King Charles VI: The Tragic Fall from 'The Beloved' to 'The Mad' and Its Impact on France's History
How Schizophrenia Shaped His Reign, France’s Civil War, and the Hundred Years' War
The Subject
The story of how King Charles VI of France went from “The Beloved” to “The Mad” has many of the same elements that made “Game of Thrones” a hit: murder, family feuds, war, mad kings, and backstabbing. (Fortunately for us, there’s no incest.)
Charles was merely 11 years old when his father, King Charles V, died in 1380. Because Charles was still a child, a regency — a group of people appointed to serve in the King’s place — was created until he was deemed old enough to rule alone. In addition to several members of the nobility, the regency included Charles’ three uncles: Philip “The Bold”, Duke of Burgundy; Louis, Duke of Anjou; and John, Duke of Berry. Just one big happy family, pitching in to help make sure France was safe and prosperous by the time Charles VI took the throne...not!
In 1384, Uncle Louis passed away, and Uncle Phil and Uncle John saw their chance to rule the kingdom and make some extra profit. With the authority of the crown, Uncle Phil began buying up vast amounts of land, and Uncle John became a collector of valuable objects. Charles finally took control of the crown at age 20, but it would take a lot of work to undo the problems his family had created.
During the first years of his rule, Charles VI earned the title Charles the Beloved with a series of favorable policies. He reinstated the group of councilors—the Marmousets—that had served his popular father. The Marmousets “sought to reform royal government by making it “more rational and efficient” (Wagner). He also sought to establish stability abroad. The so-called Hundred Years War began a good 30 years before King Charles VI was born. This war with England was one his father Charles V had spent his reign fighting, and when Charles VI came of age, he and the Marmousets set out in the hopes of brokering some kind of peace. Although things were never perfect between France and England during those years, it was as close to peace as the two countries had been in quite some time. And so, it appeared that Charles VI was poised to follow in the footsteps of Charles “The Wise” and leave a legacy his dad would be proud of. Until disaster struck.
There is some confusion among historians surrounding the exact events on the day in August 1392 when the course of Charles’ reign changed forever. The consensus seems to be that Charles was attacked by a stranger while riding through the forest with his knights. At some point in the confusion and panic, Charles snapped and began to attack anyone within striking distance, supposedly shouting, “Forward against the traitors! They want to deliver me to the enemy!” (Norwich). By the time his entourage was able to restrain him, the King had killed several of his own men and was unable to speak coherently or recognize anyone. It was immediately clear was that Charles could not rule France in this condition, so he was sent away to rest in an area of France with a pleasant climate. By September he seemed to have made a full recovery; however, within a year’s time, Charles VI experienced another episode. And so it continued for the remainder of his life, with the periods of coherence fewer and farther between. Before we consider the impacts of Charles’ tenuous mental health on the country, let’s look at what might have been going on inside his mind.
The Science
There have been several theories of what caused Charles’ initial and subsequent breakdowns, but none seem as convincing to me as schizophrenia. To justify this, we will begin by looking at the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which is used by clinicians to codify and reliably diagnose mental illness.
In the case of schizophrenia, we can distinguish between positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms mean the person is experiencing something they normally wouldn't, while negative symptoms mean they aren't experiencing something that they normally would. Positive symptoms are present during the “active” periods of disease and include delusions, hallucinations, speech that doesn’t make sense, and disorganized thoughts and actions. Negative symptoms crop up outside of those psychotic episodes and are things like lack of emotion, decreased speech, social withdrawal, and lack of interest or pleasure in normal activities. According to the DSM-5, for someone to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, they need to show a minimum of two symptoms for at least a month. One of these symptoms must be a hallmark symptom of delusion, hallucination, or disordered speech. As you might guess would happen if you were suddenly hallucinating or consumed with paranoia, there also must be evidence that the symptoms interfere with your job, relationships, or ability to care for yourself.
That brings us back to Charles. There were times when he thought he was made of glass, believed he was St. George, and was convinced he was being persecuted. Delusions, check. He sometimes babbled incoherently. Disordered speech, check. His fits of insanity were followed by periods where he just laid in bed, unable to do anything else, which is consistent with negative symptoms. While the duration of his first episode is unclear, historians report that as time went on Charles experienced more frequent and lengthy relapses. Modern studies of patients who have stopped taking their medications have found a similar pattern. They report that with each successive relapse a person experiences, they are less capable of recovering to their previous level of functioning. Charles also had intermittent inability to recognize the faces of his family members, which is a rarer symptom that has been reported in patients with schizophrenia. And as we will see, Charles’ symptoms interfered with his responsibilities as king.
