Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (26 page)

The king of France… took the road to Troyes, in Champagne… He was accompanied by his uncles the duke of Bourbon, the duke of Touraine… and many other knights… [when] he arrived at Dijon… he was received with every respect and affection by the duchess of Burgundy, and all who had come thither to do him honour. Grand entertainments were given on the occasion, and the king remained eight days at Dijon.
⁹⁴

Burgundy’s ruling circles cultivated the art and the ethos of chivalry with unparalleled passion. The Order of the Golden Fleece, modelled on England’s Order of the Garter, was instituted in 1430. Its rituals and ceremonies outshone all others. Its badge was mounted on a jewelled collar bearing the incongruous motto: ‘
Pretium Laborum Non Vile
’ (‘Not a Bad Reward for Working’).
⁹⁵
The choice of a non-Christian theme for the Order was an outward sign of interest in the ancient world. The same can be said of the manuscripts and the literary works, such as the
Épopée troyenne
or ‘Trojan Epic’, which graced their libraries. William Caxton, the pioneer of English printing, published a
Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
in 1473, based on the Burgundian original.
⁹⁶

The Flemish School of painting, a centrepiece of the Northern Renaissance, was launched under Burgundian patronage. Painters such as Robert Campin (
c
. 1378–1444), Jan van Eyck (
c
. 1390–1441), who worked both for the count of Holland and for Philip the Bold, Roger van der Weyden (
c.
1400–1464) and Hans Memling (
c.
1430–94), a German who settled in Bruges, pioneered the secularization of European art. They moved with confidence into new genres, including portraits, still life, everyday scenes and landscape.
⁹⁷
Outstanding sculptors, too, were patronized. Claus Sluter (
fl
. 1380–1405), a Dutchman, became the court sculptor at Dijon. His best-known surviving work is the
Well of Moses
, fashioned for the ducal mausoleum at the monastery of Champol.
⁹⁸
Tapestries, too, were a Burgundian speciality. The costly technique of weaving gold thread into coloured designs was invented in Arras. In the fifteenth century, the
tapissiers
could produce huge, wall-hung panels depicting battles, historical scenes, ancient legends and intricate landscapes.
⁹⁹

Music blossomed alongside the visual arts. The Burgundian School started life in the ducal chapel in Dijon, where ‘the Burgundian Spirit in Song’ could already be heard by the century’s turn.
¹⁰⁰
But it expanded both geographically and stylistically. Guillaume Dufay (
c
. 1397–1470), a Brabanter, may have been the most famous European composer of the day. The later Franco-Flemish School produced a bevy of talent centred on the genius of Joskin van de Velde (
c.
1450–1520), better known as Josquin des Prez, who brought polyphony to its peak.
¹⁰¹

Renaissance literature covered many fields from poetry to philosophy. Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536), the greatest humanist of his age, was a Burgundian.
¹⁰²
Both French and Dutch developed alongside Latin, and the intermingling of the vernaculars has been called ‘a dialogue of two cultures’. Burgundy also provided the setting for one of the most stirring works of twentieth-century scholarship, Johan Huizinga’s
Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen
(1919), known throughout the world as
The Waning of the Middle Ages
. Huizinga (1872–1945), a professor at Leiden and a pioneer of cultural history, used detailed analysis of the rituals, art forms and spectacles at the Burgundian court to formulate his theory about the rough and vividly emotional character of late medieval life, contesting the prevailing view that it was an age full of Renaissance grace, aestheticism and enlightened debate:

When the world was half a thousand years younger, all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us. Every event, every deed was defined in given and expressive forms; death by virtue of the sacraments, basked in the radiance of the divine mystery. But even the lesser events – a journey, a visit, a piece of work, were accompanied by a multitude of blessings, ceremonies, sayings and conventions.
¹⁰³

Huizinga’s views were hugely influential, even though they provoked hostility among some Dutch colleagues, and bewilderment in his Belgian friend Henri Pirenne.
¹⁰⁴

