Cazelles, Raymond. Société politique, noblesse et couronne sous
Jean le Bon et Charles V. Geneva: Droz, 1982.
Delachenal, Roland. Histoire de Charles V. 5 vols. Paris: Picard,
1909–31.
Dodu, Gaston. “Les idées de Charles V en matière de gouverne-
ment.” Revue des questions historiques 110 (1929): 5–46.
Henneman, John Bell. Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century
France: The Captivity and Ransom of John II, 1356–1370.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
CHARLES VI (1368–1422)
Charles VI (r. 1380–1422) was born in Paris on De-
cember 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, infl uenced 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 fi ve
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 inconsis-
tent and questionable manner with the assassination of
his brother, Louis of Orléans, in 1407. The consequence
was almost constant civil war that exacerbated the per-
secutory 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 Orléanist
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 fl ed Paris
as it fell to the Burgundians on May 29, 1418. He did
not return until 1437.
The dauphin Charles and the Armagnacs found sup-
port 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 author-
ity. Charles VI survived Henry and died at the Hôtel de
Saint-Pol on October 21, 1422.
See also Henry VFurther Reading
Autrand, Françoise. Charles VI. Paris: Fayard, 1986.
Famiglietti, R. C. Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles
VI 1392–1420. New York: AMS, 1986.
Grandeau, Yann. “La mort et les obsèques de Charles VI.” Bulletin
philologique et historique du Comité des Travaux Historiques
et Scientifi ques (1970): 133–86.
Hindman, Sandra L. Christine de Pizan’s “Epistre Othea”: Paint-
ing and Politics at the Court of Charles VI. Toronto: Pontifi cal
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986.
Rey, Maurice. Les fi nances royales sous Charles VI: les causes
du défi cit (1388–1413). Paris: SEVPEN, 1965.
Richard C. FamigliettiCHARLES VII (1403–1461)
One of the best known but least understood of the medi-
eval kings of France, Charles VII was the eleventh child
of Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria. That he would
become king or be immortalized by his association
with Jeanne d’Arc and the reconquest of France was
unimagined during his youth. Becoming dauphin in
1417 after the unexpected deaths of older brothers, he
entered the political scene in one of the darkest periods
of French history. In 1418, upon escaping a Burgundian
coup in Paris, he became head of a government in exile
dominated by the Armagnac faction. His ill-advised
role in the assassination of the duke of Burgundy in
1419 united the English and Burgundians, and they
sought to disinherit him in the 1420 Treaty of Troyes.
When Charles did become king in October 1422, he
controlled only the third of the realm south of the Loire.
He indiscriminantly accepted a wide range of supporters
and advisers, whom he only slowly learned to control.CHARLES V THE WISE