Bal des Ardents

Bal des Ardents depicted in a 15th century miniature from Froissart's Chronicles. The Duchess of Berry holds her blue skirts over a barely visible Charles VI of France. Four dancers are in flames; one dancer has leaped into the wine vat.

The Bal des Ardents (also known as Ball of the Burning Men, or by the French title Le Bal des Sauvages) was a masquerade ball held on 28 January 1393 during which Charles VI of France was almost killed and four members of the French nobility were burned to death in an accidental fire. The occasion was one of a series of balls and dances intended to entertain the young king who had suffered an attack of madness the previous summer.

The fire led to a loss of confidence in Charles' capacity to rule. Parisians considered it proof of courtly decadence and threatened to revolt against Charles' advisors, uncles and the more powerful members of the nobility. The King and his brother, Louis, Duke of Orléans—whom at least one contemporary chronicler accused of attempted regicide and sorcery—were forced by public outrage into penance for the event. The accident was blamed on Orléans and used partially as justification for his assassination in 1404 which sparked a decades long civil war between Orléanist factions and Burgundian factions.

At the event the dancers were dressed in flammable costumes, disguised as wild men. Although often associated with demonology, the myth of wild men, which was rooted in antiquity, was common in medieval Europe and documented in revels in Tudor England. The event was chronicled by a number of contemporary writers, including a monk of St. Denis and Jean Froissart in Froissart's Chronicles. It was illustrated in a number of 15th-century illuminated manuscripts by painters such as the Master of Anthony of Burgundy.

Background

Coronation of Charles VI of France depicted by Jean Fouquet in the mid-15th-century Grandes Chroniques de France

When Charles V of France died in 1380 his 12 year old heir was crowned as Charles VI. His four uncles acted as regents at the beginning of his minority—all ambitious men, although within two years, Philip the Bold, the first Duke of Burgundy and "one of the most powerful princes in Europe", was sole regent to the young king. In 1387, as a 20 year old, Charles assumed sole control of the monarchy; he immediately dismissed his uncles and reinstated the Marmousets, his father's traditional councillors. Unlike his uncles, the Marmousets wanted peace with England, a strong, responsible government and lower taxation.

In 1392 Charles suffered the first attack of what was to become a life-long madness. After an attempted assassination of Olivier de Clisson, Constable of France and leader of the Marmousets carried out by Pierre de Craon but orchestrated by John V, Duke of Brittany Charles became overly enraged and believed the attempt on Clisson's life represented an act of violence against both himself and the monarchy. Immediately he planned a retaliatory invasion of Brittany, approved by the Marmousets, departing from Paris in August with a force of knights.

On a hot August day outside Le Mans, Charles charged at his knights including his brother, Louis I, Duke of Orléans, with whom he had a close relationship, yelling "Forward against the traitors! They wish to deliver me to the enemy!" He killed four men before being subdued by his chamberlain (who grabbed him by the waist to restrain him), whereupon he fell into a coma for four days from which few believed he would recover. His uncles Burgundy and Berry quickly seized power, reestablishing themselves as regents, dissolving the Marmouset council, and overlooking the Duke of Orléans claim to the throne.

Charles VI attacking his knights, from Froissart's Chronicles

Enguerand de Coucy brought the king to Notre Dame de Liesse, and summoned Guillaume de Harsigny—a venerated and well-educated 92-year-old physician—to treat the King. Harsingny moved Charles slowly from castle to castle with plenty of time to rest, and the King's coma and fever gradually subsided. Within two months Harsigny had returned Charles to Paris. The sudden onset of madness was seen as either a sign of divine anger and punishment or thought to have been caused by sorcery. Charles continued to be mentally fragile, believing he was made of glass, and running "howling like a wolf down the corridors of the royal palaces". Contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart writes that he was so sick that "far out the way no medicine could help him". He appeared unable to recognize his wife Queen Isabeau, demanding her removal when she entered his chamber, though after his recovery, Charles made arrangements for her to retain guardianship of their children, and later to become the "guardian of the dauphin" (b. 1397) which gave her great power and ensured that if he were to become ill again she would be a member of the council of regents.

