Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 14, 2012



The Bal des Ardents was a masquerade ball held on 28 January 1393 at which Charles VI of France performed in a dance with five members of the French nobility. Four of the dancers were killed in a fire caused by a torch brought in by a spectator, Charles' brother Louis, Duke of Orléans—Charles and another of the dancers survived. The ball was one of a number of events intended to entertain the young king, who the previous summer had suffered the first in a series of lifelong attacks of insanity. The event undermined confidence in Charles' capacity to rule; Parisians considered it proof of courtly decadence and threatened to rebel against the more powerful members of the nobility. The public's outrage forced the king and his brother Orléans—whom at least one contemporary chronicler accused of attempted regicide and sorcery—into offering penance for the event. Charles' wife Queen Isabeau held the ball to honor the remarriage of a lady-in-waiting; scholars believe it may have been a traditional charivari, with the dancers disguised as wild men. The myth of wild men, often associated with demonology, was common in medieval Europe and documented in revels of Tudor England. (more...)

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