Episode 46: The Treaty of Senlis
In March 1492, the town burghers and knights of Guelders hailed Charles of Egmont as their duke, beginning a four decade period of bitter, contested conflict with the Habsburg Burgundian state. That’s right, just as the revolts in Flanders came to an end with the surrender of Sluis, the football of violent defiance was handballed from Flanders to Guelders. But across most of the Low Countries, a period of relative calm would ensue, as the prins naturel of Burgundy, Philip the Handsome, was now 14 years old and would soon come to rule in his own right, deflating the angst people had at being governed by a foreign prince for the past 15 years. The final siren on this era of instability was blown on May 23, 1493, with the signing of the Treaty of Senlis between Charles VIII and Maximilian. This treaty released Margaret of Austria from captivity in France and saw the counties of Artois, Burgundy and Charolais returned to team Habsburg. Not long after Senlis, Emperor Frederick III would die, essentially elevating Maximilian to that role. The times they were a-changin’, which is basically what all times do. And these were certainly times.
Guelders and its identity within the empire
The end of the 15th century is a peculiar one for looking at some ideas of identity within the Low Countries. A more encompassing ‘Burgundian’ identity had emerged, grown and strengthened in parts of the Low Countries over the previous century, as exhibited by the catch cry of Vive Bourgogne that was often heard throughout the period of revolt and warfare. Yet, individual ideas of belonging were largely still determined locally. Partisanship and factionalism still drove the mechanics of town and city governance at the end of the 15th century, just as it had in the 13th and 14th centuries and this did not wane, even in the face of strengthened ducal power. Arguably, the centralisation of Burgundy went hand in hand with continually strong grassroots identity politics. Issues that arose on a, dare I say it, national stage - such as being a pro or anti-Maxxer, whether France and England were to be trusted, the devaluement of the currency, the treatment of Margaret of Austria or, and here’s an important one, whether you could get any food or not - were discussed and argued on local levels, before being moved up towards the States General and before the prince. It was on local levels that peoples’ group identities were formed and solidified and, often, it was the groups one belonged to that set the tone of one’s opinion. Sound familiar?
How you felt about a big issue would depend mostly on what class of society you belonged to, what group within that class and where, regionally, you were doing all this belonging. The stance a weaver, fuller or porter from Ghent would take towards an issue might differ from that a weaver, fuller or porter from Ypres would, just because of different local agendas. Peoples’ and groups’ thoughts and opinions on ‘Burgundian’ issues differed from Friesland to Flanders, Holland to Liege. There was a lot of “‘I belong to this group, from this particular place and, because of all the history, customs, interests, inter-dependencies and traditions of this group-identity that I belong to - that we have either inherited or chosen - this is what we stand for on this issue’”. Identity markers differed from region to region, town to town, class to class and peoples’ opinions were informed as a result. Someone’s francophobia or francofilia would depend more on what kind of interaction with and dependency on French speakers they had, than how strongly they supported their anti-French duke. It is important to keep this in mind as the rollercoaster of the 16th century takes us plummeting towards a whole lot of contentious issues and - spoiler alert - a pretty large fracturing of society into many more group identities. Such regional identity politics were also at the heart of the four decades-long road of war, rebellion and punishment that Guelders is about to embark upon. as a relative period of peace, growth and stability - born of the exhaustion from war - is enjoyed in the south.
Guelders occupies a particular space on the map of the Low Countries that has it straddling the great Rhine river; as in, the Rhine runs straight through it. All the way back in our earliest episodes, we spoke about the importance of rivers and, particularly, the Rhine river to our story. Remember that, in the minds of the Romans, the Rhine was a specific border that separated Gaul from Germania, dividing one particular group from another. Of course, this is absolute rubbish, but by the end of the 15th century the inheritance of this Roman perception had held fast. In the minds of many Guelderians, particularly town citizens, just as Guelderian territory stretched over the Rhine and into the imperial, Germanic lands, so too did their identity. Perhaps more than any other of the Low Countries, entrenched within Guelderian identity politics was the narrative that they belonged naturally within the empire.
Guelders boasts one of the oldest settlements in the Low Countries, Nijmegen, which began as a Roman outpost. The city, being the most powerful in Guelders, was a physical attachment to a Guelderian narrative that tied them to the Reich. As is the way of these things, this then also tied them directly back to the ancient Roman empire. Which is not entirely incorrect, as the city had begun as a Roman fort which was granted imperial rights by the Emperor Frederick II way back in 1230. Not even 20 years after this, though, these rights had been sold off to the count of Guelders by the King of the Romans, William II, whose story we touched on waaay back in the first half of episode 11 - The murder of Floris V.
Anyway, Guelderians and, in particular, Nijmegeners, were more than willing to overlook that little detail and, by the late 15th century, were still invested in their connection with the Romans and the empire. Contemporary 15th century Guelderian chronicler, Willem van Berchen, a Nijmegen native who lived from around 1415-1481, was the canon of a church which had a 12th century memorial stone in it. The stone marked the restoration of the fortress at Nijmegen by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and on it claimed that the ‘first Roman monarch’, Julius Caesar, had personally founded Nijmegen. Van Berchen, writing three centuries later, sticks fast to this, claiming also that Charlemagne had restored it even four centuries before Frederick Barbarossa did.
