Episode 29: Dinant, Was...

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Charles, the Count of Charolais, began to take a more dominant role in the Burgundian court after the forced reconciliation with his father, Philip the Good, in January 1464. By midway through the next year Charles had ejected the pro-French members of the Duke’s inner sanctum and was finally able to convince his father that it was time to check Louis XI’s expansion into the Burgundian realm. He was given command of his father’s military, joined up with a bunch of French nobility and went to war in France in the so-called League of the Public Weal. Charles and Louis would meet in an indecisive battle at Montlhery in July, 1465, and although both men would claim victory, the battle greatly enhanced Charles’ reputation and earned him the moniker history would remember him by: Charles le Téméraire, Charles the Bold. Conflicting reports about the outcome of Montlhery would reach the Low Countries, and after wrongly hearing that Charles had been slain, a rowdy mob in Dinant, Liége, would hang an effigy of the Count and generally cause a ruckus by hurling outrageous insults about Charles’ mother Isabella. Fired up by this assault on his family’s honour, Charles would take his armies back into the Low Countries and eventually unleash such cruel vengeance on the town that people looking at its remains would say “Cy fust Dinant”, “Dynant was…”. Charles the Bold was giving the people of the Low Countries a sneak peak into his style of leadership, and this new era would begin in June, 1467, when Philip the Good would finally die.

League of the Public Weal…(thy)

France was still emerging from the end of the Hundred Year’s War and many of the larger regions and their rulers had grown used to certain amounts of independence from the King. Louis wasn’t keen on respecting this independence, and intervened in affairs in their home territories, hiring and firing officials, claiming lands as his own, cutting off funding to some of them. What resulted was a coalition of annoyed nobles who gathered together to form La Ligue de Public Bien or, as it’s known in English, the League of the Public Weal, in opposition to King Louis XI. It’s a rather lofty name, and indeed in correspondence between members of this alliance and with the people and towns of France, they insisted that this rebellion was to be for the good of the “poor people”. It was not really, much to everybody’s sarcastic surprise.

Included in the group was a who’s who of the French upper crust, including, among others, the King’s own brother, Charles, Duke of Berry, as well as the Dukes of Bourbon, Brittany, Lorraine and Cleves, the Counts of Armagnac, St Pol, Dammartin, Dunois and, of course, our friend Charles, the Count of Charolais and now de facto ruler of Burgundy.

This conflict between the French King and the nobility of France and Burgundy began in May and June with a confrontation between Louis XI and the Bourbonnais in an area a couple of hundred miles south of Paris. Charles, for his part, got his knights, soldiers, horses and artillery ready, and decided that instead of going to help his new allies in their fight against the King, he would first go and occupy those longed-for towns of Somme. After doing this, he chilled out for a couple of weeks before remembering about the Public Weal he was supposedly fighting for, and went off to try and meet up with the Dukes of Berry and Brittany in order to take Paris. Charles made it to St-Denis on the northern outskirts of Paris, but his allies weren’t there yet. Shaking off concerns from his men about this, he agreed with them through correspondence that they should instead meet up at Etampes, south of Paris to then go fight Louis together. It wasn’t exactly the smartest tactical move he could make, considering he would have to cross the Seine river, which would leave his army in a pretty sticky situation if things were to go awry. Nevertheless, over the river they went, headed for Etampes. As it would turn out, Charles wasn’t going to be able to link up with his allies, since King Louis and his army were actually smack bang in-between them as they themselves hurried to get back to Paris. What eventuated was the Battle of Montlhéry, on July 16, 1465, where finally, after almost 10 years of tension building up between them personally, Louis XI and Charles would clash. Thirty years after the signing of the Treaty of Arras, Burgundian troops would once again meet the forces of the French king on the battlefield.

