Episode 30: A Rebuke of the New Duke

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Upon becoming the Duke of Burgundy, along with all the titles that came with it, Charles the Bold inherited the complex series of social revolts that were either simmering or boiling over in places like Liege and Flanders. After burying his father, which he did with all the symbolic and royal pomp and ceremony that he could muster, Charles headed for Ghent. There, he expected to make a Joyous Entry that would celebrate his magnificence as emphatically as he had seen them do for his father years before. When he was sworn in as the new Count of Flanders, his oath was barely out of his mouth before he was literally surrounded by rioting and rebellious workers in the city. For the people of Ghent, and indeed for many of the people who lived in low country domains under Burgundian rule or influence, Charles' ascension meant that the relationship between the ruler and the ruled would begin anew; he could not simply appropriate the one which his father had established. These revolting workers in Ghent took the new duke’s visit as an opportunity to air grievances which they reckoned needed to be taken into consideration for the terms of this new relationship. This, however, was by no means the only issue that Charles had to deal with. Not even a year after the destruction of Dinant, the rebel factions in the bishopric of Liege had once more taken control of many towns in the territory, and Louis de Bourbon was forced into exile. Many of the people of Liege, invested in rebellion, were going to push a few of Charles’ buttons, and see if they couldn’t take the opportunity of a change in ruler to unhook themselves from the talons of Burgundian domination.

The funeral of Philip the Good

Philip the Good had spent almost half a century building upon the honour, prestige, reputation and influence that he had inherited from his forebears. His funeral, therefore, was suitably inclusive of and adorned with many symbolic gestures, ornaments and regalia that deliberately matched the pretensions to a throne that the Duke still held when he died in Bruges in 1467. Although he was dead, his entire state of sovereignty and right to legitimate rule was about to be passed on to Charles. It was therefore very much in Charles’ interest to boost the magnificence of his dead father as much as he could before absorbing his power. Charles inherited his father’s eagerness to be a king before he inherited any of his titles and it would serve his ambition to project a royal aura onto his father’s funeral, and to use the actual event as a means of displaying his own political and, so he hoped, royal power.  

Charles even defied some of Philip’s specific directions for what was to be done with his remains after he’d died. Philip had ordered that he must be buried in the Charterhouse in Dijon, next to his father and grandfather in the tomb that Philip the Bold had constructed. This, in itself, would have served a few purposes. Firstly, a family tomb of Valois Dukes sought to promote the idea of dynasty, implying consistency and duration of the legitimate rulers of the Burgundian realm. This was akin to what most royal families did, and could create an epicentre of gravitas around deceased rulers. Richard Vaughan compares the Crypt at Dijon with St. Denis in Paris, where the French monarchs were traditionally buried.  Lastly, because Philip the Bold and John the Fearless were entombed in Dijon, Philip the Good had seen to it that there were a lot of churches and chapels around, many of which spent a lot of time in dedicated, and pre-paid prayer to the Valois rulers.

Charles, however, had different plans, at least for now. We have seen how troublesome Flanders could be for any of its Counts. At the end of his life, Philip had listed one of his main achievements as being the pacification of rebellion and revolt in Liège and Flanders. Despite this bold claim, however, extreme elements in those societies still remained, and you just know that Flemish revolts are not yet a thing of the past. Upon inheriting the title of Count of Flanders, Charles wanted to make a statement about the nature of his upcoming reign, and decided to use the occasion of Philip’s funeral to show the people of Flanders that he meant business. As such, Charles decided that Philip would be buried in Bruges, not Dijon, to once again remind the Flemish of the resplendent power incumbent in Burgundian rule.

Historian Edward Tabri compares the funeral of Philip the Good to that of his grandfather Philip the Bold. As you may remember, when the first Philip died in Halle, a multiple-weeks-long funeral procession began, in which he was varyingly joined by his sons, courtiers and household staff during certain periods. But by the time Philip’s body arrived in Dijon, there was basically nobody of importance left to see his body actually interred in the ground, his sons having already departed and his household having been released from their personal duty to him. As dignified as this procession was, it was a much more meagre affair than his grandson’s would be. ‘Although the two funerals shared some fundamental similarities… the funeral of Philip the Good was far more elaborate and formalized, as well as much more expressive of ducal dignity and several other significant implications, which from all appearances were totally absent from the cours funèbre of his grandfather in 1404.’

