Episode 36: The Great Privilege
Charles the Bold’s death at the beginning of 1477 set off a political tsunami which crashed over the Low Countries, like a rising tide from the North Sea, sweeping away the old structures and drowning those too slow to react. Unlike today, where information is transmitted around the world at nearly the speed of light, in 1477 it took awhile for the news to break and for the reality of the situation to be revealed to all parties. For those in the Low Countries, they were like the people you see in a grainy holiday film, standing on a tropical beach, looking out at the horizon as the water recedes far beyond where it normally goes, looking at the fishing boats beached on the sand, scratching their heads thinking, “this is weird, what’s happening?”, all-the-while being completely unaware of the devastating wave that was barrelling towards them, already too late to escape from the destruction it would bring. That devastation would include imminent attack by France, popular revolts in numerous cities, the forced acceptance of a whole new constitution for the Burgundian state and the beheadings of two of the most powerful people in the Burgundian governing apparatus.
Delayed details of the Ducal death
Charles died on the 5th of January, 1477, but the first word of his death only began filtering into the Low Countries a few days later. A messenger arrived in Ghent around the 8th or 9th of January to inform Margaret of York that her husband had perished. As she and her step-daughter, the 19 year old Mary of Burgundy, sat and listened to vague details about the lost battle at Nancy, they must have reminded themselves and each other that it could all be incorrect. There had been false reports of Charles’s demise before, such as after his defeat at the hands of the Austro-Swiss allied army in Murten. We cannot know whether Margaret had any greater sense of foreboding this time, but, as Christine Weightman put it in her biography of Margaret: “All her life both as Duchess of Burgundy and, before 1468, as a daughter of the House of York, was a preparation for the catastrophe which confronted Burgundy in January 1477.”
Margaret had witnessed a similar message being brought to her mother, Cecily, in 1460, after her father Richard of York had been killed by Lancastrians in the Battle of Wakefield. She had seen her mother react to the news and take control of the situation by sending her younger brothers off to safety and trying to shore up the family’s interests within the messy political tumult that was sweeping over England. Margaret would now need to do similar, and use her experience to help guide not only the new Duchess, but also other major figures of the Burgundian governing structure. This included figures such as the chancellor, Willem Hugonet, the stadhouder-general of the Low Countries, Adolf of Cleves, Lord of Ravenstein and someone we last met when we were immersed in the chaos of Liege, Guy of Humbercourt. After playing such a crucial rule in the destruction of that city, Humbercourt had further moved up the Burgundian ladder by being ordained in the Order of the Golden Fleece, and had become stadhouder of Liege, Limburg, Overmaas, Namur and Loon, as well as the de facto stadhouder of Guelders.
As for Mary of Burgundy, her whole life had been moulded by her identity as the only successor to her father. But with this came the added burden of knowledge that, because of her gender, her status as heiress would not be enough for her to wield the kind of power that her predecessors had held at their fingertips. She would be succeeding to rule over a myriad of lands, some of which had been subject to decades of Burgundian centralisation, while others had only recently been brought into the fold and were itching to detach themselves from it as soon as possible.
But still, nobody knew for sure if Charles was actually dead and in those first weeks of January, it seems as though the court was somewhat paralysed as they tried to figure out what was going on. On the 15th of January, Margaret wrote to the parliament at Mechelen that: “we are hoping that by the grace of God he [Charles] is still alive and well and out of the hands of his enemies” As we know with hindsight, that of course was not the case, but still 10 days after the battle they were still holding out hope that Charles might somehow have miraculously survived.
