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Curious about your latest admirer? Details inside ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌ ‌‌   [Spdate]( You've caught her fancy, intrigued? [Lucy, 29 years]( Lucy, 29 [VIEW PROFILE]( The Starry Night (Dutch: De sterrennacht) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village.[1][2][3] It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Widely regarded as Van Gogh's magnum opus,[4][5] The Starry Night is one of the most recognizable paintings in Western art.[6][7] The painting Van Gogh's bedroom in the asylum Although The Starry Night was painted during the day in Van Gogh's ground-floor studio, it would be inaccurate to state that the picture was painted from memory. The view has been identified as the one from his bedroom window, facing east,[1][2][17][18] a view which Van Gogh painted variations of no fewer than twenty-one times,[citation needed] including The Starry Night. "Through the iron-barred window," he wrote to his brother, Theo, around 23 May 1889, "I can see an enclosed square of wheat ... above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory."[2][L 2] Van Gogh depicted the view at different times of the day and under various weather conditions, such as the sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled days, overcast days, windy days, and one day with rain. While the hospital staff did not allow Van Gogh to paint in his bedroom, he was able there to make sketches in ink or charcoal on paper; eventually, he would base newer variations on previous versions. The pictorial element uniting all of these paintings is the diagonal line coming in from the right depicting the low rolling hills of the Alpilles mountains. In fifteen of the twenty-one versions, cypress trees are visible beyond the far wall enclosing the wheat field. Van Gogh exaggerated their size in six of these paintings, most notably in F717 Wheat Field with Cypresses and The Starry Night, bringing the trees closer to the picture plane. One of the first paintings of the view was F611 Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy, now in Copenhagen. Van Gogh made a number of sketches for the painting, of which F1547 The Enclosed Wheatfield After a Storm is typical. It is unclear whether the painting was made in his studio or outside. In his 9 June letter describing it, he mentions he had been working outside for a few days.[19][20][L 3][15] Van Gogh described the second of the two landscapes he mentions he was working on, in a letter to his sister Wil on 16 June 1889.[19][L 4] This is F719 Green Wheat Field with Cypress, now in Prague, and the first painting at the asylum he definitely painted en plein air.[19] F1548 Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence, now in New York, is a study for it. Two days later, Vincent wrote to Theo stating that he had painted "a starry sky".[21][L 1] The Starry Night is the only nocturne in the series of views from his bedroom window. In early June, Vincent wrote to Theo, "This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big".[L 5] Researchers have determined that Venus (sometimes referred to as the "morning star") was indeed visible at dawn in Provence in the spring of 1889, and was at that time nearly as bright as possible. So the brightest "star" in the painting, just to the viewer's right of the cypress tree, is actually Venus.[15][17] The Moon is stylized, as astronomical records indicate that it actually was waning gibbous at the time Van Gogh painted the picture,[15] and even if the phase of the Moon had been its waning crescent at the time, Van Gogh's Moon would not have been astronomically correct. (For other interpretations of the Moon, see below.) The one pictorial element that was definitely not visible from Van Gogh's cell is the village,[22] which is based on a sketch (F1541v) made from a hillside above the village of Saint-Rémy.[3] Pickvance thought F1541v was done later, and the steeple more Dutch than Provençal, a conflation of several Van Gogh had painted and drawn in his Nuenen period, and thus the first of his "reminisces of the North" he was to paint and draw early the following year.[1] Hulsker thought a landscape on the reverse (F1541r) was also a study for the painting.[23] F1548 Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence, Morgan Library & Museum F1548 Wheatfield, Saint-Rémy de Provence, Morgan Library & Museum F719 Green Wheat Field with Cypress, National Gallery Prague F719 Green Wheat Field with Cypress, National Gallery Prague F1547 The Enclosed Wheatfield After a Storm, Van Gogh Museum F1547 The Enclosed Wheatfield After a Storm, Van Gogh Museum F611 Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek F611 Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Rémy, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek F1541v Bird's-Eye View of the Village, Van Gogh Museum F1541v Bird's-Eye View of the Village, Van Gogh Museum F1541r Landscape with Cypresses, Van Gogh Museum F1541r Landscape with Cypresses, Van Gogh Museum Interpretations Despite the large number of letters Van Gogh wrote, he said very little about The Starry Night.