Episode 33: No More Mr Neuss Guy
After being rebuffed in his royal ambitions at Trier in 1473, Charles the Bold became embroiled in a series of power struggles with neighbouring imperial lands during the final years of his life. In Upper Alsace, which the Duke of Austria, Sigismund, had mortgaged to him, Charles installed a man named Peter von Hagenbach as his bailiff, whose tyrannical tendencies united a coalition of Swiss and Alsatian towns which teamed up with Sigismund, forming an anti-Burgundian alliance called the League of Constance. This coalition set about rejecting and ejecting the Burgundians from Upper Alsace. Basically, conditions conspired to continuously concern Charles and the League of Constance would contemptuously constrain his constant compulsions for control over consecutively connected constituencies. He also declared himself protector of Cologne, which was in revolt against its prince-bishop, and set about laying siege to the rebellious town of Neuss. All of this so worried important sectors of the imperial nobility that war was declared on the Duke of Burgundy by the Emperor. Charles found himself faced with enemies on all fronts and after almost a year of laying siege to Neuss, was forced to abandon it without success. His finances were in tatters and his prestige was diminished, but still, Charles had high hopes that he could turn his fortunes around.
Peter van Hagenbach in Upper Alsace
After Charles bought the mortgage to Upper Alsace from Sigismund of Habsurg, the Duke of Austria, he installed Peter von Hagenbach as his bailiff there. What Charles had actually gotten from Sigismund definitely can’t be called the lordship of a single unified area, since Alsace itself was actually divided up between various power brokers there. It was more that he’d just bought lots of little pieces of it. As legal scholar Gregory Gordon wrote “his new possessions could be described as an archipelago of city-states more or less accustomed to independence given the absentee-landlord role played by Sigismund while he was nominally in control”. Given how often we have already seen the disregard Charles had towards the independence of towns, you might see where this is headed. When he bought this mortgage, Charles agreed not to arbitrarily impose any new taxes on those towns, and also consented to the fact that Sigismund could take it all back at any time, as long as he stumped up the cash in full, at Besansçon. So it was all kind of loose, but still, Charles had gotten a new friend in Sigismund and a few more titles to add to his burgeoning collection.
But, Charles also bought the problems these areas were facing. This is all very complicated, and given that this isn’t the History of German Squabbles podcast, we are going to try and keep things as simple as possible. You might recall that Sigismund had mortgaged Upper Alsace to Charles in 1469 because he’d been fighting and losing against the Swiss, who had encroached on his lands, and Sigismund was now going broke due to paying them reparations. Switzerland, at this stage, was a growing patchwork of confederate states, also known as the 8 cantons. The primary aim behind the formation of such a confederacy had been to facilitate free movement of goods and easier trade, and it was dominated by the lower, artisanal class. For our purposes, what it also provided was a body politic with which people in other towns and regions nearby, especially on the Rhine, could seek alliance and mutual protection against the ravages of the ruling, noble elite. So the Swiss must have looked on warily as the Duke of Burgundy bailed out their enemy and started setting up shop on their border.
When von Hagenbach was appointed bailiff of Upper Alsace by Charles, he set about trying to wipe out so-called "robber barons” from the region. These could be low-blood pirates, but were often castellans from the lower-nobility who were in charge of the forts along its banks, who faced little scrutiny in their intimidation, theft and exploitation of shipped goods on the river. Von Hagenbach’s aggressive and dominating methods gained him few new friends during his first four years there, and the lands of Alsace actually came to be a big drain on the finances of the Burgundian state, which was already beginning to strain under the costs of all of Charles’ military endeavours. Despite von Hagenbach’s efforts, the incomes generated in Upper Alsace were much less than had been expected and weren’t even enough to actually cover the expenses incurred there, so money from other regions was being sent to Alsace and disappearing into a financial blackhole. von Hagenbach’s reputation became notorious. On top of being the tax-collector, who are never the most popular people going around, he also ignored the interests of the Swiss confederacy, whose animosity had caused such trouble for Sigismund in the first place, and he was just downright rude to them. Richard Vaughan quotes von Hagenbach as saying to a delegation of Swiss coming to speak with him “Ha! Ha! Have you come here to oppose my lord of Burgundy? By Christ you villains! You’ve got it coming to you!”