The immediate threat of France
The most immediate danger facing the Burgundian territories with the death of Charles was the looming threat of the King of France, Louis XI. Louis had been waging on-again off-again war with Charles and Burgundy for years, helping his adversaries and launching raids into the French parts of the Burgundian realms whenever Charles had been looking elsewhere. Louis kept himself updated with a constant flow of information from messengers relaying word to him about Charles’ situation in Nancy. He knew that an army was approaching and that a battle was imminent. Commynes gives the impression that in the days leading up to receiving the news from Nancy, Louis was kind of like a kid before Christmas, full of excitement and glee, telling all his mates about what he was going to do with the presents he was gonna get, but also a little concerned that maybe Santa wouldn’t actually come this year. But of course, instead of waiting for Santa, he was anticipating hearing that his biggest rival had been butchered in a field. Had he been waiting for Santa, this kind of request probably would have got him on the naughty list, but considering their life-long rivalry, is somewhat understandable. There were messengers competing with each other to be the one to deliver word of the outcome of the battle of Nancy to the king. Philip de Commynes writes that “several persons waited eagerly for the news, in order to carry it first to the king; for his custom was to give liberally to any person who brought him the first tidings of any news of importance, and to remember the messenger besides. His majesty also took great delight in talking of it before it arrived, and would say ‘I will give so much to any man who brings me such and such news’.” This is certainly an example of not shooting the messenger, and rather just splashing cash in the direction of wished-for tidings.
But of course, when the news did come, Louis was in the same position that Mary and Margeret were and was also unsure about what had actually come of the Duke; the reports simply said that he had last been seen running away. Louis quickly took stock of the situation and began making plans for the conquest of Burgundy, but not before taking a moment or two to revel in Charles’ demise. Philip de Commynes says “...the king had some reason to be more than ordinarily pleased at the death of that duke, and the destruction of his family; and indeed he triumphed more in his ruin than in that of all the rest of his enemies, foreseeing, as he thought, that nobody for the future, either of his own subjects, or his neighbours, would be able to oppose him, or disturb the tranquility of his reign”. Commynes basically suggests that upon hearing the news, Louis got drunk on the possibility of quickly snatching everything which Burgundy had taken from France over the years. He could probably have methodically and slowly built up a power base in those territories, sucking them into his sphere of influence through strategic marriages and winning the hearts and minds of the people there with money, but instead decided on a full frontal assault. Presumably he thought that since these areas had borne the brunt of years of warfare, they wouldn’t be able to resist. He also had the perfect justification to do so, given that a teenage girl had now inherited them and that, as such, Salic law gave him a legitimate claim to go over her head. If it turned out that Charles was actually still alive, and he somehow managed to buy back his freedom, well, he could always just give them back to him under the pretense that he’d acted so as to protect those areas from marauding Germans.
So it was that Louis XI duly ordered his troops to seize control of the French fiefs in the Burgundian lands on the condition that “...it is true that the Duke of Burgundy is dead”. Within weeks, French troops had marched into the Burgundian realms and taken control of the duchy of Burgundy, as well as Mâcon, Picardy, Artois and, you guessed it, those bloody Somme towns, such as Peronne, which had been constantly exchanged between France and Burgundy for decades. Louis’ confidence grew with each subsequent success. His troops entered Hainault and the Franche-Comte (the imperial part of Burgundy) and it seemed like soon they could take Namur, maybe even Flanders, and that he would be able to install princes favourable to himself in Holland and Brabant. In short, if Louis had his way, the Burgundian realm would cease to exist and soon he would be the sole power-broker who mattered in the Low Countries.
To further complicate matters, many of the nobility close to Charles, such as Olivier de la Marche, had been captured at Nancy and ransoms needed to pay for their return. Many of the nobility actually switched allegiance at this moment from Burgundy to France. This made things extremely difficult for the Burgundian government to hold it all together. Some of the defecting nobles included the Lord of Esquerdes, Philip de Crèvecoeur, who had been the governor of Picardy and held the Somme region for Philip and Charles, and now retained all those former titles but at the pleasure of Louis XI. Another important noble who entered Louis’s service was Charles’ half-brother Anthony, the Bastard of Burgundy, who had been captured at the battle of Nancy, but whose freedom was bought back by Louis.
So with their lands under attack, and with nobles abandoning them like rats from a sinking ship, the tide seemed to be turning inexorably in favour of France. All of this put great pressure on Mary and Margaret to take action and try to halt the French invasion before it was too late. By the 21st of January, they were forced to accept that Charles was indeed dead and a memorial service was held at the cathedral in Ghent now known as St Bavo’s. Although Margaret and Mary attended to mourning the dead sovereign, husband and father, they were fully aware that other matters demanded their attention.