The funeral took place about a week after his death, with the services kicking off on Sunday 21 June, 1467. Despite burying him in the wrong place, Charles truly did justice to his father’s love of splendour in the other arrangements he made. Philip’s household members were decked out in expensive mourning garb, and everybody involved wore clothes that deliberately reflected the hierarchy of each person’s nobility and importance. The entire St Donatian’s church in Bruges was similarly bedecked in a wide range of ridiculously expensive black fabrics, and adorned with hundreds, and possibly a couple of thousand, banners showing the ducal arms. So many candles were jammed into the church that the stained glassed windows had to be pierced in order to let the stiflingly hot air out.

It is thought that around 20,000 people watched the funeral procession as it wound its way from the ducal palace, through Bruges and to the church. Between the procession and the crowd stood men holding torches, supplied by both the city, the guilds and by Charles himself. 

The procession began with the magistracy and the guilds of Bruges and the Franc of Bruges, followed by the officers of the duke, and then the members of Philip’s personal household. This was a very large contingent, ranging from the duke’s surgeons and advisors to the people who were responsible for cutting his meat. There was a grand ceremony where all these people had their names called out, and then came the chamberlains and heralds of Philip’s awesome boy’s club, the Order of the Golden Fleece, followed by four prince-bishops, all dressed in pontifical garb. These were then followed by a bunch of high military officers, an element common in French royal funerals given that, unlike the personal household staff of the Duke, these people would not be replaced by the incoming Charles and symbolised the unbroken transfer of power from father to son.

When, finally, it was time for Philip’s body to be taken through, it was carried in a massive, lead coffin draped in all the necessary Christian insignia and gold cloth and regalia, carried by twenty specifically chosen men. This was accompanied by four great noblemen of Burgundy who held a grand canopy above the coffin, another symbol often associated with French royal funerals. Then, walking alone behind them, was one of Philip’s chief administrators, who held Philip’s sword, sheathed and pointed to the ground in front of him. The sword was also an entrenched symbol for the possession of power, and had long been practiced in royal funerals and other ceremonies. To quote Tabri again (whose work we have relied very heavily on for this section):

“the sword was perceived as an impersonal objectification of princely power which served to demonstrate the continuity of rulership and the ongoing vitality of the king until the moment he was placed in the grave.”

In the wake of his father’s body and the sword that contained his future super powers, came Charles and five other chief mourners, representing the dead Duke’s kin. 

Once inside the church the assembled and privileged crowd spent four hours in prayer and solemnity, (probably wishing they could cover it in just a few minutes like we have), before leaving the body to be guarded by a vigil of the duke’s heralds and his super-power sword. The next day they came back again for a few masses, before watching the coffin be lowered into the tomb. Officers and sergeants of Philip, their jobs now ended, came and threw their batons and staves in with the coffin. Finally, once this was done, the man who had carried Philip’s sword in the procession picked it up, pointed it at the ceiling and presented it to Charles. The transfer of power was complete and, to anyone watching, it was done in a way that could easily be described as ‘royal’.

The Un-Joyous Entry

Once in possession of the sovereignty of Burgundy, Charles was required to go and take part in a bunch of ceremonies throughout his lands in order to confirm his reign in each and every one of them. So having made this display to the people of Bruges, he decided to follow things up by making a Joyous Entry into that most difficult of all Flemish cities, Ghent, which he did just one week after the funeral on Sunday June 28. This would be a more solemn affair than the one he had experienced as a child, since everybody was still supposed to be mourning for Philip. But given the importance of these occasions, and that it was the first of his new reign, Charles would have been anxious to ensure that the whole affair went smoothly. According to Philipe Comines, “he chose to make his entry into Ghent before any town besides, out of an opinion of his being better loved there than in any other town in his whole dominions, and that according to their example all the rest would behave themselves towards him.”

Let’s remind ourselves of what the Joyous Entry meant and why it was important for both the new ruler and the magistracy of Ghent. The entries had become the manner by which the relationship between the ruler and the ruled was agreed upon in much of the Low Countries. If it did not happen, or if it was interrupted or disturbed, it threatened the sense of legitimacy in that relationship. The two most recent Joyous Entries into Ghent had been in 1453 and again in 1458. The former had come following the failed Ghent wars, after which Philip had gone excessively hard with invocative, poignant symbolism that subjected Ghent to a clear understanding that he was their absolute ruler. The city’s aldermen and the deans of the guilds had been forced to appear before him with shaved heads and bare feet, presenting him with the banners of the guilds’ militias. 