When von Hagenbach began threatening to take the town of Mulhouse into Burgundian “protection”, it resulted in an historic meeting in Basel in June, 1470. At this meeting, the Swiss Eidgenossen, as well as other members of the imperial nobility of the region and representatives of the towns of Basel, Sélestat, Colmar and Strasbourg took the first steps towards forming a general alliance against Burgundian expansion into the area. With this support, Mulhouse stood firm against the Burgundians. Over the next few years, ever shifting proposals and counter proposals were made, but it seems like these towns were angling toward getting rid of the hated von Hagenbach and the Burgundians, and bringing back Sigismund.
In early 1473, von Hagenbach’s financial situation became dire enough that he decided to break the promise Charles had made to not introduce arbitrary new taxes on the towns in Alsace. He brought in a new tax on wine, which became known as the Bad Penny. Von Hagenbach must have known how politically and socially unstable the region was becoming, that an alliance was being formed against his master and that many towns would refuse to pay the tax. But still, he insisted on collecting it. When a group of towns predictably refused to pay, von Hagenbach brought the Burgundian military down on some of them and in standard fashion, had a few leading officials publicly executed. He tried once more to occupy the town of Mulhouse, but again they denied him entry. So as Charles was wrapping up his campaign in Guelders in the summer of 1473, tensions were beginning to boilover in Upper Alsace.
Charles signs alliance with René, Duke of Lorraine
In the previous episode, we mentioned how after Charles finished taking over Guelders, he abandoned further plans to invade Friesland because of three distractions, one of which was to go meet the Emperor. Another of those distractions was the death of the Duke of Lorraine. Lorraine was vitally important to Charles simply because it lay right in between his southern French domains and his northern Low Country ones. When the Duke of Lorraine, Nicolas of Anjou died on July 27, 1473, at the tender age of 25, a lot of suspicion was aroused, with some claiming that he had been poisoned by Louis XI. Since the Duke had no children, his aunt, Yolanda, inherited his lands, but she immediately abdicated in favour of her son, twenty two year old René. Given the strategic location of Lorraine, both Louis XI and Charles the Bold entered into negotiations with the new Duke to woo him into their sphere of influence. But due to the pro-Burgundian sentiment of many in Lorraine, in October 1473, René ultimately signed a military pact with Charles which was mostly aimed at thwarting French aggression.
The two agreed to allow the other’s armies to move through their territory, a vitally important deal for Charles given that he had to be able to move troops between his northern and southern territories. On top of this, young Rene agreed to appoint captains who were loyal to the Burgundian cause in castles which were located along the important routes Charles’ armies would use. In contrast to the usual image of him as the conquering hero, here we see Charles using diplomacy to get what he wanted. In December 1473, Charles passed through the capital of Lorraine, Nancy, and met up with René, no doubt wanting to impress his new ally and to ensure that matters in Lorraine would remain favourable. After that, Charles moved on to Alsace, no doubt to show that he was there to stay. Whilst there he met with Swiss emissaries who complained about the threatening language von Hagenbach was constantly directing towards them, and made sure to receive oaths of loyalty from people wherever he went. After this, in January 1474, Charles made the bold move of actually going to Burgundy to make the necessary pledges of mutual love and fealty between himself and his subjects there as Duke. By this time he had already held the title of Duke of Burgundy for 6 years and, that he had not yet done this, shows just how much the Low Countries had usurped the southern French domains in terms of their importance to that title holder.
The League of Constance and the Trial of Peter von Hagenbach
Whilst in Burgundy, Charles also received ambassadors from Sigismund, Duke of Austria. Charles had learned that Sigismund had been in talks with Louis XI, trying to get him to help negotiate peace terms between himself and the Swiss. Charles was not at all happy that Sigismund had been secretly talking to his biggest enemy and let his displeasure be known. According to Richard Vaughan, by the beginning of 1474, the alliance between Sigismund and Charles, and Austria and Burgundy, was no more, and from here things began to move quickly.
