the dukes, initiated a program of reform that was cut short by the onset of his mental illness on August 5, 1392.
This crisis enabled the dukes to regain their power. The king considered himself recovered within five weeks, but other psychotic episodes followed. Charles VI suffered from recurring persecutory delusions and exhibited forms of behavior commonly observed today in schizophrenics. There was often no clearly visible line of demarcation to distinguish his schizophrenic thought patterns from “sane” ones. Since he often seemed able to function, he was allowed to continue to rule with full power, his royal prerogative protected by the sacred character of French kingship. Despite a manifest desire to be a good king, Charles VI made many important decisions while his thinking was disordered, and this soon upset the equilibrium of his government.
His mental illness caused him to deal in an inconsistent and questionable manner with the assassination of his brother, Louis of Orleans, in 1407. The consequence was almost constant civil war that exacerbated the persecutory delusions suffered by the king, for suspicion of treason was everywhere. This atmosphere also had the effect of making the king’s schizophrenic thinking often seem sane.
In an attempt to protect the monarchy from control by either the Burgundians or the Armagnacs (the Orleanist party), the king’s eldest son, Duke Louis of Guyenne, sought to form a separate royalist party. These efforts, spoiled by the invasion of Henry V of England and by Louis’s own death in December, were not continued by the dauphin Charles (later Charles VII), who fled Paris as it fell to the Burgundians on May 29, 1418. He did not return until 1437.
The dauphin Charles and the Armagnacs found support in each other for their demands. The government was anxious for the dauphin to return to the royal court, but reconciliation became impossible after he sanctioned the assassination of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, at Montereau in September 1419 and then committed treason by usurping royal authority to call himself regent of France. As a result, Charles VI accepted the Anglo-French-Burgundian Treaty of Troyes in May 1420 and married his daughter Catherine to Henry V. The treaty declared Henry heir to the French throne with the powers of regent, but preserved Charles VI’s rights and authority. Charles VI survived Henry and died at the Hotel de Saint-Pol on October 21, 1422.
Richard C. Famiglietti
[See also: ARMAGNACS; CATHERINE OF FRANCE: CLISSON; HENRY V; JOHN THE FEARLESS: LOUIS, DUKE OF GUYENNE; MARMOUSETS]
Autrand, Franfoise. Charles VI. Paris: Fayard, 1986.
Famiglietti, R. C. Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles VI1392-1420. New York: AMS, 1986.
Grandeau, Yann. “La mort et les obseques de Charles VI.” Bulletinphilologique et historique du Comite des TravauxHistoriques et Scientifiques (1970):133-86.
Hindman, Sandra L. Christine de Pizan ’s “Epistre Othea”:Painting and Politics at the Court of Charles VI. Toronto: Pontifi-cal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986.
Rey, Maurice. Les finances royales sous Charles VI: les causes du deficit (1388-1413). Paris: SEVPEN, 1965.
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