Philip had specifically chosen dates for his entries that would serve the stated aim of the event, such as in 1458 when he had deliberately held it on St George’s day, the patron saint of the city’s social elite crossbowmen. Being himself a member of the city’s crossbowmen, he had utilised symbolism to do with St George to further entrench the sense of connection between himself and the elite section of Ghent society in his subjects’ minds. Philip had understood the power of symbols in establishing a stable relationship between ruler and the ruled. Charles, perhaps because he had first experienced his own mini-Joyous Entry as a child, can be understood as having felt more entitlement to them, and less a need to use them to establish and legitimise the terms of his sovereignty.

The date Charles chose to make his ASAP-Joyous Entry into Ghent was the 28th of June, 1467. The problem was that this conflicted with one of the most important civic festivals in that town’s calendar, the procession of the relics of St. Lievin, an Irish missionary who had been killed in nearby Houtem in the 7th century. Over two days, the relics of St Lievin would be carried from Ghent to Houtem and back again, followed by an escort of thousands of revelling pilgrims. Charles, perhaps displaying a lack of connectivity with his irritable new subjects, as well as a rash arrogance that was true to his nickname, was seemingly not aware, or did not care, how much Ghentenaars loved this event and chose to enter the town right in the middle of it.

The aldermen of Ghent’s city government had their own specific interests in what this Joyous Entry would mean. It was Charles’ first as ruler, and presented an opportunity to renew the relationship between the City and the Count, with new terms to be agreed upon. Many of Ghent’s privileges had been stripped from them after 1453 - such as control over an area outside the city and the right of guilds to hang on to their own banners and assemble their militia. Still, after nearly fifteen years, it was of high priority for the local power brokers that the town’s independence be restored. The magistracy likely had this in mind when - showing terrible judgement - they neither informed Charles or his people of the clash in programming, nor showed proper respect to the social importance of the St Lievin festival. An ordinance was handed down that ordered the pilgrims to reschedule the procession so as not to interfere with the Joyous Entry. They were told to leave for Houtem a day early, on the Friday instead of Saturday and to return as usual on the Monday, the day after the entry was done. As historian Peter Arnade eloquently put it, ‘the usurpation of urban space at the expense of Ghent's most cherished procession upset the fragile political and cultural order among social classes within the city.’

Chastellaine saw the events unfold, and described the protesting, returned pilgrims as ‘a group of lowlife and young brats carrying the saint, shouting and crying, singing and dancing, making a hundred thousand insults, all drunk.’

So, on the day after his taking charge, Charles was faced with a group of Flemish commoners carrying the bones of a long dead Irishmen and who, instead of being sated, tired but content from their annual two-day religious festival, had instead been on a three-day bender which started with them being angry at having to leave a day early just so this Count could use their city to try and make himself look splendid. They had other reasons to be angry, however, as many workers in Ghent were feeling the pinch and were disenchanted with the aldermen in government, who they saw as exploitative and corrupt. 

This group found itself assembling on the Korenmarkt in Ghent, where there stood a tax-booth by which citizens were expected to pay a much hated tax on the most basic necessities, such as food, drink and fuel, called the quellotte. In general they had begun protesting, not against Charles himself, but against the magistrates of the city, who they saw as exploitative and corrupt. Using the reliquary, which was the case in which St. Lievin’s relics were carried, members in the group smashed the tax booth to pieces. As is the way with mobs of emotional people, their cries of righteousness justified and escalated their actions and their confidence in taking them, and they held the cloth that had adorned the reliquary aloft - one contemporary diarist suggests that this was in lieu of the guild banners which had been forbidden since 1453. Under its sway, the mob grew and moved, making its way to the Vrijdagmarkt where, just the day before, Charles had first been presented to and celebrated by many of them as their new ruler.