[1] After reporting that he had painted a starry sky in June, Van Gogh next mentioned the painting in a letter to Theo on or about 20 September 1889, when he included it in a list of paintings he was sending to his brother in Paris, referring to it as a "night study."[24] Of this list of paintings, he wrote, "All in all the only things I consider a little good in it are the Wheatfield, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills and the Portrait and the Entrance to the quarry, and the rest says nothing to me"; "the rest" would include The Starry Night. When he decided to hold back three paintings from this batch in order to save money on postage, The Starry Night was one of the paintings he did not send.[25] Finally, in a letter to painter Émile Bernard from late November 1889, Van Gogh referred to the painting as a "failure."[26] Van Gogh argued with Bernard and especially Paul Gauguin as to whether one should paint from nature, as Van Gogh preferred,[27] or paint what Gauguin called "abstractions":[28] paintings conceived in the imagination, or de tête.[29] In the letter to Bernard, Van Gogh recounted his experiences when Gauguin lived with him for nine weeks in the autumn and winter[clarification needed] of 1888: "When Gauguin was in Arles, I once or twice allowed myself to be led astray into abstraction, as you know. . . . But that was delusion, dear friend, and one soon comes up against a brick wall. . . And yet, once again I allowed myself to be led astray into reaching for stars that are too big—another failure—and I have had my fill of that."[30] Van Gogh here is referring to the expressionistic swirls which dominate the upper center portion of The Starry Night.[31] Theo referred to these pictorial elements in a letter to Vincent dated 22 October 1889: "I clearly sense what preoccupies you in the new canvases like the village in the moonlight [The Starry Night] or the mountains, but I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things."[26] Vincent responded in early November, "Despite what you say in your previous letter, that the search for style often harms other qualities, the fact is that I feel myself greatly driven to seek style, if you like, but I mean by that a more manly and more deliberate drawing. If that will make me more like Bernard or Gauguin, I can't do anything about it. But am inclined to believe that in the long run you'd get used to it." And later in the same letter, he wrote, "I know very well that the studies drawn with long, sinuous lines from the last consignment weren't what they ought to become, however I dare urge you to believe that in landscapes one will continue to mass things by means of a drawing style that seeks to express the entanglement of the masses."[32] But although Van Gogh periodically defended the practices of Gauguin and Bernard, each time he inevitably repudiated them[33] and continued with his preferred method of painting from nature.[34] Like the impressionists he had met in Paris, especially Claude Monet, Van Gogh also favored working in series. He had painted his series of sunflowers in Arles, and he painted the series of cypresses and wheat fields at Saint-Rémy. The Starry Night belongs to this latter series,[35] as well as to a small series of nocturnes he initiated in Arles. Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône, 1888, oil on canvas The nocturne series was limited by the difficulties posed by painting such scenes from nature, i.e., at night.[36] The first painting in the series was Café Terrace at Night, painted in Arles in early September 1888, followed by Starry Night (Over the Rhône) later that same month. Van Gogh's written statements concerning these paintings provide further insight into his intentions for painting night studies in general and The Starry Night in particular. Soon after his arrival in Arles in February 1888, Van Gogh wrote to Theo, "I need a starry night with cypresses or—perhaps above a field of ripe wheat; there are some really beautiful nights here." That same week, he wrote to Bernard, "A starry sky is something I should like to try to do, just as in the daytime I am going to try to paint a green meadow spangled with dandelions."[37] He compared the stars to dots on a map and mused that, as one takes a train to travel on Earth, "we take death to reach a star."