Episode 32: Charles, King of Burgundy?
Charles the Bold inherited from his predecessors a lust for territorial expansion. When an old conflict in Guelders reared its head in 1468, Charles put himself in position to intervene there in much the way he had in Liège. Not just satisfied with this, he also sent a strongly worded letter to the power-brokers of Friesland, suggesting that they should think about accepting him, the Count of Holland, as their rightful ruler. Aaah, remember the days of haughty princes threatening Frisians with subjugation? Well, they’re back! By 1473 Charles’ army was in Guelders and threatening Friesland. Now, more regions of the Low Countries would be exposed to the process of Burgundian centralisation, which Charles ramped up by establishing the Parlement of Mechelen. Charles had become so powerful that he had started making eyes at not only a royal title, but an imperial one. In Triers in late 1473 Charles went to meet the emperor and, to all onlookers, it was pretty clear that he was going to leave this meeting with a crown on his head. Spoiler alert: he wouldn’t.
War in Guelders and admonishments in Order of the Golden Fleece
When Charles the Bold married Margaret of York in 1468, the English chancellor announced the news to the Parliament in London by describing Charles as “oon of the mygh-tyest Princez of the World that bereth no crowne." This backhanded compliment must have rankled with the image Charles held of himself, and indeed most historians agree that Charles would spend the rest of his life pursuing said crown. In a speech to the Four Members of Flanders, those great and powerful cities, Charles said of his rule: "I do not doubt that I shall remain ruler as long as He wills, in spite of all those who regret it, because God has given me the power and the means, which I would not advise you to test. . . . I would rather prefer that you hate me than despise me, because neither for your privileges —which are in any case worthless —nor for any other reason will I allow myself to be thwarted, nor will I allow anything to detract from my majesty or sovereignty; and I am strong enough to prevent such a thing." As you can tell from those words, Charles had first-class tickets on himself and felt that they were going to get him pretty far. Brimming with self confidence and arrogance, Charles’s set about continuing to meddle in areas the Low Countries which up until now had remained out of his grasp.
One opportunity to do this came to bear in May 1468, at a Chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece. As Duke of Burgundy and thus sovereign of this illustrious order, Charles was presiding over a meeting in Bruges in which two of the members came under admonishment for waging war against each other. If you remember back to episode 24, The Lavish and the Revolting, you’ll recall that disputes between members of the Order of the Golden Fleece were to be tabled before the order to be resolved. It was simply not a good look for its members to be fighting each other on the battlefield.
The two men in conflict were Adolph, Duke of Guelders and John II, Duke of Cleves. We’ve actually already met Adolph, back in 1456, before he was duke, when Philip the Good was preparing to lay siege to Deventer after installing his bastard son David onto the episcopal throne of Utrecht. You might recall that Adolph and his mother appeared at Philip’s camp suddenly, telling him that Adolph’s father, the Guelderian Duke Arnold, had allied to the Frisians and was planning an attack on the Burgundians. The outcome of this had been Philip throwing his support behind the younger Adolph, which included admitting him into the Order of the Golden Fleece. In the ensuing power struggle, Adolph sought and succeeded in attaining the support of the major towns against his father and Guelders descended into an on-again, off-again civil war.
The respective parties in Guelders reached some sort of peace agreement in 1459, but this disintegrated within two years. One night at the beginning of 1463, the old Duke Arnold, seemingly safe in his castle at Grave in the depths of winter, was roused from his slumber and promptly abducted by his son’s men. While still wearing just a tunic and his wimple, which is a wonderfully endearing headdress that one wears when sleeping, he was hauled off over the frozen Meuse river and taken to Lobith castle where he would remain in captivity for the next eight years whimpering in his wimple. After Duke Arnold was abducted, his ally, John II, Duke of Cleves, loudly began letting it be known how displeased he was with what had happened. Supported by Arnold’s brother, William of Egmond, John II thus went to war against Adolph to try and get old Arnold back.
Which brings us back to this meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Bruges, 1468. The issues in Guelders and complications related to it were discussed heavily and both Adolph of Guelders and John of Cleves came under admonishment. In his role of sovereign of the Order, Charles forbade either of them from making war against the other. The punishment for doing so would be military intervention by the other members of the order. For whatever reason, though, within 6 months, Charles had actually wavered to the side of John II of Cleves, and began discretely funding him, as well as creating closer bonds with William of Egmond, who we will meet again later.
