What Happens When There's A Madman in the Highest Office?
What happens when there’s a madman in the highest office? A man who is impossibly fragile, a creature who is made of delicate, transparent glass, whose loyal handlers are convinced that a single unscripted touch from the world might shatter his porcelain ego into a thousand jagged diamonds? A man who stalks the gilded corridors of his residence like a ghost in a silk shroud, lashing out at the people sworn to his service because he sees in them shadows sharpening knives where there are only loyalists? A man who whispers in the night about his will to muster the might of his resources to annihilate civilization, should he fall?
What happens when the most powerful man in the land begins to lose grip on his own story? When he looks at his kin and sees strangers, his mind a watercolor blur where names and faces fade into a gray mist of unrecognition? When he abandons the dignity of his seat, sinking into neglect, refusing the basic rituals of his office while he trudges through a maze of lies of his own making? When he becomes a hollowed-out shell of a man who has checked out of reality but still, with the support of his unwavering, self-interested, sycophantic followers, holds the heavy, golden levers of the world in his trembling, failing hands?
I am, of course, referring to Charles VI of France, known as ‘The Mad King.’ His story is a cautionary tale that, like many aspects of the Hundred Years’ War, offers lessons that remain relevant today. This topic came to mind while I was preparing my Hundred Years’ War course for Medievalists.net, and I thought it would be timely to share here. Charles became king of France at the age of six, under the co-regency of his four uncles, known as the “Dukes of the Lilies.” These four brothers of the late Charles V were Louis of Anjou, John of Berry, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, and Louis of Bourbon, the king’s brother-in-law.
Charles VI inherited a fortunate situation. His father, Charles V, along with his constable Bertrand du Guesclin, had reconquered most of the territories taken by Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, earlier in the century. France had regained nearly all of its lost demographic and economic strength following the devastating battles of Crécy and Poitiers, as well as the unfavorable terms of the Treaty of Brétigny. Charles V had built a powerful bureaucratic state that became a dominant force of its time, and the nation had become so wealthy that it invested large sums into constructing a “Great Armada”—possibly the most expensive project of the Middle Ages—to invade England (the armada never sailed, as Jean de Berry arrived late, causing them to miss the favorable winds).
Charles VI’s kingdom was the leading superpower of the time. His reign should have been celebrated for triumph and prestige; a great chapter in history. While he indeed made history, however, it was for all the wrong reasons.
From an unknown cause, the young king suddenly spiraled out of control into madness. Historians have proposed numerous hypotheses to explain his condition. The most widely accepted theory is that Charles suffered from a form of genetic psychosis, likely Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder. It was certainly a widely discussed topic of the day among the people of France. Whatever it was, it caused him to lose touch with reality.
The tragedy was not that the King had lost his mind, but that those closest to him who could do anything about it ignored it. The Dukes and high bureaucrats watched the King’s eyes go vacant and yet refused to act. To admit the King was unfit was to admit the system and their way of life were broken, so they clung to his fraying robes with white-knuckled desperation. They had spent decades consolidating power after the English invasion, the Black Death, and the peasant rebellion of the Jacquerie; they had built a fortress of statecraft, and they were not about to let the truth disrupt it. All because they feared that if the crown fell, their own titles and stations would be swept away and replaced by their rivals.
Thus, they propped him up like a grotesque puppet, whispering that he was just tired, misunderstood, or weighed down by his own brilliance. They ignored the stench of his self-neglect and the fragility of his mind because a mad King cannot say “no” to his handlers.
But madness was a contagion that did not stay confined to the palace. It seeped through the floorboards and into the soil of France. The court split into two warring factions: the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. Charles, in his rare moments of flickering lucidity, fueled the chaos. His paranoia became the realm’s paranoia; his inability to tell friend from foe became the national policy. He would sign a decree for one faction in the morning and a death warrant for them by evening, pitting his own people against each other until the nobility was caught in a vicious cycle of vengeance. It was as if the sickness at the top had become a miasma, a “madness of the realm” that stripped away the common sense of an entire nation.
The kingdom became a house divided, so busy burning its own curtains that it failed to hear the boots on the porch. While the sycophants scrambled to protect their positions and the dukes fought over the scraps of a dying reign, a familiar rival watched from across the water. Henry V of England saw a superpower made soft by delusion and fractured by ego. He did not have to break the door down; the madman and his enablers had left it unlatched.
The lesson was etched in the mud of Agincourt: when a governing faction decides that the preservation of their own power is worth the price of a madman’s vanity, they invite a chaos they cannot control. They believe they are managing the situation, but they are actually inviting ruin. It’s a good thing they learned that lesson for us, right?