[38] Although at this point in his life Van Gogh was disillusioned by religion,[39][40] he appears not to have lost his belief in an afterlife. He voiced this ambivalence in a letter to Theo after having painted Starry Night Over the Rhône, confessing to a "tremendous need for, shall I say the word—for religion—so I go outside at night to paint the stars."[41] He wrote about existing in another dimension after death and associated this dimension with the night sky. "It would be so simple and would account so much for the terrible things in life, which now amaze and wound us so, if life had yet another hemisphere, invisible it is true, but where one lands when one dies."[42] "Hope is in the stars," he wrote, but he was quick to point out that "earth is a planet too, and consequently a star, or celestial orb."[37] And he stated flatly that The Starry Night was "not a return to the romantic or to religious ideas."[43] Noted art historian Meyer Schapiro highlights the expressionistic aspects of The Starry Night, saying it was created under the "pressure of feeling" and that it is a "visionary [painting] inspired by a religious mood."[44] Schapiro theorizes that the "hidden content"[44] of the work makes reference to the New Testament Book of Revelation, revealing an "apocalyptic theme of the woman in pain of birth, girded with the sun and moon and crowned with stars, whose newborn child is threatened by the dragon."[45] (Schapiro, in the same volume, also professes to see an image of a mother and child in the clouds in Landscape with Olive Trees,[46] painted at the same time and often regarded as a pendant to The Starry Night.)[47] Art historian Sven Loevgren expands on Schapiro's approach, again calling The Starry Night a "visionary painting" which "was conceived in a state of great agitation."[48] He writes of the "hallucinatory character of the painting and its violently expressive form," although he takes pains to note that the painting was not executed during one of Van Gogh's incapacitating breakdowns.[49] Loevgren compares Van Gogh's "religiously inclined longing for the beyond" to the poetry of Walt Whitman.[50] He calls The Starry Night "an infinitely expressive picture which symbolizes the final absorption of the artist by the cosmos" and which "gives a never-to-be-forgotten sensation of standing on the threshold of eternity."[51] Loevgren praises Schapiro's "eloquent interpretation" of the painting as an apocalyptic vision[52] and advances his own symbolist theory with reference to the eleven stars in one of Joseph's dreams in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.[53] Loevgren asserts that the pictorial elements of The Starry Night "are visualized in purely symbolic terms" and notes that "the cypress is the tree of death in the Mediterranean countries."[54] The drawing Cypresses in Starry Night, a reed pen copy executed by Van Gogh after the painting in 1889. Originally held at Kunsthalle Bremen, today part of the disputed Baldin Collection.[55][56] Art historian Lauren Soth also finds a symbolist subtext in The Starry Night, saying that the painting is a "traditional religious subject in disguise"[57] and a "sublimated image of [Van Gogh's] deepest religious feelings."[58] Citing Van Gogh's avowed admiration for the paintings of Eugène Delacroix, and especially the earlier painter's use of Prussian blue and citron yellow in paintings of Christ, Soth theorizes that Van Gogh used these colors to represent Christ in The Starry Night.[59] He criticizes Schapiro's and Loevgren's biblical interpretations, dependent as they are on a reading of the crescent moon as incorporating elements of the Sun. He says it is merely a crescent moon, which, he writes, also had symbolic meaning for Van Gogh, representing "consolation."[60] It is in light of such symbolist interpretations of The Starry Night that art historian Albert Boime presents his study of the painting. As noted above, Boime has proven that the painting depicts not only the topographical elements of Van Gogh's view from his asylum window but also the celestial elements, identifying not only Venus but also the constellation Aries.[17] He suggests that Van Gogh originally intended to paint a gibbous Moon but "reverted to a more traditional image" of the crescent moon, and theorizes that the bright aureole around the resulting crescent is a remnant of the original gibbous version.[22] He recounts Van Gogh's interest in the writings of Victor Hugo and Jules Verne as possible inspiration for his belief in an afterlife on stars or planets.[61] And he provides a detailed discussion of the well-publicized advances in astronomy that took place during Van Gogh's lifetime. Boime asserts that while Van Gogh never mentioned astronomer Camille Flammarion in his letters,[62] he believes that Van Gogh must have been aware of Flammarion's popular illustrated publications, which included drawings of spiral nebulae (as galaxies were then called) as seen and photographed through telescopes. Boime interprets the swirling figure in the central portion of the sky in The Starry Night to represent either a spiral galaxy or a comet, photographs of which had also been published in popular media.