The Battle of Montlhéry

The details of the Battle of Montlhéry are confusing, due to conflicting accounts. The battle took place on a scorching hot, summer day in the middle of a wheat field, which would become a dust bowl throughout the fight. Louis was in a stronger defensive position, though his troops were outnumbered by Charles’s, 14000 to 25000. Both Charles and Louis were evidently in the thick of the action. At one point, Louis fell off his horse after it was slain by the Bastard of Burgundy, Charles’s brother Anthony and he was almost killed until some of his archers rallied and saved him. Charles received multiple wounds, including at one point getting stabbed in the neck by a sword before being rescued. Despite what one would assume was a rather serious injury - I don’t know anybody who would brush off being stabbed in the neck - Charles got himself bandaged up and then quickly returned to the fight. As the day turned to night the two sides disengaged and Charles’s army camped on the battlefield. The casualties had been heavy on both sides, each losing at least 2000 men, though according to Philip de Comines, the Burgundians lost significantly more than the French. The night was spent with Charles anxiously taking counsel from his advisors, many of whom suggested retreating from this precarious situation which they had thrown themselves recklessly into. But, when dawn broke the next morning, Charles was delighted to discover that the King, his advisors and his army had had the same genius idea, and had already left the scene during the night.

Charles had taken on the might of the army of the King of France without any support, and although the battle had not been conclusive he had, in his mind at least, come out victorious. The Burgundian herald Philip de Comines says of Charles and this battle that “whereas before he was altogether averse and unfit for the war, and took delight in nothing that belonged to it; his thoughts were so strangely altered upon this, that he spent the remainder of his life in wars”. He goes on to say that “in short, his designs and enterprises were always so bold and daring, that nothing less than an Almighty Power was able to accomplish them, being far beyond the reach of human capacity to do it”. It was from this moment that Charles apparently acquired the epithet by which history would remember him, “the bold”, though perhaps a more accurate English translation of the French “le Téméraire” would be “the rash”. Pro life tip: next time you have a spot of eczema, try to come to terms with it by calling it Charles the Rash. 

In the aftermath of the Battle of Montlhery, Louis was able to escape to Paris, where he ensconced himself for a while and talked his way into the good books of people in his capital city, while Charles, meanwhile, was finally able to link up with some of his allies, the Dukes of Brittany and Berry. According to Richard Vaughan, “A week later, on 27 July, he proudly set out his artillery at Étampes and fired it all off twice for the benefit of the dukes of Berry and Brittany. He had created an image of invincible military power which was to impress his allies and overawe the king in the months to come”. So although Charles hadn’t really beaten Louis, his “victory” at Montlhery had served him in a way which always suited Burgundian dukes. It had massively enhanced his reputation and he became seen as the leader and the driving force of the entire rebellion. Whereas his father Philip might have projected an image of princely benevolence, Charles seems more inclined to foster an image of himself as the conquering military hero. A bit like that famous and ancient one he had read and heard so much about as a child, Alexander the Great.

The Treaty of Conflans and return of the Somme towns to Burgundian control

Charles had been posted in Conflans, north-west of Paris, while Paris city was put to siege. The siege was a stalemate which nobody on either side was going to break. One day, under the protection of about twenty men, Louis XI made his way to Conflans via the Seine. Monstrelet - being the chronicles of Monstrelet not actually Monstrelet - tells us that the king and the count greeted each other on the river bank “like old and loving friends.” A series of unknown conversations passed between them and, following Louis’ departure back to Paris, correspondence that Charles made to his father Philip in Brussels suggests that he was encouraged by the king’s attitude and entreaties to put their conflict behind them. Apparently Louis had even invited Charles to visit him in Paris. Charles politely declined, citing a vow he had made to not enter any large city until his job on this military operation was done. That Charles would have grown up with and been intimately familiar with the history of Burgundian Dukes and French nobles assassinating each other, such as what had happened to his grandfather, John the Fearless, one suspects that he did not see such a visit to Louis as being good for his long term health. Nonetheless, it would seem that the French king was truly trying to placate Charles, and indeed flattered him by recognising him as a true French prince. Philipe Commynes tells us that Louis said to Charles:

“When I sent my ambassadors lately to Lille to wait on your father and yourself, and that fool Morvillier talked so saucily to you, you sent me word, by the archbishop of Narbonne...that before the year was at an end I should repent of what Morvillier had said to you. You have been as good as your word and much before your time has expired.”

