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The Dukes of Burgundy
Charles the Bold; the last Valois Duke of Burgundy
Charles the Bold (1467-1477) was the last of the great Dukes of Burgundy. This historical and biographical work assesses his personality and his role as a ruler, and discusses his relationship with his subjects and his neighbours. It describes and analyses his policies, giving particular attention to his imperial plans and projects and his clash with the Swiss. The armies, the court and Burgundian clients and partisans are given separate treatment.
491 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 19, 2009
One of the best places to start, if you're looking for information on Charles the Bold. The new edition has a great survey of recent scholarship in the introduction.
September 28, 2017
Biography of Charles of Charolais, the last Duke of Burgundy, brother-in-law to Edward IV of England. There are few English books on this enigmatic duke so I was intrigued to read this. It is a well written work, although there were times when I began to suspect that Vaughan does not really like the subject of his book.
August 22, 2026
Richard Vaughan Studies The Life & Reign Of Charles The Bold, Last Of The Valois Dukes Of Burgundy.
In the first chapter's closing paragraphs to what is perhaps the most widely-known entry in Professor Richard Vaughan's four-book series of studies dedicated to the Burgundy region's most famous potentates, Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy, the author describes his motives for composing what may very well be his literary career's magnum opus - "It is high time that the history of Charles the Bold which was in the first place created by Chastellain and de Commynes in terms of a violent and dramatic clash between two opposing personalities, each full of scorn and hate for the other, that is, the king of France and the duke of Burgundy, was rewritten in more realistic and accurate terms." Bold words from an undeniably gifted historian, and now an updated edition of a book which likely entailed a decade or more of comprehensive research and devoted labor can be enjoyed by modern readers in this exquisitely composed volume on who is perhaps the most controversial and well-known of the Valois dukes of Burgundy.
Charles the Bold fits perfectly the literary archetype for the brooding, melancholy lordling who nursed the injustices which had been dealt to him with cold deliberation, taking into his inner circle such individuals as Anthony, the famous Bastard of Burgundy, who aptly reflected his own disenchanted attitudes and political views on lordship and on the king of France, Louis XI. Charles the Bold reigned for a total of ten tumultuous, war-torn years from 1467-1477, and his tenure in power was fraught with short-lived alliances, clandestine intrigues, bloody rebellions, and costly military expeditions that ended more often than not in utter defeat for Charles and for Burgundy. He did manage by purchase or by conquest to unite the northern and southern areas of his dominions with his acquisition of the Alsace and Lorraine regions in south-central France, but after sustaining grievous losses fighting against René II of Lorraine and the Swiss Confederation at Grandson and Morat, Charles's imperial ambitions were finally shattered on 5 January 1477 when he lost his campaign and his life in the frigid winter tundra at the Battle of Nancy.
This 2002 edition of Richard Vaughan's 1973 monograph, Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy was published in Great Britain by Boydell Press and features a 432-page main text that is divided into eleven chapters which address Charles's territorial acquisitions, his suppressions of revolts in Flanders and other regions, and his various military campaigns, amongst other topics. This volume provides a new introduction written by Werner Paravicini of the German Historical Institute in Paris, and an updated bibliography of suggested reading that was current up to 2002. The special features include 13 well-articulated maps depicting territorial treaties and important battles such as The Liège campaigns of 1467-1468, The grand alliance against Charles the Bold, & the Battles of Grandson, Murten, & Nancy, as well as a pair of genealogical charts which display The dukes of Lorraine in the fifteenth century and The House of Savoy in the fifteenth century. Also featured is a 34-page bibliography of French, Dutch, German, & English sources located at the end of the book, as well as an index.
In Chapter 1, The Duke and the Towns: Ghent and Liège, Professor Vaughan limns Charles the Bold's military campaigns against the rebellions of the Flemish city of Ghent and the church-controlled town of Liège. He capably utilizes contemporary accounts of major events which include Jehan, Lord of Haynin's battlefield chronicle of Charles' surprise attack on the Liègeois-held town of Huy, and the memoirs of the Burgundian court-writer, Philippe de Commynes, describing the tumultuous aftermath of Charles the Bold's procession into Ghent on 28 June 1467. At the end of the chapter Vaughan opines on the nature of what he believed to be Charles the Bold's true adversary during his turbulent reign, which surprisingly is not the Universal Spider of western Europe that historian Paul Murray Kendall felt strongly in favor of.