For all their extraordinary cultural patronage, politics was the prime
métier
of the duke-counts. Burgundy distinguished itself both in projects to lay the foundations of an integrated state and in the brilliance of its diplomacy. Although force could be used to suppress rebellious subjects, local particularities were respected; and it was the practice to rule by established procedure and consent. In a typical decree of 13 December 1385, Ghent felt both its lord’s heavy hand and his magnanimity:

Philip of France, duke of Burgundy, earl of Flanders and Artois, palatine of Burgundy… to all, greeting: be it known… our well-beloved subjects… of our good town of Ghent, having humbly supplicated us, to have mercy, that [We] have pardoned and forgiven all misdemeanours and offences… and have fully confirmed all the said customs, privileges, and franchises, provided they place themselves wholly under obedience [to us].
¹⁰⁵

The duke-counts, like the English monarchs, drew on their impossibly tangled genealogy to support their claim that they were the true kings of France, and Philip the Bold in particular was preoccupied with French affairs. When he died in 1404, his position both as a prince of the Valois blood and as an independent ruler was secure. Yet he did not neglect his ‘States of Burgundy’. He was a connoisseur of fine wine, and issued detailed decrees on matters such as the banishment of the inferior gamay grape or the sacrifice of quality to quantity through excessive use of manure. Small towns like Pommard, Nuits St George and Beaune grew up in his time as centres for the
négociants
, the middlemen of the wine trade. One of his properties at the Château de Santenay on the slopes of the Côte d’Or still produces wines that bear his name.
¹⁰⁶
He was also the principal constructor of the Palais de Ducs at Dijon.
¹⁰⁷

Philip’s son, Jean sans Peur – John the Fearless – who had fought against the Turks as a young knight in the Crusade of Nicopolis, consolidated Burgundy’s power and independence. Endlessly embroiled with his French relatives, he was murdered by the entourage of the dauphin in September 1419 on the bridge at Montereau near Paris in an encounter which he had expected to be a diplomatic parley.
¹⁰⁸
John’s son, Philippe le Bon – Philip the Good – was known in his youth as the count of Charolais, and brought ‘the States’ to a high degree of prestige and prosperity. He expanded them by the purchase of Namur and Luxembourg, by the conquest of Holland, Zealand and Frisia in the so-called Cold Wars, and by the inheritance of Brabant, Limburg and Antwerp. He liked to style himself, immodestly, as the ‘grand duke of the West’.
¹⁰⁹

Philip the Good’s funeral is often cited as the grandest of Burgundian spectacles. It was lavishly staged in Bruges in 1467 and was recorded in great detail by the court chronicler, Chastellain. Hundreds of mourners, dressed in black, were fitted out at official expense with cloaks reflecting their rank. The church of St Donation was filled with so many candles that the stained glass had to be broken to release the heat. Twenty thousand spectators watched the torchlight procession:

The remains of Duke Philip… were placed in a closed leaden coffin weighing more than 240 pounds. A cloth of gold measuring thirty-two ells and lined with black satin covered the coffin. Twelve Archers of the Guard carried [it], [while] the pall of gold cloth… was held by sixteen grand barons… A canopy of golden cloth mounted on four large spikes was a borne aloft by four Burgundian noblemen: the counts of Joigny, Bouquan, and Blancquehain, and the seigneur de Chastelguion. Directly behind… walking alone was Meriadez, the Master of the Horse… [and] the principal director of the funeral. [He] carried the ducal sword of his late master in its richly ornate sheath, pointed down towards the ground.
¹¹⁰

During the entombment, the sword was passed to the late duke’s son and heir, Charles, in a gesture borrowed from French regal ceremony. It signified the continuity of princely power – but it also gave notice of Charles’s intention of living by the sword.