[22] He asserts that the only non-realistic elements of the painting are the village and the swirls in the sky. These swirls represent Van Gogh's understanding of the cosmos as a living, dynamic place.[63] Harvard astronomer Charles A. Whitney conducted his own astronomical study of The Starry Night contemporaneously with but independent of Boime (who spent almost his entire career at U.C.L.A.).[64] While Whitney does not share Boime's certainty with regard to the constellation Aries,[65] he concurs with Boime on the visibility of Venus in Provence at the time the painting was executed.[15] He also sees the depiction of a spiral galaxy in the sky, although he gives credit for the original to Anglo-Irish astronomer William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, whose work Flammarion reproduced.[66] This letter was sent to {EMAIL}. If you do not want to receive notifications from Spdate, go to [notification settings](. Spdate, Trust Company Complex, Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake Island, Majuro, Republic of the Marshall Islands MH 96960 Charles VII (22 February 1403 – 22 July 1461), called the Victorious (French: le Victorieux)[1] or the Well-Served (le Bien-Servi), was King of France from 1422 to his death in 1461. His reign saw the end of the Hundred Years' War and a de facto end of the English claims to the French throne. In the midst of the Hundred Years' War, Charles VII inherited the throne of France under desperate circumstances. Forces of the Kingdom of England and the duke of Burgundy occupied Guyenne and northern France, including Paris, the most populous city, and Reims, the city in which French kings were traditionally crowned. In addition, his father, Charles VI, had disinherited him in 1420 and recognized Henry V of England and his heirs as the legitimate successors to the French crown. At the same time, a civil war raged in France between the Armagnacs (supporters of the House of Valois) and the Burgundian party (supporters of the House of Valois-Burgundy, which was allied to the English). With his court removed to Bourges, south of the Loire river, Charles was disparagingly called the "King of Bourges", because the area around this city was one of the few remaining regions left to him. However, his political and military position improved dramatically with the emergence of Joan of Arc as a spiritual leader in France. Joan and other charismatic figures[who?] led French troops to lift the sieges of Orléans and other strategic cities on the Loire river, and to crush the English at the Battle of Patay. With the local English troops dispersed, the people of Reims switched allegiance and opened their gates, which enabled the coronation of Charles VII at Reims Cathedral in 1429. Six years later, he ended the English-Burgundian alliance by signing the Treaty of Arras with Burgundy, followed by the recovery of Paris in 1436 and the steady reconquest of Normandy in the 1440s using a newly organized professional army and advanced siege cannons. Following the Battle of Castillon in 1453, the French expelled the English from all their continental possessions except the Pale of Calais. The last years of Charles VII were marked by conflicts with his turbulent son, the future Louis XI. Early life Born at the Hôtel Saint-Pol, the royal residence in Paris, Charles was given the title of Count of Ponthieu six months after his birth in 1403.[2] He was the eleventh child and fifth son of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria.[1] His four elder brothers, Charles (1386), Charles (1392–1401), Louis (1397–1415) and John (1398–1417) had each held the title of Dauphin of France as heirs apparent to the French throne in turn.[1] All died childless, leaving Charles with a rich inheritance of titles.[1] Dauphin See also: Assassination of John the Fearless Almost immediately after becoming dauphin, Charles had to face threats to his inheritance, and he was forced to flee from Paris on 29 May 1418 after the partisans of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, had entered the city the previous night.[3] By 1419, Charles had established his own court in Bourges and a Parlement in Poitiers.[3] On 11 July of that same year, Charles and John the Fearless attempted a reconciliation on a small bridge near Pouilly-le-Fort, not far from Melun where Charles was staying. They signed the Treaty of Pouilly-le-Fort in which they would share authority of the government, assist each other and not to form any treaties without the other's consent.