“Nijmegen is not bound by feudalities, because Nijmegen is imperial…Yes, our imperial town of Nijmegen excels among all the cities and places in our region, generously endowed with grants and privileges by many Roman kings and emperors, to the advantage and honour of the Empire.”
Another contemporary, poet Johannes de Speculo who lived in the town of Erkelenz, south of Nijmegen and east enough to today be in Germany, dedicated whole works to the story of Julius Caesar personally building dikes and seizing the land from the clutches of the sea. So this narrative and concept of Guelderian identity being borne out of Rome was strong and widely spread.
As a result, because of these particular imperial identity markers, major establishments and states outside the empire, such as Burgundy or France, could go and get stuffed. With the rise and aggression of Burgundy, of course, this became solidified into outright contempt. This is succinctly put by Aart Noordzij in his article Against Burgundy: the appeal of Germany in the Duchy of Guelders (which is also a responsive argument to a seminal book on the Guelderian court or the period, called In the Shadow of Burgundy, by Gerard Nijsten both of which we have leaned upon heavily.)
“The cities and knights of Guelders, and most of the dukes, were strongly oriented towards the east: towards the Empire, towards Germany. This orientation involved a fundamental mistrust of Burgundy. “The Empire’ and ‘Germany’ stood for liberty, freedom and self-determination, while ‘Burgundy’ and ‘France’ were associated with oppression and servitude.”
Getting back up to speed with Guelders
We have been loosely following the contemporary goings-on in Guelders for some time and these particular events since episode 32, Charles, King of Burgundy? Since our production of this podcast seems to have slowed down into real time history pace, that probably feels like it was 30 years ago so, to quickly bring us all back on to the same page: in that episode we saw how, in 1463, the Duke of Guelders, Arnold, had been abducted by men in the service of his son, Adolf. Charles the Bold had directly intervened in 1471, while the younger Adolf was staying with him at Hesdin. Charles’ troops had broken the older Arnold out of prison and brought him before the Duke of Burgundy, whereupon Charles had ordered Adolf to cede to his father. Adolf (bringing in the imperial identity narrative just mentioned) had told Charles the Bold that he answered only to his liege lord, the emperor. Following this, the older Arnold was released back to Guelders to drum up support for Burgundy, whereas Adolf remained with Charles, tried to escape, was recaptured and thereafter, like his father had been, was imprisoned.
In Guelders, the older Arnold had largely failed to get the support of the estates, probably much because, again, “Burgundy was associated with oppression and servitude”. Arnold had then sold off the Duchy to Charles and, three days after signing the will, died, leaving the Duke of Burgundy as, also, the Duke of Guelders. To ram the point home, Charles had brought his ducal death-train upon the Duchy, really not doing a great job of changing the perception that “Burgundy was associated with oppression and servitude.” By the summer of 1473, Charles had conquered the city of Nijmegen and taken over Guelders, instituting an oppressive occupying administration that cemented the Burgundian reputation in the duchy. Adolf’s children with Catherine of Bourbon, twins named Charles and Philippa, were wrapped up in Burgundian cloth and shifted off to the south to be raised in Ghent. Adolf remained imprisoned in Hesdin and his inheritance was sold off to Burgundy.
When Charles the Bold died and the turmoil of Mary’s succession began, the reaction in Guelders was to cast off the Burgundian yoke. The occupying administration crumbled. A friar from the town of Duisburg wrote of this:
“Then, all those who had subjugated the country of Guelders, and as officials, instituted by this duke, had ruled it, turned their back to flee, all of them to their own country, so that in a few days, indeed, not one of those alien French or Picards could be seen in the country; yet countless of them had occupied the country only to lay it to waste.”
As for Adolf, well in Episode 38 we saw how he was released from prison in 1477, tried to win the hand of Mary of Burgundy in marriage, but, rather, won an inglorious death by Frenchman while at the head of a squabbling Flemish army. His sister, another Catherine, had ruled Guelders in his stead but was always under threat by their uncle, William of Egmont, who was pro Burgundian. By 1481, Maximilian had managed to isolate Catherine, forcing her into a deal that left Guelders pacified… for the time being. But being kept busy with the other goings on throughout his territories in the Low Countries, Maximilian was unable to quell the resentment felt in Guelders towards Burgundy. Another strange example of identity politics emerges here, particular to Guelders. Even though there was a pro-imperial history and sentiment and Maximilian was literally the son and successor of the emperor, he was also the head of the Burgundian army that conquered the territory in 1481 and whose administrators were once again seeking to take charge of the duchy. In so many of the low countries anti-Maxxer outrage had come from his being a foreign, imperial prince. In Guelders, no matter how imperial he was, he was still Burgundy. Local hopes for independence had to find another candidate for leading them and the one that made sense was the young male of Adolf’s twin children, Charles, who was being brought up as, essentially, a high-noble hostage of the Burgundian state.