"The real enemy of Charles the Bold, opposing him with a bitter and consistent hatred, was urban. It was not as the chroniclers and many modern historians would have us believe, King Louis XI of France; it was the towns. In particular, it was that mosaic of city-states which had been brought into existence by the avaricious grasping and dynamic merchant communities of the great borderland of the Europe of those days, where the French and German speaking worlds met and merged. It would be going too far to see Duke Charles as the first of a new generation of European rulers, intent on smashing the power and demolishing the privileges of the medieval cities, but it is nonetheless true that his sweeping ambitions and radical policies were stubbornly opposed by these communities or elements in them."
Charles the Bold's diplomacy with King Louis XI of France and England's York and Lancaster Kings during the Wars of the Roses, and his dealings with influential European potentates such as Duke Francis II of Brittany and Galleazo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, are the primary areas of focus in Chapter 2, Burgundy, France and England: 1467-1472. The author analyzes the socioeconomic climate which led to Charles's betrothal and subsequent marriage to Edward IV's sister, Margaret of York, despite the duke of Burgundy being himself a diehard Lancastrian. Among the most important deciding factors was a purely financial issue - with western Europe's unstable status quo there was no room for lost revenues, and neither the Burgundians nor the English could afford to adhere to Duke Philip the Good's debilitating statues of 1463 and 1464, which prevented the import onto English soil of Burgundian manufactured products. The resulting abolition of these edicts in a treaty which coincided with Charles and Margaret of York's marriage betrothal in 1467 came as a most welcome boon to the two nations.
The author also includes the French scholar Jehan de Haynin's fascinating accounting of the ducal couple's wedding festivities, a chronicle which was, according to Vaughan's remarks, "Among all the eyewitness accounts perhaps the most lively and charming", with an excerpt from the first passage as follows - "'I, Jehan, lord of Haynin and of Louvignies, knight, intend to pass the time by writing down here what I have seen and discovered of the departure, welcome, entry, wedding, festivity, jousts, tournament and banquets which occurred in the town of Bruges because of the alliance and marriage of the most excellent, high and mighty prince, my most redoubted lord Charles, by the grace of God duke of Burgundy...and the most high and mighty princess Madame Margaret of York...subject to the correction of those who were present & who saw & found out more about them better or more certainly than I. I hope I may be forgiven if I write anything false for I certainly do not wish to include anything except pure and certain truth.'"
Chapter 3, Territorial Aggrandizement, 1469-1473: Alsace, Lorraine, Frisia and Guelders describes how Charles the Bold was, through a series of purchases, treaties, and military operations, able to merge the north and south regions of his vast dominions. This challenging goal would have been all but impossible, had it not been for the shrewd political acumen of his father Philip the Good, particularly in the old duke's acquisitions of the Holland, Hainault & Luxembourg regions during his own reign, which lasted from 1419-1467. Vaughan expertly canvasses the chain of events which led to Sigmund, Archduke of Austria, mortgaging a large part of the Upper Rhine Vorlande to Charles the Bold for the sum of 50,000 Rhenish florins, as a way to protect his own holdings in the Tyrol against the repeated incursions of the Eidgenossen, a close-knit coalition of the Eight Cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy.
Although the deal was in theory a territorial windfall for Charles, the reality of the situation was quite convoluted and very much imperfect, compromising the Burgundian duke's immediate territorial gains, as Vaughan ably explains - "In actual fact, what Charles now acquired in mortgage was a miscellaneous collection of rights rather than a group of territories. Moreover, Sigmund had the right to redeem this mortgage at any time, though Charles made it as difficult as possible for him to do this by insisting on adding all his administrative expenses in the meanwhile to the original loan. He also laid it down that if Sigmund wanted to repay the loan & redeem the mortgage the entire sum must be handed over in a single payment at Besançon: repayment by instalments was disallowed."
