Episode 45: The Surrender of Sluis
The final years of Philip of Cleves’ rebellion in Flanders saw the most famously fractious of Flemish cities, Ghent, flare into open revolt against Habsburg rule once again and rejoin the fight alongside him. Although Philip’s war against the ducal regime would ultimately come to an end in October, 1492, this last period of the conflict is made extra-complicated not only because of the interpersonal relationship between Philip and Maximilian, nor because of the ongoing conflict between the powerful cities and the ducal court, not to mention the economic woes brought on by decades of warfare, trade disruptions and the mass exodus of the citizenry from probably the most important trading centre of the Low Countries, Bruges, but also because of a succession struggle which was contemporaneously being waged between Maximilian and Charles VIII of France in the Duchy of Brittany. And since this distant, dynastic dance would have all sorts of repercussions for the more local goings on in the Low Countries, it makes sense to get it out of the way. So first, to Brittany!
Charles VIII puts the spears into Brittany
About two weeks after the formal capitulation of Bruges to the Habsburgs again in December, 1490, Maximilian put into action a plan he had to really mess with the French King’s head by marrying Anne of Brittany, the heiress to the prominent and strategically important duchy on the west flank of the French kingdom. We touched upon the situation in Brittany in episode 42, “Philip Cleaves and Maximilian Leaves”. After being defeated by French forces in July, 1488, the Duke of Brittany, Francis II, who had no male heirs, had agreed that his daughters would only be married with the explicit permission of the French King, Charles VIII. When he died in September of that year, his eldest daughter, Anne, was left unprotected from the rapacious overtures of Charles VIII. France quickly declared war on Brittany, again, which had led to an alliance being formed between Maximilian, Henry VII of England and Ferdinand of Aragon to protect Brittany. At the peace of Frankfurt in July 1489, the precursor to Montils-lez-Tours, they had agreed that the question of what would happen in Brittany should be decided by a papal court of arbitration. In October of 1490, a truce between France and Brittany was brought into effect which would last until May 1491.
During this interim period, Maximilian must have looked over at Brittany and seen it as yet another opportunity for him to waltz into a proud and powerful duchy in the midst of a succession crisis and, once again, play the part of the heroic white knight in shining armour, just as he had for Mary in Burgundy in 1477. So on December 19, 1490, he did just that. Kind of. An entourage of representatives was sent by Maximilian to the city of Rennes, where Anne was holed up, and Maximilian was married to the 14 year old Anne by proxy. This surprised everyone, most especially Charles VIII who only found out about it after the fact.
This is not the first time we’ve seen a proxy marriage. Maximilian had first married Mary of Burgundy by proxy. So too had Philip the Good and Isabella of Portugal. The problem with getting married by proxy, however, is that until the marriage ceremony is repeated later, in person, it is pretty easy to claim that the proxy marriage isn’t actually real. As historian D. L. d’Avray wrote of this in their wonderful book “Dissolving Royal Marriages: A Documentary History 860-1600”: “If the ceremony was so definitive, why repeat it? Despite long-established conceptual clarity on the canon law side, it looks as if there was still something of a no-man’s-land between betrothal and definitive marriage.” To help give the whole thing a veneer of formality, there were a bunch of rituals which took place in proxy marriages. d'Avray writes further of it, “Maximilian did not go to Brittany in person. He sent proxies empowered to contract the marriage for him. One of them famously touched Anne with his naked knee in a marriage bed in front of the whole court.” Weird. I wonder how that actually worked. “I hereby place my knee on you, your marriage to my lord has now been consummated”. The person who acted in proxy might have been relieved that he was just standing in for Maximilian, because Anne was apparently rather ugly and suffered from a hip problem, meaning she walked with a higher heel in one of her shoes to mask her limp. In fact, historian Jane de Longhe said of Maximilian’s absence here: “He did not know her sad, distressingly ugly little face, her pathetic little figure, which shy and slightly lame, one would have expected to meet in the sculleries of the ducal palace rather than on the ducal throne itself”. Be that as it may, that distressingly ugly, little face had married a king, so cop that body shamers. After this, she signed her letters as Anne, Queen of the Romans.
Although it was bold, this plan was never going to work out for Maximilian or his allies. In fact, when the French court found out about this marriage, they were very angry indeed, especially because it explicitly went against the agreement they had made with Francis II of Brittany that his daughters could only marry with the French king’s permission. As soon as the truce between France and Brittany expired in May, 1491, Charles VIII marched an army back into Brittany and quickly took over all the major cities except for Rennes, where Anne was protected by an army of about 14000 English, German and Spanish troops.