Charles of Egmont
There isn’t a lot of information available about the earliest years of Charles of Egmont’s life, but what is known suggests that he was brought up by the Burgundian court with the type of dignity and decorum that someone of his privileged position could expect. When he and his sister were brought to Ghent in the summer of 1473, they were just 5 years old. The children featured in the pageantry of the ducal court: both had held candles at Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian’s wedding in 1477 and Charles had stood directly behind the archduke Maximilian at Mary’s funeral less than 5 years later. On her deathbed, probably feeling a little guilty about holding the two nobles hostage for years, Mary of Burgundy had included in her testament that Charles and Philippa should either be reinstated in Guelders, or be given an equivalent position of honour. Perhaps as a gesture towards the last wishes of his wife, Maximilian did, in fact, accede to a request by Anne of Beaujeu, the regent of France, for Philippa to be released and sent to the French court. Why would Anne of Beaujeu care about them? Well, because she was married to Peter of Beaujeu, who also happened to be their uncle. On 1 September, 1485, the Beaujeu’s organised for Philippa to be married to Rene II of Lorraine, the guy who had defeated Charles the Bold at Nancy. Marrying the man who had killed the guy who had taken her hostage as a child and stolen her familial lands must have been quite a satisfying moment, I imagine. They would have 12 children together over the next 20 years, which again, suggests satisfaction if you ask me.
Charles, however, remained in Maximilian’s grasp. His teacher was Maximilian’s right-hand-man in the Low Countries, Engelbert of Nassau, who taught Charles all about politics and warfare. He learned to speak French fluently, but never really mastered the Dutch language. At the age of 17, Charles took part in the siege of Oudenaarde in 1484, fighting on behalf of Maximilian against the rebellious Flemish. In 1487, he again fought in one of Maximilian’s battles, this time against the French at the Battle of Bethune. During this battle, however, Charles and his military tactics teacher, Engelbert of Nassau, were themselves taught a lesson by Philip de Crevecoeur when they were captured by the Marshal of France and taken into custody. For the next 5 years, Charles would take part in his family’s now time honoured tradition of being held prisoner, this time in Peronne as a guest of the French king.
During this period, various attempts were made by Maximilian to get Charles of Egmont freed from his captivity, presumably so he could, once again, take him into his own custody. Philip de Creveouer set the ransom for Charles of Egmont at the ludicrously large sum of 200 thousand francs. Maximilian baulked at this suggestion, pointing out that Charles was a prince without a country, and offered him 70000 instead. The deal was not accepted. Maximilian then tried to appeal to the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon to get them to help negotiate with the King of France to get the demanded ransom reduced, but when Maximilian tried to marry Anne of Brittany behind the French king’s back, well, any chance he had of winning sympathetic gestures was ruled out. In September 1491, he developed a few plans with the Rene II, Duke of Lorraine, to split the ransom between them, but these plans never came to fruition, because, unbeknownst to them all, the anti-Burgundian crew in Guelders had also been scheming.
The Burgundian government in Guelders had been critically weakened by the level of resources that the French and Flemish crises had demanded. The town estates and the knights of Guelders, led by a local count called Vincent van Meurs, started correspondence with Charles imprisoned in Peronne in 1489. They were looking to pay his ransom and get him released so he could return and be installed as the independent Duke of Guelders. They didn’t manage to raise even half of the funds, but van Meurs convinced - or outright ordered - his grandson to go down as a proxy prisoner and step in for Charles until the rest of the ransom was paid. ‘Only for a couple of months!’ they told him. If you haven’t listened to our bonus episode on the history of comics in the Low Countries, this is the story that we cover at the beginning of that. So it was that at the beginning of 1492, Vincent van Meurs’ grandson stepped into the cell at Peronne and Charles of Egmont stepped out as a free man.
Imagine, for a second, what must have been going through Charles of Egmont’s mind throughout these five years of imprisonment at Peronne. He had been held captive for pretty much his entire life, even if treated with noble gloves, first by Charles the Bold, then Mary of Burgundy, then Maximilian. He had fought for Maximilian against the French, but then was captured by Charles VIII and left hanging for five more years by the bloke he had risked his own life for. Charles must have been fuming when a chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece named him to their ranks in 1491. It was the highest honour a nobleman could get, yet he remained imprisoned. This would remain forever a sore point for the young Duke of Guelders. In his dissertation on this topic, titled “Guelders and Habsburg 1492-1527”, Jules Struick writes of the “bitterness that the young duke would carry with him all his life at the attitude of Maximilian, who abandoned him when he had just been caught in his service. He will speak of it later with fierce resentment, with the convulsive hatred of someone who as a child and growing man was hurt to the very depths of his being. He returns repeatedly to this painful childhood memory." Reminiscent to as he had done with Philip of Cleves, Maximilian once again burned a young nobleman, turning a potentially useful pawn into a powerful enemy who would remain a thorn in his side for years, or, in this case, decades. Because having finally won his freedom at the age of 24 for the first time in nearly twenty years, Charles of Egmont would spend the rest of his life violently defending it.