Once settled there, the crowd in the Vrijdagmarkt grew and grew, and all those currents of angst and rebelliousness that streamed constantly under the surface of urban Flemish society began to seep to the forefront of everybody’s mind. Accounts differ about exactly how the ducal response was. Chastellaine says that Charles wanted to immediately go and confront the rioters, but was talked down by one of his Flemish advisors, Lodewijk Gruuthuse, who told him that "your life and ours rest upon your careful behavior.” Charles agreed that Lodewijk could go in his stead. Other Flemish accounts say that it was Charles who went himself.

Either way, both men engaged with the crowd gathered on the Vrijdagmarkt. Gruuthuse apparently appealed to the sensibilities and respect of the Ghentenaars, for the esteem of the occasion that marked a new lord’s coming to power. The rabble insisted that they were angry at the aldermen in the city government who exploited them for taxes and did not care about what was important to them, such as the St Lievin procession. When Gruuthuse told them that, all that being fair, an entry by a new duke was no such time to air such grievances, they retorted that, in fact, it was the perfect time. Charles had taken an oath only a day before to uphold his obligations to their well being, and in their eyes their well-being was being forsaken by the city government.

If, then, Charles made his appearance after Gruuthuse had tried to mollify the crowd, then we can see how the actions the new duke took would have been exasperating for Gruuthuse to behold. When Charles appeared he was dressed entirely in black, marking his period of mourning but also reminiscent of his father who had consistently worn only black since John the Fearless’ murder in 1419. He was accompanied by some of his knights as well as archers, and his approach was nowhere near as amenable as Gruuthuse had attempted. He shoved his way through the crowd, angrily demanding to know who the rebels were and why they were doing what they were doing. Reportedly he hit someone, whether by accident in his anger, or purely just in anger. Naturally this would have riled up the crowd even more, sending a jolt of unease and anxiety through the Duke’s entourage. Gruuthuse was a Fleming himself, and he knew the precariousness in which they now found themselves. He admonished Charles, telling him that “our lives, and yours, hang on a thread.” Charles was escorted to a safe place nearby, an inn called the Tooghuis. He calmed down and, according to Chastellaine, once more spoke to the crowd, in Dutch, to try and assuage their anger. Charles’ more placid demeanour, however, would not last. A local commoner called Hoste Bruneel managed to stand up and take the crowd’s attention. He clearly laid out the demands of the people of Ghent. These were that the quellotte tax be abolished, that Ghent have the rights which had been abolished in 1453 restored, including the reopening of three city gates which had been shut since then and the permission for the guilds to carry their own banners once more. On top of this he demanded that the aldermen of the city be punished for their greed and corruption which had inspired this revolt.

Bruneel was clearly a big hit, because Charles could have no further influence on the crowd’s opinion and was forced to retire in a foul mood. 

Bruneel’s action is an under-rated moment of daring courage. This was a time when the superiority of some over others was not just accepted, but absorbed into the fabric of how every human saw themselves. Chastellaine’s horror in describing this makes it clear how outrageously bold Burneel’s manner was.

“O glorious Majesty of God, think of such an outrageous and intolerable piece of villainy being committed before the eyes of a prince! For a low man to venture to come and stand side by side with such a gentleman as our seigneur, and to proffer words inimical to his authority—words the poorest noble in the world would hardly have endured! And yet it was necessary for this noble prince to endure and to tolerate it for the moment, and needful that he should let pass as a pleasantry what was enough to kill him with grief."

Emboldened by Bruneel’s audacity, the protest continued, some of those involved even trying to break into the city’s belfry so as to once again summon the guilds with the tolling of its bells. Although they did not succeed, they got their hands on some bells and these, as well as the word spreading like city-fire through Ghent, saw more and more militia members arming themselves and heading to the square to join in this ancient Flemish tradition. 

It went into the night and through to the next day. Holed up in talks with the aldermen of the city, Charles was finally forced to concede to some of the demands. They convinced him that returning the banners to the guilds would suffice, and the workers would leave happy. Charles, probably quite desperate by this stage, agreed, but Philip de Comines suggests that he had little choice: “To avoid the danger he was in, he granted their demands, gave them whatever privileges they asked, and the word was no sooner spoken but the banners were set up and displayed in the market-place, being there before, and ready for the purpose: from whence one may probably conjecture they would have done the same thing if the duke had denied their requests.”