She must have imagined that her new husband would soon come rushing to her aid, especially considering she rejected a proposal from Henry VII to help escort her out of the town and into the Netherlands. But, alas, Maximilian was far away in his Austrian lands, dealing with a bunch of hungry, hungry Hungarians, whose conquering king Matthias Corvinus had, himself, just recently died, providing the Habsburgs with the opportunity to reassert themselves in central Europe. Rennes was put to siege, and after months of deprivation in the city, and essentially sending herself bankrupt in her attempts to prevail, Anne was left with no choice but to surrender Rennes to the French on October 13, 1491.
Now Charles had to figure out what to do with the young Duchess of Brittany. He offered to send her to Maximilian, but despite being wed to him through the power of proxy-knee-touch, she wasn’t interested in the man who had decided to stay thousands of miles away from her while she was being besieged by one of his most powerful enemies. Charles sought suitable marriage prospects for her which would keep Brittany under his thrall, but Anne refused to marry anybody who was not a king or the son of a king. Why should she downgrade? Well, Charles VIII was himself a king and, even though he was already betrothed to Margaret, Maximilian’s daughter, he soon saw that the neatest way to get what he wanted was to regretfully cast Margaret aside and wed the Duchess of Brittany on December 6, 1491.
‘‘But’, we hear you cry, ‘what about Margaret?’ Well, dear listeners, young Margaret’s world came crashing down with this unexpected turn of events. She had been in France since infancy, and was partly raised by the King’s own sister, Anne of Beaujeu. Margaret was well entrenched within the socio-political network in which she was due to play a major part in the future. Her governess, Madame de Segre, is said to have treated her as a mother would. de Longh, in her 1950s biography of Margaret, supposed that “In later years, when she herself was charged with the upbringing of four motherless children, Margaret was often to remember this warm-hearted, understanding woman who had given her such a happy youth.” And yes, indeed, that is some serious foreshadowing. Now at the age of 11, Margaret found herself dumped, heartbroken, bereft of the future that she had been brought up to expect, on the outer in France and wondering what would become of her. Charles told her he would send her back to her father Maximilian, who was basically a stranger to her, but that would still take quite a long time to happen.
This whole kerfuffle in Brittany would have all sorts of implications in Flanders, because those who were still disaffected with Maximilian and the ducal government, namely Philip of Cleves and the rebellious faction in the city of Ghent, found a very large and willing ally, in the form of France, in their corner. Charles VIII began funnelling money, troops and emotional support towards Philip of Cleves and the rebels in Flanders. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, it’s France v Germany in the Low Countries for the umpteenth time, and we’ve only just gotten into the 1490s.
Ghent goes into revolt… again… again…
Ghent had already begun stirring against the Habsburg ducal government again in March, 1491. The revolt that is about to unfold there is going to look a hell of a lot like the one we saw in Bruges last episode which, remember, Ghent chose not to join at that time because… they couldn’t really decide whether they disliked Maximilian or Bruges more. Heavy sigh. If these two cities had worked together, rather than constantly sit at odds with each other, perhaps they could have shared the spoils of success instead of dividing the detritus and debris of defeat. But, whatever, we’re not here to judge with 500 years of hindsight. So, as we were saying, in the middle of March, 1491, Engelbert of Nassau told Ghent, just as he had done Bruges, to introduce those mean and malignant monetary reforms. Remember that these reforms were enforced in the context of insane food prices (compared to 1470, the price of rye in Ghent had tripled by 1488 and was five times higher by 1491). The city of Ghent refused to bring in the changes to the currency and, in so doing, found themselves once again in direct conflict with the ducal regime. You can imagine that the towns in the vicinity of Ghent could, by now, recognise a revolt when it was in the making. In April, nearby Biervliet demonstrated such awareness by requesting more troops and resources from the ducal government, in the case that this most powerful city in Northern Europe once again erupted into violence.
The ripples from this conflict within Flanders had spread across the North Sea and beyond. Maximilian made a demand that all foreign merchants within his lands would have to pay a contribution for the upcoming war against Philip in Sluis and, now, also Ghent. This led the Hanseatic League to consider blocking all Hollandic ships from being able to load grain from the Baltic lands at Reval (better known as Tallinn, the capital of Estonia today). Toll records in the Danish Sound show that at this time, more than half of all the ships making the journey from the North Sea into the Baltics through this passage were from Holland. This blockade would have had a devastating effect on a region which was already suffering under massively inflated food prices and shortages. We spoke in more detail about the importance of the trade from this region in episode 16, “The Fishy Tale of Willem Beukelszoon”. That just made me realise it has taken us 25-odd episodes to get through the 1400s. We are going to have to speed up if we are to get through the History of the Netherlands in the fifty episodes we originally planned. So let’s speed up!
