Duke of Burgundy 1433 1477 Charles the Bold

CHARLES THE BOLD, DUKE OF BURGUNDY (1433 1477). By the side of a little stream in northwestern France, on a Sunday morning in October 1468, the fiery ambitious Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, awaited the arrival of his crafty overlord, the miserly king Louis XI of France. At the approach of the royal party, Charles bowed low in his saddle and was about to dismount, but the king prevented him.

Fervent were the kisses pressed by the royal lips upon the ducal cheek, while Louis' arm rested lovingly about Charles' neck. In their youth, before Louis became king, the two had been bosom companions, had lived in the same tent, and slept in the same bed.

No one would guess from their meeting that they were no longer friends but bitter enemies, that for three years Charles had been ravaging the territory of the king and encouraging the other nobles of France to resist their sovereign's authority. King Louis had now come to Charles, not as a real friend, but to win back by diplomacy territories which force had com pelled him to give up.

Before he had succeeded, alarming reports reached Charles that the citizens of Liege had revolted against him and had killed his officers. He well knew that they had been stirred up by the tricky king, who was known in all the courts of Europe as the " universal spider." For a time the angry duke was ready to murder his royal guest, who was virtually his prisoner.

But he had promised Louis that he should be safe in Burgundian territory, and the fiery duke kept his word. Yet he forced the king to accompany him on his expedition against Liege, and to sit by while its walls were destroyed and its citizens suffered death or exile for trusting to his promise of aid.

Charles was ambitious as well as impetuous. He planned to build out of his scattered hereditary pos sessions, including the Netherlands, a strong state between France and Germany, over which he should rule as king. These ambitions finally led him away from his struggle against the French king and turned all his attention eastward. He easily mastered the pleasant duchy of Lorraine, but his conquests in Alsace brought him into conflict with the sturdy mountaineers of Switzerland. With pikes made by lashing scythes to alpenstocks, the Swiss more than a century and half before had withstood the Hapsburg power; and their bands of serried pikemen were now invincible against feudal cavalry. Charles basely

slaughtered the inhabitants of the little town of Granson after its surrender on terms. In return the Swiss administered a defeat near that city (March 1, 1476) in which the Burgundians lost " all their ar tillery and a vast number of tents and pavilions, be sides a great deal of valuable plunder, for they saved nothing but their lives." A few months later (June 21, 1476) the Swiss cut to pieces at Morat a second army raised by the haughty duke.

Then came the mortifying news of the revolt of the town of Nancy, which he had conquered the year before. Charles hastened into Lorraine to put down the insurrection. Against the advice of his councilors he attacked the enemy, but his horsemen were no match for the intrepid Swiss pikemen, who had come to Nancy's aid. The battle (Jan. 5, 1477) was short, for the Burgundians fled before the charging pikemen.

When the conflict was over Charles the Bold could not be found. Three days later, on the desolate battlefield, a naked and disfigured body was identified as that of the duke who at one time had been the head of the most magnificent court in Europe.

When Charles the Bold inherited the French duchy of Burgundy from his father, Philip the Good, in 1468, his territory included also the "free" or imperial county of Burgundy (Franche ComtO) and most of what we call the Netherlands (now Belgium and Holland). His lands were divided, however, and his aim in his wars was to gain territory which should unite the northern and southern sections. In this he failed, and at death Louis XI deprived his daughter and heiress, Mary of Burgundy, of all her French possessions. The remainder passed to the House of Hapsburg when Mary married Maximilian of Austria.

The term "Burgundy" has not always meant the same territory. There were at different times in the Middle Ages five different kingdoms of Burgundy, most of them including the valley of the Rhone River, which was never a part of Charles' possessions.