Charles VI
The reign of French king Charles VI (1368 – 1422) started off auspiciously, and he was known as “Charles the Well-Loved”. However, that had more to do with the fact that he ascended the throne at age 11, and his kingdom was governed by regents. That all changed after he came of age and took personal charge of France at age 21. By the time he died over four decades later, he had earned the nickname by which he is best known to history: “Charles the Mad”.
His first bout of insanity struck in 1392 when the 24-year-old king set out on a military expedition to punish a vassal who had attempted to assassinate a royal friend. Charles acted weird from the campaign’s start and was in such a fever to get at the offender that his speech often became incoherent while urging preparations sped up, and once on the road, the army’s slow progress drove him into a frenzy.
En route, a crazy leper by the roadside started yelling at the king to halt and turn back because he had been betrayed, and after getting shooed, kept following the king, shouting his warnings. While that was going on, a drowsy page dropped a lance, which clanged off somebody’s helmet. Something about the noise made Charles snap, and drawing his sword, he charged at his retinue and started hacking and stabbing them. By the time he was restrained, he had killed at least four knights and men at arms.
The following year, he got amnesia and forgot his own name and that he was king, and failed to recognize his wife. Between 1395-1396, he went imagined that he was Saint George. He recognized his companions and officials, but for some reason could not recognize his wife and children. Then again, at least as far as his wife, he might have simply tired of her and was crazy like a fox in pretending not to recognize her.
Another manifestation of his insanity took the form of imagining that he was made of glass, growing extremely frightened of shattering if he fell or was jostled, and attempting to avert the danger by inserting iron rods in his clothes. At other times, he would run wildly at top speed, on the streets or in the halls of his palace. It got so bad, that to keep him inside his Parisian residence, its entrances were bricked up. The unfortunate king kept slipping in and out of insanity until his death in 1422.
