Many years ago I went through a stage when I read every historical novel I could get my hands on, from Gone With The Wind through all of Cecilia Holland's fine tales. For years since I have avoided them until I ran across a review of Hella Haasse's In A Dark Wood Wandering, Originally written in Dutch in 1949 - it was wildly popular in Holland - it was not completely translated into English until 1989. Most of the work had been completed years earlier, but the death of the translator and subsequent burial of the manuscript in a closet for years prevented its publication.The epic story takes place in France at the time of the Hundred Years War, beginning with the reign of the mad king Charles VI. In wonderful detail the story reveals what life was like during the 14th and 15th centuries in the courts of Europe. Haasse follows the life of Charles, Duke of Orleans, through palace intrigues and the long battle for power between the duchies of Burgundy, Bourbon, Orleans and the king.
Unfortunately for France, Charles VI suffered from periods that came and went of insanity with cycles of increasing severity during which he would not recognize his kin. He would dance around, attack and occasionally kill people, generally making a nuisance of himself.
Because he still had periods of lucidity when all appeared normal, and because he eventually could recognize the onset of his periods of madness and learned to warn his courtiers, the power of the monarch fell only intermittently to his Council, dominated by his brother Louis, Duke of Orleans, and his uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, a powerful duchy that derived much of its wealth and power from its ties to England.
Louis of Orleans, and later his son Charles (the poet and our story's hero,) after Louis was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy, sought to achieve a more nationalistic role for France and to sever the connections and claims of the King of England. This chauvinistic fervor was the source of much power for Joan of Arc, born about 1412.
Of course, the English wanted most of France too, and Haasse's description of the Battle at Agincourt, brief though it is, gives a real flavor of what it must have been like to be a French knight, his horse mired in mud up to the knees, unable to move, so tightly were the knights lined up in traditional formation, as the peasant English archers inexorably marched down on them, slaughtering as they went, in a battle that redefined warfare.
edited 11/26/09
