In this section, Tuchman charts the collapse of both institutional authority and individual sanity in late 14th-century France. The argumentative structure moves from the general to the specific, illustrating how the systemic decay of chivalry and governance created the conditions for personal tragedy. Chapter 21 establishes the broad crisis of confidence in the knightly class following a series of military humiliations. Tuchman then narrows the focus in subsequent chapters to demonstrate the consequences of this decay: the mismanaged Barbary campaign, the cynical court intrigues that derailed peacemaking, and finally, the mental distress of King Charles VI. This progression argues that the king’s troubles were not merely a personal affliction and suggests instead that they were the culminating symptom of a society in which the core pillars of order—the chivalric code, the monarchy, and the Church—were themselves crumbling. The king’s sanity becomes as frayed as the social fabric. The sequence of events forms a chain of causation, linking the failure of an entire social class to the vulnerability of its sovereign and the political chaos that followed.

Tuchman uses the disastrous military expeditions of the period to expose The Illusion of Chivalry, showing it to be a hollow and self-serving ideology. The Guelders campaign and the Siege of Barbary are presented as case studies in incompetence and vanity instead of noble ventures. While the Barbary expedition was framed as a holy crusade, Tuchman reveals its true nature as a poorly planned adventure driven by the knights’ desire for glory rather than any coherent military or religious objective. The contrast between Coucy’s cautious pragmatism and the reckless bravado of his peers, particularly during the ill-advised combat challenge he warned against, highlights the code’s internal contradictions. The chivalric ideal of honorable combat is further challenged by the court’s internal conflicts. Pierre de Craon’s attempted assassination of Olivier de Clisson is an act of brutal pragmatism, an ambush that bypasses any pretense of knightly honor. Similarly, Robert de Vere’s repudiation of his wife Philippa, Coucy’s daughter, for a courtly infatuation demonstrates that personal desire and political convenience easily overrode the supposed sanctity of marriage vows and feudal loyalty. These events show that knighthood was a fiction, cracking from both external pressures and internal moral rot.

Throughout these chapters, Enguerrand de Coucy is a figure of relative stability and competence, yet Tuchman uses his career to show how even the most capable individuals were entangled in the era’s corrupt systems. He is a voice of reason in the Barbary campaign, a skilled negotiator in the Savoyard dispute, and a man of principle when he refuses to profit from his friend Clisson’s downfall by accepting his confiscated office of Constable. This act establishes Coucy’s moral integrity in contrast to the naked avarice of his contemporaries. However, Tuchman resists portraying him as an unsullied hero. His role as a paid negotiator in the sale of the Blois inheritance to the acquisitive Louis d’Orléans, a transaction for which he was handsomely compensated, earns a sharp rebuke from the chronicler Froissart, who judged that “the Sire de Coucy was greatly to blame in this matter” (491). By including this critique, Tuchman complicates Coucy’s character, using him as a lens to illustrate the moral compromises required to survive and prosper in a decaying feudal world. She does not present Coucy as an anachronistic modern hero, but as a man of his time, navigating a system where even honorable men must engage in morally ambiguous transactions.

The section culminates with an analysis of the era’s morbid cultural atmosphere, using the king’s mental health struggles and a series of ghastly events as potent symbols. King Charles’s mental illness episode on the road to Brittany becomes a metaphor for the state of the kingdom itself: a violent, irrational break from reality. The horror is compounded by the Bal des Ardents, an event Tuchman presents as the inevitable result of a decadent and irresponsible court culture. The image of the king and his nobles disguised in flammable costumes becomes a fateful symbol of a ruling class detached from reason and consequence. Tuchman explicitly connects this horrifying episode to the rise of the Danse Macabre, an artistic motif that depicted a skeletal Death leading all members of society to a common grave. This cultural obsession with putrefaction and mortality, seen also in the stark cadaver-effigy of the physician Harsigny, reflects a society grappling with The Breakdown of Social Order in Times of Crisis and haunted by the ever-present realities of plague and war.

Tuchman portrays large-scale political events alongside intimate personal dramas to create a rich historical fabric. The public failure of the Amiens peace parley is directly linked to the private, psychological travails of King Charles. Similarly, the political rivalry between the king’s uncles and his ministers is driven by personal greed and animosity, which then explodes into public violence with the attack on Clisson. The schism is presented as a political football, with Pope Clement sending Cardinal Pedro de Luna to lobby the English, who angrily dismiss him. This method reinforces the idea that in a monarchical, feudal society, the line between personal character and public policy is blurred. The sins of the age—greed, pride, irrationality—are shown to have destructive consequences for the state, as the whims and failings of powerful individuals directly shape the fate of nations. This also connects to The Spiritual and Moral Cost of Institutional Corruption, as personal failings among leaders mirror and exacerbate institutional ones, leaving the realm of France without a stable head.