Charles was in a sticky situation indeed. He had entered Ghent with the hope of setting the tone for his rule, no doubt with memories of the ceremony he had experienced as a child bouncing around in his head, but instead of being treated like the second-coming of Jesus he was now helplessly watching his new authority be immediately challenged and eroded by, and you’ll never believe this, a bunch of common workers. Welcome to the big time, Charlie boy. Comines goes on to say, however, that Charles had got one thing right: “His opinion was right, that, if he made his first entry into Ghent, all the rest of the towns would follow its example, for several of them mutinied as they had done, killed their officers, and committed many other exorbitances”. Mega conscious of wanting to calm the situation down, as well as of the fact that his daughter and only heir Mary, was in the city, vulnerable to anyone who might be so bold as to grab her and use her as a bargaining chip, as well as the fact that he had brought along with him an abundance of treasure Bruges which his father had left him, Charles was keen to try and sort things out as soon as possible. He also must have been keen to avoid a general Flemish uprising, no doubt probably a bit shaken by how quickly these things can come about. So Charles grabbed his daughter & his treasure chest and left Ghent on the 1st of July.

Lingering Liegoise lividity

After Dinant was sacked in August 1466 many of the radical of the main, antagonising rebels fled from Liege. This included the nominal leader, a man named Raes de Lyntre, fled to escape from the most likely alternative, which was to be captured and executed. The sacking was followed by even harsher peace terms being foisted upon Liege in September, 1466, known as the Treaty of Oleye. This included a huge indemnity cost, to be paid in installments, for each of which a set of fifty hostages was to be provided as collateral. Even worse, from this point on the Duke of Burgundy was appointed the hereditary guardian of Liege, by-passing the ecclesiastical sovereignty of the bishop altogether. Despite the weight of these Burgundian conditions, however, and still yet buoyed by their hatred of Burgundians and desire for independence, Raes de Lyntre and his rebel allies did not abide by the terms of the piteous peace part two, but rather continued sowing discontent and notions of rebellion in Liege. As Vaughan put it: “...instead of busying themselves with the publication and implementation of this peace settlement, which included a reconciliation between the city of Liege and the bishop, Louis de Bourbon, the more radical leaders in Liege raised objections, made delays and set about prosecuting, and even executing, those who had been responsible for negotiating the peace settlement with the duke of Burgundy, while Raes de Lyntre dressed his partisans in red tunics with the words Long Live Liege! embroidered on the sleeves. The rift between bishop and city widened…”

During all this turmoil, Louis de Bourbon, the hated prince-bishop and puppet/nephew of Philip the Good, made his by now signature move and fled. He made his way to the town of Huy, called in his inner-circle to join him and set up base there to try and figure out how to proceed.

You may remember that the rebellious Liegoise had been courting and had been courted by the French king, Louis XI, for some years. One of his chief aims was the destabilisation of the Burgundian state. During the initial outbreak of hostilities in 1465, he had given the rebels a lot of emotional support, but also promised that he would send troops to help them out. As we saw with the destruction of Dinant, these troops that would be arriving any day now, simply never did. Nearly two years later, with the rebellion once more gaining traction, Louis had changed tack, the evidence suggesting that he was trying to engender a peace agreement between the rebels and their hated bishop, Louis de Bourbon. This may have been confusing for the rebels, some of whom surely had fortified their courage with insistence that they still had the support of one of Europe’s greatest monarchs. To compound any confusion, and if Chastellaine is to be believed, they did have the explicit support of one of Louis’ underlings, Philip, the Count of Nevers; he who had the tenuous claim on Brabant, who was a cousin of Charles the Bold and whom Louis XI had put in charge of the Somme and Peronne towns when he had bought them back off Philip. He was shooting off daring letters which took aim at the honour of Charles’ court as well as at the righteous sensitivities of the rebels. 

And such was the turmoil of this complex situation when Philip the Good had died and Charles had taken over. When Ghent teetered on the brink of yet another violent uprising the day after his Joyous Entry there, he was being confronted with the prospect of revolt on several fronts, which very easily could have spread like wildfire beyond the bounds of Flanders and Liege.

Companions of the Green Tents

originated in Ghent in the 1450s as a name for rebels against Philip the Good and which soon became a label that anyone fighting against Burgundian forces may apply to themselves, or have applied to them. The Companions merged with other rebel forces in Liège and became a pretty effective guerrilla fighting unit. 

