Masque of King Charles VI of France (Bal des Ardents)
From the Royal 18 E II manuscript, by Jehan Froissart, , before 1483, British Museum



In 1393, the queen married one of her ladies of honour, who was a widow. In that age it was customary to celebrate the marriage of widows with the most riotous and extravagant mirth; every one who was present at the festivities was allowed to do or say what he liked with the most unbounded freedom; and the weak king and his bad favourites determined to make this an occasion for exceeding even the licentiousness usual on such occasions. One of the king's favourite counsellors in his pleasures, a wicked man named Huguet de Guisay, contrived a new mode of putting in effect their design; at his suggestion the king and five of his knights (Huguet de Guisay being himself one), equipped themselves as satyrs, sewn up in vests of linen which fitted tightly the whole of their bodies, and which was covered externally with a coating of rosin and pitch (resin), on which flax tow was attached so as to make them look hairy like goats. On their heads they placed hideous masks.

When the ladies of the court, and the new married pair, with their friends, were celebrating their nuptials in the royal palace of St Paul, in the night of the 29th of January in the year above mentioned, the king and his five knights, thus disguised, rushed into the hall, howling like wolves, dancing and leaping about in the most extravagant style, and exhibiting a thousand uncouth and unbecoming gestures. In the midst of the confusion which they thus created, the Duke of Orleans (the king's brother) and the Comte de Bar, who had been passing the evening elsewhere, arrived, and, thinking to heighten the merriment and frighten the ladies, they set fire to the hairy covering of some of the masquers. The pitch and rosin immediately caught the flame, and the satyrs became in a few seconds so many blazing fires. As the dresses had been sewn close to their bodies, it was impossible to deliver themselves from them, and the five knights, like living masses of fire, threw off their masks, and ran from one side of the hall to the other, in the most excruciating torments, and uttering the most terrible cries.

At the moment when this disaster took place, it happened that the king was apart from his companions, running after the young duchess of Berry; who, when she saw what had happened, held him fast and covered him with her robe, so that no spark could fall upon him, and he was thus saved. The queen and most of the other ladies fled in the utmost terror to a more distant part of the house. One of the knights with more presence of mind than his companions, rushed into the kitchen and threw himself into a large tub full of water, and thus saved himself. The other knights burnt during about half an hour; one of them died on the spot; two died on the second day; and Huguet de Guisay, the contriver of this unfortunate masque, outlived it three days in extreme torments. The king, though he escaped the fate of his fellow masquers, was thrown by the fright into a long fit of madness.

 Huguet de Guisay was a proud overbearing man, cruel and tyrannical in the extreme, and on that account an object of general detestation: he was in the habit of treating the poor commoners, and his own servants, in the most brutal manner, beating them like dogs, throwing them down and kicking them with his spurs, and forcing them to bark. His death created a general feeling of joy, and as his funeral procession passed the street, the populace saluted the body with the words he had so often used to others, 'bark, dog!'