Also included in this chapter are several helpful maps depicting the approximate areas of the territories gaged to Charles, known as the Sundgau and Breisgau regions, in addition to the Friesland territory which was located in the far north of Holland, as this was a dependency that Charles aspired to possess but could never obtain. Finally, Vaughan addresses Charles's efforts to expand Burgundian influence to the Duchy of Guelders, with its vassal dependency of Zutphen, by using his stewardship of the Order of the Golden Fleece as a diplomatic pretense to exploit discord between Arnold of Egmond, the reigning duke of Guelders, and his heir, Adolf, as both father and son were members of the illustrious knightly order. After much political wrangling Duke Arnold finally mortgaged Guelders to Charles for the sum of 300,000 Rhenish florins, who immediately began installing his own government in the region, but it would take a full-scale invasion for him to actually gain control of it. His campaign's most famous engagement began on 28 June 1473 with the three-week siege of the town of Nijmegen.
In Chapter 4, The Duke and the Empire, 1467-1473, Vaughan limns for his reader the territorial ambitions of Charles the Bold as he struggled to realize his late father's grandiose aspirations of becoming the first Burgundian Holy Roman Emperor by his successful annexation by statecraft or by warcraft of multiple domains that fell within the empire's boundaries, which at that time was ruled by Frederick III of the house of Habsburg. Philip the Good had established a precedent during his long reign by employing his own shrewd form of diplomatic warfare to acquire Hainault, Holland, and Luxembourg, while his son Charles utilized a more direct method in his efforts to obtain Alsace, Lorraine, Guelders and Frisia which inclined toward intimidation at the negotiation table and military force on the battlefield. Charles had a vested economic interest in many of these key regions, even prior to his acquisition of them, particularly in the exportation down the Upper Rhine River of Burgundian wine.
The duke's correspondence from this period speaks to his concern for the river's security and also to his displeasure for the unreasonably steep taxes and tariff duties levied on the wine by the local lords, as can be evinced by the following excerpt from the chapter's beginning - "Almost every autumn in the early part of his reign, Charles the Bold's letters on the subject of the general security of the river, or on the tolls levied on wine shipped along it, were sent out to interested parties. On 24 November 1467 the dukes of Guelders & Cleves and the archbishop of Cologne were asked to protect trade on the river. On 26 October 1469 Charles the Bold wrote to rulers of Guelders, Cleves, & Jülich & the civic authorities of Cologne complaining of the exorbitant tolls being collected on wine shipments, which had caused the merchants to transfer the wine to wagons & transport it by land instead."
Charles's dreams of becoming Holy Roman Emperor ran so deep that he actually attempted to enter into negotiations with Frederick III to have himself coronated using the hand of his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, as a bargaining chip to sweeten the proposition, & members of his court began composing literature & music to fuel his insane obsession with the concept. In 1469 one of his court doctors wrote a manual for autocratic rule, De custodia principum, that was styled in a similar vein to Niccolò Machiavelli's famous treatise, The Prince, which at that time had not yet been written, as the Florentine statesman had just been born that same year.
Later chapters in Vaughan's study discuss the diverse, colorful composition of Charles the Bold's court, the organization & leadership of his formidable Burgundian army upon the field, the duke's vast reservoir of allies, retainers, and partisans, and the revolt which occurred in Upper Alsace while the duke was busy solidifying his newly established power base in the region. Chapter 10, Savoy, Grandson and Murten, analyzes Charles' defeats while conducting his doomed campaign fighting the Swiss Confederation at Murten and Grandson, and the final chapter, entitled The Collapse of Burgundian Power, discusses the duke's unpopularity, which pervaded not only at the end of his ducal term but throughout his entire reign. The author illustrates this with excerpts from contemporary correspondence, the most prominent of which is a letter penned by Charles the Bold that was probably intended for municipalities in Ghent or Bruges, attempting to exculpate himself from taking blame for his unhappy populace. Among the duke's arguments was his staunch refusal to accept responsibility for the onerous taxes, called aides, many of which were levied by his father, Philip the Good, and the excerpt provided speaks both to this effect as well as it does to Charles' talent for wordcraft.