The state of the States General, 1431-1477
We witnessed the nascent emergence of the States General in episode 26, when representatives of the Estates of Flanders, Hainaut, Holland and Brabant were assembled in 1431 in order to discuss a single currency to facilitate trade between the territories as they were being brought under the umbrella of Philip the Good and his administration. In the thirty odd years that followed, representatives of the Estates of the Burgundian lands would come together sporadically upon the command of Duke Philip to discuss mostly economic matters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it became dominated by the big powers: Flanders, Holland and Brabant. When the feud between Duke Philip and Count Charles began threatening the continuation of the Valois-Burgundian reign, the States General took the first baby steps towards determining their own future when they met, on their own accord, to reconcile father and son.
After that, the States General came to meet regularly at Coudenberg palace and, by the time of Charles’ ducal tenure, had become an established mechanism by which the duke’s legislation and jurisdiction were delivered to, and negotiated with, his subjects. They had expressed general discontent at the excessive taxes Charles had levied upon them during his ventures into Lorraine, Savoy and against the Swiss towns. As his military campaigns suffered loss after loss in 1476, Margaret of York and the chancellor of Burgundy, Willem Hugonet, Charles’ direct representative at court, were consistently charged by the absent duke to eke out cash and troops from the war-weary States General. After his defeat at Grandson in March 1476, Charles sent word to Margaret and Hugonet that they were to again request more money and troops, as well as permission for his daughter, Mary, to travel to Lorraine, where he was camped.
The States General that met following Grandson was the largest assembly of representatives from across the Burgundian domains that had yet gathered; consisting of members from the various Low Countries, such as Brabant, Flanders, (including representatives from the Four Members as well its three estates), Limburg, Holland, Hainault, Friesland, Namur, Luxembourg, Guelders, Outremeuse and the Somme towns. They would have been well aware of what was going to be asked of them and any official facing them would have felt the weight of such an exhaustive diplomatic mission, even someone as respected and experienced as Margaret of York was. She would not have been surprised when they refused to give any more cash or troops, and deferred the decision on Mary’s departure to be made by provincial courts.
The States Generals’ reasoning was that four years prior, in 1473, when Charles had requested an amount equalling 1.5m livres for a period of six years, the condition had been that he would not request anything more of them for that period. Despite this, he had continued to drain them of more money. Comparisons have been made between the last years of Philip the Good’s life and the years of Charles’ rule. The average expenditure under Philip in his last ten years was around 360,000 livres. Under Charles, it stretched to nearly 700,000, so almost double. Flanders, as the wealthiest of all the Burgundian domains, had borne the heaviest load of this burden, with annual payment of aides to the Duke averaging over 450,000 livres between 1471 and 1476. In 1475 Flanders, alone, had paid 910,000 livres to the ducal coffers, the highest amount for the entire 15th century.
The Burgundian chancellor Hugonet was unimpressed by the resolute defiance of the States General. He attempted to negate their collective strength by creating a smaller committee out of the larger body with which to negotiate, the hope being that he could more easily bend a smaller group of them to give the money the duke was demanding. Their response to him was that ‘those who are deputed do not have the power to depute others.’ In other words, Hugonet was a mere deputy of Charles and did not have the authority to create a smaller group from the States General with which to negotiate. They had no choice but to adjourn the assembly, at a stalemate and without securing cash and troops for the duke.
When the States General reconvened on the 24th of May, 1476, the ducal council had again sought to exploit divisions amongst the collective body. The Dutch-speaking, more northern provinces, especially Flanders, remained adamantly opposed to forking out anything more for the Duke’s cause, while in the French-speaking regions of the south, there was less unity on the matter. For instance, the towns in Artois were opposed to paying any more aides, while the nobles and clergy were willing to compromise. An attempt was made to portray this as meaning that there was majority support among the estates. This succeeded, somewhat, but enraged the towns. It only served to further enhance the distrust and animosity that now existed between the States General and the ducal council. The assembly continued to show an utmost willingness to assert an understanding of their perceived rights and authority.