Louis returned to Conflans several times during the course of these negotiations and, at least once, he was even joined by Charles’ least favourite person in the world, the Lord of Croy. We’ll let Monstrelet pick up this part of the story: “During this truce, the Lord of Croy and his friends were at Paris, and laboured most diligently to make their peace with the Count of Charolais. Even the king exerted himself greatly in their favour; but the count would not listen to nor talk of it, as the Lord of Croy had once accompanied the King to Conflans; but the Count of Charolais ordered him not to come thither again.” 

The Duke-in-waiting was evidently stepping into his new role with an authority that the other power brokers around were forced to recognise, and it is amusing to consider the sycophantic eagerness with which the Lord of Croy attempted to return into the fold of Burgundian favour; and of how Charles basically told him to get stuffed. Once again, however, Charles was proving himself to be a different man than his father, and not one to forgive and compromise. He was all about honour and holding grudges against those he perceived had wronged him.

Throughout the negotiations, Burgundian military actions continued in the region of the Somme. By the time the Treaty of Conflans was signed, on the 5th of October in 1465, the guy who Louis had given control of the region to, John II, Count of Nevers, Charles’ cousin-once-removed, had actually been captured by Burgundian forces in the town of Peronné. In the treaty, Louis XI ceded greatly to Charles’ desires and demands and threw John II under the bus, stating “we will cause, and effectually procure, our most dear and well-beloved cousin, the Count of Nevers, to transfer and make over to our said cousin and brother, the Count of Charolais, all that right which he hath, or pretends to have, to those castles, towns, provostships, and chatellanies, and he shall surrender all that he possesses therein, and give possession thereof to our said brother and cousin the Count of Charolais”. Ouch, pretty harsh way to treat someone who had swapped allegiances to help you. The upshot of it all was that the right to those Somme towns, as well as Boulogne and Guienne, was once again given to the Duke of Burgundy, and would remain in their possession until at least the end of Charles’ life.

Liege goes into revolt…again.

While the War of the Public Weal had been going on in France, the conflict between Louis XI and Charles the Bold had begun seeping into more localised issues and conflicts in the Low Countries, particularly in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. We are all intimately aware that the people of Liège were a rebellious bunch, as we have explored in previous episodes, and, as mentioned in Episode 27, they had not reacted happily to the appointment of Louis of Bourbon, a nephew of Philip the Good, as the new Prince-Bishop. You may recall that upon receiving the news that he had been appointed, the people of Liège forced him into exile in Maastricht. In retaliation, he excommunicated them all, whereupon the person bringing the news of this excommunication was made to eat the paper the message had been written on. Small uprisings and great rumbles of discontent had been pervading the towns of Liège since then, and in early 1465 a new revolutionary government was installed to take over from the exiled bishop.

So with Charles distracted by events in France, rebellious factions in Liège were actively being supported by the French king. In a treaty signed between Louis XI and Liège in June 1465, he encouraged them to go and attack nearby Burgundian controlled towns, as well as promising them military support which would arrive any day now. One of the main towns of the Prince-Bishopric was Dinant, which lay on the Meuse river and was an important site on the trade route between Cologne and Paris. Some old chroniclers claim that Dinant was bigger and more prosperous than the city of Liège itself, though this is no doubt exaggeration. Nonetheless, it was an important commercial town and its influence stretched way beyond the bounds of the territory it sat in. It was famous for metallurgy, and particularly in the working of brass and copper goods. Dinanderie even became a widely used term for pots and pans in the region and beyond. Dinant had a presence in other trading towns, such as London, where they enjoyed the equivalent privileges as that most dominant of commercial operations, the Hanseatic league. 