Charles le Téméraire has variously been classed, according to translation, as ‘the Bold’, ‘the Rash’ and ‘the Terrible’. He was the son of a Portuguese princess, and through successive marriages, brother-in-law to the kings both of France and of England. His warlike disposition had erupted before his father’s death, when in 1466, he ordered the slaughter of every man, woman and child in the rebellious town of Dinant. His main mistake was to assume that he could offend all his neighbours simultaneously, and in the complicated Burgundian wars of the 1470s, his enemies eventually united against him. He soon found himself pressed in the west by Louis XI of France, ‘the Universal Spider’, and in the east by the Lorrainers, the Imperialists and the Swiss.
¹¹¹

Switzerland, which by now had absorbed large parts of the old ‘Upper Burgundy’, proved to be the nemesis of the ‘Burgundian States’. In three successive battles, Charles was successively humiliated, outmanoeuvred and obliterated. At Grandson in the Vaud (2 March 1476), where he had slaughtered the local garrison, he abandoned a vast booty, including his solid silver bath. At the lake of Morat (Murten) in the canton of Berne (22 June 1476), his army was routed, and many of his troops drowned. Finally, at the winter siege of Nancy (5 January 1477), he met his death. The chronicler Philippe de Commynes recorded what he had heard:

The duke’s… few troops, in bad shape, were immediately… either killed or [put to] flight… The Duke of Burgundy perished on the field… The manner of it was recounted to me by [prisoners] who saw him hurled to the ground… He was set upon by a crowd of soldiers, who killed him and despoiled his body without recognizing him. This battle was fought on… the eve of Epiphany. [Two days later], the duke’s naked corpse, frozen into the ice of a pond, was identified: the head had been split to the chin by a Swiss halberd, the body many times pierced by Swiss pikes.
¹¹²

Commynes, who had once served Charles le Téméraire, was harsh in his judgement. ‘Half of Europe’, he commented, ‘would not have satisfied him.’
¹¹³

The ‘Booty of Burgundy’ is a phrase most usually applied to the vast pile of treasure which was captured by the Swiss at Grandson and which has been appearing on the European art market ever since,
¹¹⁴
but it could equally be applied to the fate of the ‘States of Burgundy’ as a whole. Within a few years, the possessions of the duke-counts had been dispersed. The duchy, swiftly occupied by French forces, reverted to France. The County-Palatine, the ‘Franche-Comté’, with some delay, reverted to the Empire. The link between the duchy and the Low Countries was severed.

The late duke-count’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Mary of Burgundy (1457–82), was now wooed by more suitors than the years of her life. Since her duchy had been seized by the French, she fell back on her subjects in the Low Countries. Yet they, too, were simmering with resentment. They stopped her from choosing a husband until she granted them a ‘Great Privilege’ abolishing all her father’s recent impositions. Mary was then free to make her choice, which fell on Maximilian von Habsburg, son of the Holy Roman Emperor. The marriage was consecrated at Ghent on 19 August in the year that had started with the Battle of Nancy. It was one of the great matrimonial milestones of European history. Within five years, Mary was dead, killed by a fall from her horse,
¹¹⁵
yet in the brief interval, she had given birth to three children who would ensure the political legacy of her marriage. Her widowed husband succeeded to the Empire; her son Philip IV was to marry the queen of Aragon and Castile, and her grandson, Charles of Ghent,
Kezer
Karel, better known as the Emperor Charles V, was to scoop the largest portfolio of titles and dominions ever bequeathed to a European monarch.
¹¹⁶

From the geographical standpoint, the principal result of the settlement of 1477 must be found in the permanent separation of the duchy from the rest of the ‘Burgundian Inheritance’. The duchy returned to the Kingdom of France, where as ‘Bourgogne’ it became one of the provinces of the
ancien régime
. The rest passed to the Habsburgs, who complicated matters by adopting the title of ‘duke of Burgundy’ without inheriting the duchy. In this way, the hereditary title of dukes of Burgundy, which all Habsburg emperors used from 1477 to 1795, was associated with a very different territory from that underlying the title of ‘kings of Burgundy’ which earlier emperors had once used.