Harsigny—who left Paris despite fervent pleas to stay—ordered the courtiers to shield the King from the duties of government and leadership, telling his advisors "be careful not to worry or irritate him .... Burden him with work as little as you can; pleasure and forgetfulness will be better for him than anything else." To surround Charles with a festive atmosphere and to protect him from the rigor of governing, the court turned to amusements. Women's fashions became excessive as Isabeau and her sister-in-law Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orléans indulged in extravagant clothing, such as jewel-laden dresses and elaborate braided hairstyles coiled into tall shells and covered with wide double hennins that reportedly required doorways to be widened to accommodate them. The extravagance seemed excessive to the common people, but they loved their young king, whom they called Charles le bien-aimé (the well-beloved), so blame for unnecessary excess and expense was directed at the foreign queen who had been brought from Bavaria and at Charles' uncles. Neither Isabeau nor her sister-in-law Valentina—the ruthless Duke of Milan's daughter—were well-liked by the court or the people. Charles' uncles were content to allow the frivolities for "so long as the Queen and the Duc d'Orléans danced, they were not dangerous or even annoying."

Bal des Ardents

On 28 January 1393, Isabeau held a masquerade at the Hôtel Saint-Pol to celebrate the third marriage of Catherine de Fastaverin, her lady-in-waiting. Traditionally a woman's remarriage was occasion for mockery and tomfoolery, often with masquerades or charivari characterised by "all sorts of licence, disguises, disorders, and loud blaring of discordant music and clanging of cymbal". On the suggestion of Huguet de Guisay, well-known for his "outrageous schemes" and cruelty, six high-ranking knights performed a dance in costume as wood savages. They were sewn into costumes made of linen soaked with resin to which flax was attached "so that they appeared shaggy and hairy from head to foot". Masks made of these materials covered the faces and hid the dancers' identities from the audience. According to Barbara Tuchman, some chronicles report that the dancers were bound together by chains.

Unknown to the audience, Charles was one of the dancers. Strict orders forbade the lighting of hall torches during the dance and disallowed anyone from entering the hall carrying a torch during the performance so as to alleviate the risk of the highly flammable costumes catching fire.

Bal des Ardents by Master of Anthony of Burgundy c. 1470s, showing in the foreground a dancer in the wine-vat, Charles huddling under the Duchess of Berry's skirt on the left middle, while the dancers in the center burn.

The men capered and howled "like wolves", spitting obscenities and inviting the audience to guess their identities while dancing in a "diabolical" frenzy. Charles' brother Louis and Phillipe de Bar arrived at the event late and drunk and entered the hall carrying lit torches. Accounts vary, but Louis may have held his torch above a dancer's mask to see his identity when a spark fell, setting fire to the leg of one of the dancers. According to a contemporary description, "the Duke of Orleance ... put one of the Torches his servants held so neere the flax, that he set one of the Coates on fire, and so each of them set fire on to the other, and so they were all in a bright flame. Other accounts accused Louis, who was known to have practiced sorcery, of intentionally causing the fire.

Detail of the Duchess of Berry, wearing a high conical hennin covering a costumed Charles with the train of her dress

As the men burned in front of her, Isabeau fainted, knowing her husband was one of the dancers. Unknown to her Charles had been standing at a distance from the other dancers, near the 15-year-old Duchess of Berry, who swiftly threw her voluminous skirt over him thereby protecting him from the sparks. The hall was filled with the shrieks of the burning men and the screams of the audience who were unable to save them. According to Veenstra, the event is chronicled in uncharacteristic vividness by the Monk of St. Denis who wrote "four men were burned alive, their flaming genitals dropping to the floor ... releasing a stream of blood". Many guests were severely burned as they tried to rescue the dancers. Sire de Nantouillet jumped into an open vat of wine where he hid until the flames were extinguished. The Count de Joigny died at the scene; Yvain de Foix and Aimery Poitiers, son of the Count of Valentinois, lingered in pain for two days. The instigator of the affair, Huguet de Guisay, survived for three days, bitterly "cursing and insulting his fellow dancers, the dead and the living, until his last hour".

The citizens of Paris were angered by the event and at the danger posed to their monarch, blaming Charles' advisors. A "great commotion" swept through the city as the citizens threatened to depose Charles' uncles and kill dissolute and depraved courtiers. Greatly concerned at the popular outcry and chastened by the Maillotin revolt of the previous decade, the court did penance at Notre Dame, preceded by an apologetic royal progress through the city in which the uncles walked in humility behind the King on horseback. Louis of Orléans, who was blamed for the tragedy, donated funds for a chapel to be built at the Celestine monastery in atonement.

Orléans' involvement in the event severely damaged his reputation, compounded by an earlier episode in which he had been accused of sorcery when he had hired an apostate monk to raise demons to imbue the duke's ring, dagger, and sword with sorcery. Jean Petit would later say that the Duke practiced sorcery, and that the fire at the Bal represented a failed attempt at regicide, made in retaliation for having been attacked by Charles in his fit of madness the previous summer. In 1404 John the Fearless had Orléans assassinated for reasons of "vice, corruption, sorcery, and a long list of public and private villainies", and at that time Isabeau was accused of having become mistress to her husband's brother. Orléans' assassination pushed the country into civil war between the Burgundians and the Orléanists (known as the Armagnacs) which was to last several decades.