Imperial ambitions
One of the many dignitaries present at the ceremony for Ghent’s formal apology to Charles for their failed uprising 18 months earlier was a man named Sigismund, a Habsburg-relative of the current Emperor, Frederick III. Sigismund had inherited a chunk of land in the Upper Alsace, along the Rhine river extending to Switzerland. He was having a lot of trouble with a general alliance of Swiss towns and bodies, called the Eidgenossen, who contested his dominion in their region. Sigismund was also broke and, as he sat and watched the splendour with which Charles was able to demonstrate his power, he carried an idea that had first been discussed between Frederick and Philip the Good in 1463: Charles’ daughter and sole heir, Mary, should be married to the son of the Emperor, a young Maximilian of Habsburg. In talks with Charles, Sigismund brought the idea up with him. This was certainly an appealing prospect for Charles and one that he would use as leverage to wield in discussions with the emperor.
By this stage there are accounts of multiple alliances being made on the back of promises for Mary’s hand, including marrying her off to the son of the King of Aragon; the grandson of the King of Sicily; the King of England’s brother, the Elector Palatine’s nephew and heir; the duke of Brittany; the one year old dauphin of France; his uncle (Louis XI’s brother Charles); the Duchess of Savoy’s son; and the Duke of Lorraine. Basically, if you were a single, noble man in Western Europe, somebody, somewhere, had had a discussion about you potentially marrying Mary. As you can probably guess, she is going to play an extremely important role in everything that is to come and all of this wrangling over who she would marry demonstrates how complicated the political positioning was in Europe at this time. In light of who she would eventually marry, it is interesting to ponder what might have unfolded had any of these other proposals and arrangements come to fruition.
Sigismund’s main aim in meeting Charles was to attain a promise of military and financial support from him against the Swiss Eidgenossen. He got this assurance, though it came at a cost. He mortgaged his lordship of the Upper Alsace to Charles and had to agree to petition the Emperor that Charles be given a royal title, namely King of the Romans.
Charles eyes Friesland
Friesland had steadfastly denied the advances of the Counts of Holland and had remained weary of the Burgundian dukes once they had taken that moniker for themselves as well. A point of contention with Frisian identity was also the city of Groningen, which some saw as a part of the Frisian domains. If you had asked someone in Groningen, however, they would more likely have proclaimed the city’s independence or, possibly, loyalty to the bishop of Utrecht, as ruler of the Oversticht. In October, 1469, Charles summoned some representatives of Friesland and had them told that they needed to accept him as their rightful sovereign.
This was a year after the destruction of Liège and as much as they valued their autonomy, the Frisians were acutely aware of how destructive Charles could be. While they were never going to agree to these demands, they preferred that their towns not suffer the same fate as Dinant and Liège. The representatives prevaricated, delayed and managed to not give anybody a satisfactory answer, instead arranging for further talks six months later in Enkhuizen. When these talks rolled around, the Frisians remained unbudged in their autonomous pretensions. The Burgundian representatives assured them that, under Charles’ recognised rule, Frisian laws, liberties, privileges and customs would remain unabused... oh except for if Charles’ ‘prerogative’ demanded otherwise. Sure they might have to pay taxes, but they would not be held to military service. The town of Dokkum was the only part of Friesland that came to agree to these terms; they sent some ambassadors down to St Omer and swore fealty to Charles as their legitimate and true ruler on July 8, 1470. The rest of the Frisian embassies, keeping in mind that Friesland was not a united province in the best of times, were able to unite on this matter and kindly told the Burgundians no. It must have been a surprise to them on July 9, then, when Charles released a drawn up agreement, in Latin, that read as if Dokkum had been joined in agreement by the rest of the Frisian embassies. He began making plans and preparations for a campaign in the far north and, in November, declared war on Friesland.
But the Frisians got a stroke of luck, because guess which European monarch couldn’t go an entire episode about the history of another country without being mentioned? That’s right, Louis XI, king of France and implacable nemesis of Charles. But we are not going to pander to Louis XI’s dominance of this period of Dutch history, all we are going to say is that, despite all their diplomatic dancing in Conflans and Peronne; despite the tasty Treaty of Ham, from 1470 until Charles’ death, he and Louis were pretty much always at war with one another. In the winter of 1470/71, Louis made another attempt to grab back those Somme towns that were such a point of contention and Charles had to send his military forces off to deal with this. So the Frisians just kept on doing their Frisian thing.
