At the "bridge of Paris," hard by Notre-Dame, fresh wonders awaited the queen. A master tumbler, from Genoa, "had tied a cord on the highest house of the bridge of Saint-Michael over all the houses, and the other end was tied on the highest tower in Our Lady's church. And as the Queen passed by, and was in the street called Our Lady's street, because it was late, this said master with two burning candles in his hands issued out of a little stage that he had made on the height of Our Lady's tower, and singing he went upon the cord all along the great street, so that all saw him and had marvel how it might be." This tumbler, dressed as an angel, gave another crown to Isabeau, and then mounting skyward disappeared through a slit in the canopy over the bridge, as if he were returning to heaven.
In the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Isabeau was crowned, saying, says Froissart,--not without an equivocation of which he himself was doubtless quite unconscious,--"what prayers she pleased." But the festivities were not over; we have omitted many a detail given by Froissart plays and dumb shows presenting indiscriminately the sacred histories of Scripture and the legends of French heroes, castles full of mock monsters, representations of the entire heavenly hierarchy and of the dream which had suggested to Charles the emblem of the flying hart. With gay balls at night and jousts and miracle plays by day, the celebration was continued for several days. The merchants of Paris presented to the queen and to Valentine Visconti, the new Duchess of Orléans, most costly jewels, rich sets of plate, in gold and silver, cups, and salvers, and dishes of gold, "whereat everyone marvelled greatly," and the royal pair were greatly pleased.
Who was to pay for all the display in this entry of the queen? The citizens of Paris had fondly hoped that, what with their show of loyal joy and their presents,--aggregating some sixty thousand crowns in gold,--the king would be pleased to remit certain oppressive taxes. On the contrary, it was the citizens of Paris who were compelled to pay for all this fine foolery. Charles departed from Paris a few days after the conclusion of his fête, leaving behind him an increased tax and an ordinance prohibiting, under penalty of death, the use of certain silver coins of small value; this latter restriction, which was intended to favor the circulation of his new and debased coinage, inflicted peculiar hardships upon the poor. Thus, Isabeau was already inflicting much misery upon the poor of that capital which had lavished so much upon her; and before we bestow our commiseration upon the miserable king in after days, it is well to remember the miseries of his subjects.
Life had been as yet but a dream for Charles and his queen; though France was rapidly going to ruin under their extravagant and heedless rule, could they not chase away care in revels surpassing any that France had yet seen? But the dream was soon to become a nightmare, the hideous nightmare of insanity, for this heedless monarch.
It was not until three years after the coronation of Isabeau that her unfortunate husband had the first attack of what was, unmistakably, insanity, though to any reasonable creature the behavior of the whole court would have seemed mad enough from the beginning. One of those acts of lawless private vengeance which were so soon to become dreadfully familiar in France first excited the king almost to the point of frenzy. A certain Pierre de Craon, a noble who had already distinguished himself by robbing the late Duke of Anjou, was driven from Paris by the Duke of Orléans, to whose wife he had imprudently revealed some of the infidelities of her too licentious husband. He fled to Jean de Montfort, who persuaded him that the person chiefly responsible for his disgrace was the renowned Olivier de Clisson, Conétable of France. Secretly returning to Paris, Pierre de Craon lay in wait for the constable one night and fell upon him with a band of bravoes. The brave De Clisson was seriously wounded, and the villains fled, thinking him slain. Charles, who favored De Clisson, was furious at the outrage, and breathed vengeance against Craon. As Jean de Montfort constituted himself the defender of this wretch, and refused to deliver him up to justice, the lands belonging to Craon were devastated, his wife and children were driven forth, and war was declared upon Brittany.
The king had always had a passionate love for the more theatrical side of war, and, as soon as the constable was able to ride, the king and his forces marched upon Brittany. We may pass over the earlier part of his campaign, taken up in aimless marches and as aimless parleying. On August 5, 1392, during a spell of intensely hot weather, Charles marched out of Mans. He had been suffering from a fever, was much weakened, and had for days been greatly harassed by the heat and the baffling of his delayed vengeance; he was moody, and "his spirits sore troubled and travailed," when, as he rode through the forest of Mans, there suddenly rushed to his horse's head a wild figure, half clothed, and manifestly mad. Seizing the king's bridle, the apparition exclaimed, with that strange earnestness so often noticeable in those whose reason is unbalanced: "Sir King, ride no further forward, for thou art betrayed." The servants hastily drove away the poor madman, and sought to restore the king's peace of mind, more seriously disturbed than ever by a happening that might well have startled even a person in strong health. On rode the cavalcade, out over the open plains, where a blazing sun beat full upon the king's head, protected only by a thin cap. Suddenly Charles started, checked his horse, drew his sword, and charged upon the pages who rode beside him, crying, as if in the heat of battle: "On, on! down with these traitors!" Madly pursuing the pages, he put to flight even the Duke of Orléans, and was not overpowered and disarmed until he and his horse were quite exhausted.