"Concerning which, in regard to the said aides, we are utterly amazed at what is being said and even more at those who are saying these things, especially as all the aides that we take in our said lands by no means total more than 200,000 good livres per annum, which is not much considering the estate and the great expenses & charges which we have to maintain, support and undertake. And, as you know, those aides which were granted to our said late lord & father which have fallen to us through his decease were only to run for a further two or three years at the most and when they expire, the sum total of our said aides, ordinary & extraordinary, will not amount to more than 150,000 good livres per annum, which is very little considering the great riches & wealth of the said lands in which, apart from the said aides, we have not levied a single penny to our profit, nor charged or taxed our subjects in any way for whatever affair we have been involved in whether it be the armies we have raised, led & paid at our own expense both in France & in Liège, or anything else."
Charles the Bold's sole heir was his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, who had married Frederick III's oldest son, Maximilian I Habsburg, and upon the duke's death his lands were parceled out between the king of France, Louis XI the Prudent, & the Holy Roman Empire. Never again would the Grand Dukes of the West be considered among the European continent's preeminent and puissant lords, and never again would the richest and most prosperous region of France be led by an illustrious line of potentates such as the Valois princes of Burgundy most undoubtedly were.
Though his reign was turbulent & fraught with strife & woe, Charles the Bold occupies a unique niche alongside the early Renaissance's period's diverse tapestry of personalities - Cosimo de'Medici, whose pioneer financial institution paved the way to his coveted status as the affluent Florentine nouveau riche who brokered treaties as effectively as he conducted business transactions; the quintessential Renaissance tyrant, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, whose cruelty, rapacity, and ostentatious high living proved to be a dark contrast to the condottiere discipline and brilliant statecraft for which his father, Francesco, had been universally known and loved throughout Europe; and finally, the ruthlessly efficient, changeable Earl of Warwick, Richard Neville, whose renowned status as an experienced battle commander & respected lord could not overcome his own stubborn pride & overweening ambition, which caused him to switch his loyalties numerous times, & was to be the cause of his downfall at the decisive Battle of Barnet -- when juxtaposed against these formidable personages, Charles the Bold embodies qualities in all of them, and in none of them.
His dominions commanded lucrative commercial enterprises such as the wine industry and the textile trade, generating sufficient revenue to give any banker pause; he was the last scion of a majestic line of dukes who arguably wielded more power than many kings could ever dream of; and he possessed ambitions so grandiose and inconceivable that he refused even to contemplate their failure to be realized, a tragic shortcoming which ultimately led to his final undoing, in the cold snow and ice at Nancy. I hope you enjoyed the review, thank you so very much for reading!
In the first chapter's closing paragraphs to what is perhaps the most widely-known entry in Professor Richard Vaughan's four-book series of studies dedicated to the Burgundy region's most famous potentates, Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy, the author describes his motives for composing what may very well be his literary career's magnum opus - "It is high time that the history of Charles the Bold which was in the first place created by Chastellain and de Commynes in terms of a violent and dramatic clash between two opposing personalities, each full of scorn and hate for the other, that is, the king of France and the duke of Burgundy, was rewritten in more realistic and accurate terms." Bold words from an undeniably gifted historian, and now an updated edition of a book which likely entailed a decade or more of comprehensive research and devoted labor can be enjoyed by modern readers in this exquisitely composed volume on who is perhaps the most controversial and well-known of the Valois dukes of Burgundy.
Charles the Bold fits perfectly the literary archetype for the brooding, melancholy lordling who nursed the injustices which had been dealt to him with cold deliberation, taking into his inner circle such individuals as Anthony, the famous Bastard of Burgundy, who aptly reflected his own disenchanted attitudes and political views on lordship and on the king of France, Louis XI. Charles the Bold reigned for a total of ten tumultuous, war-torn years from 1467-1477, and his tenure in power was fraught with short-lived alliances, clandestine intrigues, bloody rebellions, and costly military expeditions that ended more often than not in utter defeat for Charles and for Burgundy. He did manage by purchase or by conquest to unite the northern and southern areas of his dominions with his acquisition of the Alsace and Lorraine regions in south-central France, but after sustaining grievous losses fighting against René II of Lorraine and the Swiss Confederation at Grandson and Morat, Charles's imperial ambitions were finally shattered on 5 January 1477 when he lost his campaign and his life in the frigid winter tundra at the Battle of Nancy.
