It could be said that King Charles VI of France was not your most mentally stable of monarchs. Given to such bizarre behavior such as roaming around, howling like a wolf; not bathing for months and believing he was made from glass; at times he would forget his own name or that he was king, fleeing from his wife in terror. He once killed one of his own knights in a fit of psychosis, believing the man was an enemy sent to assassinate him.

Yeah…crazy dude who lived a privileged, weird, French existence. Anyway, one thing about his life that grabbed my attention was something I remembered reading about as a kid called the “Bal des Sauvages” (later known as the “Bal des Ardents”) or the “Ball of the Wild (or Burning) Men”.

The King’s wife, Isabeau of Bavaria threw a party to celebrate the marriage of one of her ladies-in-waiting. For giggles (or perhaps because he was shit-slappin’ crazy), Charles and five other lords dressed up as Woodwose (mythical, hairy-covered, wild men of the forests), “in costumes of linen cloth sewn onto their bodies and soaked in resinous wax or pitch to hold a covering of frazzled hemp, ’so that they appeared shaggy and hairy from head to foot’”. This concoction of a costume was seriously flammable, so all torches were banned from the room. Much ribaldry ensued.

However, the Duke of Orleans (who died after having both his arms amputated in an assassination, incidentally), being kind of a dick, took a torch into the room and under the auspices of trying to locate his brother Charles (others say he was teasing the dancers), one of the Woodwose dancers caught aflame. The men, being chained together and covered with extremely flammable gunk, all lit up like a bonfire. Hilarity and panic galore.

Charles barely escaped with his life, being saved by the Duchess of Berry, (whom he had been flirting with prior to becoming human kindling) who covered him with her skirts, keeping him from burning alive. Four of the other men died.