Jan-Maat’s Reviews > De Bourgondische vorsten > Status Update

After the death of Charles the Bold the defence of Burgundy is led by count Adolf of Ravenstein- a grandson of Philip the Good from one of his illegitimate children. I wonder if in the 1560s counts Egmont & horn & the Prince of Orange were also descendents of Philip the good, but then he had so many bastards, it might have been hard for them not to have been and thus distant cousins of Philip of Spain.

John III the pitiless duke of Bavaria died in January 1425, poisoned by a prayer book treated with arsenic.

Which demonstrates that it is good to be careful what you read.

In their 1st 25 years of marriage on average duke Philip the Good and his wife Isabella of Portugal were together for 200 days a year. Despite this Philip still found enough time to have mistresses - possibly up to 33 of them, it has been claimed he had 26 bastard children - this no record the Bishop of Liege had more than 60 bastards, they were generally employed at court and could make up about 5% of the personnel.

Henry V of England is described as a particularly brutal warlord and is cited as saying 'war without fire is like sausage without mustard' sadly no source is offered.

But I do wonder now when mustard became a widely used condiment

6 oxen, 80 sheep, 30 calves, 700 chickens and 3,000 eggs were prepared for the reception of king CharlesVI of France by his uncle Philip the Bold duke of Burgundy in 1389.

From which we learn that pork and fish were out of fashion.

From the accounts for the year 1385 we see that the hotel or household of the duchess of burgundy baked 1500 loaves ( or baguettes? ) of bread a day both for personal and the dogs, but double that if important guests were being received and five vats of wine daily. I imagine a continous traffic jam of wagons laden with wine and grain moving across the countryside.

The motto of Duke Philip the Bold was " Y me tarde" = I'm in a hurry. So he had a pair of glasses made of gold and crystal to protect his eyes from the dust as he galloped along medieval roads.

A problem i have readong books about the Burgundian dukes is that looking at the maps can be like reading a menu: I see savoy and think of cheese, Macon and wine, Dijon and mustard and so on...