This 2002 edition of Richard Vaughan's 1973 monograph, Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy was published in Great Britain by Boydell Press and features a 432-page main text that is divided into eleven chapters which address Charles's territorial acquisitions, his suppressions of revolts in Flanders and other regions, and his various military campaigns, amongst other topics. This volume provides a new introduction written by Werner Paravicini of the German Historical Institute in Paris, and an updated bibliography of suggested reading that was current up to 2002. The special features include 13 well-articulated maps depicting territorial treaties and important battles such as The Liège campaigns of 1467-1468, The grand alliance against Charles the Bold, & the Battles of Grandson, Murten, & Nancy, as well as a pair of genealogical charts which display The dukes of Lorraine in the fifteenth century and The House of Savoy in the fifteenth century. Also featured is a 34-page bibliography of French, Dutch, German, & English sources located at the end of the book, as well as an index.
In Chapter 1, The Duke and the Towns: Ghent and Liège, Professor Vaughan limns Charles the Bold's military campaigns against the rebellions of the Flemish city of Ghent and the church-controlled town of Liège. He capably utilizes contemporary accounts of major events which include Jehan, Lord of Haynin's battlefield chronicle of Charles' surprise attack on the Liègeois-held town of Huy, and the memoirs of the Burgundian court-writer, Philippe de Commynes, describing the tumultuous aftermath of Charles the Bold's procession into Ghent on 28 June 1467. At the end of the chapter Vaughan opines on the nature of what he believed to be Charles the Bold's true adversary during his turbulent reign, which surprisingly is not the Universal Spider of western Europe that historian Paul Murray Kendall felt strongly in favor of.
"The real enemy of Charles the Bold, opposing him with a bitter and consistent hatred, was urban. It was not as the chroniclers and many modern historians would have us believe, King Louis XI of France; it was the towns. In particular, it was that mosaic of city-states which had been brought into existence by the avaricious grasping and dynamic merchant communities of the great borderland of the Europe of those days, where the French and German speaking worlds met and merged. It would be going too far to see Duke Charles as the first of a new generation of European rulers, intent on smashing the power and demolishing the privileges of the medieval cities, but it is nonetheless true that his sweeping ambitions and radical policies were stubbornly opposed by these communities or elements in them."
Charles the Bold's diplomacy with King Louis XI of France and England's York and Lancaster Kings during the Wars of the Roses, and his dealings with influential European potentates such as Duke Francis II of Brittany and Galleazo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, are the primary areas of focus in Chapter 2, Burgundy, France and England: 1467-1472. The author analyzes the socioeconomic climate which led to Charles's betrothal and subsequent marriage to Edward IV's sister, Margaret of York, despite the duke of Burgundy being himself a diehard Lancastrian. Among the most important deciding factors was a purely financial issue - with western Europe's unstable status quo there was no room for lost revenues, and neither the Burgundians nor the English could afford to adhere to Duke Philip the Good's debilitating statues of 1463 and 1464, which prevented the import onto English soil of Burgundian manufactured products. The resulting abolition of these edicts in a treaty which coincided with Charles and Margaret of York's marriage betrothal in 1467 came as a most welcome boon to the two nations.
The author also includes the French scholar Jehan de Haynin's fascinating accounting of the ducal couple's wedding festivities, a chronicle which was, according to Vaughan's remarks, "Among all the eyewitness accounts perhaps the most lively and charming", with an excerpt from the first passage as follows - "'I, Jehan, lord of Haynin and of Louvignies, knight, intend to pass the time by writing down here what I have seen and discovered of the departure, welcome, entry, wedding, festivity, jousts, tournament and banquets which occurred in the town of Bruges because of the alliance and marriage of the most excellent, high and mighty prince, my most redoubted lord Charles, by the grace of God duke of Burgundy...and the most high and mighty princess Madame Margaret of York...subject to the correction of those who were present & who saw & found out more about them better or more certainly than I. I hope I may be forgiven if I write anything false for I certainly do not wish to include anything except pure and certain truth.'"