At this point, a whole lot of diplomatic wranglings started. In April there were peace negotiations between Philip and the ducal government… which failed. After this, Philip of Beveren, the ducally appointed admiral of the Low Countries, decided to lay a really heavy chain over the harbour of Veere to stop any piratical attacks from Sluis. In May, Philip’s father Adolf of Cleves and his wife personally went to Sluis to negotiate as well on behalf of Maximilian and Philip the Fair. These negotiations also failed. Philip of Cleves, seeking to shore up his alliances, sent his personal secretary, a guy called Olivier de Kesele to meet with the marshal of France, Philippe de Crèvecoeur, who was, by now, in his 73rd year of life! Which would have been absolutely ancient by contemporary standards. A quick google search suggests that at this time period, the average lifespan for an English male (which we assume were roughly equivalent to French males at the time, though one might have had a greater propensity for baked beans), was 48.8 years. Today’s average life expectancy for men in France is 79.2 years. The point of all this is to suggest that people might have reacted to Crevecoeur the way you might react to seeing a 120 year old bloke dressed up in his formal wear and ruling a world power. Think, Joe Biden. Or the Queen of England, but even older!
Anyways, upon return, Philip’s secretary passed on word that Crevecoeur wanted everybody (meaning Philip of Cleves, Maximilian, Charles VIII etc) to figure out this mess and meet in either Tournai or Arras, but, and you won’t believe this, this plan also went nowhere. After this, representatives from Mechelen were again sent to Philip to try and reach peace between him and the ducal regime, but with his French money he was really in no rush to cease his stubbornness. He refused to take part in any negotiations without the French king’s presence. In this, you can clearly see the constant rhythm of failed mediation that we described in the previous episode. Around the same time, representatives from the Hanseatic league and the King of England, Henry VII, met in Antwerp. They were also trying to locate the long elusive laxative that might counter the crippling commercial constipation that resulted from Philip’s intractable recalcitrance in Sluis.
Things began to really heat up in June, 1491 when Ghent exploded into its own bizarre orgy of violence. Like we said earlier, this revolt was highly reminiscent of the one in Bruges the year before, because it was mainly led by the starving lower classes who supported Philip of Cleves, as opposed to the rich nobles who just wanted peace. It was also somewhat reminiscent of the outburst of fury we talked about in Episode 30 - “A Rebuke of the New Duke”, that happened in 1467 during the ill-timed Joyous Entry of Charles the Bold into Ghent, because it took place at the same time of year during the same civic celebration. In June, the people of Ghent partook in one of their most notorious time-honoured traditions, the procession of the Sint-Lievenszotten, (which literally translates as the Saint Lievens crazies). This was a perennial parade of plastered pilgrims, who drunkenly carried the relics of St Lieven from Ghent to Houtem and back over two days. The symbol these pilgrims wore was a sheep herders staff. On this occasion in 1491, during the march through Ghent, a bunch of them began to loudly and aggressively bleat like sheep, “baa baa baa” and exclaim that the nobility needed to better look after their flock. At the same time, about 300 of Philip of Cleves’ troops, who had hidden within the crowd of pilgrims - wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing, so to speak - said ‘hold my beer’, drew their swords and even more loudly and more aggressively began to chop Ghent’s urban elite to bits, rather un-sheepishly shouting “long live Ravenstein!” Through this sudden eruption of violence, the radical leader Jan van Coppenhole was once again thrust into power in Ghent, alongside his twin brother Frans.
Open warfare once again broke out in Flanders. The armies of Ghent went plundering through the countryside, whilst Philip of Cleves captured the town of Hulst and burnt it to the ground. There was also an unsuccessful attempt to capture Bruges which was repulsed. This was around the same time that the States of Holland sent a message from up north to the ducal government in Mechelen that a peace with Philip of Cleves should be achieved asap, because they had an issue with ‘Bread and Cheese Folk’, which we talked about last episode.
Much like the most recent uprising in Bruges, this one in Ghent was more the death throes of a starving populace rather than a well orchestrated and coordinated political coup. By August, people within the walls were over it and already grumbling for peace. Coppenhole was forced to briefly flee from Ghent to Sluis in October 1491, but returned when he found out that, in his absence, the peace party had started making preparations to send ambassadors to Mechelen, with the aim of allowing Ghent to come to terms with the ducal court. There were negotiations between all possible combinations of parties, all of which, surprise surprise, failed. Meanwhile, devastation continued to be wrought across Flanders and the countryside became, as Arie de Fouw describes it, “a wasteland”. In December, 1491, Maximilian signed a treaty with Denmark and Holstein, in which they explicitly agreed with each other that no ship which wanted to take part in trade with Flanders was allowed to go to Sluis. In agreements like this we can see how the consequences of Philip of Cleves’ stubbornness became clear, as powers in the wider region began to cooperate with each other and manoeuvre against him. The pirate-rebel in his castle in Sluis, was now facing the prospect of not just having to hold out against Maximilian, but also against much of the rest of the North Sea region as well.
