Saturday 28 September 2013

When Good Kings Go Bad

When Charles VI of France was approached by a leper screaming "Ride no further, noble King!Turn back! You are betrayed!" we can imagine it disturbed him a spot.  For his friends though, it was a calamity. 

  Charles hadn't been feeling too well of late.  Things had been getting rough.  A chap called Pierre de Craon had attacked a one-eyed friend of Charles', by the name of Olivier de Clisson, down a dark Parisian alleyway.  Olivier had survived, but not before being knocked out by a bakery door.  This had worried young Charles.  If chaps could go about assaulting one-eyed people with door frames, then nobody was safe?  They'd be after the King next!

  Seized with panic, Charles summoned his army and told them he wished to visit Pierre's house where he intended to throw some furniture about.  His friends complied, but they were nervous.  Charles was not himself.  He was pacing about with fervour and speaking total nonsense which nobody could make head or tail of.  They all just nodded thoughtfully at their King, for it is a tricky thing to know exactly how to go about telling ones Monarch that they are talking utter bilge.

  “Let us just amuse him.” the courtiers no doubt said to each other anxiously.  “We shall all head to Brittany, and perhaps the walk will do him some good.” proffered others.  And off the went, hoping for the best.  The procession moved on slowly through the forest of Le Mans, the summer air broken only by the sound of the King spouting garbage and whinging about delays.


Charles slugging the Bastard of Poligny - Wikipedia

  It was at this moment when the aforementioned leper popped up and began declaring his message of doom and betrayal.  Charles believed it immediately.  Here was a fellow who saw eye-to-eye with him. His friends, on the other hand, gasped in horror and bundled the wretch into the nearest hedge.  The atmosphere was tense. Charles was silent and saw ambushes in all quarters.  Then a squire dropped a lance which clunked against a helmet.  This was the last straw for Charles.