Rising tensions in Guelders
But although Friesland would stay of his reaches, Guelders would not. While he was dealing with the French, Charles was in Hesdin and had the young Duke of Guelders, Adolf, staying with him. At Charles’ order, a crack-team of his troops went to Lobith, broke in to the castle and rescued the older duke, Arnold, who was brought back to Hesdin in January 1471. Charles now had both dukes of Guelders under his control. He began a process of pressuring the younger Adolf into ceding to his father but, fair play to him, Adolf told Charles that he was a vassal of the emperor and would only answer to him in this regard. From everything we know about Charles, we know that this would have annoyed him greatly. Perhaps this is what prompted Charles to release the older Arnold back into the wild, where he could set about trying to reestablish control over the towns of his territory which had sided with his son in the civil war. Adolf was to remain, as a guest of course, with Charles at Hesdin. Citizens in Nijmegen became extremely concerned for the welfare of their duke, meaning that Charles had to send reassurances to them that he was merely up to a bit of diplomacy, rather than anything untoward. On the 10th of February, however, Adolf decided to ‘nope’ out of this diplomatic procedure and effected an escape from the Burgundian court. He got as far as the outskirts of Namur, where he was caught and arrested on a boat. Thereafter he was officially became a prisoner of the Duke of Burgundy, mostly held in Kortrijk for the next several years.
Meanwhile the older Duke Arnold was gallivanting around Guelders after eight years absence, greatly failing at inspiring his subjects to get around him. His only success was in the town of Grave, which meant his prospects of succeeding were grave, indeed.
The towns of Guelders and Zutphen outright rejected Arnold and reaffirmed their loyalty to Adolph. In 1471, they appointed lieutenant-governors on his behalf whose job was to rally resistance and tell Burgundy where they could stick their banners. In this sentiment, they found a willing ear in Louis XI, who was always happy to encourage and enable destabilisation within the Burgundian sphere of influence. He, along with a bunch of German princes petitioned for the release of Adolf over the course of 1471. Charles being the stubborn man he was, however, these were all in vain.
By the end of that year the issue was not settled and Arnold could still not unite the Duchy behind him, even while his son languished in captivity. Trying to boost his power-levels, he offered Charles to become the guardian of Guelders, which is really ‘writing on the wall’ stuff. It took another year, but by December 1472, he had little choice but to mortgage Guelders and Zutphen to the Duke of Burgundy for the sum of 300,000 Rhenish florins. Arnold was an old fella by now, had spent years of his life in prison and had run out of steam. In February, 1473, he signed his will, in which Charles was named his heir. Conveniently for Charles, he then died three days later. And so it was that the Duchy of Guelders came into the Burgundian realm. But of course things weren’t going to be so simple, and the towns of Guelders were not going to concede so easily.
Military action in Guelders
It seems certain that, whatever Arnold had done with his will, by 1473 Charles had decided he was going to bring his Burgundian death train to bear on Guelders. He got the go ahead from the emperor and sorted things out with any other ambitious nobles who may have had any claim to Guelders, one being the king of Scotland. In May, Charles assembled his troops outside of Maastricht. On the 9th of May, they set off north, following the Meuse. Let’s not over-glorify the mission. As Vaughan put it:
“The campaign which followed was carefully planned, well executed, and brilliantly successful. But the opposition was inherently weak, comprising a section of the nobles only and some of the towns. There was nobody to field an army against the duke of Burgundy; he merely had to mop up the few defended places.”
It is unavoidably tempting to compare Guelders to Liège. We have spent more than a couple of episodes exploring the persistent endeavour exhibited by the Liégeois to safe-guard their liberties against a bishop and a duke who would have it otherwise. In Guelders, however, the situation was far different. The four bigger towns had their own senses of identity and were often quarrelsome amongst one another. The territory had also been living with the divisiveness of the father-son feud and loyalties were split across the breadth of the land. What we saw in Liège was desperation and guerrilla resistance. The same was not the case in Guelders. Roermond gave up before the Burgundian army even set off from Maastricht, sending a party there to hand in the city’s keys for when Charles arrived. As the invading force went north, its troops terrified the people and sauntered into towns and villages. There were some displays of resistance, led by the Count of Moers whose own lands were not even in Guelders. Venlo withstood for a few days before falling under the ferocity of Burgundian guns. Charles enacted some punishments, executing suitable enough people to let them know they’d been naughty by defying him. He coupled this with a stern talking-to at the city hall which the town’s citizens had to sit through uncomfortably.
