Isabella of Bavaria was but fifteen years old when she came from Germany to wed Charles VI. Without parents, without a guide in the midst of a corrupted court, she learned its morals quicker than she learned its tongue, and she lived solely for luxury and pleasure. Years did not render her conduct more circumspect, or her thoughts more serious. From pleasure she descended to debauchery. Charged after the king’s affliction with the keeping of his person, she used the authority obtained through the melancholy situation of her husband to satisfy her passions, her vices, and her vengeances. It will soon be seen how fatal this foreign queen was to France. The duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, kept the sovereign authority until his death in 1404. His son, John the Fearless, wished to receive, with his heritage, his father’s influence in the government, but the duke of Orleans, the king’s brother, all powerful with the queen--master, through her, of the king and the dauphin; chief of the nobility, and brilliant knight himself--had no intention of renouncing the power to anyone. So there soon sprang up, between John the Fearless and Orleans, a rivalry that threatened to become civil war right in the midst of Paris. Each collected his arms and fortified his palace; they were about to fight when the aged duke of Berri interposed. He brought Burgundy to the bedside of Orleans who was lying ill and made the two men embrace and talk and take food together. This reconciliation took place November the 20th, 1407; on the 23rd Louis of Orleans fell, assassinated by John the Fearless. For more than four months, the duke had been planning this murder. He had bought, in the city, a house for the ostensible purpose of storing wine, corn, and other provisions, but really concealed in it seventeen hired assassins. This house, situated in the rue Vieille du Temple, near the Porte Barbette, lay in the path of the duke of Orleans while returning from the king’s residence to his own palace. Wednesday, the 23rd of November, at eight in the evening, the duke of Orleans left the Hôtel Montaigu on muleback. The night was very dark, and he was accompanied only by two equerries mounted on one horse and four foot attendants carrying torches. Although it was not late, all the shops were closed. The duke, keeping a little behind his people, was singing softly to himself and toying with his glove when suddenly the assassins, concealed by the corner of a house, rushed upon him crying, “Die! Die!”