Charles’ takeover of Guelders
Having successfully purchased the freedom of Charles of Egmont, the towns and States of Guelders began to rumble with revolution and revolt against their weakened Habsburg overlords. Maximilian wrote to Duke Charles on February 6, 1492, explaining all the attempts he had made to get him released from jail and trying to convince him to go to Ghent (haha yeah right) and to definitely not make war against him. He also sent an advisor named Cornelis van Bergen to go and assess the situation and to make sure that Maximilian’s stadhouder in Guelders, Adolf of Nassau, was making necessary defensive preparations just in case war came. But van Bergen wrote back to Maximilian with the realist’s perspective that Charles’ takeover of Guelders would be “short work”. Adolf of Nassau had been powerless to even stop Vincent van Meurs’ gofundme campaign to free Charles of Egmont, there was now little chance of him stopping his comeback. In mid-March, the stadhouder was taken prisoner in the town of Arnhem and promptly ejected from the city. Ajuus. On March 25, 1492, Charles of Egmont arrived in the town of Roermond and shortly thereafter pretty much the entirety of Guelders recognised him as Charles II, the rightful Duke of Guelders. Only a few stronghold castles defied him, as well as the town of Wageningen, which was under the occupation of a Maximilian loyalist. This was problematic because of its strategic position, from which one can cause havoc on the communities of the Betuwe and as far as Utrecht.
The entire territorial takeover was remarkably quick, aided by the fact that so much of Guelders was united behind the return of Duke Charles II. When Charles the Bold had marched into Guelders two decades earlier, the unity of the nobility had been fractured by the in-fighting and squabbling during the Arnold/Adolf feud, and the Duke of Burgundy had been able to rule with an iron fist. Maximilian’s rule had been softer in its approach towards Guelders, highly constrained and distracted as he was by needing to deal with things like being personally locked up in Bruges and forced to watch people have their heads chopped off for 3 months and, you know, the whole Flemish revolt and wars against France. But despite the latest iteration of Burgundian governance in Guelders not being as oppressive as the first, twenty years of military occupation had still created enough resentment in Guelders to be able to make almost everyone agree that Duke Charles II was for sure a more attractive prospect than what they had.
But it wasn’t all rosy for the young Duke. Like the rest of the territories in the Low Countries, Guelders had been bled dry by the last two decades of war under Burgundian and Habsburg rule. The financial situation in Guelders was so bad that it would take Charles of Egmont eight years before he was finally able to pay off the remaining money owed for his ransom and secure the release of Vincent van Meurs grandson, whom he had initially promised would only spend three months in jail. There was also the slight issue that Maximilian’s son, Philip the Handsome, was also going around calling himself the Duke of Guelders. Be that as it may, Charles of Egmont had the overwhelming support of powerful cities like Arnhem and Doesburg which sent weapons and provisions; the small towns which rallied to him far more earnestly than they ever had for Burgundian/Habsburg officers; and even a couple of monasteries, which sent money. He went on the offensive and sured up his position by taking Wageningen, the only town which had remained loyal to the Burgundian side. Within a month, the only remaining resistance to him in the province was championed by two noblemen Peter van Hemert and Cornelis Pieck, who controlled two castles, one named Poederoyen and the other Beesd, as well as his second cousin, Frederick, Count of Egmont, who was in Baar and Buren.
By the end of April, 1492, Maximilian had come to learn that Guelders had slipped out of his grasp. He wrote a sternly worded letter in which he somewhat threatened, somewhat pleaded with Charles of Egmont and the towns of Guelders to step back from the course they were taking and to return their obedience to him. He lambasted Vincent van Meurs, the man who had successfully raised the ransom to free Charles of Egmont, as an “agitator” and played the honour card, suggesting to Charles that he had always treated him like a “true son” which…is not how Charles felt about their relationship. Maximilian was definitely making a few appeals to any Stockholm syndrome which Charles might have felt after an almost entire lifetime in captivity. Charles, however, remained bitter towards Maximilian and the Habsburgs. (How he felt about the French, on the other hand, was completely the opposite and that would cause its own specific issues for him and Guelders later on) So, instead of heeding Max’s pleas and entreaties, Charles continued travelling around Guelders with a huge retinue, making joyous entries, receiving homage and reaffirming the different rights of towns and cities. All of this and his elaborate court style, not to mention his massive entourage, cost a fortune, which did not help the territorial financial woes that were being heaped upon his newly ducal shoulders. But you have to make an impression, I suppose.