Nijmegen provided the greatest resistance, fortified behind stout walls and with an indelible sense of civic pride and stubbornness. Here, many of those who had been actively fighting against the Burgundians gathered for a last stand. On the 28th of June the siege began, but it would only last for three weeks. No other town or city sent aid or offers of help and during the three weeks, every other still-free body in Guelders capitulated. When Nijmegen fell on the 17th of July, it signalled the fall of Guelders to Burgundy. Guelders, as Charles himself observed, had been ‘reduced completely to my obedience.’
We have often painted the picture of Charles as a rash, aggressive sort. He certainly displayed many examples of living up to the ‘Alexander the Great-mighty-conqueror-prince’ image that he likely aspired to from a young age. But he was also intelligent and utilised many means other than military might to achieve his ambitions. The key to inheriting Guelders, for instance, had been in backing Arnold over his son and basically letting Arnold run himself into a corner in which his only remaining option was to hand Guelders to Charles on a cheese-board. Once it was in his grip, he maintained a military occupation of the territory and also enacted sweeping administrative changes that reflected what he and his father before him had instituted in previously won lands. He appointed William of Egmont as his Stadhouder there, as well as a Ducal council which operated from Arnhem, holding jurisdictional rights over all of Guelders.
Parliament of Mechelen
Charles was, like his father before him, attempting to centralise the power throughout his realms, no doubt with an eye on creating a single Burgundian state. We saw in previous episodes, his father Philip had implemented centralised policy, such as the establishment of the Great Council of Burgundy, by which he sought to circumvent the judicial autonomy of the states within their realms. Now, Charles would institute the next iteration of this, by creating the Parliament of Mechelen - to become the highest court of appeal for anyone in the Burgundian realm. Instead of travelling around following Charles, the Parliament of Mechelen would be based in one place, you guessed it, Mechelen (or Malines in French, as we have once previously called it).
The idea was to finally, once and for all, remove those parts of the Low Countries which were technically vassals to the French king from the judicial authority of the Parliament of Paris. The Parliament of Mechelen was basically a Burgundian replacement of the Paris parliament, and it shall be no surprise to learn that the French king was not enamoured with such a move. In the case of the imperial territories, even though the Emperor had not been anywhere near as involved in the Low Countries as the French kings, and had generally granted privileges akin to autonomy, the Mechelen parliament would provide further evidence that it was most definitely Charles who was sovereign here.
We’ve already had plenty of examples which show just how highly Charles thought of himself, but perhaps the ordinance which created the Parliament of Mechelen does this better than any other, which we will quote as it reads in Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States by Robert Stein: “By the divine goodness and providence that governs and determines all earthly matters, the princes were appointed as the head of the principalities and lordships, so that they, in the place of God, our creator, should maintain the regions, provinces and nations in unity, agreement and discipline.” We’re all familiar with narcissistic rulers these days, but despite all of his shortcomings, you can definitely say that Charles had a way with words. Or at least was able to chuck a coherent sentence together.
In addition to the parliament, the Chambers of Accounts in Brussels and Lille were dissolved and new versions also established in Mechelen, essentially turning the city into the capital of the Low Countries for the next half century. The creation of the Parliament of Mechelen also trampled over different privileges held by the Estates in places like Brabant and Hainaut, since it overrode their own courts and customs. As you are probably well aware by now, this was very unwelcome amongst those in the powerful towns of those areas, who were never comfortable with anybody undercutting the authority of their long fought for local systems of justice.