The States General meets in Mechelen
But with France at his side, Philip of Cleves was still feeling untouchable. In October of 1491, Charles VIII, acting in his role as the official sovereign of Flanders, declared that Philip of Cleves was now the governor and lieutenant-general of that province. Philip sent his wife off to go and meet with the French and to get as much help as possible. During yet more peace negotiations, around Christmas of 1491, the ducal side really got into the Christmas spirit and basically gave up on all of their demands (meaning that Philip of Cleves could stay in Sluis until Philip the Fair came of age and they would support him financially). But Philip, playing the Grinch, decided that this was the time to up his demands and refused to do anything until he was publicly declared innocent in front of the States General and until it be made clear that it was not he who had betrayed his prince, but his prince who had betrayed him! We can’t help but think that two years of self imposed isolation within Sluis must have really brought out the angsty emo teenager in Philip. He wasn’t into anything. Especially Christmas. Be that as it may, in January of 1492, a meeting of the States General was called to sort this whole business out. It was to be held in Mechelen in February, though it wouldn’t really get going until March, due to a complex suite of hostage swaps which had to take place before anybody could really trust each other enough to go forth into - let’s face it - another likely set of failed negotiations.
Once again, the ducal side acquiesced to a bunch of Philip’s requests, including that Maximilian, Albert of Saxony and the States General would consider the imperial ban against Philip of Cleves to be over, unless the emperor explicitly said otherwise within the next three months. Philip, though, if you hadn’t gathered by now, was a pretty infuriating individual. His wife had just come back from France with extra troops and a bunch of cash, so he responded by making even more demands. The opposing side did not find this reasonable and, yes, the negotiations - everybody all together now - failed.
At this point, the negotiating parties broke up and the avenue of diplomacy had pretty much run its course as far as the issue of Sluis was concerned. In February, the French had released Charles of Egmont, the true heir to the Duchy of Guelders, from the captivity they had kept him in since the Battle of Bethune in 1487, after the cities of that duchy, disaffected by Maximilians rule, paid a ransom for him. Now there was another loose cannon in the north of the Low Countries. Wary of this new threat to Maximilian’s grasp on centralised power, the ducal government realised that they needed to end this business in Flanders once and for all and the States-General met one last time at the end of March, 1492, to agree that war against Sluis, its privateers, and Ghent was now the number one priority. It truly was now Philip of Cleves (and Ghent, but not for much longer) against everyone else. Sluis was to be put to siege which meant that, whoever was left in there, they were in for a terrible experience.
The Coppenhole’s heads roll
After the States General agreed in March, 1492, that war against Sluis and Ghent was the only option left, things began to heat up. First of all, let’s talk about what happened in Ghent. Like we said at the beginning, the pattern this revolt followed was awfully similar to the one we looked at in Bruges in the previous episode. The city was suffering from the same generally dismal conditions that the rest of Flanders had been, plus it had now spent about a year locked in confrontation with the ducal regime, meaning it was running perilously low on food and supplies. During the night of March 28, a group of about 150 Ghentenaars under the command of Jan van Coppenhole snuck out of Ghent and headed south to the town of Geraardsbergen. There they went a-plundering, setting several houses on fire, capturing the captain of the town and stealing whatever they could get their hands on. As they were transporting these captured supplies back to Ghent, however, they were surprised by a bunch of soldiers from Hainault, who attacked them from behind and killed and/or captured a whole lot of them, as well as the all important loot.
Things continued badly for Ghent. In April 1492, just before easter, an attempt was made to transport more supplies from Sluis to Ghent. You’ll remember that Sluis, what with its pirating and pillaging, was absolutely overloaded with food and materials, but was unable to use these to help its allies, due to the hostile armies which blockaded the land around it. According to the Excellent Chronicle of Flanders, an army of about 5 or 6 thousand people left Ghent to Sluis to try and gather supplies. But as this transport mission was returning, they were ambushed by armies from Bruges and Damme and about 100 ships which were loaded with grain and other materials, were captured and sent back to Damme. The Ghentenaars were able to return with a few wagons of supplies, but it must have been a demoralising effort.
The divisions inside Ghent between those who wanted peace and those who wanted to continue the struggle against Maximilian continued to grow ever wider during these desperate last months. There were several failed attempts to open the city’s gates to Albert of Saxony and his armies. On June 14, a group of about 150 men led by Arend de Cleerck van Lederenne, set out from Ghent to try to capture the town of Deinze, but were unable to do so due to their small size. When they returned to Ghent, a confrontation erupted between Arend de Cleerck and Jan van Coppenhole in front of the Schepenhuis, with de Cleerck blaming Coppenhole for the failed capture of Deinze. According to de Cleerke, Coppenhole had promised to send troops, which he never actually did. This confrontation got so heated that a fight broke out. During the clash, the captain-general of Ghent, a shoemaker by the name of Hubert, was murdered by the dean of the shippers guild. De Cleerck’s troops apparently would also have cut Coppenhole down on the spot, if not for de Cleerck’s intervention. Instead, Coppenhole and his followers were arrested and chucked into jail and the peace faction took power.