Chapter 3, Territorial Aggrandizement, 1469-1473: Alsace, Lorraine, Frisia and Guelders describes how Charles the Bold was, through a series of purchases, treaties, and military operations, able to merge the north and south regions of his vast dominions. This challenging goal would have been all but impossible, had it not been for the shrewd political acumen of his father Philip the Good, particularly in the old duke's acquisitions of the Holland, Hainault & Luxembourg regions during his own reign, which lasted from 1419-1467. Vaughan expertly canvasses the chain of events which led to Sigmund, Archduke of Austria, mortgaging a large part of the Upper Rhine Vorlande to Charles the Bold for the sum of 50,000 Rhenish florins, as a way to protect his own holdings in the Tyrol against the repeated incursions of the Eidgenossen, a close-knit coalition of the Eight Cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy.
Although the deal was in theory a territorial windfall for Charles, the reality of the situation was quite convoluted and very much imperfect, compromising the Burgundian duke's immediate territorial gains, as Vaughan ably explains - "In actual fact, what Charles now acquired in mortgage was a miscellaneous collection of rights rather than a group of territories. Moreover, Sigmund had the right to redeem this mortgage at any time, though Charles made it as difficult as possible for him to do this by insisting on adding all his administrative expenses in the meanwhile to the original loan. He also laid it down that if Sigmund wanted to repay the loan & redeem the mortgage the entire sum must be handed over in a single payment at Besançon: repayment by instalments was disallowed."
Also included in this chapter are several helpful maps depicting the approximate areas of the territories gaged to Charles, known as the Sundgau and Breisgau regions, in addition to the Friesland territory which was located in the far north of Holland, as this was a dependency that Charles aspired to possess but could never obtain. Finally, Vaughan addresses Charles's efforts to expand Burgundian influence to the Duchy of Guelders, with its vassal dependency of Zutphen, by using his stewardship of the Order of the Golden Fleece as a diplomatic pretense to exploit discord between Arnold of Egmond, the reigning duke of Guelders, and his heir, Adolf, as both father and son were members of the illustrious knightly order. After much political wrangling Duke Arnold finally mortgaged Guelders to Charles for the sum of 300,000 Rhenish florins, who immediately began installing his own government in the region, but it would take a full-scale invasion for him to actually gain control of it. His campaign's most famous engagement began on 28 June 1473 with the three-week siege of the town of Nijmegen.
In Chapter 4, The Duke and the Empire, 1467-1473, Vaughan limns for his reader the territorial ambitions of Charles the Bold as he struggled to realize his late father's grandiose aspirations of becoming the first Burgundian Holy Roman Emperor by his successful annexation by statecraft or by warcraft of multiple domains that fell within the empire's boundaries, which at that time was ruled by Frederick III of the house of Habsburg. Philip the Good had established a precedent during his long reign by employing his own shrewd form of diplomatic warfare to acquire Hainault, Holland, and Luxembourg, while his son Charles utilized a more direct method in his efforts to obtain Alsace, Lorraine, Guelders and Frisia which inclined toward intimidation at the negotiation table and military force on the battlefield. Charles had a vested economic interest in many of these key regions, even prior to his acquisition of them, particularly in the exportation down the Upper Rhine River of Burgundian wine.
The duke's correspondence from this period speaks to his concern for the river's security and also to his displeasure for the unreasonably steep taxes and tariff duties levied on the wine by the local lords, as can be evinced by the following excerpt from the chapter's beginning - "Almost every autumn in the early part of his reign, Charles the Bold's letters on the subject of the general security of the river, or on the tolls levied on wine shipped along it, were sent out to interested parties. On 24 November 1467 the dukes of Guelders & Cleves and the archbishop of Cologne were asked to protect trade on the river. On 26 October 1469 Charles the Bold wrote to rulers of Guelders, Cleves, & Jülich & the civic authorities of Cologne complaining of the exorbitant tolls being collected on wine shipments, which had caused the merchants to transfer the wine to wagons & transport it by land instead."