You can imagine the scene; a throng of agitated lawyers, townsfolk, clergy and noblemen gathered in a big assembly hall at Coudenberg palace, watching on as Hugonet riled and threatened them with the fury of their Duke. On the 27th of May, he submitted that he and the other deputies should be able to make informal statements about the matter, rather than formal statements that directly represented the Duke’s policy. The States General, stunningly, flat-out refused this, saying that the deputies had no authority to do anything but give formal responses. This so outraged Hugonet that he apparently asked them if his and the ducal council held any authority at all, could they even decide how many drinks they might have on their journey? This was a point of sarcasm that dripped in contempt. According to the main account upon which this is based, believed to have been written by Gort Roelandts, who was the pensionary of Brussels and spokesman of the States General, “...this remark was not well taken by the estates, and they said to the chancellor: go on, go on, you can say what you like; but we will make the reply we have to make.”
The discussions continued on like this for another 5 hours, until Hugonet came to the point of blustering rancour, threatening that they 'Don't dare to say a word which might displease my redoubtable sovereign prince. Your heads are at stake.' to which their spokesman Gort Reolandts, replied, “I trust in God that I will not say a word that is not full of reverence and obedience to my redoubtable sovereign Lord…” But then, dramatically, the speaker fell to his knees and added, defiantly, “...without leaving out anything!”
Once again the States General refused to budge on giving the military and financial aides that Charles demanded via his chancellor, wife and deputies, or even on finding agreement as to whether Mary should be allowed to travel to Lorraine. The ducal council saw no choice but to, once more, adjourn the assembly, agreeing to meet in July. But after Charles’ defeated at Murten, this too was postponed and the States General never met again under his reign.
This period, between that final meeting of the States General in 1476 and Charles’ death at Nancy in January, 1477, has been cited as a significant turning point for the trajectory of the States General from here on in. Historian Helmut Koenigsberger in his ‘Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments’ wrote beautifully of this interim phase:
“In the spring of 1476 no one could have foreseen the full significance of Charles the Bold's last States General. Apparently they had, while protesting their loyalty, simply refused some specific, although certainly important, requests by the government. There was a good chance that the next meeting would arrive at least at a compromise, just as the States General of 1473 had done...A Burgundian victory over the Swiss would have further enhanced the duke's prestige. But this was precisely what did not happen. In the meantime the government had exhausted its credits on the international money markets of Bruges and Antwerp. The deputies had voiced the whole country's revulsion for Charles the Bold's spiralling financial and military demands. Against the government's rationalising and centralising policies and the duke's and his chancellor's bullying style, they had set a pedantic and legalistic, but also brave and dignified insistence on their provinces' privileges and liberties. When revolution broke out in the following year, men with totally different motivations would look to the States General as the instrument to achieve their aims and as the one fixed and acceptable institution in a suddenly fluid and frightening situation. The myth of the States General had begun.”
The Great Privilege
Mary began to style herself as the Duchess of Burgundy, and Margaret became the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy. Although Mary had been popular as an heiress, she was now the ruler, and the contempt for Burgundian domination which had been directed towards her father was thus now passed on to her. In Guelders, which had only recently been forced under the Burgundian yoke, immediate rebellion saw the ducal officials being kicked out of the territory and the prompt declaration of Guelderian independence; in Utrecht, the Burgundian puppet, bastard bishop David of Burgundy, whose position had been foisted upon Utrecht by Philip the Good, was ejected from the city and forced to flee to Wijk bij Duurstede. In Flanders, people spoke loudly and in unity against all the concessions of rights that they had been forced to make over the previous half century or so. People of the different estates, but particularly the towns of Flanders, began demanding that these rights be permanently restored and there were rumblings of great discontent in towns across the Low Countries. Margaret, Mary and the ducal council needed to act, fast, if they were to stem the flow of common vengeance.
So it was that, on behalf of Mary, the ducal council called the States General to meet in Ghent, beginning on the 3rd of February. By this stage, the States General had grown formidable enough that any Duke or Duchess would need to deal with them in order to rule effectively, and in the tumult following Charles’ death, their influence on the highest level of Low Country decision making and administration would only increase. This meeting would be the first since the acrimonious sessions of the previous year, when they had refused to give further money to Charles’ flailing military campaign.