Charles meets the Emperor in Trier
Charles had been pressuring for ascension to be King of the Romans, but it is clear that Frederick III had not been as receptive to his overtures as he might have hoped. A large reason for this was that the Emperor did not want to lay a path for his own power to be usurped by such an already powerful prince, not to mention one that was not a Habsburg. It took a whole lot of faffing about, show-boating and general peacock behaviour by both Charles and the emperor before they finally met on September 30, 1473, in Trier. Charles rocked up with an entourage that included his two puppet-bishops, Louis of Bourbon and his bastard half-brother David, the Bishop of Utrecht, as well as others. The initial engagement was painfully tedious, with displays of arrogance to one another being made outside the city walls. But when the two finally came together they acted as close and dear friends, arguing first over whether they should ride side-by-side into the city and then over who was to escort whom to their lodgings. All of this took place in pouring down rain.
Charles had gone into this conference with the goal of so dazzling the Emperor with his power and prominence that he would be crowned King of the Romans and, hopefully, be named for succession as emperor. The Emperor, on the other hand, wanted to secure Mary of Burgundy’s hand in a wedding alliance that would make his son, Maximilian, the married-in heir to the Burgundian realms and wealth.
Remember, this was not the first time Frederick had dealt with a Burgundian duke seeking a kingship. He had had just such negotiations with Philip the Good more than once. Philip’s intentions had been for a kingship of the territories he already ruled, but Charles was upping his demands. Now seeking to become King of the Romans, he was going for an already existing and symbolically powerful throne that would eventually elevate him beyond anybody else. However, by the end of October it was becoming clear he would not get this. So he wrote up a list of four demands from the emperor, one of which was to be formally invested with the Duchy of Guelders. Eventually, this is what sprang forth from the imperial will. A big ceremony in Triers main market square on November 6 made it all official and is likely the point that Charles gave up on the whole future King of the Romans thing. It does seem, however, that he was on track to get what his father had sought, which was a brand, spanking new version of the long-dead Kingdom of Burgundy. A contemporary reported on all this:
“The most serene lord Emperor has consented to restore and to create, and he will now restore and create, for the lord duke of Burgundy, the kingdom of Burgundy, in the person of the aforesaid lord duke, for himself and his heirs and successors male and female, with all the dignities, rights and prerogatives which in any way belong to the said kingdom of Burgundy.”
Rumours spread quickly throughout Europe. Their children would be married, Maximilian and Mary, and the domains of Charles would become the four duchies of Holland, Zeeland, Brabant and Guelders, ruled by their King of Burgundy. Duke William of Saxony even received direct information that Charles had, indeed, been crowned and there is great evidence that preparations for a coronation were being made in Trier. Official garb and requisite equipment, like a fancy sceptre, were made, speeches were written and Church grounds were prepared. It really does seem that Charles was about to be crowned. But then, before it had actually happened, Frederick left on the 25th of November, having given notice of his intentions just the day before.
What the terms for this coronation actually were and why it never happened remain absolute mysteries. One theory is that, given how sure he may have been about being named King of the Romans, Charles was disappointed enough to reject anything else offered, even a kingdom of Burgundy. Perhaps, like his father before him, what had been offered was essentially Friesland, which Charles did not even, really - let’s face it - have much control over. Another theory is that, if this new Kingdom included the actual Duchy of Burgundy, then it would remain threatened by France. Burgundy had actually been a kingdom many centuries ago, before being turned into a vassal by French monarchs. The truth is that nobody knows why Charles’ coronation never happened. Something compelled Frederich to leave rather unexpectedly and Charles was left crownless at the end of 1473. And that is where we will leave him for this episode. It has been a big five years for him, having ascended to power, crushed revolts, destroyed cities, chastened subjects and added a whole new domain to his realm of power and control. He had displayed the kind of prestige and honour that would have made his father proud and even gotten the Emperor to the table to discuss a crown.
Sadly for Charles, though, he had also unwittingly already become involved in the conflict that would leave him lying unrecognisably dead in a ditch; that between Sigismund of Habsburg and the Swiss Eidgenossen. It’s all for another episode, but in case you were getting frustrated with Charles and, like us, rather sick of the Burgundian dukes, this is fair warning that you do not have long to wait before they, too, sink into the soggy, sphagnum marsh of history.
Sources Used
Groot Placcaet en Charter Boek van Vriesland
Writings of Peter Trekpoel from https://ppsimons.com/2016/01/12/gelre-in-1473/
Charles the Bold by Richard Vaughan
The Promised Lands by Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier
Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States by Robert Stein
Charles the Bold, the Last Duke of Burgundy by Ruth Putnam