They gained a reputation for using handgonne, hand-canons, which sound awesome, and probably struck awe in people who got to witness one. They were pretty much exactly what they say on the box, a cannon on a stick, which would be held by the gunner who would fire it by applying matches or a red hot iron to a wick and shoot armour piercing projectiles at whoever stood in its path.

The rebel guerrilla forces soon became known as Coulivrineurs, a fancy French word for hand-gunners. Although not all Coulivrineurs carried the hand cannon, it certainly became attached to their reputation. Their typical mode of operation has been described as them jumping in and out of hedges, shooting off their hand cannons, and slipping back into obscurity. Along with their local knowledge and not being recognised by any uniform, they became a thorn in the side of the Burgundian authorities.

A Huy, little adventure

By the middle of August, 1467, the rebels had taken over Liege again and set about taking revenge on those who they blamed for the situation they found themselves in. They tortured and decapitated a former mayor of the former town of Dinant, a guy called Jan Carpentier. A few Burgundian officials and sympathisers were harassed, and imprisoned, including an emissary of the duke, Jan Stoep. On the 18th of August rebels left the territory of Liege and entered Limburg, attacking one of Charle’s towns there, Bernau. The Limburgers retaliated, of course, and it set into motion a series of tits for tats which eventually turned into open warfare by September.

On the 16th of September the Companions of the Green Tents pulled off a surprise attack on the town of Huy. The objective of this attack was to try and grab Louis de Bourbon and bring the bishop back to the city of Liège, either so they put an official veneer of respectability on their revolutionary government, or perhaps so they could use him as collateral for any negotiations between themselves and the Burgundians. Huy’s defenses, led by the Lord of Aremberg, withstood the attack for little more than a day, but this was enough time to give Louis de Bourbon chance to escape once more after begging help of one of Charles’ men. By the evening of the 17th the Liegois rebels were in control of Huy. Charles was very unhappy when a few days later, who should appear at his court in Brussels but Louis de Bourbon. In his History of Charles the Bold, John Foster Kirk says “The Burgundian officer, supposing that the main object of his mission was to protect the person of the bishop, did not think himself at liberty to refuse this request. But, on their arrival at Brussels, he met with a reception from his sovereign which undeceived him on this point. “Your duty,” said the duke, “was to regard my honour, not to listen to the prayers of a cowardly priest.” As for the bishop, Charles treated him with unconcealed disdain.”

For Charles it was time to act. He raised his banners and troops from across his domains and even beyond its borders began to mobilise and prepare to march on Liege. This included vassals from Holland, Flanders and Brabant, but also from allies like the Duke of Cleves, who rocked up with a pretty decent force. Many of them did not make it by the time the campaign began, and Ghent, many of whose citizens would have been urging on the Liegois rebels, refused to respond to the command for militia. 

Meanwhile, those rebels were continuing to prepare for the inevitable show down. Raes de Lyntre was in the city of Liege, while other of his officers, including his wife, Pentacosta van Grevenbroek, remained in Huy, which they had managed to hold for a month. The rebels would have been acutely aware that Charles was building his forces, and their preparations were designed to meet the Burgundian army on a battlefield. It was also clear that, when Charles entered Liege, he would move to take St Trond first, just as he had done two years earlier. 

On the 22nd of October the inhabitants of Huy were awoken to the cries of violence. A small force of the Burgundian army, including some locals who had fled when it fell to the rebels, had split away from the main group in order to try and surprise the town. Huy’s defence was apparently buoyed by the presence of Raes de Lyntre’s wife, Pentacosta van Grevenbroek, who helped organise the troops, had the city bells rung and alerted everybody to the attack. The attack failed when the armies got stuck at the walls of Huy. Apparently nobody thought to bring a ladder, which seems like a pretty big oversight. 

So this secret little expedition to retake Huy before setting off into Liege did not work. This would have given a big boost of confidence to the rebels, who had taken such delight in taking Huy and forcing Louis de Bourbon to flee that they had taken his official bishop’s gear and stuck it up on display in Liege for everyone to come and have a look.