When the States General was summoned by Mary and Margaret to meet in Ghent on February 3rd, 1477, it was in the midst of absolute uncertainty. Mary and Margaret were fully aware that they needed to instantly pacify the estates, which they attempted to do when they sent out messages calling for the assembly. The ducal aides which had so angered them were immediately suspended and the States were told that all matters between them and the ducal-government would be treated with ‘great sweetness, good justice and discretion.’ The members of this assembly were going to take full advantage of this great sweetness.
What emerged in the first week and a bit of talks was a landmark set of constitutional reforms that, as a collective charter, would come to be known as The Great Privilege. The conditions and demands made by the States General in the Great Privilege were bold, bordering on revolutionary and, as far as feudal relationships go, they greatly overstepped their conventional bounds by submitting it. They sought to address the issues which Charles’ militant autocracy had laid bare. The Great Privilege contained two sets of provisions. In the first, the needs and interest of each of the three estates were addressed: holders of fiefs would be guaranteed payment for military service outside of their own, home territories; it put limits on ducal appointments of people to ecclesiastical positions; and it sought to secure freedom of trade, allowing merchants to move freely between the territories without having to pay unreasonable and frivolous taxes.
Following this was a list of conditions which sought to establish a new relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Just as we have seen in previous episodes, this is something that every new ruler had to renegotiate, upon ascending to power. Some new rulers seemed to understand this straight off the bat, or at least learn it quickly, as was the case with Philip the Good. Others, however, seem to have had such a strong sense of entitlement that they were either unaware that this was something which needed to be done, or just didn’t care. We saw this in Charles’ shock confrontation with rebellious subjects in Ghent upon his ascension to power, for example. In Mary’s case, the Great Privilege saw the terms of the new relationship written up and foisted upon her.
In the Great Privilege, the States General received the right to self-assembly, meaning they could meet whenever and wherever they wanted, with or without her or her successors’ permission. The document ensured that people could be appointed to administrative positions within a province only if they actually lived there. Furthemore, somewhat explosively, the charter also stated that if Mary or any of her successors wished to wage war, whether offensively or defensively, they would need a consensus of agreement by the States General. She would need permission from the States General to marry, or to levy taxes. If any of the terms were ignored by the Duchess or any of her successors, then their subjects would be released from obedience to them.
The charter also abolished the ducal court at Mechelen, which Charles had established in 1473 as a means of circumventing the Parliament of Paris. This was to be replaced by a different Grand Conseil, composed of 24 people, lawyers and noblemen in proportional representation of each of the territories. This even included territories who weren’t represented at this assembly, such as, Holland and Zeeland, whose representatives had not yet arrived at the meeting. Their inclusion would later be separately conducted by the granting of their own versions of the Great Privilege. The northern, Dutch speaking provinces were not only worried about curtailing the power of the duke, but also of Flanders. They demanded that letters from the government would need to be written in Dutch rather than French, and ensured that the rule about only local officials being appointed was included.
While the abolition of the Mechelen parliament - this symbol of Burgundian centralisation - might have indicated that the subjects of the Low Countries were seeking a return to how things were before the rise of the Burgundian dukes, this is not the case. They sought to bring jurisdiction back into the realm of the provinces, imbuing within the Great Privilege the ius de non evocando, meaning that subjects may only be tried by a local court. The States General was attempting to secure the benefits which centralisation provided for the function of trade and the movement of goods, while re-establishing territorial independence in the realms of jurisdiction and general rights. Although, as historian Wim Blockmans writes in The Promised Lands, the Great Privilege can be seen as the first constitutional document which encompasses all of the Low Countries, it would be a mistake to look at it as a fully revolutionary. Many of the provisions found within it had grown out of developments that had taken place over the previous centuries. For example, the right to self-assembly, as well as the right to disobedience, had been a part of the Blijde Inkomst tradition that had emerged and developed in Brabant in the early 14th century, which we went into all the way back in episode 14. As Koenigsberger puts it:
“None of this suggests that the provinces wanted to reverse the union which the Valois dukes of Burgundy had imposed on them in the previous half century. The point of having councillors from all the provinces in the Great Council was simply a logical extension to all provinces of the traditional demand of medieval states that their prince's councillors should be natives. Here it seemed particularly appropriate because of the strong feeling of the Netherlanders against the many Burgundians in the duke's councils.”