On the 27th of March, 1474, representatives of Sigismund, the Alsatian towns and the Swiss confederation met at Constance. They had been engaged in nearly four years of protracted and difficult talks, and produced a set of different accords. One was called the Ewige Richtung, which created a peace in perpetuity between Austria and Switzerland. Another declared that all of Sigismund’s mortgaged lands would be removed from Burgundian control, with the towns deciding to pay Sigismund’s mortgage themselves having decided that, actually, the Austrians weren’t so bad after all, compared with the Burgundians at least. Finally, they also agreed to a ten year defensive pact between them all. Although the role he played in its creation seems to be limited, Louis XI must have been rubbing his hands with glee. This mishmash alliance directed against Burgundy between the Austrian duke, the Swiss confederation and Upper Alsatian towns became known as the League of Constance.
All of these events in themselves might not have spelled doom for Burgundian pretensions in Upper Alsace, were it not for the reputation earned by Peter von Hagenbach. Not only was he violent, and a tax-collector, but he was also widely seen as a sexual predator, at a time in which sexual predation was culturally rampant by our modern standards. Many of the stories about him may be chalked up as political slander, were it not for the fact that most have been substantiated by multiple sources. One of them, Johan Knebel, a clergyman from Basel, really went to town recounting how von Hagenbach had gone about upsetting more than a few people.
“...he had overwhelmed by force and against their will many married women, maidens, even nuns . . . and had done the same things against God, justice, and all honesty .”
There is no doubt that von Hagenbach was an unsavoury character who could be described fairly with far harsher words than that, he was also clearly a pervert. Vaughan relates a story:
“...before a banquet organized by himself at Breisach on 20 February 1474, he had the pubic hair of his wife and three noblewomen shaved off and given to his cook to pulverize and then sprinkle on the dishes served to the ladies. ...On one occasion von Hagenbach made his wife publicly exhibit her pudenda and tell the assembled company how many times he had intercourse with her on their wedding night.”
Peter von Hagenbach could feel the air of dissent that was growing strongly within the Alsace region and he was its prime target. So he remained in Breisach, seemingly well fortified against any military offensives they might make to get rid of him. But von Hagenbach was undone because Charles had not given him enough money to pay his troops. On Easter Sunday, 1474, unhappy soldiers in Breisach went into mutiny, supported by the outraged and aggrieved local citizens. Some stories indicate that the rebellion was incited in much the same way as during Charles’ Joyous Entry in Ghent; von Hagenbach had prohibited a local, Easter tradition from taking place, making the citizens go absolutely bonkers against the occupying forces who had remained loyal.
The end product of the lashed fury was that von Hagenbach was arrested and imprisoned. The city government re-established itself and aligned the town with the League of Constance. They clearly were still not one hundred percent convinced of which course of action to take, even sending an envoy to Charles trying to appease his inevitable wrath. Within the League of Constance, however, there was greater pressure for the heinous bailiff to face punishment, with little regard to Charles’ feelings.
Shortly after this all went down, Charles received a rather flippant letter from Sigismund, informing him that he was paying back his mortgage and retaking control of the lands in the Upper Alsace. Charles was...unimpressed, to say the least, at what he saw as betrayal. In his response, he said:
“If… you shall adhere to the purpose you have declared, in violation of the terms of the contract and of your princely word, we shall make resistance, trusting with God's help that our ability in defence shall not prove inferior to what we have used to repulse the attacks of the Swiss—those attacks from which you sought and received our protection”
Sigismund, however, maintained his course, alongside his former foes, now allies, the Swiss Eidgenossen and the Alsatian towns. He appointed his own bailiff to replace von Hagenbach and effectively took control of Upper Alsace.
On May 9, 1474, Peter von Hagenbach was tried for a variety of crimes. He was accused of illegally executing three women in the town of Thann, after putting down an uprising there the year before; In Breisach, he had given his word that he would not defy aspects of the towns liberties, and then broke it, abolishing guilds, tampering with the judicial system and bringing foreign soldiers to garrison within the town walls. He was also tried for allegedly plotting to use these foreign troops to murder the citizens of Breisach and, finally, also for the acts of sexual assault for which he had been accused.
