The Death of Charles the Bad
On 1 January 1387 Charles II, the medieval king of Navarre, died as he had lived – with great violence.
One night in January 1354 a group of armed men burst into a room in a Normandy inn and dragged the man asleep there naked from his bed. He begged for his life on his knees. He offered money. He offered land. People counted 80 stab wounds in his body the next day.
The body belonged to Charles d’Espagne, constable of France and its most powerful figure after the king, Jean II. The man responsible for his death was Jean’s son-in-law, the 22-year-old Charles II of Navarre. The king owed him money and land and he thought the constable was to blame.
Charles II was also duke of Évreux and the grandson of the French king Louis X. He had a better claim to the throne than Jean, albeit through the female line. His parents renounced it, but he wasn’t a man to much care about niceties like that.
Later historians dubbed him Charles the Bad. He was certainly brazen. ‘It was I with the help of God who had Charles d’Espagne killed’, he wrote to the pope. In the Hundred Years War he repeatedly allied with the English against France, sometimes switching sides within months – to defend or advance his position, or perhaps just for the thrill of the deal.
How bad was he? Even the hostile Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denis was forced to note his quick wit and sharp mind, and how his natural eloquence and affability ‘distinguished him among all the other princes and endeared him to the people’.
In December 1359 he plotted to have his men attack and murder the dauphin, the future Charles V, in Paris. But his attempted assassinations more often involved poison. He tried again to kill Charles V that way, and also targeted the dukes of Burgundy and Berry. All three were brothers of his wife. Another intended victim was the comte de Foix, his sister’s husband, for which he used their son as an unwitting accomplice. The deception was uncovered, but the comte accidentally stabbed and killed his son in the process.
Charles’ own death was theatrical. Ravaged by terrible chills, he was sewn into brandy-soaked cloths each night. Instead of cutting the last thread, one night a servant severed it with a candle flame. Charles’ entire body erupted. If Froissart’s Chronicle is right he lived on in agony for 15 days. He died on 1 January 1387. Was the manner of death God’s doing or the devil’s? Froissart couldn’t decide.