On the 11th of February, 1477, eight days after Mary first addressed the States General and was recognised as the Duchess, she signed these constitutional reforms into existence.
Ain’t no stopping a Flemish revolt
In practice, the Great Privilege did little to stem the rising tides of social unrest and grievances which had started to flow across the Low Countries. The first third of 1477 saw revolts erupting in, bet you’ll never guess, Ghent and Bruges, but also in Antwerp and Brussels. To quote Koenigsberger again:
“The revolts all followed a roughly similar pattern. Crowds of workmen - weavers in Ghent, seamen in Antwerp - would arm themselves and run to their guild houses and town halls and demand the restoration of their old privileges and the punishment of traitors...These men were arrested, often tortured to obtain confes- sions or denunciations, and then tried with mostly rather doubtful legality. Some, but certainly not all, of the accused were condemned and executed.”
In Holland and Zeeland, an old partisan conflict re-erupted, between the Hooks and the Cods. This represented grievances by Cod-partisans against what they had seen as growing over-representation of Hook partisans in positions of power within the ducal government. Hook parties all over Holland rose to seize power in many different towns and cities, including Dordrecht, Gouda, Hoorn, Oudewater and Schoonhaven where they succeeded. The Cods, for their part, took over Leiden and had their Hook counterparts there exiled or executed. In the Hague, a Cod mob attacked and plundered the official residence of the ducal residence. Until recently, this position had been filled by a Flem, Louis of Gruuthuyse, whom we met in the previous episode when he showed off his magnificent library to the then-deposed English king, Edward IV. The Great Privilege stipulated that ducal positions must be filled by a native to the territory, so Gruuthuyse had been replaced by a Zeelander with a famous Zeelander name, Wolfert van Borselen. Utterly annoyed that his new, fancy house had been sacked by rampaging Cods, van Borselen threw his weight behind the Hooks. Series three of the Hook and Cod wars was underway.
In the midst of all this, Ghent and Bruges also made a move which they had certainly been aspiring to for decades. They were the two, big power-players within the Four Members of Flanders, the other two being Ypres and the Franc of Bruges, that region beyond the bounds of Bruges proper. Ypres was, by this time, on a decline that the other towns of Flanders would soon also experience but Ghent and Bruges were cocky enough to manipulate this situation to their benefit. Between them, they divided and ate up the Franc of Bruges. This was extreme, but not that surprising. However, beyond seeking a return to a perceived former glory as autonomous city-states, none of the aggrieved seemed to truly wish for a break-up of the whole, central state of Burgundy. It was well recognised that a centralised entity was beneficial for trade, but also important for defence.
In the midst of all this uproar that took place in the months after the States General had met in February, the biggest threat to everybody remained the fact that French armies had overrun large and strategically important sections of the southern Burgundian realm. Unless agreement could be reached among all the different parties now acting egregiously for their own interests, neither the estates nor the ducal government felt that they were in any positions to stop the advancement of Louis XI’s troops.
Diplomatic effort to curtail French threat
Mary, Margaret and the ducal gang, unable to mobilise the kind of troops needed for defence, decided to send an embassy to Louis XI in early February. It was led by the Chancellor, Hugonet but also included Guy of Humbercourt, as well as Gruuthuyse, Wolfart van Borselen as well as delegates from the towns of Flanders. Louis XI now had two aims when it came to Burgundy, which were to get Mary to marry his son, the dauphin Charles, who was six, and the return of the French fiefdoms in Burgundy to his direct suzerainty. When the delegation arrived, they offered him the marriage alliance, but they could not agree to the fate of the territories under question. In Louis’ typically manipulative way he treated the representatives from Flanders in a deliberately benevolent and compassionate demeanour. Except for the concession of a month’s truce before his armies went surging through the Low Countries, however, there was no final agreement and the delegation returned to Brussels. The States General made the decision to raise a common army from across the Low Countries, with which it would seek to defend against what this diplomatic effort had failed to curtail.