Just a couple of hundred metres further down the river from Dinant, on the opposite bank, lay the town of Bouvignes, in the Burgundian controlled County of Namur. It was Bouvignes which became the focus of Dinant’s ire towards the Burgundians. To quote Philipe de Comines “the inhabitants of Dinant had besieged the town of Bouvignes on the other side of the river, before which they had lain for the space of eight months, committed several acts of hostilities, and bombarded it continually with two brass, and other great pieces of canon battering the houses about their ears, and forcing the inhabitants to shelter themselves in their cellars and caves, where they continued during the whole siege. It is impossible to imagine the deadly hatred that these two towns had conceived one against the other: yet their children married frequently together, there being no other towns for any consideration in that neighbourhood”. Quite frankly, I think that’s hilarious. They absolutely hated each other, but had to keep on marrying each other because there was nobody else near by. The rivalry between them becomes slightly less hilarious when you realise how much destruction it’s going to lead to very shortly, however.

After the battle of Montlhery, the first reports which arrived in Dinant in the confusion of that battle actually heralded a French victory, as well as the death of the hated Burgundian heir apparent, Charles. People in Dinant were stoked, and though it is generally agreed that these people did not represent the whole diversity of views and opinions in the town, a group of them decided that they would nonetheless take on a representative role for their town and constructed an effigy of Charles the Bold. This they took Bouvignes where they proceeded to hang the prince’s likeness in full view of Bouvignes town gates. 

Monstrelet quotes them as shouting out to the Burgundian loyalist in Bouvignes: “See here, the son of your duke! That false traitor the Count of Charolais, whom the king of France will have hanged as you see his representative hanging here. He called himself the son of your duke: he lied, - for he was a mean bastard, changed in his infancy for the son of our bishop, lord de Haisenbergh.”

By doing such a thing, this Dinantian rabble was making a pretty bold claim and offending a whole lot of people who they probably shouldn’t have been. Firstly, saying that Charles was a bastard was saying that he did not have claim to any of his father’s domains. Secondly, it implied that Isabella of Portugal had not been as chaste as her reputation suggested, but rather a promiscuous and disloyal harlot. As you can imagine, when Charles in Conflans and those in the Burgundian court heard about this outrage, they were...well...outraged. 

Charles soon became keen to depart France and join up with the troops his father was sending to Liège so they could all get some just revenge on the rebels there. When word reached the people of Liège, who were by no means all on-side with the inflammatory anti-Burgundian actions that some in Dinant had taken, anxiety and fear took hold. An embassy was sent to Philip the Good in Brussels, begging the old Duke to grant them the promise of peace and protection from the retribution of his son. He gave them fifteen days.

When this truce came down Charles was already in Liège, leading one of the biggest armies that had ever been assembled in the region. He upheld his father’s order, and forbade his troops from ravaging any Liégois property. As such, there was a small period in which hungry Burgundian soldiers were forced to cross into actual Burgundian territory and ransack whatever provision they could, to the terror of the common folk. After the fifteen days expired, the truce was extended a few more times, meaning that it was not until the 12th of January, 1666 that Charles, fed up with the typical magnanimity his father was showing towards the Liégois, wrote to him to request more troops and to state that he was going to push forth and take the rebellious Liégois down. Philip sent troops, including the Duke of Savoy, and wrote to Charles that he would also be joining and would prefer deferment of battle until he had arrived. Before he could arrive, however, on the 20th of January the Liégois managed to muster together a big enough sum of money and an embassy that could convince Charles to not destroy them and their towns. The terms were extremely unfavourable to the prospects and tradition of Liégois autonomy, but extremely favourable for the preservation of their lives. By agreeing to pay 600,000 Rhenish florins over the next six years, and that the Duke of Brabant and all his successors would hold governorship over Liège, war was averted and an end to hostilities, known as the Piteous Peace, was manufactured.

