King de France 1380-1422.
Son of Charles V and Jeanne de Bourbon, crowned in Rheims at twelve years, it is placed under the supervision of his uncles, the dukes of Anjou, of Berry and Burgundy.
The delegation of the power
The supervision of the uncles The duke of Burgundy, the Bold Philippe III, most powerful of the uncles de Charles VI, uses his authority on the king to lead his expansion policy to the Netherlands: military forwardings in Flanders; marriage of the young king, on on July 17th, 1385, with Isabeau of Bavaria, of the family of Wittelsbach. However Wittelsbach hold, in the Netherlands, Hainaut, Zealand and Holland, and of the matrimonial bonds link this family with that of Burgundy.
Charles VI, weak-willed, soft, not very ripe, accepts this supervision and the life of pleasure that one makes him carry out. In October 1388, however, pushed by his wife and his young brother, the future duke of Orleans, it decides to take in hand the government of the kingdom and drives out his uncles of the Council. In fact, it lets act as its name a team of former servants of her father, the “Marmousets”, but it is decided to restore the good administration which prevailed under Charles V. This experiment, which was worth the nickname of Beloved to him, ends later four years, after the first crisis of madness of the king.
Marmousets
When it decided to direct itself its kingdom in 1388, Charles VI constituted a Cabinet recruited essentially in the minor nobility: for this reason, the princes of royal blood rigged out the advisers of the king, their adversaries, of the ridiculous name of “marmousets” (small grotesque figures). Those which had belonged to the royal Council at the time of Charles V had been isolated (but not eliminated completely from the business) by the princes, when those exerted the supervision of Charles VI child, of 1380 to 1388. Returned with the power after the exile of the uncles, they endeavoured to put an end to the dilapidation of the public money and the abuses the administration. The madness of the king involved, in 1392, the return of the princes and the disgrace of the marmousets, whose the best known ones are Clisson, the constable, Bureau of the River, and Jean of Vienna.
Vacancy of the power The first crisis of madness of the king occurs during a forwarding led by the constable Olivier de Clisson in Brittany: Charles VI, badly given of typhoid who left it in an extreme state of excitation, becomes insane at the time of the crossing of the forest of Mans, on on August 5th, 1392.
Crises of madness
All its reign is marked by the alternation of long crises of insanity and short periods of clearness: on the whole, it had forty-four attacks, of which each one lasted from three to nine months. During its time of clearness, it is unstable, without memory, will; it is still able to act, to make some decisions, but it cannot direct a policy. At most one notices that it supports his brother rather, Louis of Orleans, against his uncle Philippe of Burgundy. But the policy of the kingdom escapes to him: invaluable hostage with the hands of the aristocratic factions which dispute the power, it can only cover their contradictory policies. Because, in spite of its madness, its prestige near its subjects remains practically intact and, at any moment, it was not question of dethroning it: even the king of England Henri V, winner, agrees to await his death to succeed and carry out the union of the two kingdoms to him.
Factions and the English conquest
The unhappy king is thus of nothing responsible for his reign, marked by the increasing tension between Orleans and the house of Burgundy, then by the civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundian. Supported by Isabeau, the Burgundian party triumphs and Jean without Peur (which made assassinate Louis of Orleans in 1407), after having made a pact with the English, seizes Paris where it controls instead of Charles VI. After the death of Jean without Fear (killed at the time of the interview of Montereau, in 1419), his Philippe successor the Good gets along with England and Isabeau to deliver France to Henri V. This last unloads in Normandy and crushes the French knighthood with Azincourt (1415). It obtains from Charles VI the hand of his Catherine daughter, which designates it as heir to the kingdom (treated of Troyes, 1420), to the detriment of the dolphin, the future Charles VII.
Charles VI dies on on October 21st, 1422, abandoned of all and in a complete destitution. On November 11th, it is buried in Saint-Denis: the duke of Bedford, English regent of the kingdom of France, assists, only princes of his row, with the ceremony.