So Jan van Coppenhole lived to see another day. But only one. Because on the 16th of June, 1492, this new government of Ghent hastily tried Jan van Coppenhole and his brother, Frans, on the charges of having unlawfully killed a lot of different people during their various reigns of terror. This was pretty undeniable. Remember we first talked about the Coppenholes back in episode 40, “The Rhyme and Unreason of Treason”, when they had been heavily involved in the revolt against Maximilian back in 1483. Jan had driven a decade of devilish and disruptive dissatisfaction directed at the duke within Ghent and Flanders as a whole. He had even been so bold as to have his own head stamped onto the back of those subversive coins that Ghent had decided to mint in opposition of Maximilian and Philip. Well, now was the time for that same head to be emancipated from its body, which happened on the Vrijdagsmarkt, where so many before him had experienced the same or similar fates.
So with Ghent’s rebellious leaders now headless and the peace party back in power, the time was nigh for Ghent to come to terms with Albert of Saxony and the ducal government. They immediately entered into peace negotiations, which culminated in the signing of the peace of Cadzand on July 29, 1492. This peace was a humiliation for Ghent and was basically a reversion of Ghent’s relationship with the ducal government all the way back to what it had been in the aftermath of their failed revolt in 1453. Then, the Peace of Gavere had been imposed on the great city, which we spoke about way back in Episode 26, “Beautiful Burgundian Bureaucracy and the Salty Citizens of Ghent”. In case you don’t remember that far back, following that revolt, Philip the Good had deprived Ghent of everything except for its existence, which he had also heavily considered and been advised to take away. The Peace of Cadzand saw Ghent forced to recognise Maximilian as the regent in Flanders for his son Philip, to give up its city militia, to give up the right to appoint its own aldermen and sheriffs, and to let go of the stranglehold it held on the countryside outside of the town. Since the signing of the Great Privilege in 1477, Ghent had managed to regain much of the autonomy and power which had been such a strong part of its identity for so long. With the peace of Cadzand, however, Ghent would have to start again and the city would remain subdued in its relationship with the Habsburgs for another 40 odd years.
Much like with other peaces signed at this time, there was a whole ritual which went along with it. A group of 100 citizens were sent to the town of Hulst, where they were forced to kneel bareheaded at the feet of Albert of Saxony and beg his forgiveness. Jelle Haemers suggests that while the terms of this peace agreement were harsh towards the civic autonomy of Ghent, they were not nearly as severe as they could have been towards the individuals responsible for all of the misery of the last few years. To quote Haemers: “A serious intervention in the Ghent area would probably have strengthened the resistance of [Philip of Cleves]. It is striking that there was no harsh repression (for example the execution of insurgent leaders) or that no one was personally punished in the Peace of Cadzand. A certain leniency was part of the political tactic in 1492 to get Flanders under control.” And this leniency was probably necessary, because reestablishing control of Ghent was a cakewalk compared to the challenge presented by Philip of Cleves in Sluis.
Siege of Sluis
Naturally, after the fall of Ghent, the entire focus of the ducal military operation now fell on figuring out how exactly they were going to remove Philip of Cleves from his almost impenetrable position in the town of Sluis. The first steps towards doing this were undertaken by Philip van Beveren, the ducally appointed admiral of the Low Countries. At the beginning of June he took about 100 ships, many of which had English mercenaries on board, and sailed them to the Zwin to begin blockading Sluis from the sea. There were four huge warships in this group and great preparations were made to attack Sluis. All the craftsmen of Bruges were sent to St Anne ter Muiden to go and dig trenches and build fortifications for the upcoming siege. When a group of English ships arrived at the beginning of July, the people inside Sluis mistakenly believed that they were French ships who were coming to help them and lit large bonfires hailing their arrival. They must have been dismayed when they opened fire as soon as they were in range, with the Excellent Chronicle of Flanders saying that the shots on the first night “were very terrible on the castles and city of Sluis”.