The piteousness within the peace

Charles left for Brabant and went to Brussels to see his father, with the Piteous Peace agreed upon but definitely frail. He made a brief pilgrimage and did a quick tour of some of the important Flemish towns. Meanwhile, those amongst the Liégois who had agreed to the disastrous terms soon began to feel repercussions, with at least one hung by his fellow citizens for agreeing to them. The discontent became more and more evident. To cap this off, the unpopular Burgundian-puppet/bishop, Louis of Bourbon was once more rejected. By the middle of the year it had become clear to both Philip and Charles that they would need to exert their military strength in a way that they had not six month earlier. And the target of that action would be the town which had so offended Charles and the reputation of his mother - Dinant.

Dinant had, in fact, been left out of the Piteous Pece altogether. Dinant’s reputation was now wedded to the base actions of those who had made the public exhibition of hanging the effigy of Charles. Most of the people in the city had nothing to do with the offence and would have had a far greater preference for stability and economic growth than they did for raising the ire of the most powerful and violent people around. But when Dinant was left out of the peace terms reached with Liège, the people there would have had several months of anxiety while they awaited the potential consequences for the actions of that outspoken mob. There would have been many different opinions of what to do and different factions forming behind those opinions. As is its way, fear would have made many susceptible to any idea that could maybe get them out of this mess. A letter sent by magistrates of the town to Philip the Good in March puts the levels of anxiety on full display:

“The poor, humble and obedient servants and subjects of the most reverend father in God, Louis of Bourbon, Bishop of Liège; and your petty neighbours and borderers, the burgomaster's council and folk of Dinant, humbly declare that it has come to their knowledge that the wrath of your grace has been aroused against the town on account of certain ill words spoken by some of the inhabitants thereof, in contempt of your honourable person. The city is as displeased about these words as it is possible to be, and far from wishing to excuse the culprits has arrested as many as could be found and now holds them in durance awaiting any punishment your grace may decree. As heartily and as lovingly as possible do your petitioners beseech your grace to permit your anger to be appeased, holding the people of Dinant exonerated, and resting satisfied with the punishment of the guilty, inasmuch as the people are bitterly grieved on account of the insults and have, as before stated, arrested the culprits.”

Monstrelet, on the other hand, tells us that during the spring months spent waiting on the Burgundian duke and heir’s response to the slurs made against them, “those of Dinant...having their courage puffed up by those more inclined to war than peace, suffered many evil-disposed persons, that had been banished, return to their town, who were eager for all kinds of mischief. They soon after sallied out of Dinant, and overran and pillaged many villages in Hainault and Namur, which they afterwards burned, violated churches and monasteries, committing, in short, every wickedness. The Duke of Burgundy, on hearing this, instantly ordered a greater assembly of men-at-arms than he had ever before made, to be at Namur on the 28th of July.”

Dinant’s punishment was clearly of high importance to the Burgundian clan. Not only was Charles’ honour at stake, but so too was the perceived virtue of his mother. She had been residing for years in a quiet convent, remaining uninvolved in politics. 19th century French historian, Louis Prosper Gachard, cited, however apocryphal it may be, her rumoured reaction to the disgrace which Dinant had brought upon her character.

“Were it to cost her all she were worth, she would lay the city in ruins, and put every living being in it to the sword.”

When Charles set out to put the town to siege in August, one concern was whether those in Liège who felt an affinity for Dinant and carried a generational hatred of Burgundian authority, would sally forth and take the fight to the besieging army. Dinant certainly hoped they would, sending letters to the magistracy in Liège and pleading for assistance. Apparently the Liégois responded to the pleas with assurances:

“Don’t trouble yourselves about this; we have only to take good order and we shall soon raise the siege.”

No doubt aware of this possibility, Charles did not tarry in his proceedings. Soon, his old and frail father Philip had also joined him, having been put on a litter and brought via the waterways to Bouvines to be able to get a firsthand view of the scene.

