The Horrific Death of Charles the Bad on This Day in History

 

This day in history: On this day in 1387, King Charles II of Navarre, known as "Charles the Bad" [so-called because he was ruthless and duplicitous] while suffering from illness in old age, was ordered by his physician to be tightly sewn into a linen sheet soaked in distilled spirits. The highly flammable sheet accidentally caught fire and Charles later died of his injuries. Chronicler Jean Froissart considered the horrific death to be God's judgment upon the king.

His horrific death became famous all over Europe, and was often cited by moralists, and sometimes illustrated in illuminated manuscript chronicles. There are several versions of the story, varying in the details. This is Francis Blagdon's English account, of 1803:

"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 [sic] 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."

This was not the only strange death in January,

In 2013, 68-year-old James Campbell left his van to open a gate; while he did this his dog stepped on the van's gas pedal and the van ran him over.

2013 also saw the death of Alan, an "office dog" at the Tatler magazine in London. Alan saw a man approaching the Vogue House revolving doors and walked after the man. As Alan tried to rush through the revolving doors his neck got caught in it, also getting the male worker stuck in the door. Two fire engines rushed to the scene, where they freed the man, but could not free Alan, who died at the scene.

In 2015, 50-year-old Stephen Whinfrey became trapped and asphyxiated when hunting for rabbits near Doncaster, England, after his head became stuck down a rabbit hole.

In 1932, an Australian newspaper, reported an incident where a dairy cow was partially blown up and killed on a farm at Kennedy Creek (near Cardwell, North Queensland). The cow had reputedly picked up a detonator in her mouth while grazing. This was only triggered later, when the cow began to chew her cud, at a time when she was in the process of being milked. The cow had its head blown off by the resulting explosion, and the farmer milking the cow was knocked unconscious.