Now that we know the symptoms, let’s talk about the biology. It was known for a long time that people with schizophrenia had fewer synapses, the connections between their neurons, and altered patterns of communication between brain areas, but it wasn’t until recently that scientists were able to understand why. A landmark paper published in January 2016 found that genetic variations associated with schizophrenia affect an immune-related protein called complement component 4 (C4). C4 is part of a network of proteins in the immune system that identify junk or dangerous materials in the body and coordinate their removal. During some periods of development, the complement cascade is also important for getting rid of certain synapses. Complement proteins tag synapses that aren’t very active, meaning the neurons they are connecting aren’t talking to each other, and then these will get gobbled up by cells in a process called pruning. Imagine a gardener taking a pair of clippers to an overgrown tree so that the healthy branches can flourish. But this new evidence established a hypothesis that changes to C4 in schizophrenia cause the gardener to get carried away, pruning too many synapses and ultimately impairing the brain’s ability to communicate, which could explain the disorganized thought patterns that characterize disease. The brain regions that are affected in schizophrenia undergo a period of pruning in late adolescence and early adulthood, precisely when Charles’ symptoms emerged. Indeed, the early 20s are the time of peak onset of schizophrenia in men, who are also more likely than women to develop the disease.
While we don’t know if Charles carried a genetic variant in C4, there is evidence for a genetic component to his disease: Charles’ grandson Henry VI was also reported to experience periods of psychosis. But it’s important to note that genetics cannot fully predict someone’s risk of having schizophrenia. Studies of affected families show that there is a complex inheritance pattern for schizophrenia, with close relatives often spared, and other disorders like bipolar disorder also present in the family tree. This indicates that genetics can predispose you to schizophrenia, but an environmental contribution is needed to develop the disease. For example, drug use during adolescence and young adulthood increases your risk of developing schizophrenia, as do exposures to infections before or soon after birth. Trauma and stress are also risk factors.
Today schizophrenia requires lifelong treatment with antipsychotic drugs, often accompanied by therapy. Negative symptoms are more rarely targeted by therapeutics, and people with schizophrenia are much likelier to die prematurely, mostly due to a tragically high suicide rate. While there is much to be done in the realm of understanding and treating schizophrenia today, there was dramatically less knowledge and understanding in France in the 14th and 15th centuries. Instead of getting medication and therapy, Charles VI was believed to be possessed, a common interpretation of the symptoms at the time. For centuries, patients with schizophrenia were misunderstood, forced to endure “treatments” such as exorcism and bloodletting, made victims of charlatans and mystics who promised to heal them, and later abandoned to asylums where they were out of sight and out of mind. Things likely would have turned out differently for Charles and France had they known what we know now.
The Significance
How did the effects of Charles’ mental illness reverberate across Europe and throughout history? In a time when everything from a country’s economy to its religion revolved around the royal family, stability depended on the monarch’s ability to maintain peace and rule with a steady hand. As we saw, King Charles VI began his reign with the best of intentions, but biology had other plans.
Charles VI’s inability to rule consistently left the monarchy vulnerable. Without the king’s influence, the Marmousets fell apart, leaving a power vacuum. Uncle Phil, who had abused his power during his time as regent, returned to the arena. But this time, he had a new competitor in Charles’ brother Louis, Duke of Orleans. We will call him Brother Louis. (Also I lied about the incest; Brother Louis was married to his cousin. But honestly who wasn’t back then?) The rivalry between Uncle Phil and Brother Louis created a massive amount of tension and teams began to form. It got ugly. In 1404, Uncle Phil died and his son, known as John the Fearless, became the new Duke of Burgundy. In a savage move, he orchestrated the assassination of the king’s brother in 1407, escalating things to the point of no return.
A loss of that magnitude would weigh heavily on even the healthiest of men, so imagine the toll that it took on someone already under immense emotional and psychological stress. Charles VI was distraught, unable to make decisions or think clearly. Sides formed once again in the absence of his leadership. Those that sided with the new Duke of Orleans— Brother Louis’ son Charles, AKA Charlie —were dubbed Armagnacs (named after Bernard the Count of Armagnac, the Duke’s father-in-law who helped drive the movement). Those who aligned with the John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, were referred to as the Burgundians. Perhaps the biggest indicator of the state of Charles VI’s mental health was the fact that he allowed John the Fearless and the Burgundians to seize power and influence over the government after they murdered his brother.