On June 19, 1492, Charles of Egmont wrote to the Emperor, Frederick III, asking to be recognised by him as the rightful Duke of Guelders. This pretty much amounts to Charles writing to a granddad, asking for a title his son was wielding on behalf of his grandson. But again, remember, in the minds of Guelders, the empire (i.e. Frederick) = freedom, whereas Burgundy (i.e. Maximilian) = oppression. The usual way one would make such a request was by sending a big entourage which would hand out wads of cash to all the imperial and papal officials they would come across along the way. Not being in a position to do this, however, Charles had to make do with this letter, in which he explained all the backstory as to why the title should actually be his and pledged to recognise the Emperor as supreme authority over him. He also wrote to Maximilian, explaining that he had made this request to Frederick III, that all he wanted was peace with both Maximilian and Philip the Handsome, and denying that he was planning to attack them with French troops. The situation within Guelders remained in limbo at the beginning of 1493, with the exception that in April of that year Charles was able to capture one of those remaining strongholds which held out against him, the castle of Poederoyen.
We will leave Guelders here for this episode now, however, because it was at this point that events abroad were falling into place which would have a lasting impact on the shape of things to come.
Margaret of Austria, the ex-Queen of France
At this point in our narrative we are about to begin the reign of Archduke Philip the Handsome which is going to be a pretty quick, but pretty wild ride. However, as handsome as he purportedly was, it is not Philip’s life to which the History of the Netherlands will be tethered for the upcoming three decades. Rather, it is that of his sister, Margaret of Austria and so it is with her that we shall start.
Margaret had been married to the now French king, Charles VIII, since she was two. She had been raised to become the Queen of France, however this had been unexpectedly stripped away from her in late 1491 following her father’s attempt to outplay Charles VIII by marrying Anne of Brittany by proxy and styling himself the new Duke of Brittany. Charles VIII had responded to this by dumping Margaret and heading off to Brittany in person to marry Anne himself, completely undermining Maximilian and avoiding the undesirable situation of being flanked by Habsburgs on multiple fronts. Nobody wants to be the meat in a Habsburger burger.
Once cast asunder, Margaret started living in a weird limbo; simultaneously free from blame, yet suffering extreme humiliation. She was shuffled off to Melun by Charles VIII who, despite how close they had been throughout their childhood marriage, now ceased considering her with any regard at all. There is correspondence from Margaret at this time to Anne of Beaujeu, Charles VIII’s elder sister who had ruled as regent in his stead, and with whom Margaret shared close ties. The letter reveals Margaret’s strong character, as well as her personal emotional struggle during this time. In the letter, Margaret begs Anne to not let her be separated from a companion whom Charles had ordered to leave. She writes: “Madame my good aunt, I must complain to you as to the one in whom I have my hope, of my cousin whom they wanted to rob me of, who is all the pastime that I have, and when I shall have lost her I no longer know what I will do.” Compared to the extremely privileged previous decade of childhood Margaret had enjoyed in Amboise, being abruptly slapped in the face with the new reality she found herself in must have stung. Once again, we see in her experience a young woman being deprived of her position when political circumstances no longer necessitated her occupation of it. Biographer Jane de Ionghe describes Margaret’s letter as “a touching expression of youthful determination”, comparing her way of communicating to the messy manner of her father Maximilian. “Margaret in her twelfth year appears to have far surpassed her father in capacity of expression and conciseness of style.”
In parts of her homeland, people reacted angrily to her misfortune. In Burgundian lands under French occupation the treatment of Margaret is said to have catalysed anti-French aggression, such as in Arras in November 1492, where people rose up against the French garrison, to cries of Vive Bourgogne!
The Treaty of Senlis
On May 23, 1493, both Margaret and those towns and villages enduring the on-going war, were finally released from their respective forms of feckless fortune, when Margaret’s father Maximilian and brother Philip signed a peace deal with French king, Charles VIII, called the Treaty of Senlis. Senlis brought an end to the conflict that had raged on and off for decades between Burgundy and France and which had even been the cause of her going to France in the first place! Her marriage to Charles VIII had been in the terms of the Treaty of Arras. Now, the treaty of Senlis would bring her back. In addition to releasing Maragaret back to the Burgundian court, the conditions of Senlis included that the territories of Artois, Charolais and the Franche-Comte - imperial Burgundy - as part of her dower lands, were returned to the Burgundian fold, although a few cities and castles would remain under French administration. The original Duchy of Burgundy, however, would not be returned to the family who had, until recently, borne its name; whose independent power had begun in the territory over a century before and whose most eminent ancestors were even buried at a special tomb in its capital, Dijon. Anyway, the ducal family were not the Burgundians any longer. They were Habsburgs and these Habsburgs had to agree to a few things in this treaty, like that they would not seek to recover the lost Duchy of Burgundy by military means; Maximilian also had to stop styling himself the Duke of Brittany and a promise was made of ensuing friendship between Charles VIII and Philip the Fair. The treaty also explicitly named the allies which each side counted on, with the Duke of Guelders, Charles of Egmont, being placed on the French side. Senlis also granted the fiefdom of the House of Flanders to the Empire. No longer was Flanders beholden as a vassal to the French king. That’s all it took! Actually, this would still be contentious for a while, but you know, baby steps.
