A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [323]
Bold as always, Philip of Burgundy seized authority. “We must return to Mans,” he decided. “This finishes the march on Brittany.” Laid in a passing oxcart, the King of France was carried back while an appalled company, some already thinking furiously of the future, rode alongside. With scarcely a sign of life but his heartbeat, Charles remained in a coma for four days during which he was thought to be on his deathbed. His physicians could offer no hope, and other doctors who were called—Burgundy’s, Orléans’, Bourbon’s—agreed after consultation that their science was powerless.
As the awful report of the King’s madness spread, rumors of sorcery and poison were on every tongue, and popular emotion so aroused that the sick chamber had to be kept open to the public. All the tears and grief attending a royal demise filled the room and “all good Frenchmen wept as for an only son, for the health of France was tied to that of her King.” Sobbing clergy conducted prayers, bishops led barefoot processions carrying life-size wax figures of the King to the churches, the people heaped their offerings on relics known for healing powers, and prostrated themselves before Christ and the saints to beseech a cure.
Few believed the affliction had natural causes. Some saw it as Divine anger at the King’s failure to take up arms to end the schism; others, as God’s warning against that very intention; still others, as Divine punishment for heavy taxes. Most believed the cause was sorcery, the more so because a great drought that summer dried up the ponds and rivers so that cattle died of thirst, waterborne transport ceased, and merchants claimed the worst losses in twenty years.
In a morbid time, belief in conspiracy rose to the surface. Whispers circulated against the Dukes. Why had the “phantom of the forest” not been arrested and interrogated? Had he been planted by the Duke of Brittany or by the uncles to cause the King to turn back? Had the King’s excess of anger caused by the Dukes’ delay brought on his madness? To allay public suspicions, Burgundy held a formal inquiry at which the King’s doctors testified to Charles’s previous illnesses.
Coucy too had summoned his personal physician, the most venerable and learned in France. He was Guillaume de Harsigny, a native of Laon aged 92, the same age as the century. After earning his degree at the University of Paris, he had traveled widely to enlarge his knowledge, studied under Arab professors at Cairo and Italians at Salerno, and eventually returned loaded with renown to his native Picardy. Nothing in human ills was unknown to him. Under his care—or by natural process coinciding with it—the King’s fever subsided and intervals of reason returned in which the poor young man, not yet 25, recognized with horror what had befallen him. Within a month Charles’s physical recovery had progressed well enough for Harsigny to take him to the castle of Creil high above the river Oise, where he could enjoy “the best air in the region of Paris.” The court overflowed with joy and with praise for the skills of Coucy’s physician.
The first four days, when Charles had been expected to die, gave the uncles their opportunity against the Marmosets. “Now is the hour,” said Berry, “when I shall pay them back in kind.” On the very day of the King’s attack, someone with quick perception of Fortune’s Wheel warned the Marmosets to be gone. On the next day while still at Le Mans, Berry and Burgundy, claiming authority as the King’s eldest relatives, although in fact Louis was closer to the crown, dismissed the entire Council, disbanded the army, and seized the reins of government. Returning to Paris within two weeks, they convened a subservient Council which duly gave the government to Philip the Bold on the ground that Louis d’Orléans was too young, and deposed the Marmosets by judicial process. Rivière and Mercier, who had been unready to abandon power in time,