Charles VI of France is remembered as the king whose reign was marked by recurring bouts of madness. In January 1393 his court staged a masquerade at which he was among the performers. It became one of the most notorious fires of the Middle Ages.
The Horror
On 28 January 1393 the court met at the Hôtel Saint-Pol in Paris. Queen Isabeau of Bavaria was marking the remarriage of her lady-in-waiting, Catherine de Fastaverin. Remarriage of a widow was traditionally mocked with a charivari, a noisy and irreverent masquerade.
Six young men, the king among them, were to dance as wild men. Their costumes were linen coated in resin, with flax stuck on to look like shaggy hair. Orders were given that no torches should be brought into the hall. Most of the audience did not know the king was one of the dancers.
The order was broken. Louis, Duke of Orléans, the king’s brother, arrived late and drunk, with companions carrying torches. The chronicles do not agree on what followed. In one account Orléans held his torch close to a dancer’s mask to see who was underneath, and a spark caught the costume. In another he threw the torch. Either way, the resin and flax burned at once, and the flames spread between the dancers.
Four of the six died. The Count of Joigny died at the scene. Yvain de Foix and Aimery of Poitiers died about two days later, and Huguet de Guisay, who had proposed the dance, died a day after them. The king survived, partly because he was standing apart from the others, near his aunt, Joan, Duchess of Berry, who threw her skirt over him and shielded him from the sparks. The Sieur de Nantouillet also lived: he jumped into a wine vat and stayed there until the fire was out.
The three main chroniclers differ. Jean Froissart describes a theatrical performance in which the dancers were chained together, and he blames Orléans. The Monk of St Denis describes a rowdier charivari in which the audience joined in. He mentions no chains and blames de Guisay, and he was hostile to Orléans’ faction, which may have coloured his version. Jean Juvénal des Ursins wrote a third account in the mid-fifteenth century. The chains, which are what make the fire so terrible in the popular telling, rest on Froissart alone.
Paris was outraged and blamed the king’s advisers, and the court feared a rising like the earlier Maillotin revolt. The king’s uncles had the court do public penance: a procession through the city with the king on horseback and the uncles on foot, and a service at Notre-Dame. Orléans paid for a chapel at the Célestins monastery in atonement.
The Legend
Later accusations turned an accident into a plot. The theologian Jean Petit claimed that Orléans practised sorcery and that the fire was a failed attempt on the king’s life. Orléans was assassinated in 1407. One modern interpretation, by the scholar Veenstra, reads the dance as a symbolic attempt to drive out the king’s illness. That is an interpretation, not an established fact. It is also unconfirmed that the king’s madness was worsened by the fire, as is sometimes claimed.
The Modern Relic
The Hôtel Saint-Pol is gone, so there is no hall to stand in. The scene survives in paint. The Harley Froissart in the British Library (about 1470 to 1472) shows it in a miniature titled “Dance of the Wodewoses”. The Getty Froissart (about 1480 to 1483) and a Gruuthuse manuscript now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France also depict it. In these images the dancers in their shaggy costumes burn while the guests and the king look on.