Monstrelet’s chronicles report that the Dinanters obstinately stuck by their convictions in the lead up to, and commencement of, the siege, which began on the 19th of August. The Dinanters apparently responded to the Duke of Burgundy’s request for their surrender by saying: “What has put it in the head of that old dotard, your duke, to come hither to die? Has he lived long enough to come and die here miserably?! And your count, little Charley, what! He is come to lay his bones here also? Let him return to Montlhery and combat the king of France, who will come to our succour: do not think that he will fail in the promise he has made us. Charley is come hither in an unlucky hour; he has too yellow a beak; and the Liégois will soon make him dislodge with shame”.

Dinant? Dinant was…

Despite the fighting words, the people of Dinant could not withstand long. By the 22nd a breach had been opened in the defenses and by the 25th the Burgundian army was strolling through the streets, and Burgundian soldiers being foisted upon the obligatory hospitality of terrified Dinanters. Seemingly Charles and Philip put a moratorium on any violence or plunder by their troops. The Count and Duke themselves retired to hold council in nearby Bouvignes; to discuss and decide what to do. 

The Burgundian rulers decided upon the complete sacking and destruction of Dinant.

Many of the most extreme elements within Dinant society, and those who probably had the most to fear from repercussions to their anti-Burgundian actions, had likely all fled the town where possible, leaving their fellow and less-culpable citizens to deal with whatever was coming. Although many of these anxious and remaining Dinanters would have hoped that somebody would come and relieve them - whether it be the people of Liège, or some allied noble willing to take on the Burgundians - nobody did. 

We don’t know how different individuals found out about the weekend programming that would see their town and lives destroyed, but some reports state that the soldiers being quartered in local houses caught word and could not contain their patience, setting about looting, killing and pillaging those with whom they’d been put up. Violence against women was made punishable by death by Charles, but three of his troops were caught breaking this law. As punishment, they were marched before the entire army three times and then hung before everyone. All women and children were ordered to vacate the town, and were then promptly escorted to Liege. Most of them would not see anybody else from the town alive again. Without being able to contain the avariciousness of his men, Charles had little choice but to have as much of the loot hastily retrieved and carried to safety as possible. Monstrelet says that the common looting soldiers had great success: “The Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday were wholly employed in plundering and boat-loads of effects were on the river, - and the streets were crowded with wagons full of goods, - and every man was carrying off on his back all that he could bear. Many of the men-at-arms gained riches enough to support them for three or four years.”

Throughout this systematic rampage, Charles also commenced on the justice and punishment part of the whole endeavour. An investigation was made into who amongst those remaining had been complicit in the grave offense to his family’s honour. “Some were discovered, who were tied back to back, and thrown into the Meuse, where they perished. The count ordered the chief cannonier of the town to be arrested, and hung on the mountain above the church, and those who had been most culpable in renewing the war to be drowned in the river.” 

In the early morning hours of Thursday 28 August, a fire broke out near the Notre Dame cathedral in the centre of Dinant. Despite Charles ordering it to be extinguished, the fire soon ran out of control and threatened everything in the town. What Charles’ troops cared most about, besides themselves, was that the remaining loot be saved from the conflagration. Many monasteries, churches and convents were destroyed, with many of their relics and idols perishing, despite Charles’ efforts to save them. Monstrelet says “the Count of Charolais, observing that all attempts to put out the fire were ineffectual, determined that the whole should be destroyed, and caused such parts, in the town and suburbs, as had hitherto escaped to be set on fire, so that all was burnt.” 

Dinant was completely destroyed. One monk from Liege, cited by Gachard, visited the smouldering ruins afterwards:

“The only thing I found entire in the whole city was an altar; besides this I found an image, marvellous to tell, almost unharmed by the flames, a very beautiful image of our lady, which was left all alone at the portal church.”

