Death
Charles's horrific death became famous all over Europe, and was often cited by moralists, and sometimes illustrated in illuminated manuscript chronicles. There are various contemporary versions that vary in detail: this is Francis Blagdon's English account, of 1801:
Charles the Bad, having fallen into such a state of decay that he could not make use of his limbs, consulted his physician, who ordered him to be wrapped up from head to foot, in a linen cloth impregnated with brandy, so that he might be inclosed in it to the very neck as in a sack. It was night when this remedy was administered. One of the female attendants of the palace, charged to sew up the cloth that contained the patient, having come to the neck, the fixed point where she was to finish her seam, made a knot according to custom; but as there was still remaining an end of thread, instead of cutting it as usual with scissors, she had recourse to the candle, which immediately set fire to the whole cloth. Being terrified, she ran away, and abandoned the king, who was thus burnt alive in his own palace.
Other versions have his bed set alight by a coal escaping from a metal warming-pan.
Read more about this topic: Charles II Of Navarre
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,
Ease me with death by bidding me got too.
Oh, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do.
Except it be too late to kill me so,
Being double dead: going, and bidding go.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“I can only see death and more death, till we are black and swollen with death.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)