The Flemish delegates, however, had been very much persuaded of Louis’ good intentions to Flanders. When the States General heard of this they packed together another embassy and sent them off to Lens to meet with the French king. French forces were on the brink of re-taking the town of Arras, however, and they were forced to follow him there, making their case as he prepared to accept the surrender of the town. When he met them, Louis asked for clarification; did they speak with the authority of the Duchess? Their response was that, indeed, she would not make any decisions without their knowledge and consent. It was at this point that Louis’ disposition towards strategically sowing division came to the fore. He whipped out a letter which, apparently, had been given to him by Hugonet during the last embassy. It was written and signed by Duchess Mary, Margaret of York and Adolf of Cleves, the lord of Ravenstein and it explicitly stated that the authority of decisions in Burgundy lay solely with Mary and only rested on the advice of the ducal gang and, of course, the French king himself. It advised Louis XI that he may only deal with Hugonet and Humbercourt.
Well, you can imagine how annoyed this delegation from the States General must have been, having just achieved such a great victory for their rights of political inclusion in the form of the Great Privilege but, now, in dealing with the French king, being shown evidence that the Ducal government had no such intention of allowing them the seat at the table they thought that they held. The contents of the letter come from Commines, despite the fact that he was not even there when Louis produced it. There is no way to be able to verify whether Mary actually did write it. It may well have been that Hugonet had contrived it, so as to way-lay the pretensions of the assembly that he had been so frustrated by. Either way, this letter was absolutely scandalous and completely destructive for the immediate governing body. Louis XI had fertilised the tubers of hostility, division and contempt that had been steadily growing in the hearts, minds and wallets of people in the Low Countries, as regarded their ducal sovereigns.
When this delegation returned to the Low Countries, they told everybody what had happened in an assembly at which Mary was present, as well as Margaret, Humbercourt and Ravenstein. It took place in a city full of protests and demonstrations by angry workers. They confronted her with the accusation that she had sent the letter to undermine their inclusion. According to Commines and his flair for the dramatic “The princess was extremely surprised, and, presuming the letter had not been seen, strenuously denied it; upon which the person that spoke (being the pensionary of either Ghent or Brussels) put his hand into his bosom, produced the letter publicly, and delivered it to the board.”
Commines did not care much for the lower classes and continued on by saying that this act showed the man to be lacking in honour and good breeding “...for a lady of her rank and quality ought not to have been treated after such a rude and disrespectful manner; for, granting she had committed an error, she was not to be vilified or confronted with it in a public assembly.”
It is tempting to think that the bravado with which the States General were now treating their Duchess could be at least somewhat explained by the youth and gender of their new sovereign, which they intended to exploit fully for their own benefit. But then again, the last Duke, her father, was once confronted with an angry mob and a commoner had had the audacity to climb on to the same balcony and publicly berate him. And Charles was a walking stereotype of outdated ideas about masculinity. Perhaps we should just look at such rebellious acts as being a part of the political and social culture that had been developing in the Low Countries for so long.
Humbercourt and Hugonet pay the price
Almost immediately after this scandalous confrontation, an angry mob began setting out to attack members of the government. Good thing that doesn’t happen these days. Citizens of the city who had thrown their support behind Charles over the last decade were dragged out and imprisoned. On the 14th of March an arrest order was made for Willem Hugonet and Guy of Humbercourt, and they were subsequently taken into captivity. Margaret, who had long enjoyed popular support but who had spent a lot of this capital in raising armies for Charles, also came under the spotlight as the burghers of Ghent sought to expunge the destructive corruption of the ducal government. She was forced to flee, first going to Oudenaarde, closer to the French border, and organising a midnight procession of mourning among the town, supposedly trying to light the flame of love for the late duke and, therefore, support for his besieged daughter. Then she went to Mechelen, taking along other ducal officials whose lives were at risk if they had remained in Ghent. This included the chronicler and long-time ducal henchman, Olivier de la Marche, who wrote, “As for me I was advised not to fall into their hands and I went to Malines [Mechelen] with Madame”. De la Marche had only recently regained his freedom after having been caught at Nancy. It is pretty funny that one of his first acts after joining Mary’s court, was to flee for his life.