Folkloric and Christian representations of wild men

Wild men, or wodewoses, depicted by Albrecht Dürer, 1499.

Masquerades acted as a form of courtly theater, although the extent of audience involvement is unclear. Sources vary about the Duchess of Berry's movements: it is unknown whether she came close enough to the dancers to bring the King to speak to her or if he chose to move away toward the audience. According to Froissart: "The King, who proceeded ahead of [the dancers], departed from his companions ... and went to the ladies to show himself to them ... and so passed by the Queen and came near the Duchess of Berry".

Common superstition held that mountainous areas such as the Pyrenees contained wild men with long black hair who danced in firelight either to conjure demons or as part of fertility rituals. The medieval recognition of the existence of wild men was common enough that Penitentials forbade a belief in them or dressing as one. In remote villages it was believed that by dressing as wild men, villagers ritualistically "conjured demons by imitating them". Some village charivari included dancers dressed as wild men, to represent demons, who were ceremonially captured and symbolically burnt to appease evil spirits at harvest or planting time. The Church, however, considered the rituals pagan and demonic. Early medieval folk festivals in some areas included a ritual called the "Expulsion of Death" which was often performed on the fourth Sunday in Lent, also known as Todten-Sonntag (Sunday of the Dead). An effigy was killed, often by burning, with the fragments scattered on fields as a fertility ritual. As early as the 8th century in Saxony and Thuringen in Germany a being known as the pfingstl—a leaf and moss clad wild man—was ceremonially hunted and killed in village ceremonies.

Wild men depicted in the borders of a late 14th-century book of hours

Although common in medieval Europe, the myth of wild men is rooted in antiquity. In the Book of Daniel Nebuchadnezzar II is depicted as a long-haired creature living on the outskirts of civilization. In Swiss folklore, notably in Graubünden, the Alpine folk in the Grisons caught wild men by making them drunk which corresponds to the much earlier story of shepherds catching a forest being called Silenus or Faunus, in the same fashion and for the same purpose. By the 16th century the figures of wild men were documented in courtly masquerades such as in an event of 1513 at the court of King Henry VIII when two "mighty woordwoosys or wyldmen" appeared in a revel, and documentation exists that shows in the same century green men, leaf-covered costumed semi-savage men, were often combined with or substituted for wild men in village revels and courtly dances.

In the medieval period the wild man was a metaphor for man without God. They were usually depicted carrying a staff or a club, outside of and beyond civilization, without shelter or fire, without feelings and without a soul. The mythology of wild or forest men was then often associated with demonology. At the time of the Bal des Ardents, the folkloric depiction of wild men was an acceptable theme in the literature of noble society.

In his Magic and divination at the courts of Burgundy and France, Jan Veenstra notes that a ritual burning on the wedding night of a woman who was remarrying has Christian origins. In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, the demon Asmodeus is banished through the burning of the heart and liver of a fish after the murder of each husband of a woman who married seven times. By the 15th century ritual burning of evil, demonic, or Satanic forces was not uncommon as exemplified by the Duke of Orleans' later persecution of the King's physician Jehan de Bar, who under torture confessed to practicing sorcery and was burned to death.

Chronicles

The event was recorded in Jean Froissart's Chronicles and has been illustrated in a number of illuminated manuscript copies. The Harley Froissart, held in the British Library and dated from c. 1470 to 1472, identifies the costumed dancers as wodewoses and shows four dancers in the hall; the Queen sits with two ladies on the dais. A 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Froissart's Chronicles with the event illuminated by the Master of Anthony of Burgundy held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France shows the Bal des Ardents, with the Queen in a standing position flanked by ladies-in-waiting, wearing high conical hennins. The King cowers beneath the Duchess' skirts and the dancers are engulfed in flames.

Froissart places the blame for the tragedy on Louis, Duke of Orléans, writing "and thus the feast and the marriage celebrations ended with such great sorrow and grief that [Charles] and [Isabeau] could do nothing to remedy it. We must accept that it was no fault of theirs but of the duke of Orléans". Jean Juvénal des Ursins, whose father was employed in the court of Charles, but forced to flee Paris when the Burgundians took control in 1418, wrote of the event in his biography about Charles, L'Histoire de Charles VI: roy de France. Written in the mid-15th century, his chronicle was not published until 1614.

Sources

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