On a freezing January night in 1393, music and laughter filled the Hôtel Saint-Pol, a sprawling palace on the right bank of Paris. The French court had gathered for a masquerade ball in honour of a lady-in-waiting’s remarriage — a diversion meant to lift the spirits of King Charles VI, a 24-year-old monarch already shadowed by bouts of mental instability.
By dawn, four courtiers would be dead, the king barely alive, and the French monarchy’s reputation scorched beyond repair. The event would be remembered for centuries as the Bal des Ardents, or the Ball of the Burning Men.
The Bal des Ardents depicted in a 15th-century painting from Froissart's “Chronicles”. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Charles VI had come to the throne when he was barely twelve hears old, inheriting a realm weakened by the Hundred Years’ War and by repeated outbreaks of plague, unruly peasants, and roaming bands of mercenaries. In his early reign, the government was run by four of his uncles, but in 1387, the then 20-year-old Charles assumed sole control of the monarchy and immediately dismissed his uncles and reinstated his father's traditional counsellors. Under their capable guidance, Charles was able to bring peace to France, lower taxation and establish a strong, responsible central government. The king immediately became favourite among his French subjects who nicknamed him Charles the Beloved.
However, in just a few years Charles would begin to show the signs of a deep and lifelong mental illness. In 1392, on a hot August afternoon, while leading a campaign against the rebellious Duke of Brittany, the king suffered a terrifying breakdown. He attacked his own soldiers believing they were traitors and killed four men, before his chamberlain grabbed him by the waist and subdued him. Charles collapsed and fell into a coma and it took him several days to recover.
Charles VI attacking his knights. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Charles' sudden onset of insanity was seen by some as a sign of divine anger and punishment, and by others as the result of sorcery. Modern historians believe that Charles was likely suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. The king continued to be mentally fragile, and according to historian Desmond Seward, ran around "howling like a wolf down the corridors of the royal palaces." During the worst of his illness the king even refused to recognize his own wife, demanding her removal when she entered his chamber.
His physician, the venerated and well-educated 92-year-old Guillaume de Harsigny, advised the courtiers not to burden him with worry or the duties of government, and instead keep him entertained and amused. To surround Charles with a festive atmosphere and to protect him from the rigor of governing, the court turned to elaborate amusements and extravagant fashions. Isabeau and her sister-in-law Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orléans, wore 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.
To lift his spirits, Queen Isabeau of Bavaria organized a ball at the Hôtel Saint-Pol, one of the royal residences, to celebrate the remarriage of Catherine de Fastaverin, the friend and lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, Charles’ wife. The remarriage of a widow was traditionally an occasion for mockery and mischief, often celebrated with a charivari characterized by fun disguises, debaucherous dancing, and loud, discordant music.
Also read: How dozens of members of the court of King Henry VI drowned in the latrine of a cathedral in Erfurt
The main event of the night—as suggested by Huguet de Guisay, a young courtier who had developed a reputation as a prankster and deviser of mischievous schemes—involved six dancers disguised as wild men, or wood savages. According to classical mythology, wood savages were mythical figures who lived in the dark woods away from civilization, and were usually depicted as filthy, shaggy brutes.
The costumes, designed for the spectacle, were dangerously inventive. The men’s bodies were covered in resin-soaked linen and layered with flax fibers that bristled like fur. Masks made of the same materials covered the dancers' faces to conceal their identities. To guard against mishap, attendants were told to keep all flames at a distance. Among the dancers was the King himself, but many of the audience were unaware of the fact.
According to the chronicler Jean Froissart, the ball began in raucous good humour. The “wild men” capered and howled, leaping about the floor while the courtiers shrieked with laughter. Then the door opened.
Louis I, Duke of Orléans, the king's 20-year-old younger brother, entered late, drunk and holding a torch. Wanting to get glimpse of the masked men’s faces, he strode closer. When he leaned toward one of the “wild men,” several sparks fell from the torch and landed on the man's costume. In an instant, the dancer burst into flames.
Bal des Ardents by the Master of Anthony of Burgundy (1470s) shows the King huddling under the Duchess of Berry's skirt. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The fire spread from one man to the next “as quickly as powder catches,” Froissart wrote. The hall erupted in chaos. Guests screamed, musicians dropped their instruments. Servants tried to beat out the flames with tablecloths, but the resin burned too fiercely.
Queen Isabeau, unaware which of the dancers was her husband, let loose a shrill cry before fainting. Luckily, the king’s aunt, Jeanne, Duchess of Berry, had the presence of mind to throw her heavy skirt over Charles, smothering the fire and saving his life. Another dancer, Sieur de Nantouillet, managed to dive into a large wine cooler that had been filled with water. He too was saved.
The remaining four men were engulfed before help could reach them. When the smoke cleared, the blackened remnants of the costumes clung to the marble floor. The hall reeked of pitch and death.
Yvain de Foix and Aimery de Poitiers lingered for two days with agonizing burns before they both succumbed to their injuries. Huguet de Guisay, the instigator of the whole affair, was the last to die, living for three painful days before expiring. He spent his last hours cursing his fellow dancers, both the living and the dead.
Within days, word of the disaster spread through Paris and beyond. France was still reeling from war taxes, plague, and famine, and now its people heard that the king had nearly burned to death at a masquerade. To many, the Bal des Ardents was more than an accident—it was a symbol of the nobility’s moral rot.
Preachers thundered that God had sent the fire as a warning. Pamphlets mocked the “mad king” who danced with devils while his subjects starved. To quell this dissent, the king solemnly rode to Notre Dame Cathedral with his uncles walking penitently behind him. Louis of Orléans, whose torch had sparked the blaze, came under fierce criticism. He donated funds in atonement for a chapel to be built at the Celestine monastery.
The scandal deepened existing political fractures. When the king’s illness worsened in the following years, Orléans and the Duke of Burgundy would fight for control of the regency, plunging France into the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war—a conflict that weakened the kingdom and invited renewed English invasion.
For Charles VI, the trauma of that night seemed to hasten his decline. His later episodes grew stranger. He claimed to be made of glass and refused to be touched, he forgot his name, his wife, and his children. The court fragmented into rival factions, each exploiting the king’s illness for power.
Later writers and artists revisited the tragedy as both moral lesson and spectacle. Illuminated manuscripts depicted the burning dancers writhing in flame, their horror contrasting with the jewelled calm of onlookers.
Even modern historians see in it a striking metaphor: a glittering court, drunk on its own luxury, suddenly set ablaze by its carelessness. The disaster anticipated not only Charles’s personal downfall but also the coming century’s turmoil — the loss at Agincourt, civil war, and the erosion of royal prestige that would haunt France long before the Revolution.
References:
# Bal des Ardents, Wikipedia
# Ball of the Burning Men, World History Encyclopaedia
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