Albert of Saxony scored another victory when he was able to subdue Zierikzee, in Zeeland, on July 10, 1492. Zierikzee had been supporting Sluis in its plundering of the North Sea. According to historian Arie de Fouw, at Zierikzee Albert of Saxony was awarded with a golden rose and a sword from the pope, with which he was named as the “right hand of the empire”. That must have been a blessed feeling, indeed. The feeling was probably less blessed for all the regular people who lived within this war torn region. In the chronicle of Rombout de Doppere, a priest from Bruges who wrote contemporaneously about the period of 1482-1492, he writes that at this time “a pestilence and disease raged…with which men seemed so insane that it was necessary to be guarded and tied with cords; by which disease many were perished.” So if the war didn’t get you, perhaps the plague would. Great. With the subjugation of Zierikzee, basically all of the major ports of Zeeland and Flanders were now under the control of the ducal government and they could begin to further challenge the dominance which Philip of Cleves had enjoyed over the seas from Sluis.
To do this, Albert of Saxony sent a bloke we met in the last episode, Wilwolt von Schaumberg, who had been influential in the crushing of the Cheese and Bread folk in Holland, to go and begin the attack on Sluis. Wilwolt von Schaumberg first went to the town of Vlissingen, where he combined his forces with those of Philip of Beveren. This armada sailed through the other main connection Sluis had to the sea, a treacherous gap known as the Zwarte Gat, the Black Hole. From here they occupied the island of Cadzand, which due to the devastation of the war, the blockades and the plague had a grand total of 12 people left living on it. The occupation put a huge amount of pressure on Philip of Cleves. Cadzand lay just to the north of Sluis and for ships from to get from Sluis to the sea, they either needed to head west, via the Zwin, which was already blockaded, or north east, through the Zwarte Gat. With Cadzand occupied, it would be possible for the ducal forces to completely cut Sluis off by building blockhouses alongside the Zwin and the Zwarte Gat, from which they could destroy any marauding pirate ships. In so doing they would flip the script on everything which had been transpiring for the last few years. Philip of Cleves knew how important it was for Cadzand to be held, so almost immediately led an invasion force of 2000 men and a bunch of artillery from Sluis onto Cadzand. But Wilwolt van Schaumberg was a tricky customer. He had anticipated this move and was waiting with his ships for Philip to make it. As soon as he did, Wilwolt ordered his ships to sail from Cadzand to Sluis, upon which Philip realised he’d better quickly do the same or risk getting cut off from the safety he enjoyed within the walls and castles of Sluis.
In the middle of July, the international coalition which had formed against Philip of Cleves began to bite when the King of England, Henry VII, commanded that a group of 12 ships and 2500 men under the command of Sir Edward Poynings join the siege at Sluis. They arrived around the beginning of August, at which time Poynings and Albert of Saxony met with each other to figure out exactly how they were going to crush Philip of Cleves within Sluis. The strategy they decided upon was for Albert of Saxony’s armies to maintain the attack on one of the castles from the land side, while the English armies attacked the other from the sands on the sea side. This siege was, to put it bluntly, awful. Stuck in sand outside Sluis, the English troops were completely at the mercy of the tides and often found themselves standing in knee high water. Welcome to the Low Countries, friends. When the tide was high, they were forced to cook their food on fires which had been raised above the water. The rising water also meant that their big guns couldn’t shoot anymore. It must have been a truly miserable existence.
Despite being on the same side as each other, there were often miscommunications between the English and German troops, as well as insults being hurled between them, leading Poynings to step in and break up fights which broke out and turned deadly. Yet the English persisted with the siege, despite, according to de Doppere, every single person in the army except for one, the tailor, suffering from disease. A last ditch attempt was made by Philip de Creverouer to persuade the English to leave, but all that piracy had done so much damage to English trade in the Low Countries that pulling out now was just not going to happen. Philip of Cleves himself was in no mood to surrender either - what a surprise - and he let as much be known in a letter to his father, Adolph of Cleves, the very old and very soon-to-be-dead Lord of Ravenstein. Adolph must have despaired at seeing his son and heir in this position, because according to de Doppere he apparently burst into tears upon receiving this letter and swore on the Golden Fleece to disinherit his rebellious son.
For twenty days the fighting at Sluis raged. In his chronicle of England, Edward Hall writes that the English troops continually assaulted the castle, as well as a boat bridge which connected the two castles across the water. In this fighting at least fifty English troops died, including the Earl of Oxford’s brother, George de Vere. By the middle of September, the military situation in Sluis was beginning to look bad for Philip of Cleves and people inside the city were clambering for peace. But Philip’s position was truly thrown into disarray when word arrived in Sluis on the 20th of September that, two days earlier, Adolf of Ravenstein had died in the castle of Souberg, in Zeeland. This old man’s passing, whilst not entirely unexpected, but definitely unplanned, would provide the necessary cut to unravel the Gordian knot that this entire situation had become.