The Treaty of Senlis was generally pretty good for the Burgundian/Habsburg side. Really, it was a magnanimous one by the French King. Why, then, did he undo so many years of his predecessors’ bitter entanglement in Low Country affairs? Well, in the interest of keeping our eye on the wider context of European politics at the time, it is worth, for a moment, considering Charles VIII’s situation in 1492-93, because Senlis is actually one part of a wider pattern of international policy that would have far reaching consequences for all of Western Europe. The young king had succeeded Louis XI after his sister had spent his childhood merely trying to hold the whole thing together. Now that he was ruling in his own right, he looked at the nefarious web of international conflict and division that his father, the Universal Spider, had long woven and which he had inherited. He now sought to unweave much of this web; Senlis was the third of a triplet of international treaties that he signed over the course of 1492-93 which brought him accord with the English King Henry VII via the Treaty of Etapes, the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Catherine of Aragon and Castile with the Treaty of Barcelona and, now, Burgundy (and the Habsburgs) with the Treaty of Senlis. This was a significant and comprehensive peace process that deliberately aimed to extricate France from the bog of conflicts it had long been mired in. That is why the terms of each were largely beneficial to France’s counterpart within. For example, Charles VIII paid off French debt to England in the Treaty of Etapes; ceded disputed territories in the Pyrenees in the Treaty of Barcelona and, well, we’ve already mentioned what Burgundy got in the Treaty of Senlis.
Whatever Charles’ VIII exact motives for doing this, it was an effective move. He was facing a coalition between England, Burgundy and Spain that had to be dealt with and, by giving such big concessions, he had held their potential combined force at bay. Furthermore and, in the historical narrative often cited as the main reason for his concessionary approach, he was shortly to set off on an Italian campaign, making big on his claim to the crown of Naples. This would be a costly, fruitless endeavour that would outlast not only Charles VIII, but also the bloke who would succeed him and would occupy much of the attention of the NEXT king after that too. So why is this important for us? Well, the up-coming decades of French royal obsession in Italy will give the Low Countries something it had not had for quite a while. A bit of breathing space from French attention (aka attention); the burden of having to constantly worry about impending or actual French invasion was lessened. This, perhaps, would have the biggest influence on the era of relative stability that would now unfold.
As for Margaret, after over a year of lingering in Melun - with consternation and uncertainty her most constant companions - she could now leave her whole French royal experience behind. Thanks to the terms of Senlis, she and her entourage returned north, her procession through the lands of her now-former subjects characterised by the grace, dignity, wit and humour for which, as an adult, she would be renowned. One story recounts how she had been given a local wine in one French town, meant to honour her. It had been a particularly poor year, however, and the wine was unfavourably sour. Upon tasting it, her quick intelligence and tongue made the play on the French words sarment, meaning ‘branch’ (by which she meant the grapevine) and serment which means ‘oath’ (and by which she meant specifically the oath of the king). She remarked how both sarment and serment had been worthless this year. SNAP!
From young Margaret’s point of view, she was now heading back to a homeland, court and family that she had not known since being handed over by them to France as a two year old. When she arrived in Cambrai on June 12, 1493, she was met by one family member who could maybe appreciate the depths of her travails as a political pawn more than most; a woman who had her own wealth of both amazing and terrible experiences to draw upon as just such a pawn; Margaret’s great-step-grandmother and namesake, Margaret of York. The elder Margaret had little idea of what sort of person the younger would be, arriving back into the Burgundian fold, but they had the chance to reacquaint as they headed back to the former’s dower town of Mechelen.
They arrived on the 22nd of June, 1493. How excited Margaret’s family must have been to have her back. Now, surely, she could stay safe in their home and they could make up for the years together, already lost. Nope. That is looking at it with a lens that is way out of focus for these times. Of course they were happy to see each other and become acquainted, but we are talking about the Habsburgs here and, specifically, the Habsburgs as moulded by the imperial idealism of their newest patriarch, Maximilian, the White knight emperor of fairytales and fables. His primary agenda was always doing whatever served the interests of his family’s prestige. It is worth quoting Jane de Ionghe once more here for a second, if only to enjoy the imagery she invokes: “These "interests" were in large measure the butterfly imaginings of Maximilian's tireless brain, and he pursued them with his unquenchable energy, his irrational optimism. To be Duke of Brittany, or King of Hungary, Emperor of Byzantium, leader of the Holy War against theTurks; all this appeared, alternately or simultaneously, upon his program. Giving himself no time for regret over whatever escaped him or for lengthy speculation upon the results of this mercurial butterfly chase, Maximilian wandered about through the Empire, through Europe, inconsequent and charming, the despair of his councillors, the delight of his subjects, the idol of his hunting friends, the laughing stock of perspicacious ambassadors like Machiavelli the Florentine, or Quirini the Venetian.”