Charles's dreams of becoming Holy Roman Emperor ran so deep that he actually attempted to enter into negotiations with Frederick III to have himself coronated using the hand of his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, as a bargaining chip to sweeten the proposition, & members of his court began composing literature & music to fuel his insane obsession with the concept. In 1469 one of his court doctors wrote a manual for autocratic rule, De custodia principum, that was styled in a similar vein to Niccolò Machiavelli's famous treatise, The Prince, which at that time had not yet been written, as the Florentine statesman had just been born that same year.
Later chapters in Vaughan's study discuss the diverse, colorful composition of Charles the Bold's court, the organization & leadership of his formidable Burgundian army upon the field, the duke's vast reservoir of allies, retainers, and partisans, and the revolt which occurred in Upper Alsace while the duke was busy solidifying his newly established power base in the region. Chapter 10, Savoy, Grandson and Murten, analyzes Charles' defeats while conducting his doomed campaign fighting the Swiss Confederation at Murten and Grandson, and the final chapter, entitled The Collapse of Burgundian Power, discusses the duke's unpopularity, which pervaded not only at the end of his ducal term but throughout his entire reign. The author illustrates this with excerpts from contemporary correspondence, the most prominent of which is a letter penned by Charles the Bold that was probably intended for municipalities in Ghent or Bruges, attempting to exculpate himself from taking blame for his unhappy populace. Among the duke's arguments was his staunch refusal to accept responsibility for the onerous taxes, called aides, many of which were levied by his father, Philip the Good, and the excerpt provided speaks both to this effect as well as it does to Charles' talent for wordcraft.
"Concerning which, in regard to the said aides, we are utterly amazed at what is being said and even more at those who are saying these things, especially as all the aides that we take in our said lands by no means total more than 200,000 good livres per annum, which is not much considering the estate and the great expenses & charges which we have to maintain, support and undertake. And, as you know, those aides which were granted to our said late lord & father which have fallen to us through his decease were only to run for a further two or three years at the most and when they expire, the sum total of our said aides, ordinary & extraordinary, will not amount to more than 150,000 good livres per annum, which is very little considering the great riches & wealth of the said lands in which, apart from the said aides, we have not levied a single penny to our profit, nor charged or taxed our subjects in any way for whatever affair we have been involved in whether it be the armies we have raised, led & paid at our own expense both in France & in Liège, or anything else."
Charles the Bold's sole heir was his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, who had married Frederick III's oldest son, Maximilian I Habsburg, and upon the duke's death his lands were parceled out between the king of France, Louis XI the Prudent, & the Holy Roman Empire. Never again would the Grand Dukes of the West be considered among the European continent's preeminent and puissant lords, and never again would the richest and most prosperous region of France be led by an illustrious line of potentates such as the Valois princes of Burgundy most undoubtedly were.
Though his reign was turbulent & fraught with strife & woe, Charles the Bold occupies a unique niche alongside the early Renaissance's period's diverse tapestry of personalities - Cosimo de'Medici, whose pioneer financial institution paved the way to his coveted status as the affluent Florentine nouveau riche who brokered treaties as effectively as he conducted business transactions; the quintessential Renaissance tyrant, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, whose cruelty, rapacity, and ostentatious high living proved to be a dark contrast to the condottiere discipline and brilliant statecraft for which his father, Francesco, had been universally known and loved throughout Europe; and finally, the ruthlessly efficient, changeable Earl of Warwick, Richard Neville, whose renowned status as an experienced battle commander & respected lord could not overcome his own stubborn pride & overweening ambition, which caused him to switch his loyalties numerous times, & was to be the cause of his downfall at the decisive Battle of Barnet -- when juxtaposed against these formidable personages, Charles the Bold embodies qualities in all of them, and in none of them.