The trial was the biggest event in the region at the time and people came from far and wide to see the man meet the punitive fate that his depraved infamy had led him to. He claimed having been only following the orders given to him by Charles the Bold and flatout denied the more scandalous allegations of sex-crimes made against him. As much as von Hagenbach was obviously a brutish man who had committed many atrocities, the trial was still not a fair one; the outcome was set in stone before it began. Despite this, the trial is often cited as being the first case in history of somebody being tried for, essentially, war crimes, and where the legal defence of “but I was just following orders” was rejected. After solicitations of reprieve were rebuffed by the court, which was run wholly by the League of Constance, Peter von Hagenbach was brought before a crowd and had his head cut off. Burgundian rule of Upper Alsace was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Charles the Bold becomes Protector of Cologne
So the third distraction that had stopped Charles from invading Friesland after finishing campaigning in Guelders was that the Prince-bishop of Cologne, Ruprecht, had arrived at his camp complaining about rebellious subjects. The Burgundian Dukes had been trying to meddle with affairs in nearby Cologne already for more than a decade. Philip the Good’s approach towards it had been similar to the one he had taken in Utrecht and Liege; appoint a puppet, make sure that they owe you for their continued life and rule and then slowly infiltrate the administrative system of the territory with people who were favourable to you.
But this had not exactly worked in Cologne, because the chapter and Estates there did not bend to Philip the Good’s suggestions and had instead elected their own person, the aforementioned Ruprecht. They quickly came to regret this choice, however, because Ruprecht turned out to be a shocking ruler and soon the power brokers of the bishopric were trying to curtail his dominion. A great rift arose between the bishop and his subject, and Ruprecht beseeched Charles for help in 1467. Charles was busy dealing with Liege at the time, so instead sent a haughty letter to the Cologne chapter and the town’s burghers telling them to behave. This sent them off the rails; they refused, became even less enamoured with Rup, sent an angry letter to the Pope and took over the nearby town of Neuss in contempt of the bishop. The rebellious chapter was joined by a local noble called Hermann von Hesse, who organised and led the town’s defence. A stalemate ensued which would continue until 1474 as everybody waited to see what the pope would do, what the emperor would do and what Charles would do.
Cologne was one of the topics discussed heavily with Frederick III at their meeting in Trier. In Charles’ new role as the Duke of Guelders, the territory controlled by the Archbishop of Cologne - which was known as the Stift - was now neighbouring territory to his realm and, therefore, important to Charles’ prospects of further expansion.
After the emperor hastily left Trier, he headed to Cologne, ostensibly to act as a final arbiter in the conflict. Frederick, however, despite having the honour of being the longest reigning emperor, was definitely not the best at the job and had trouble making firm decisions on tough matters. He did not have the strength of will that would have forced a resolution and, as the winter went on, did not issue any decision either way.
Charles, on the other hand, despite lacking many qualities, definitely did not lack strength of will. In December 1473, only three weeks after the emperor had dashed his hopes for a crown and/or a step-up on the imperial ladder, he had a manifesto distributed. In this he declared that the cause of Ruprecht was the only just cause in this matter and that the chapter and Estates of Cologne must cede to his authority without question. Charles arranged to be made the guardian of Cologne. Sometime in the early spring of 1474, he formally took the position as the Protector of Cologne, for life. He would swing the axe on the rebelling towns on behalf of Ruprecht and, in return, Ruprecht would pay him a huge sum of money. This was good for Charles, because as we mentioned earlier, he was starting to run into financial issues. He had a lot of military endeavours to undertake and these required troops, supplies and equipment, all of which cost a lot of cash.
Professionalising the army and raising taxes
To put it simply, because of the ongoing threat Charles faced from Louis XI of France, Charles had been forced to change the way his army was composed. Previously, the Burgundian dukes had generally relied on getting troops for each campaign in the standard way of calling up people who were feudally obliged to fight, as well as the militias from the towns throughout his domains. In general, Charles recruited more soldiers from his southern lands, such as Burgundy and Picardy, whereas he relied more on the northern areas, like Flanders and Holland, for the money to pay his soldiers and buy necessary military equipment. As we have seen many times already, after campaigning was over, those armies would disband and then disperse back to where they were they had come from, to go back to doing their regular jobs, like farming, or weaving, or whatever.