Over the following days, a sort of legal process was set upon, even though it is debatable as to how legal this was. Ducal officers were summarily tried and executed and, as for Hugonet and Humbercourt, they were in the hands of the angry Gentenars and the States General. A special tribunal was convened to handle the allegations against two of the most powerful men in the Burgundian apparatus. Mary’s agreement to this was forced upon her. Humbercourt and Hugonet were given lawyers to make their cases, but it was a kangaroo court. They were charged with negligence of duties - specifically surrendering the town of Arras to the French king, with accepting bribes and were also charged with breaking town privileges while previously acting on behalf of the duke, which did not make much sense given that neither of them came from Ghent. It is suspected that the mass exodus of nobility from the Burgundian cause also engendered grave suspicions of anybody who owned French-ruled land. Hugonet and Humbercourt fell firmly into this category and, as a result, were also charged with treason.
Commines goes right into this, even though he wasn’t there, but he gives a wonderfully descriptive account and we think it is worth travelling by his words for a stretch:
“...they were both condemned to death by the magistrates of the city, who at that time were assembled in their town-hall, for infringement of their privileges, and receiving bribes. After judgement was given, the two lords were astonished at their sentence, and not without reason, for being in their hands, there was no possibility of escaping. However, they thought fit to appeal to the King of France...hoping at least it would defer the execution for some time, and, in the meanwhile, give their friends an opportunity of exerting their power and interest to save their lives. Before sentence was passed, they put them upon the rack, contrary to all law and justice. In six days’ time their whole process was finished, and when sentence was given, they allowed them but three hours for confession, and the settlement of their temporal affairs, upon expiration of which they were brought upon the scaffold, which was erected at the marketplace.
As soon as the Princess of Burgundy had received the news of their condemnation, she came herself in person to the town-hall to beg for their lives; but, finding she could not prevail, she ran into the market-place, where the mob were got together in arms, and the two prisoners upon the scaffold. The young princess was in mourning, her head dressed carelessly, (on purpose to move pit and compassion,) and, in this posture, with tears in her eyes, and her hair dishevelled, she begged and entreated the people to have pity upon her two servants, and restore them to her again. A great part of the mob were touched with compassion, and would fain have complied with her request, and were willing they should be saved, but others violently opposed it, and they were at push of pike one with another. At last, those who were for the execution being the stronger party, called out to the executioners to do their office, and immediately both their heads were struck off, and the poor princess returned to her palace very sad and disconsolate for the loss of two persons in whom she chiefly confided.”
The tidal wave of chaos and uncertainty had begun to break on the Low Countries. Only a little more than a month into her tenure, Mary had been violently pushed and pulled in the swirling rip of ducal governance. She had been forced to sign the Great Privilege, significant enough as to be held up as a historical marker of political progress in the Low Countries and had been unable to prevent her two chief advisors from being somewhat unduly tried and beheaded. The young Duchess was now essentially imprisoned by the ever-troublesome burghers of Ghent, which would have been emotionally confusing, given that Ghent was as close as she had to a ‘home’ town. But, her trusted mother-in-law, Margaret, had been able to escape the torrent of retribution, and would be instrumental in ensuring that the Low Countries did not fall into French hands.
Sources used:
Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess by Christine Weightman
Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States by Robert Stein
Charles the Bold by Richard Vaughan
Charles the Bold, the Last Duke of Burgundy by Ruth Putnam
The Promised Lands by Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier
Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments by Helmut Koenigsberger
The Historical Memoirs of Philip de Comines, Containing the Transactions of Lewis XI and of Charles VIII of France and of Edward IV and Henry VII of England by Philippe de Commyne
‘The Burgundian Netherlands, 1477–1521’ in The New Cambridge Modern History, chapter by C. A. J. Armstrong