His dominions commanded lucrative commercial enterprises such as the wine industry and the textile trade, generating sufficient revenue to give any banker pause; he was the last scion of a majestic line of dukes who arguably wielded more power than many kings could ever dream of; and he possessed ambitions so grandiose and inconceivable that he refused even to contemplate their failure to be realized, a tragic shortcoming which ultimately led to his final undoing, in the cold snow and ice at Nancy. I hope you enjoyed the review, thank you so very much for reading!
October 31, 2017
Link to my review of this book:
https://flhwnotesandreviews.com/2017/...
https://flhwnotesandreviews.com/2017/...
June 11, 2023
If you're looking forward toward the long misery of Early Modern Europe, you can see it all in Charles' reign: standing armies, fear of a strong territorial sovereign driving the lower nobility and towns into an alliance, ability to raise vast sums of money, but never quite enough to pay the men, a meandering route for mercenaries from Genoa/Milan to Luxembourg and north, even the gradual emergence of something like a national church, all crowned by the failure of centralizing project to quite remake the continent.
While Vaughan isn't really interested in the emergence of modernity out of the middle ages, the future of the Burgundian inheritance looms large over this text, which is why Vaughan's decision to end it abruptly with Charles' death is so admirable and interesting. Even as characters who carry on (almost) to the reformation enter the scene, (Commynes, Maximilian, the Swiss foot and the restive populace of Flanders) and give the feeling of a world system at its very end, Charles is still living in the world of his great-grandfather. But of course, the conflict that dominated the 16th-17th centuries was between that feudal, noble world and the dynamic world of capitalism growing within the feudal order. In Charles' time that latent conflict still seems like it could've gone the other way, leaving the reader to ask 'What if?'
As with all four of these volumes, the biggest problem is insufficient information on the economies of the Burgundian territories, especially as the dynamism of greater Flanders would prove enticing enough to force the Spanish to expend 80 years and a continent of silver trying to retain political control.
While Vaughan isn't really interested in the emergence of modernity out of the middle ages, the future of the Burgundian inheritance looms large over this text, which is why Vaughan's decision to end it abruptly with Charles' death is so admirable and interesting. Even as characters who carry on (almost) to the reformation enter the scene, (Commynes, Maximilian, the Swiss foot and the restive populace of Flanders) and give the feeling of a world system at its very end, Charles is still living in the world of his great-grandfather. But of course, the conflict that dominated the 16th-17th centuries was between that feudal, noble world and the dynamic world of capitalism growing within the feudal order. In Charles' time that latent conflict still seems like it could've gone the other way, leaving the reader to ask 'What if?'
As with all four of these volumes, the biggest problem is insufficient information on the economies of the Burgundian territories, especially as the dynamism of greater Flanders would prove enticing enough to force the Spanish to expend 80 years and a continent of silver trying to retain political control.
September 2, 2020
This is a methodical biography of Duke Charles the Bold ( Rash), a dramatic figure in the late fifteenth- century. It focuses on his military battles, but also contains chapters on how he organized his government and his military. It is an academic history, and there’s not much of an attempt at story-telling. The author has a strong viewpoint and like many academic historians strives to be iconoclastic. His main point is to show that the independent cities, not King Louis XI, were the Duke’s primary opponents. He dislikes every character - Duke Charles certainly but also less justifiably the urban commoners who strove against his dominion. He’s often highly confident to the degree that he will assert that all of the Duke’s contrmporaries were wrong in their perspective of an event.
Despite the quirks of this narrative, I still learned a lot from it. In particular, The story of the Swiss and Flemish city-states’ fight for their freedom and autonomy was new to me and very enlightening. The role of medieval cities in developing western democracy is fascinating. Also, one wonders if the Protestant Reformation, which occurred just a few years later, would have been as successful if the cities had not prevailed in their war against feudal lords.
Despite the quirks of this narrative, I still learned a lot from it. In particular, The story of the Swiss and Flemish city-states’ fight for their freedom and autonomy was new to me and very enlightening. The role of medieval cities in developing western democracy is fascinating. Also, one wonders if the Protestant Reformation, which occurred just a few years later, would have been as successful if the cities had not prevailed in their war against feudal lords.
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