[4] Charles and John also decided that a further meeting should take place the following 10 September. On that date, they met on the bridge at Montereau.[5] The Duke assumed that the meeting would be entirely peaceful and diplomatic; thus, he brought only a small escort with him. The Dauphin's men reacted to the Duke's arrival by attacking and killing him. Charles's level of involvement has remained uncertain to this day. Although he claimed to have been unaware of his men's intentions, this was considered unlikely by those who heard of the murder.[1] The assassination marked the end of any attempt of a reconciliation between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions, thus playing into the hands of Henry V of England. Charles was later required by a treaty with Philip the Good, the son of John the Fearless, to pay penance for the murder, which he never did. Treaty of Troyes (1420) At the death of Charles' father Charles VI in October 1422, the succession was cast into doubt. Under the Treaty of Troyes, signed by Charles VI on 21 May 1420, the throne would pass to Henry V or his heir. Henry had died in July 1422: his heir was the infant King Henry VI of England, son of Henry and Charles VI's daughter Catherine of Valois. However, Frenchmen loyal to the Valois regarded the treaty as invalid on grounds of coercion and Charles VI's diminished mental capacity. Those who did not recognize the treaty and believed the Dauphin Charles to be of legitimate birth considered him the rightful heir to the throne. Those who considered Charles illegitimate recognized as rightful heir Charles, Duke of Orléans, cousin of the Dauphin, who was in English captivity. Only the supporters of Henry VI and the Dauphin Charles were able to enlist sufficient military force to press effectively for their candidates. The English, already in control of northern France, enforced Henry's claim in the regions of France that they occupied. Northern France, including Paris, was thus ruled by an English regent, Henry V's brother, John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, based in Normandy (see Dual monarchy of England and France). King of Bourges In his adolescent years, Charles was noted for his bravery and flamboyant style of leadership. At one point after becoming Dauphin, he led an army against the English dressed in the red, white, and blue that represented his family;[citation needed] his heraldic device was a mailed fist clutching a naked sword. However, in July 1421, upon learning that Henry V was preparing to attack from Mantes with a much larger army, he withdrew from the siege of Chartres.[6] He then went south of the Loire River under the protection of Yolande of Aragon, known as "Queen of the Four Kingdoms" and, on 18 December 1422, married her daughter, Marie of Anjou,[7] to whom he had been engaged since December 1413 in a ceremony at the Louvre Palace. Charles, unsurprisingly, claimed the title King of France for himself, but he failed to make any attempts to expel the English from northern France out of indecision and a sense of hopelessness[8][citation needed] Instead, he remained south of the Loire River, where he was still able to exert power, and maintained an itinerant court in the Loire Valley at castles such as Chinon. He was still customarily known as "Dauphin", or derisively as "King of Bourges", after the town where he generally lived. Periodically, he considered flight to the Iberian Peninsula, which would have allowed the English to advance their occupation of France. Siege of Orléans 1429 Territories controlled by Henry VI of England Territories controlled by the Duke of Burgundy Territories controlled by Charles Main battles English raid of 1415 Joan of Arc's route to Reims in 1429 Joan of Arc at the coronation of Charles VII with her white flag Political conditions in France took a decisive turn in the year 1429 just as the prospects for the Dauphin began to look hopeless. The town of Orléans had been under siege since October 1428. The English regent, the Duke of Bedford (the uncle of Henry VI), was advancing into the Duchy of Bar, ruled by Charles's brother-in-law, René. The French lords and soldiers loyal to Charles were becoming increasingly desperate. Then in the little village of Domrémy, on the border of Lorraine and Champagne, a teenage girl named Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc), demanded that the garrison commander at Vaucouleurs, Robert de Baudricourt, collect the soldiers and resources necessary to bring her to the Dauphin at Chinon,[9] stating that visions of angels and saints had given her a divine mission. Granted an escort of five veteran soldiers and a letter of referral to Charles by Lord Baudricourt, Joan rode to see Charles at Chinon. She arrived on 23 February 1429.