In 1393, a French king who believed he was made of glass hosted a masquerade ball that ended in flames. The Bal des Ardents (Ball of the Burning Men) became one of history's most notorious party disasters, made even more bizarre by the host's deteriorating mental state.
King Charles VI of France had suffered his first mental breakdown just months earlier, attacking his own knights in a paranoid rage and killing four men before falling into a four-day coma. His glass delusion — which was common among the upper class at the time — led him to wrap himself in blankets and refuse to move, terrified his body would shatter. As chronicled by Jean Froissart, Charles would "run howling like a wolf down the corridors of royal palaces" and sometimes failed to recognize his own wife. In one particularly episode, he refused to bathe or change clothes for five months, convinced that touching water would cause him to break.
The ball featured Charles and five noblemen performing a dance dressed as "savage men" in highly flammable costumes made of resin-soaked linen and flax, their bodies covered entirely except for their genitals, which were left exposed. When the king's brother, Louis of Orleans arrived drunk with a torch, the entertainment turned deadly. The Monk of St. Denis chronicled the gruesome scene, writing that "four men were burned alive, their flaming genitals dropping to the floor…releasing a stream of blood." Only Charles was saved, thanks to his quick-thinking aunt who threw her voluminous skirts over him.
The tragedy undermined public confidence in the French court, already strained by concerns about their king's capacity to rule. Charles' mental condition continued to deteriorate, becoming so severe that by the late 1390s, he sometimes forgot he was king and would erase his signature from documents he had just signed. The people of Paris were so outraged that both Charles and his torch-happy brother had to perform public penance to avoid a revolt.
In 1407, John the Fearless (with a name like that, you know he means business) decided he'd had enough of his cousin Louis of Orleans' shenanigans. John had Louis assassinated, citing "vice, corruption, sorcery, and a long list of public and private villainies." The being 15th century France, the assassination triggered a "civil war between the Burgundians and the Orléanists which lasted for several decades."
Previously:
• Exploring the bizarre world of the psychiatric condition called 'Glass Delusion'