Adolf of Ravenstein dies and Philip agrees to stop fighting
At the end of September, Engelbert of Nassau and another big-shot, the Prince of Chimay (Chimay being just south of Brussels) rocked up in Sluis for another round of negotiations, full of hope that everything might just be different this time round. Eight days of talks followed, which doesn’t seem like much considering the sheer levels of righteous obstinance that everybody had to get through, on both sides. At last, amazingly, they reached an accord. That’s right! They didn’t fail this time! Hooray. But why? Why this time? Well, Ludwig von Eyb the younger, the biographer of Wilwolt von Schaumburg, made the case that two factors were responsible for the outrageous occurrence of these negotiations actually leading somewhere.
The first major factor was the death of Adolf of Cleves. As we bid him adieu, it is worth remembering that Adolf had long been not only a major player in Flanders for decades, but that he had also been a key figure at the start of this series of revolts which began 10 years earlier and have taken us five episodes to get through. Adolf had, after all, been an original member of the rebellious regency council that had denied Maximilians claim to rule in his infant son’s stead. Adolf had been directly responsible for empowering the rebellious Monetan factions in Flanders, as well as for denying Maximilian from seeing his own son for three years. He had shrewdly realigned his loyalties to the ducal side right before the end of the first revolt, but had since witnessed his son realigning his own loyalties in the opposite direction before bunkering down for several years of outright refusal. Now Adolf was dead and, for Philip of Cleves, this meant that his inheritance was on the line. His father’s castles and lands were quickly occupied by ducal forces, with the government basically saying to Philip, ‘yer not gettin’ any of your stuff til you come out of Sluis!’ As honour bound as Philip had proven himself to be, he was still a highborn noble for whom family inheritance, reputation and legacy was paramount. It was a no brainer.
The second reason given by von Eyb for why the talks succeeded this time is the extremely desperate situation into which Sluis had descended. It would seem that the matter of his father’s passing gave a legitimate reason for Philip to bring an end to the suffering within his pirate-den’s city walls. The siege had wrought devastation and hunger and, of late, “tons of women” had been engaging in public proclamatory processions, pleading for peace. As Arie de Fouw put it, “Sluis could not take it anymore and Philip, seeking the chance to remain a big man of the world, could not let it slip. Any further resistance would have been senseless.”
So it was that, on the 9th of October, a bunch of nobles came together on a field just outside Sluis; Philip of Cleves, Engelbert of Nassau, the Prince of Chimay and the Lord of Beveren were all there. On October 12, 1492 it was announced that a peace treaty had been signed between Philip of Cleves and Albert of Saxony. The terms of the treaty were, once again, pretty bloody lenient all things considered. Philip of Cleves, who was by now sporting an absolutely fantastic beard, which we will put a picture of on our website, appeared publicly on his knees before Albert of Saxony and swore allegiance to the ducal government. The imperial ban against Philip was lifted. Philip would receive all the incomes to which he was entitled for his earlier service to Maximilian and his inheritance through his father and his wife would not be infringed. Philip would hand over control and the keys to the larger castle at Sluis to the Duke of Saxony, who would then immediately return them to him. Weird. He was given money to make repairs to the damage which had been done to it and was allowed to keep the castle until Maximilian, or Philip the Fair when he came of age, personally came to relieve him of it. The smaller castle, however, would be handed over immediately and irrevocably to the Duke of Saxony, because, no matter what, they were never going to let them both fall into hostile hands again.
Other conditions included that neither Philip nor the men he had ordered to murder Adrian Villain, the lord of Rasseghem, would be prosecuted for the attack, though they would need to meet with the heirs of Villain to figure out what an appropriate penance would be (he would later agree with them to hold a mass every day for the soul of slain man, as well as undertake a pilgrimage to Rome and complete the Santiago de Compostella). The pirates of Sluis would immediately cease their activities and all foreign ships, meaning those Danish ships which had been plundering the North Sea for Philip would leave within two weeks. Still, there were things in the treaty which rankled Philip of Cleves. As Joey Spijkers writes in his great master’s thesis on this topic, “Albert declares to “have forgiven, quitted, remitted, abolished, and forgive, quit, remit and abolish from especial grace” all “crimes, excesses and abuses” that have been committed against Philip the Handsome”. Philip of Cleves would forever remain obstinate that he had never done anything wrong in this entire affair and would maintain this stance for decades afterwards. Be that as it may, after half an hour, the ceremony was over and a new era of peace began.
That night a huge party was held within the larger castle of Sluis. It must have been strange for Philip to be hosting the people he had been struggling violently against for so long. Not to mention that he had engaged in about 100 previous negotiation attempts with all of those with whom he was now sharing a table. This is part of what makes it difficult to assess Philip of Cleves. One the one hand, he took a solemn oath to protect the Peace of Bruges and went as far as he possibly could in upholding it. But on the other hand, throughout all of those previous negotiations, both sides had variously suggested almost exactly the same terms as the ones that they had finally settled upon, but the only real objective difference between those situations and this one, as they ripped into their feast in the castle at Sluis, was that… his dad had died… and… Philip had wanted his stuff. All of that honour and chivalry which he had professed over the last few years might have just been a way to cover over the fact that Philip of Cleves was a deeply selfish person. Perhaps this might have been part of the reason why Mary of Burgundy had refused to marry him all those years ago.