[9] Second-hand testimony by witnesses who were not present when Joan and the Dauphin met state Charles wanted to test her claim to be able to recognise him despite never having seen him, and so he disguised himself as one of his courtiers. He stood in their midst when Joan entered the chamber in which the court was assembled. Joan identified Charles immediately. She bowed low to him and embraced his knees, declaring "God give you a happy life, sweet King!" Despite attempts to claim that another man was in fact the king, thereafter Joan referred to him as "Dauphin" or "Noble Dauphin" until he was crowned in Reims four months later. After a private conversation between the two, Charles became inspired and filled with confidence. After her encounter with Charles in March 1429, Joan of Arc set out to lead the French forces at Orléans. She was aided by skilled commanders such as Étienne de Vignolles, known as La Hire, and Jean Poton de Xaintrailles. They compelled the English to lift the siege on 8 May 1429, thus turning the tide of the war. The French won the Battle of Patay on 18 June, at which the English field army lost about half its troops. After pushing further into English and Burgundian-controlled territory, Charles was crowned King Charles VII of France in Reims Cathedral on 17 July 1429. Joan was later captured by Burgundian troops under John of Luxembourg at the Siege of Compiègne on 24 May 1430.[10] The Burgundians handed her over to their English allies. Tried for heresy by a court composed of pro-English clergy such as Pierre Cauchon, who had long served the English occupation government,[11] she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431. French victory Nearly as important as Joan of Arc in the cause of Charles was the support of the powerful and wealthy family of his wife Marie d'Anjou, particularly his mother-in-law, Queen Yolande of Aragon. But whatever affection he may have had for his wife, or whatever gratitude he may have felt for the support of her family, the great love of Charles VII's life was his mistress, Agnès Sorel. Charles VII and Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, then signed the 1435 Treaty of Arras, by which the Burgundian faction rejected their English alliance and became reconciled with Charles VII, just as things were going badly for their English allies. With this accomplishment, Charles attained the essential goal of ensuring that no Prince of the Blood recognised Henry VI as King of France.[12] Over the following two decades, the French recaptured Paris from the English and eventually recovered all of France with the exception of the northern port of Calais. Close of reign Charles VII the Victorious by Antoine-Louis Barye, held in The Walters Art Museum Charles's later years were marked by hostile relations with his heir, Louis, who demanded real power to accompany his position as the Dauphin. Charles consistently refused him. Accordingly, Louis stirred up dissent and fomented plots in attempts to destabilise his father's reign. He quarrelled with his father's mistress, Agnès Sorel, and on one occasion drove her with a bared sword into Charles' bed, according to one source. Eventually, in 1446, after Charles's last son, also named Charles, was born, the king banished the Dauphin to the Dauphiné. The two never met again. Louis thereafter refused the king's demands to return to court, and he eventually fled to the protection of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in 1456. In 1458, Charles became ill. A sore on his leg (an early symptom, perhaps, of diabetes or another condition) refused to heal, and the infection in it caused a serious fever. The king summoned Louis to him from his exile in Burgundy, but the Dauphin refused to come. He employed astrologers to foretell the exact hour of his father's death. The king lingered on for the next two and a half years, increasingly ill, but unwilling to die. During this time he also had with the case of his rebellious vassal John V of Armagnac. Finally, however, there came a point in July 1461 when the king's physicians concluded that Charles would not live past August. Ill and weary, the king became delirious, convinced that he was surrounded by traitors loyal only to his son. Under the pressure of sickness and fever, he went mad. By now another infection in his jaw had caused an abscess in his mouth. The swelling caused by this became so large that, for the last week of his life, Charles was unable to swallow food or water. Although he asked the Dauphin to come to his deathbed, Louis refused, instead waiting at Avesnes, in Burgundy, for his father to die. At Mehun-sur-Yèvre, attended by his younger son, Charles, and aware of his elder son's final betrayal, the King starved to death. He died on 22 July 1461, and was buried, at his request, beside his parents in Saint-Denis.