Battle of Brustem

The day after the spirited defence of Huy, Raes de Lyntre and the citizen army of Liege got ready to march out one day later and face Charles’ forces in battle. The next day, because these are the Low Countries we are talking about, it rained, causing  delay. It was not until the 23rd of October, 1467 that they left Liege and started walking the twenty or so kilometres towards St Tron, where Charles, when he did attack, would surely head first. A really strange little tidbit of history, is that the Burgundian army, when it arrived in St Tron late on the 27th, were confused that the rebels were not already there. In fact the Liege army only got to Brustem, a town not far from St Tron, on the 28th, meaning it had taken around five days for them to walk what, according to Google maps, can be done in 6h50m of walking, if you take the N3, of course. Being just old enough to remember driving around Belgium relying on road maps and erroneous street signs, I’m actually surprised they got there at all. Anyway, to this day, nobody has any clue what they did in that time, or why it took them so long. So there you go. That’s weird!

Both sides had arrived around the same time and had had a night to prepare for the battle. The location of the battle was filled with ditches, trees, hedgerows and, get this, morass, sorry just have to mention sphagnum again, which meant that it was going to be difficult for either side to get any cavalry into the action. Charles carefully made arrangements, and in the morning, made a point of being seen moving around his army, delivering written orders to all of his troops. Charles was keen to show that he was a skilled commander as well as being personally brave on the battlefield. Both sides had their fair share of artillery, and in fairly standard late-middle-ages style they were both pretty awful at using it, largely sending their bombardments over the heads of one another’s troops, crashing into trees and sending their branches tumbling.

Charles ordered his archers to advance through the forest around Brustem, to take on the more defensively positioned rebels. Hand-to-hand combat ensued as the Burgundian forces pushed further and further, and into the town of Brustem itself. A mounted force down the road between Brustem and St Tron, led by his bastard half-brother, Badouin, was ordered to help the arches, but were not able to make it due to the terrain. The rebels held strong, and after the archers ran out of ammunition they pushed forward, sending the Burgundian attack into disarray, momentarily looking like they were going to completely collapse. To quote John Foster Kirk again “But the excellence of the duke’s arrangements was now made apparent. The archers of the “battle,” or main corps, unsheathing the long two-handed swords which they used in close combat, raised a loud cheer, and assailed the advancing pikemen with such impetuosity that in a moment these half-trained soldiers were discomfited and scattered. The panic soon spread through the whole army.” 

Some rebels stood and fought, but others fled as soon as things turned south. The result was a blood bath for the rebels, with anywhere between 2-9000 of them being killed. As Vaughan writes: “...nightfall saved the lives of many of the Liegeois, though their tents and pavilions, their carts and baggage, and their artillery, all fell into the hands of the Burgundians. Many of their leaders remained dead on the field of battle…” The day and the result of the Battle of Brustem belonged to Charles and once again, Liège found itself facing the wrath of the Duke of Burgundy. 

The next few days saw a steady push from the Burgundian army to take Liege itself. Raes de Lyntre’s home territory of Heers was taken, with both castle and town destroyed, so too was the town of Wellen. The courage of the rebels, largely holing up within the walls of Liege, was waning. The inevitable death train of Burgundian soldiers was moving towards them. Poetically, on the 10th of November they were in Othée, where Charles could reflect on his grandfather’s retributive legacy and brilliant victory there in 1408. A day later they were outside Liege’s walls. Those who had managed to flee from Brustem, including Raes de Lyntre, had advocated hard within the city that they should make a stand here against Charles. But others, according to Philip de Comines, “who saw and considered the inevitable ruin and desolation of the whole country, if they persisted in that resolution, would needs have peace upon any terms”. Can you really blame them? You can imagine that these people who have had fresh memories in their mind of the complete destruction of Dinant only one year earlier, and would have been prepared to do almost anything to avoid a similar fate.