Because of the on-going conflict with Louis, however, in 1469 Charles began to change the nature of his army. The French king had a permanent force of soldiers at his disposal, which Charles decided he needed to emulate. Remember Louis was constantly watching what was going on over in the Burgundian lands, and whenever Charles seemed to be busy somewhere else he would launch attacks, spreading Charles’ military thin. So, Charles created so-called ‘companies of ordinance’, which were basically volunteer mercenaries from all over the continent, many of whom came from Italy, England and the German states. One of the big issues the Swiss took with Charles was the fact that groups of Italian mercenaries would be constantly crossing over the mountains to fight in his armies. It took a few years, but between 1471-74 Charles gradually managed to bring more and more ‘companies of ordinance’ into the field, effectively changing his army from being one composed mainly of conscripted subjects from his territories, to a standing army with a large portion of foreign, professional fighters.
But the thing about professional armies is that they need to be paid, or they tend to get mutinous, and to pay them Charles needed money. Up until 1470, taxation in the Low Country domains had been done through negotiations between the Duke and the Estates of the individual territories, with discussions about how much money was to be handed over happening annually. In May of 1470, however, Charles took the first step toward changing this by asking for a total expenditure of 120,000 crowns per year for a period three years, instead of one. When the Estates of Flanders responded to this request by complaining about the fact that they were being asked to pay more than the southern, French lands had been, and asking for clarifications about it, Charles responded with characteristic pomposity. “You act as you have always done—you Flemings. Neither to my father nor to me have you ever been liberal. What you have granted—sometimes more than our request—has always been given so tardily as to prove the lack of good will. Your Flemish skulls are hard and thick and you cling to your stubborn and perverse opinions”. He definitely wasn’t the most gracious guy going around asking for money and his words no doubt added to the Flemish unwillingness to pay. But, Charles went on to point out that he needed the money not only for his own defence, but for theirs too, and eventually the Flemish agreed and the money was handed over.
In 1473, Charles took another step towards centralization, by commanding the Estates General of his northern territories meet with him in Brussels, where he got them to collectively agree to a six-year taxation plan. Instead of organising the payments on a territory-by-territory basis, now the negotiations were all done at once. This time, however, instead of asking for 120000 crowns per year, Charles demanded 500000 crowns per year, a huge increase and definitely much more than they had been asked to pay in the past. Remember that these payments weren’t distributed evenly between the provinces (rich Flanders would obviously be asked to pay more than relatively poor Burgundy), but still, places in Flanders and Holland were being asked to pay up to 3 to 6 times more money than they had previously. We’ll get into this more in a later episode, but as you can probably tell, this huge increase in taxation was extremely unpopular, and the discontent this sewed would lead to backlash. But still, here we see Charles making the first attempts to centralise taxation in the low countries. Not long after, he did the same with his southern domains. So with this financing and the establishment of a permanent fighting force, in the spring of 1474, Charles clearly felt he was in a position to deal with Cologne and Upper Alsace.
Treaty of London, 1474
First, however, he had to figure out a way of keeping Louis XI off his back and did this by devising a secret plan to get England to invade France. In June, 1474, Charles signed a one year peace treaty with the Louis, which would last until 1 May 1475. At the same time, his half-brother, Anthony, the Bastard of Burgundy, was negotiating on his behalf an audacious plan to recognise Edward IV as the true King of France. Charles was married to Edward’s sister, Margaret of York, and had previously given him protection in Flanders when he was briefly ousted from the English throne in 1470 as part of the ongoing civil war there known as the War of the Roses. The next year, Charles had given Edward troops and ships and sent him back across the sea to reclaim his crown. By the terms of the Treaty of London, signed on the 25th of July, 1474, Charles would once again provide troops, and Edward agreed that he would invade France by 1 July, 1475, just after the aforementioned peace treaty between Charles and Louis expired. In case you are lost here, Charles’ military ambitions had basically grown so grandiose that he was in essence trying to restart the Hundred Years War as a diversionary tactic so that he could subjugate Cologne, punish treacherous Alsace and keep France busy for, hopefully, another hundred years.