So total was the destruction of this great town, famous for its mastery in metal working, that it would never recoup its former grandeur. Afterwards, the remaining artisans moved to other towns, most of the copper and brass masters re-establishing themselves in Mechelen. The contemporary chronicler Jacques du Clerq, after some conjecture that the fate of Dinant could best be explained by simply being the unknowable will of God, concluded the entire episode with the words ‘Cy fust Dynant’... Dinant was.

Philip the Good leaves the scene…for good.

Despite the destruction of Dinant, the fires of rebellion in Liège against the Dukes of Burgundy had not yet been put out, and the Liège wars would rage for a couple more years. The remarkably violent wrath unleashed against Dinant would not, in fact, even be the worst of it, if you can imagine that. But the next conflagration would be directed against a new Duke of Burgundy, because in Bruges, on the 16th of June, 1467, Philip the Good would finally shake off his mortal coil after almost seventy-one years. Considering how much he loved an extravagant banquet, that is a pretty good innings, indeed. 

The details of the final days of Philip the Good’s life have been recorded in exquisite detail in a letter written by the royal apothecary, Poly Bulland, to the mayor of Lille to inform him of the news of the Duke’s death. As we mentioned earlier, Philip’s physical state had markedly declined towards the end of his life as he suffered from various illnesses, the effects of which made it hard for him to travel throughout his territories. Despite this poor health, however, he seems to have been still completely with it mentally up until the end, with Bulland remarking how Philip had “made good cheer and was as happy as ever throughout last week, often chatting and joking with others, myself among them”. Bulland writes that Philip spent his final Friday doing what he normally did; watching people work, taking a long nap, talking to his administrators, eating an omelet and drinking almond milk. After retiring for the evening, however, Philip suffered some kind of congestive attack which most historians think was from pneumonia. We’ll let Bulland tell the story, and if you are squeamish, be warned.

“At two o’clock after midnight a quantity of phlegm gathered in his throat and he was so troubled by this that it seemed he would die then. By frequent insertion of a finger in his throat much of this was ejected, but he was in great difficult and soon afterwards developed a high temperature which continued from 6am on Saturday until Monday evening at nine, when he gave his soul to God. And I certify you that the good prince died because of the phlegm which descended from his brain to his throat and blocked the passages so that he could only breathe with great effort. He was in pain for twelve hours, on the brink of death. The grief of my lord his son when he entered the room and saw him struggling thus in the utmost agony was indescribable. My lord of Tournai arrived soon after his death and renewed the grief of all of us with his lamentations.

Today my lord [the duke], whom God pardon, has been placed on his bed between two sheets as if he were alive and the public has been permitted to come and see him. He looked as if he was asleep, with half-smiling face, but he was deadly pale and no one had the heart to look at him for long. As the public filed past, the lamentations and moaning which the wretched people made, large and small alike, has continued from the hour of his death till the day following...at 3 p.m., at which time the autopsy was carried out, his heart removed, also the intestines, liver, lungs and spleen, and the body embalmed and made ready to be taken wherever it pleases my lord his son. And to let you know the true state of his body, his liver was healthy and clean; the spleen was all decomposed and in pieces together with the part of the lung touching it; and the heart was the most perfect ever seen, small and in good condition. When my lord was opened he was found to have two fingers’ thickness of fat on his ribs. His head was opened to see the brain because some doctors maintained that he had a tumour on the brain, but this was by no means the case, for it was found clean and as perfect as has ever been seen.”

Gross. It would seem that, finally, the great Duke of the West had come across a revolting phlegm that he could not pacify. 