Philip de Comines writings give us a sense of what the confusion must have been like inside the city. “The whole city, indeed, was a scene of tumult. Mutual recriminations distracted the counsels of the leaders. The people no longer obeyed the orders or listened to the persuasions of those whose audacity was ever conspicuous save in the hour of danger.” Many of the town’s citizens escaped throughout the night, hiding themselves in the forests outside of the town, no doubt freezing in the cold and wet November night air. Although the city was in a precarious position, it still wasn’t possible for Charles to simply waltz in and take the town. A delegation was sent to negotiate the town’s surrender, led by a man named Guy of Humbercourt. Philip de Comines, was himself a part of this group, and provides great detail in his narrative about the negotiations. Humbercourt had been active in the administration of Liège for the past year, so knew the town well. Comines writes about how the negotiations went down to the wire, with Humbercourt being aware that Raes de Lyntre and other rebels were openly advocating against any peace and being worried about the chance of his delegation being attacked. They sent two people within the walls to negotiate, and heard the bells of Liège peeling, calling the town’s citizens together to discuss what to do. Cries and shouts could be heard within the walls, and when the two did not return, another four people were sent into Liège to implore them to surrender. As they entered the town “Some of the people threatened, and gave them very ill language; others were willing to hear what they had to say, and returned to the palace; and the bell ringing again, we were extremely pleased, and the noise at the gate began to decrease. In short, they were then a long time in the palace, and their conference lasted till two in the morning, in which assembly it was agreed that their promise should be kept, and that in the morning one of the gates should be delivered up to the Lord d’Humbercout; upon which resolution the Lord Raes de Lyntre and his party abandoned the town.” On the 12th of November, Liège surrendered, once again. Three hundred and forty citizens met the duke with bareheads and bare feet, outside the walls, begging his forgiveness and offering him the keys to the city.

Charles the Conqueror and what to do with Liege…

Charles found himself once again in the position of conqueror. He ordered the gates of Liège to be taken off their hinges that the walls be dismantled. He made a triumphal entry into the city, surrounded by his nobles and his armies, riding through the town, being watched by the cities population of citizens and priests. Charles once again made sure that his soldiers were on their best behaviour in the town and, just like he had done in Dinant, ordered that any who plundered would be hanged. So although the city was spared the systematic sacking which Dinant had suffered, and the citizens were mostly spared their lives, except for a few ringleaders who Charles had executed, the rest of the terms of the surrender were extremely harsh.

To quote John Foster Kirk again “On the morning of the 26th the bell was rung that had so often called the burghers together in their usual place of assembly to exercise the rights of freemen. On an elevated plat form sat the duke in state, the bishop beside him, the principal nobles standing round. Charles's secretary read "the judgment and sentence" of his master, "word by word, in a loud and distinct tone." The "customs" of Liege — that is to say, its constitution and its laws — were by this instrument pronounced "bad," and were for ever abrogated. All the franchises of the people, their charters and their privileges of every kind, were declared to be forfeited and an nulled. The existing tribunals were dissolved. The municipal government was done away with. The guilds were disincorporated. The walls and fortifications were to be demolished, so that Liège might henceforth be open, " like a village or a country town," on every side.”

Charles essentially scrapped the entire system of justice and constitution of Liège, replacing it with the “law of reason”. And who was going to administer this law of reason? Well, that would be 14 officers who would be selected by the bishop, but who would be taking an oath of loyalty to Duke Charles. For a place which had a somewhat democratic tradition, with power sharing between the bishop, the clergy, the towns and the patricians, stretching back at least a hundred years, and who had violently fought against any attempted incursions on their sovereignty, you can imagine how much of a slap in the face this must have been. But they were in no position to negotiate.

Charles departed Liége with all of the city’s arms and artillery. He even had the symbol of the town and its liberties, known as the perron, a large column standing in a fountain, topped by a sculpture of the Three Graces carrying a pine cone with a cross sticking out of it, weird, dismantled and taken to Bruges. He left Guy d’Humbercourt behind to act as his Lieutenant-General. Charles must have hoped that by this stage, the rebellious Liegois would accept the inevitability, as he would have seen it, of his rule. The rebels in Liege, on the other hand, had been defeated but not broken. It would be less than a year before the fire of revolt was stoked once more, and Charles would reach the limits of his patience with them.

Sources:

The Funeral of Duke Philip the Good by Edward Tabri

The Memoirs of Philip de Comines: Volume 1 By Philippe de Commynes

Secular Charisma, Sacred Power: Rites of Rebellion in the Ghent Entry of 1467 by Peter J. Arnade

Charles the Bold by Richard Vaughan

Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States by Robert Stein

History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy by John Foster Kirk

Charles the Bold, the Last Duke of Burgundy by Ruth Putnam

The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy, 1363-1477 by Kay Douglas Smith, Robert Douglas Smith, Kelly DeVries