From Maximilian’s point of view, in the flurry and flutter of his mercurial butterfly chase, the return of Margaret re-equipped him with an extremely valuable political pawn. Once again in charge of her life, Maximilian could now utilise Margaret’s hand in marriage for his dynastic interests. ‘Welcome back, beloved daughter, now hang tight while your brother and I find someone else to whom we can wed you and send you. All for the family! Huzzah!’ That is where we will leave Margaret, just for now; returned to Burgundian lands for a time, but fully aware that her destiny was not in her hands.
The wider implications
Following the signing of Senlis in May, 1493, several other dominoes fell that transformed the wider political stage of western Europe. Philip the Handsome, Max’s son and Margaret’s older brother, turned 15 two months after the accord, legitimising him to formally bear his princely mantle on his own handsome shoulders. Less than a month after that, in August, 1493, his paternal grandfather and Max’s father, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, did the boardwalk boogie into the big beyond and took his leave of this world after a pretty impressive 78 years; 41 of them in possession of the imperial sceptre. This obviously had big implications for Philip as well, not to mention for his father, who now became - for all intents and purposes anyway - the new Emperor. The States General took this opportunity to formally request/declare that the prins naturel of the Burgundian realm, Philip, be elevated unto his due and become the Archduke of Burgundy in his own right. From this point, Burgundy was once more ruled by a native male. This, in and of itself, made a huge difference to the unruliness-metre, with the willingness of Burgundian and, particularly, Netherlandish (and, particularly, Flemish) subjects to comply with the ducal authority at the highest levels they had been since, well, since they’d last had had a native, of-age male Duke. Guelders being an exception, of course, not to mention other hotspots like Friesland where anti-ducal sentiment still simmered.
During this entire period of warfare and revolt, the Low Countries had changed in more ways than one. Socially and demographically there had been both big and subtle shifts. Small towns and villages all across the southern Low Countries had been decimated, if not entirely wiped out, during the years of warfare and consequent looting and pillaging by soldiers. Poverty abounded, not just in Flanders but across the Low Countries, as we saw with Speckhaalders, those rovers who had wandered the countryside begging and stealing during the Bread and Cheese revolt in Holland. Which ding ding ding ding brings us to today’s instalment of bet you didn’t know that was Dutch! The English word ‘rover’, which today we use for a person who likes to aimlessly wander around (which, honestly, is one of the best things you can do in life), was also archaically used in the way we just used it, to mean “a pirate”. Which, again, is also one of the best things you can be in life. The word ‘rover’ comes from the middle Dutch word “roven”, meaning to rob. How rude that we have decided that the most generic name for our most loyal companions is robber. Anyways, rover! Bet you didn’t know that was Dutch. Now back to it…
During these past years, some of the great towns in the Low Countries had also undergone entire identity crises. Ypres’ population had crashed from maybe 80 thousand at its peak eight decades earlier to just 5 thousand people now. Huge swathes of the textile industry had left for smaller West-Flemish towns, such as Hondschooten, which were taking the reins of an industry that had been the foundation stone of the big Flemish cities since their inception. The entire international commerce sector of Bruges, likewise built out of the textile industry but having expanded so greatly from there, had pretty much up and shifted to Antwerp as a direct result of the Flemish revolt, dramatically changing the identities of both cities. The economic crisis surrounding the revaluing of the coinage which we spoke about in episode 43 prevailed and would continue to be a problem for some time, as ardently as it was tackled within the States General. Simply put, things were different now than they had been in 1477 because of nearly twenty years of extra war and deprivation that had been heaped onto the similar issues that already existed in 1477.
Subtle shifts had occurred, however, that were more reminiscent of butterfly wings; shifts that, over time, would blend into massive hurricanes of change. During the previous few decades, the ways that people in the realm conceptualised, understood and relied upon their polity - the way they were governed - had shifted. Most of all this was because the role of the States General had changed, with the institution cementing itself into a position of irrevocable importance. All of the territories that made up the Low Countries and Burgundy were still beholden to the whims of their local nobility and, importantly, the allegiances that their local nobility held - essentially whether they were with the dukes of Burgundy or the French king. As you will recall, Charles the Bold’s death had seen many nobles cast off their loyalty to the former and pledge to the latter, moving from Burgundy to France. Some had wavered hither and thither between the two over the years. Nonetheless, no matter which prince enjoyed the allegiance of the noble estates, there were only very few cases during this 15 years of turmoil when members the nobility went into direct revolt against their prince, being the Hook affiliated uprisings in Holland and Utrecht and what was going down in Guelders which we covered in the first half of this episode.