With all of this in motion, Charles sent word around that he was going into Cologne to make the rebels finally accept Ruprecht as their bishop. He would do this by laying siege to Neuss, the town where many rebellious elements of the Cologne bishopric had installed themselves, alongside Hermann of Hesse. At the same time, he banned all trade on the Rhine with towns further up the river in Alsace and Switzerland, no doubt expecting that he would waltz into Cologne, quash the revolt quickly and then bring his armies up the river to crush the Alsatian towns.
Siege of Neuss begins
Days after the siege of Neuss began at the end of July 1474, other major towns in the prince-bishopric of Cologne, namely Bonn, Andernach, Ahrweiler and the city of Cologne itself, threw their support behind Neuss and joined the against Ruprecht and Charles. And then just a few days after that, the Emperor Frederick III, who less than a year before had ceremoniously invested Charles with the Duchy of Guelders, also declared war on Burgundy and began assembling a coalition and army of his own to come to the aid of the rebellious people of Cologne. A flurry of correspondence between Frederick and Charles ensued, with Frederick’s disposition towards his vassal betrayed in a letter that began: “Frederick by the grace of God Emperor of the Romans etc. to Charles, prince and duke of Burgundy, greetings — if you deserve any.” Indeed, whatever amicable relations they had shared in Trier now seemed to be a thing of the past. In fact, the acrimony that Charles’ brazen and arrogant aggression tended to sow was now spreading beyond manageable bounds. That is to say: almost everybody hated him.
Charles was renowned for his fascination in military stratagem and we’ve already seen how he had successfully besieged other cities. Yet despite intense strategic bombardment and even managing to break through the odd gate, he could not break Neuss. A Burgundian who was present, Jehan Baugey says that in September, “The Cologners sent a man to Neuss swimming in the Rhine to take letters to the town in a wooden bottle... instructing the Neussers to hold firm as the Emperor was coming to attack the duke.” Winter came and went. By the end of March 1475, it was clear that this was very far from a simple affair. A Milanese ambassador to Charles’ court, who was present at the siege, reported back to his lord: “this undertaking at Neuss is a difficult thing and, according to people expert in the art of war, it will take a long time to have it by force. The place is strong in its site and because of the river. It is well defended, with perhaps over 3,000 stout defenders within it, with good artillery”
The situation inside Neuss was also getting difficult. The besieged people took to attaching messages to cannonballs, trying to shoot them out beyond the attackers reach. Many of these were intercepted, while some reached their destination. One of them, written by Hermann the Landgrave of Hesse and directed to his brother, Heinrich, indicates that the town was reaching the limits of what the people within could bear:
“Unless we are relieved soon and powerfully and with the utmost expedition we are bound to report to you that we shall suffer a complete disaster. We know no one to appeal to except the Almighty God. We request you, through your love and honour, in affection and obedience, not to allow our misery to become worse than we have described to you. And, if no relief comes in the above-mentioned time, then we want to undertake discussions [concerning surrender], in order to avoid losing our lives and goods.”
Frederick III was an expert at procrastination and not taking a path that would demand any resolute action. The coalition army he had brought together was approaching… very.... slowly. As Vaughan puts it:
“Frederick himself can scarcely be said to have demonstrated any real enthusiasm for the task, though one must make allowances for the fact that his movements, if that be not too grand a word to describe his intermittent ambling pace, were hampered by his desperate financial situation...An embassy from Cologne had to bail him out of his difficulties..The nearer he approached to Neuss, in the spring of 1475, the more protracted were his delays and the shorter his days’ marches.
Attacked on multiple fronts and betrayed by René of Lorraine
Frederick also set into motion counterintelligence plans designed to destabilise Charles on his homefront. Agents and messengers were sent into the Low Countries (yes the area this podcast is actually meant to be about) and set about encouraging rebellion and inciting anti-Burgundian sentiment, which wasn’t hard given the financial pressure they were all starting to feel. Frederick also began negotiating an alliance between himself and the French king known as the Treaty of Andernach, which was signed in December 1474 and then reconfirmed in April 1475. In this treaty they agreed that they would both attack Charles at the same time, in classic East Francia and West Francia attacking Middle Francia fashion.