But that’s by the by. Over the next few weeks, the two armies departed from Flanders and finally - finally - peace returned to the county. No really. It did. We are not going to suddenly throw another random Flemish revolt at you. Flanders was spent and ready for peace. The peace they got was one borne from exhaustion; a peace that only existed because it was all that remained after nearly two decades of war and revolt had destroyed everything else. The population had dwindled, with many towns and villages now deserted. Arie de Fouw finishes this chapter of his biography on Philip of Cleves’ life by pointing out the devastation across the region, with many now disused dikes and sluices having been cut open for military purposes, or decayed after a decade of disorder. He describes that there were so many wolves and wild boars running around, revelling in the post apocalyptic landscape, two years later, the hunting master of Flanders was ordered to go on a six month culling campaign so that the farmers could use the land again. That’s insane to think about. And makes me very glad not to be a Flemish farmer trying to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of it all.
Speaking of post apocalyptic landscape well…ding ding ding, we bet you didn’t know that it is time for Bet you didn’t that was Dutch! Thought we’d forgotten? We would never do that, except in episodes 42 and 17, where we have gaps on our list of “Things You Didn’t Know Were Dutch” and maybe forgot..? Have we used landscape before? I dunno. But landscape! It derives from the Dutch word landschap, a term that came to be used widely from the 17th century in regard to painting views of natural scenery, paintings of… you know… landscapes. The Netherlands has a grand total of one landscape. It’s flat and green. Landscape, bet you didn’t know that was Dutch.
The times they are a-changin’
So now you might be thinking, with this Flemish revolt out of the way, surely life in the Low Countries was due to settle down for a bit and become a bit simpler. But you would be wrong. Because with the release of Charles of Egmont, the Duke of Guelders, that province was about to take Flanders’ place as the bastion of anti-Habsburg feelings within the Low Countries. There was also the question of what to do about the war with France which had once again reared its head, and about the fact that Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret, was still a ‘guest’ of the French court despite having been ignominiously dumped from her betrothal into it. Not to mention that Maximilian’s dad, the Emperor Frederick III, was not long for this world, meaning that Maximilian would soon take his place as emperor and Philip the Fair would soon be of age to rule in the Low Countries in his own right, marking a significant change in the ducal identity.
But that is not the only change that was to come. Because, while we have been looking at how events in the Low Countries unfolded during the 15th century, other events abroad, undertaken by different people in different countries, were going to have extremely far reaching consequences. In fact, perhaps the farthest reaching global consequences yet. From the 1420s, as Philip the Good was wresting control of Holland off his cousin, Jacqueline of Bavaria, the Portuguese were ramping up their exploration of the West African coast, bringing them into contact with people and trade networks there that would soon become expanded to a world scale. In 1488, at the same time as Maximilian was being held captive in Bruges, the Portuguese navigator Bartolemeu Dias was en route to successfully rounding the southern tip of Africa, kicking off the age of European access to Asia by sea. And, on the same day as the signing of the peace treaty between Philip of Cleves and Albert of Saxony, October 12th, 1492, an Italian navigator sponsored by the king and queen of Spain, Christopher Columbus, first set foot on an island of the Bahamas, marking the beginning of the European exploration, invasion and colonisation of the Americas. The world was about to change extremely quickly and our beloved little swamp is going to have an oversized impact on it all.
Sources used:
‘The Burgundian Netherlands, 1477–1521’ in The New Cambridge Modern History, chapter by C. A. J. Armstrong
Dits die Excellente Chronijcke van Vlaenderen by anonymous (1531)
Philips van Kleef by A. de Fouw (1937).
‘Punished and corrected as an example to all’ by J. H. Spijkers
De Vlaamse Opstand van Filips van Kleef en de Nederlandse Opstand van Willem van Oranje: Een vergelijking by Jelle Haemers and Louis Sicking
Chroniques de Jean Molinet. T. 4
‘The Significance of the Siege of Rennes, 1491’ by Susan Abernethy
Dissolving Royal Marriages: A Documentary History 860-1600 by D. L. d'Avray
Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands by Jane de Longh
Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek (NNBW) by Philip Christiaan Molhuysen
De 'dagboek' van Romboudt de Doppere 1491-1498.
Geschiedenis van België. Deel 3 by Henri Pirenne
‘Het beleg van Gent’ by Jelle Haemers
“Henry VII’s expedition to France of 1492: A study of its financing, organisation and supply' by Ian Tanner
Henry VII's New Men and the Making of Tudor England by Steven Gunn