Charles’ mental health crisis also led to further deterioration of France’s relations with England. One of the most famous historical examples of this is the Battle of Agincourt. In 1413, Henry IV died and his son, Henry V, succeeded to the throne. What Henry V found was a France “torn apart by civil strife, headed by a mad king…[and] his for the taking (Norwich).” And so he set out with an aggressive agenda, and France and England met on the battlefield in 1415 at Agincourt.
If you’ve ever seen “The King” on Netflix, starring one of my loves Timothee Chalamet as Henry V and Robert Pattinson as Charles VI’s son Louis for reasons I cannot understand, then you saw in some blend of truth and fiction how the Battle of Agincourt played out. Spoiler alert: England won against all odds. The English army had been depleted by disease and previous battles and were on their way back to England. When England's army of about 6,000 men ran into 20,000 Frenchmen, it certainly was not an even fight. But what the English lacked in numbers they made up for in strategy and absolutely decimated their enemy. It was a massive defeat for the French, who lost 6,000 men that day. The English only lost 400 and they were able to return home in triumph. It was a devastating blow to France and they lost the upper hand in the war. Morale was shredded as France continued to fight amongst themselves.
The chaos of the domestic conflict and the ongoing war with England collided when uncertainty arose about the heir to Charles’ throne. His eldest son Louis, Duke of Guyenne, AKA Son Louis, is one of the rare characters in this story who tried to end the conflict. In 1413, he created a third party that was loyal to the crown. Unfortunately, within two years Son Louis was dead of a mysterious illness. Next in line to the throne was John, Duke of Touraine, who was also dead by 1417 (again, it’s not clear what happened but one of the theories is that he was poisoned). Charles VI’s last remaining son who (shocker) was also named Charles, suddenly found himself as the heir. For our purposes we will refer to his son as Chucky. At this point in the hostilities, it’s hard to imagine that this 14-year-old boy could make things worse. But Chucky was susceptible to influence at his young age and became a pawn of the Armagnacs. In 1419, men that served Chucky assassinated John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. As the cherry on top, Chucky then declared himself regent.
Historians are rightly skeptical that Chucky just happened to come up with this idea to murder John the Fearless. What is more likely is that he was a puppet. Unfortunately for Pinnochio, the optics weren’t great, and his dad was pissed. Charles VI disowned Chucky, his last remaining son and heir, and under the influence of the Burgundians, signed the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 that made perhaps the least acceptable man next in line: Henry V, King of England.
In case you are confused about why Charles VI would name the king of England as heir to the French throne, you are not alone! This was a less-than-ideal solution to France’s issues. But Charles doubled down, having his daughter Catherine of Valois marry Henry V to further bond the two countries. At this point, Charles VI was 52 years old (that is old for the Middle Ages), and with his deteriorating mental health, no one expected him to outlive Henry, who was 20 years his junior. It seemed inevitable that an English king would ascend to the throne of France.
Charles VI shocked everyone and outlived Henry V by two months. Both men died in 1422. Now France had two choices for their next king: Charles VI’s backstabbing disinherited son Chucky, or Henry V’s infant son who was less than a year old. What could go wrong with choices like these?
The rivalry between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs was amplified as they took sides in the debate of who should succeed Charles VI as king. The Burgundians had supported the treaty and the alliance with England. And so, the Armagnacs naturally backed Chucky as King of France. But Chucky was able to do what his father wasn’t. In 1435 he brought an end to the civil war and solidified his claim as rightful king (with the help of Joan of Arc!). Despite his rocky start, Chucky reigned for 40 years and earned the nicknames “The Well-Served” and “The Victorious”.
Even though things looked optimistic for King Charles VI’s rule in the early days, we unfortunately have no way of knowing what his legacy could have been had he not suffered from the debilitating effects of what was most likely schizophrenia. Would France have been spared the ravages of civil war if Charles VI had remained healthy and capable of ruling throughout his reign? Could the Hundred Years War have been more like the Sixty-Something Years War? Despite the disaster that could have been for the French monarchy, France kept a monarch on the throne until the dawn of the 19th century, and historians such as “Claude Gauvard suggest that it was the reign of Charles VI ‘which was the moment when the bureaucratic state was established in matters of justice and finance’, and one moreover capable of surviving long periods of royal incapacity (Potter).”