By this time, Charles had made many enemies, who saw the time and resource expenditure he was wasting on besieging Neuss and decided to take advantage of it by declaring war on him. Scores of vagrant rebels who had been exiled from lands Charles had subdued, roamed in and around Burgundian territories. One of these was a man with the awesome nickname, The ‘Wild Boar of the Ardennes’. He made his way to Cologne where, over the winter of 1474/75 he managed to hook up with our old mate, Raes de Lyntre, the former rebel leader of Liege. Together they set about attacking and raiding parts of Luxembourg and Liege. The Swiss also took the opportunity to declare war on Burgundy in late October, 1474. They attacked the Franche-Comte, the imperial part of Burgundy, and killed 1600 Burgundian allied troops at the Battle of Hericourt, which was apparently one of the first battles in history to be fought with handguns. Then in April, 1475, Louis XI and Frederick III were able to pressure the young Duke of Lorraine, René, who remember had previously signed an alliance with Charles, into flipping against him, by promising him that if Lorraine joined the treaty of Andernach and declared war on Charles, they wouldn’t sign any separate peace treaties with Burgundy.
When the peace treaty between France and Burgundy expired on the 1st of May, 1475, Louis launched an all-out, three-pronged attack. His troops ravaged across the Somme towns and into the Low Countries, pushing up into Artois and Hainault, wreaking havoc and destruction. Off the coast of Zeeland, a French ship attacked and captured a bunch of fishermen from Amsterdam and then raided up the Dutch coast, as far as Amsterdam and Texel. On the 6th of May, Frederick finally decided to leave the city of Cologne and bring his army up to Neuss itself. On the 9th of May, an ambassador from René of Lorraine, passed on the declaration of war to Charles “To thee, Charles of Burgundy, in behalf of the very high, etc., Duke of Lorraine, my seigneur, I announce defiance with fire and blood against thee, thy countries, thy subjects, thy allies, and other charge further have I not”. Charles responded to this news by giving the ambassador a fine robe and saying “tell your master that I shall soon be in his lands and the greatest fear I have is not to find him there”. Bold words from a man who had spent a year bogged down, unsuccessfully laying siege to the rather insignificant town of Neuss, and was currently getting attacked by basically everybody.
End of the siege
Eventually, the combination of all of this finally put enough pressure on Charles to abandon the siege. Neuss never was relieved, per se, but neither did Charles ever succeed in bringing it to his obedience. It is clear that neither Charles nor Frederick really wanted to take the field against each other, but they also definitely didn’t want to be the first person to blink and back down from the fight. Their honour and prestige simply demanded otherwise! A papal legate was sent in to negotiate matters and told them both they would be excommunicated if they didn’t disengage. By the end of May, Charles, Ruprecht, the chapters of Cologne and the emperor managed to agree to terms which would see Charles give up the Protectorship of Cologne and cede Neuss to neutral hands, which is to say, to Vatican control. Frederick spent a whole 2 seconds hesitating about whether or not he should break his promise to Louis XI and René, Duke of Lorraine that he wouldn’t negotiate a separate peace with Charles, but then did so anyway.
There is no doubt that the Siege of Neuss was a failure for Charles. He had wasted a year, at the cost of huge sums of money and a not insignificant amount of soldiers. His being there had provided his enemies with the opportunity to attack him on different fronts. This led to the Swiss beating a Burgundian army at the Battle of Hericourt; to the French rampaging spear-first into the Low Countries; and denying him a chance to quickly recapture his lost territories in Upper Alsace. But things weren’t necessarily terminal for Charles, nor indeed Burgundy at this point. The arrival of an immense English invasion force in Calais which he had organised, as well as that promise he made to the ambassador of Lorraine that he would soon meet his master there, offered an opportunity to redeem his fortunes. But with the benefit of hindsight, we can safely say that the murder of von Hagenbach and the failure at Neuss were just the first in a series of misfortunes which would mark the end of Charles and of the Burgundian state.
Sources used:
Charles the Bold by Richard Vaughan
The Promised Lands by Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier
Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States by Robert Stein
Charles the Bold, the Last Duke of Burgundy by Ruth Putnam
The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy, 1363-1477 by Kay Douglas Smith, Robert Douglas Smith, Kelly DeVries
The Trial of Peter von Hagenbach: Reconciling History, Historiography, and International Criminal Law by Gregory S. Gordon
Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States by Robert Stein