You are probably screaming ‘didn’t we just spend half a year on the FLEMISH revolt?!’ Yes, we did. But, semantics. From the point of view of Philip of Cleves and his rebel allies, the Flemish revolt was always on behalf of their prince, Philip the Handsome, and against the tyranny of his father, their not-prince, Maximilian. In accordance with an argument made by Koenigsberger in his tome Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments, in general very few of the nobility put provincial or local loyalty or agenda before loyalty to their prince, mainly because the nobility generally attached themselves to the rising star of said prince and were willing to ride that star as far as they could. The other estates, being the clergy and the city burghers of each province, were not death-riding the coat-tails of the princely crust as much, rather working around the ruler’s machinations with eyes to pushing their own agendas whenever they could. And this is important to keep in mind. Societies are in constant flux and, in this flux, behaviours transition between being uncustomary and customary. This transition happens because every person involved is pushing the limits of what is collectively acceptable based on where their own interests and agenda lies. In times of crisis within the ducal court and amongst the upper nobility, the rising eminence of these other estates meant that they could push for greater freedoms, but also, strangely, that they could provide some sense of stability in times when there really was none. Examples include the devisement of the Great Privilege, when the upper nobility was in absolute crisis around Mary’s succession to Charles the Bold and many Burgundian nobles had jumped ship to the French king’s vassalage. The burghers and the clergy, on the other hand, had nowhere else to jump! Their interests lay in holding the state apparatus together while pushing for greater civil rights.
In the aftermath of Charles the Bold’s death, the behaviour of many members of the estates was to react against the decades of centralisation and dense bureaucracy that the Burgundian dukes had shoved down their throats. From 1477 there was an ardent push towards the structure and culture of a more federative system of governance across all the Low Countries, with a ruler who was a part of the apparatus, rather than the sole determiner of how it looked.
It is quite remarkable that the States General as an institutional body had managed to uphold and even strengthen its validity and legitimacy throughout the entire period. Much of the turmoil generated came from the Flemish town estates while openly manipulating the States General. Yet the States General was representative of the diversity of ideas and opinions generated from all the many different identities existing across the Low Countries. While the rebellious and even revolutionary elements pushed the limits, more conservative elements sought to reign them back in. What emerged, in hindsight, looks like tempered, even undeliberate progressiveness. The envelope of what was customarily acceptable had been pushed quite absurdly far, but had also been self-regulated. Perhaps the best example of what we mean by this is in one of the rights extracted via the Great Privilege and reaffirmed in 1488. The right for the States General to assemble without ducal permission had been granted by Mary - basically under duress - and it had even been used during the chaos of Maximilian’s imprisonment in Bruges. Spoiler alert, the rights of the Great Privilege were about to be pretty much fully revoked, including the right to self-assembly. But, again with hindsight, the greatest impact of having achieved the right came from its very existence rather than its actual utilisation as a political manoeuvre. That is the process of something shifting from what is unacceptable and uncustomary towards what is acceptable and customary. The boundaries of what a parliamentary body could attain from a prince (or princess) had been extended and, even though they would be brought back in in the short term, on a long term basis… effectively the genie was out of the bottle.
By the end of Maximilian’s first tenure as regent, the States General was vastly stronger than it had been by the end of Charles the Bold’s. As you may recall, at this time, Albert of Saxony had taken over as Max’s lieutenant and he had been sure to include the States General as much as he could in the decision making process, giving tacit ducal consent to the elevated position that the body had come to hold in the general understanding of how the entire region of the Low Countries was governed. The biggest crisis for everybody was the currency turmoil and it was from within the States General that this problem was being tackled. With the death of Emperor Frederick III and the imminent ascension of Maximilian to the imperial throne, it was the States General that now called for Philip to be formalised as the new ruler. The transfer of powers occurred shortly thereafter and, in September 1494, Philip was inaugurated as the ridgy-didge, au naturel Archduke of Burgundy and Lord of the Netherlands. According to Olivier de la Marche, Maximilian gave him some solid advice that shows that the Austrian white-knight prince-cum-emperor had, in fact, learned a thing or two about dealing with the inhabitants of these realms. “...And to let you know the truth, I write this as a precept to you, never to give authority to those who should live under your command and authority. But I should advise you well that you should ask their counsel and aid to conduct your great affairs.”
And it is to future episodes of History of the Netherlands that we shall leave those great affairs, when Philip the Handsome goes to work putting his stamp on the Low Countries before finding himself a handsome opportunity for an Iberian holiday…
Sources used:
‘The Burgundian Netherlands, 1477–1521’ in The New Cambridge Modern History, chapter by C. A. J. Armstrong
Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands by Jane de Longh
Vaderlandsche historie. Deel 4 by Jan Wagenaar
Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments by Helmut Koenigsberger
‘Against Burgundy. The Appeal Of Germany In The Duchy Of Guelders” by Aart Noordzij in Networks, Regions and Nations: Shaping Identities in the Low Countries, 1300-1650 edited by Robert Stein and Judith Pollmann
In the Shadow of Burgundy: The Court of Guelders in the Late Middle Ages by Gerard Nijsten
‘Karel van Egmond” in Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek. Deel 10(1937) by P.J. Blok and P.C. Molhuysen
‘Gelre en Habsburg 1492-1528’ by Jules Edouard Anne Louis Struick
Gedenkwaardigheden uit de Geschiedenis van Gelderland (Zesde Deel, Eerste Stuk) by Isaac Anne Nijhoff
‘The Three Peace Treaties of 1492–1493’ by Randall Lesaffer
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 Commynes