Philip the Good, the man with the brain as clean and as perfect as had ever been seen, ruled as Duke of Burgundy for just short of 50 years. Over the course of his reign, Philip had overseen a massive expansion of the Burgundian realm, adding the territories of Namur, Holland, Hainault, Zeeland, Brabant, Limburg, Luxembourg, and Friesland to his collection - though nobody had told the Frisians about this - as well as making sure that his family members or puppets controlled the ecclesiastical domains of this area, such as the bishoprics of Utrecht and Liége. He had managed to acquire this power for himself by using political cunning and diplomacy, throwing around wads of cash to get what he wanted, and quite frankly, with the help of a whole lot of luck in the form of convenient people dying at convenient times. With his patronage of the arts he turned the Burgundian court into the centre of high-culture in Europe, with enough splendour and magnificence in his ceremonies to eclipse most royal courts of the time. Indeed, he had played a defining role in the major conflict of his time, that between France and England, and although he might not have worn a crown himself, he certainly played as big a part in the political affairs of his lifetime as anybody who did. Furthermore, in a world that we have seen put a great emphasis on the esteem of personal honour, and in which threats to honour and power were often met with violent responses, Philip, it must be said, showed from a young age his capacity to compromise, especially when it came to rebellious subjects, and to use mercy as a practical tool when it suited him. This cannot be said of many late-medieval rulers in Europe. 

But despite these soaring heights towards which he had helped catapult Burgundy, Philip’s reign was a failure in a few critical ways. The most obvious is that despite being married three times, and the father to literally dozens of bastard children, Philip had only managed to raise one legitimate child, Charles, with whom he had clashed so acrimoniously that, for a critical period in the final decade of his rule, he had basically forced his son into exile, the two not even being on speaking terms with one another. It’s one thing to be able to collect loads of titles for yourself, but if you’re not able to ensure that those titles are going to be kept together in trustworthy hands after your death, then you’ve ultimately failed the most important test of a feudal ruler - to create a long lasting dynasty with the hallmark of stability. Secondly, Philip struggled to find a solution to the same problem which had plagued the Low Countries since the times of Middle Francia, which is how to deal with being surrounded by big and hungry neighbours. Immediately after switching sides in the conflict between England and France with the Treaty of Arras, Philip had found himself facing an ever more confident and powerful France whose kings would try their hardest to undermine him in any and every way. His obsession with the idea of a crusade to the East, which he failed to ever put together, made him give up those vitally important Somme towns to Louis XI, which sparked the events that led the Estates General to step into the political decision making of his realms and force a mediation between father and son. Philip also failed in terms of his international relations with the Empire. Philip undoubtedly felt that he was entitled to a crown and the independence that came with it, but he only ever managed to receive unsatisfying offers of one over places like Friesland. Nothing against Friesland but...yea they don’t need a king. 

Which brings us to the final point; despite everything, Philip was never able to turn the Burgundian realm into a single, unified state. Sure, there had been attempts to create more centralized institutions, such as the Great Council, and to draw the territories together by things such as a common currency. This was expansive enough for historians to long recognise Philip as a centraliser. But, at his death, Philip was still in reality just the Count or Duke of a bunch of small and separate areas. Indeed, the people in many of those areas still actively resisted his rule, as we have seen in this episode in Liége and in the ever so many uprisings in the Flemish cities which we’ve covered. Charles, the new Duke, is going to become obsessed with the idea of claiming a crown and ruling a single state. In his pursuit of this, he will pave a road upon which the metaphorical car of Burgundian dukedom will plough head on into a wall of obliteration. But before getting busy with dynastic implosion, Charles would first get to work putting his stamp on things, laying his father to rest in grand, symbolic fashion and mercilessly crushing the ongoing uprising in Liége. Charles the Bold may have had lofty ambitions, but little did he know that he would be the final Valois Duke of Burgundy.

Sources Used

The Promised Lands by Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier

A Brief History of the Netherlands by Paul F. State

A Concise History of the Netherlands by James C. Kennedy

Charles the Bold: Last Duke of Burgundy 1433-1477 by Ruth Putnam

Philip the Good (Apogee of Burgundy) by Richard Vaughan

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

The Chronicles of Monstrelet

Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in Political Thought by Adrianna E. Bakos

History of France by Louis Prosper Gachard