Historical Figures

Isabella of Bavaria (1371 - 1435)

Philip II the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, seeking alliances with Germany gave as wife his nephew Charles VI the daughter of the Duke of Bavaria, Isabeau. The king's madness, which broke out in 1392, made her the regent of the kingdom. She then found herself at the center of all the quarrels and intrigues between Armagnacs and the Burgundians. In his Secret History of Isabeau of Bavaria, the Marquis de Sade saw in her an incarnation of vice and the portrait he gives of her imposed itself on everyone. Very quickly becoming unpopular, she was particularly targeted by the Cabochian riot of 1413. Exiled to Tours by the Armagnacs, she then became friends with the Duke of Burgundy, Jean sans Peur, who freed her. At the end of 1417, she organized in Troyes a government tightly controlled by the Burgundians. Then in 1420, it was the disastrous Treaty of Troyes which disinherited his son, the Dauphin Charles, in favor of the King of England.