He recognized none of those about him, and only physical weakness prevented him from becoming again a frantic lunatic. The poor weak brain, over-excited and worn-out by the long years of debauchery, was hopelessly overthrown; though sane at times, and even for considerable periods, Charles VI. was evermore incapable of ruling, being a mere helpless and unhappy tool in the hands of the heartless people who could win sufficient power to rule what was left of France.
The queen was no Blanche de Castille, able to rule a kingdom, and the king's uncle, Philippe de Bourgogne, was at first the real power in France. He was opposed by Isabeau de Bavière and her paramour and brother-in-law, Louis d'Orléans, brother of the king; and the history of the next few years is largely a record of shameless intrigues between these people to obtain control of the mad king, in whose name many an odious thing was done. The regency should, by rights, have devolved upon the king's eldest brother, Louis d'Orléans, who was twenty-one years of age at the time of Charles's madness; but the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri set him aside for "his too great youth." There might have been found some precedent for recognizing Isabeau as regent; but there is no evidence that she ever made any serious efforts to establish her claim; for she was content with that which the Duke of Burgundy was quite willing to allow her, viz., the squandering of money--not his money--in her pleasures. Isabeau was nominally associated in the council that exercised the powers of regency, but she was really under the control of the Duchess of Burgundy, whom the chroniclers call "a haughty and cruel woman."
With such care as the doctors of the period were likely to give him, there was not much hope of the permanent restoration of the king's reason. One learned physician, however, did have the correct idea as to the cause of Charles's malady and prescribed a moderate diet and a quiet life for him. Under this wise treatment Charles soon recovered as much reason as he had ever had; but the regimen imposed by the physician's orders was as distasteful to the king as it was to Isabeau. The queen, under pretext of furnishing diversions for him, began again the wild life of debauchery which had been the prime cause of Charles's insanity. It was at one of these festivals that occurred the famous "dance of savages" that so nearly deprived France of her mad king.
The chronicler of Saint-Denis says that "it was an evil custom of the time in many parts of France to indulge unreproved in all sorts of indecent follies at the marriage of a widow, and to assume with their extravagant masks and disguises the liberty of making all sorts of obscene remarks to the bride and bridegroom." It was at a sort of charivari held one night (January 29, 1393) in celebration of the marriage of one of Isabeau's German waiting women, a widow, that Hugues de Guisay, one of those panders to the follies of the rich and extravagant who plan their "amusements" for them, undertook to divert the mad king, the queen, and the whole court. He devised "six coats made of linen cloth covered with pitch and thereon flax like hair." Charles put on one of these, and he and his five satyr-like companions, much delighted with their resemblance to things of horrid form, pranced in among the other revellers. The five were linked together by a chain, the king, fortunately, being loose and preceding them. As the wretched Charles, in his disgraceful costume, was trying to fulfil the part of a satyr indeed by teasing and exchanging coarse jests with the young Duchess of Berri, Louis d'Orléans came into the room. Wishing to discover who it was so disguised--we refuse to credit the account which says he acted in mere heedless desire to see what would happen--he held a torch too near one of the tow-clad gallants. In an instant the whole five unhappy victims of folly were in a blaze. "Save the King! save the King!" cried one of them as he burned. Fortunately the Duchess of Berri, guessing that it was the king who stood by her, covered him with her cloak and prevented his costume from catching fire. Four of the others, whom not a soul in this gay assemblage seems to have made serious attempts to rescue, were burned to death, one escaping by jumping into a large tub of water in the pantry. Among those who died was the wanton deviser of this foolish and dangerous amusement; and as his body was borne to the tomb through the streets of Paris the people cursed him and called out after him, as he had been wont to speak to the poor when it pleased him to amuse himself with them: "Bark, dog!"