Episode 39: The Wild Boar and the Dung Wagon

After the death of Mary of Burgundy in March 1482, the Low Countries were thrust into a period of turmoil the likes of which they had not seen for around... five whole years. The reigning sovereign was dead and her heir, Philip, was not even four years old. In Flanders, the estates and particularly the city of Ghent, successfully set a course of obstruction against Maximilian, defying his attempts to hold the regency for his young son and stopping him from continuing waging war against France. Because of this, Maximilian was backed into a corner and forced to sign the embarrassing Treaty of Arras with the French king Louis XI in late 1482. One of the consequences of this was that Louis withdrew the support he had been giving to destabilising elements across the Burgundian realm. Although the defiance of Flanders had thwarted Maximilian’s plans against France, stopping the war also allowed him to put more energy into negating the prickly thorns of defiance that had risen in Liege and Utrecht. Within this context, the two most powerful bishops in the Low Countries would face some difficult between 1482 and 1483. One of them would be stabbed in the face and his body dumped in a river, while the other would find himself being taken prisoner and hauled off in a fertiliser cart to Amersfoort, literally sitting in a pile of poo.

Flanders, led by Ghent, refuses to recognise Maximilian as regent

On the 27th of April, 1482, an assembly of the States General was summoned by Maximilian and gathered in an Augustinian monastery in Ghent. Here they were welcomed by the Pensionary of Brussels and spokesman of the States General, Gort Roelandts. He had been amongst the most influential obstructors of Charles the Bold in his final years. If you remember back to when Hugonet and Humbercourt had been executed because of the scandalous letter that Mary had sent to Louis XI, well, Gort Roelandts played a big role in making this letter public. Maximilian managed to get him on-side and gave him the role of welcoming the assembly, in Dutch, before supportively reading out Maximilian’s statement of position in French.

The gist of his speech was that, even though Maximilian was about to inherit a bunch of lands and titles in Austria and Hungary, he had decided to stay and protect his childrens’ rights and titles in the Low Countries, as well as to continue protecting their subjects and lands. As Helmut Koenigsberger succinctly put it, “The States General received this speech cooly.” Over the next two days the Brabantine and Flemish delegations took turns to rip into Maximilian’s handling of affairs over the previous five years. Brabant complained that he had failed to consult any of them on his dealings with France and that nobody even knew what the state of peace talks were, or if any were even happening. The financial demands of war had left their provinces impoverished and their people facing starvation and, as such, the only course now was to seek peace immediately. Further to this, they suggested, the provinces must establish a ‘true union’ so as to thwart French aggression in the future without needing to depend on the sovereign. The Flemish, dominated by Ghentenaars, were even more defiantly aggressive, outright rejecting Maximilian’s rights to regency and telling the other members that they had already sent representatives to Louis XI to seek peace terms and that everybody else should do the same. A majority of the provinces were on board with this general rancour, Holland and Hainaut being the exceptions, albeit rather significant ones.

Not even a week after this, the French invaded Flanders again and went on a pillaging rampage through several towns and villages. In the States General, most of the provinces now got behind Maximilian, including Brabant. Flanders, however, would only recognise him as the ‘head of the country’ and determined that a guardianship council would be set up by which Flanders would be governed on behalf of the infant Philip. With their backyard under threat, the Flemish set about negotiating with the French to get them to go away. The French were prepared to do this, so long as Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret of Austria, became betrothed to the dauphin, Charles. To many of the Flemish, and particularly the Ghentenaars, this would have seemed a fair deal. 

During the following month or so Louis XI had, perhaps, his greatest chance to truly divide Flanders from the rest of the Burgundian domains. The Flemish were so sick of Maximilian and the war-mongering of the ducal government that they were more open to the possibilities of tighter French conciliation than usual. However, Louis XI had always proven himself unwilling to compromise very far beyond his own immense sense of ambition and entitlement. There was also the matter that, on a class-level, the wealthy urban patricians and nouveau riche, politically powerful workers guilds that the Low Countries boasted were unlikely to get what they wanted from the divinely ordained and autocratic French king. As Koenigsberger wrote:

Time and again the Ghent patricians and guildsmen misinterpreted the attitude of Louis XI and, time and again the French let them down. Rationally, the kings of France should have consistently supported the Ghenters and the Flemings against their arch-enemy, Maximilian. Alternatively, for reasons of princely solidarity, they (the French monarchs) might have been expected to come to terms with Maximilian and support him against his rebellious subjects. In practice, French policy was opportunistic, vacillating and, in the end, ineffective. The French court despised the bourgeois Flemings and seems to have felt uncomfortable in having them as allies.”

As negotiations continued, Louis XI made excessive demands that served to strengthen a sense of unity in the States General, rather than go to work on further deepening their divisions. In hindsight it was truly a missed opportunity. Ghent, in particular, was ripe for the French king’s picking. Ghent had an extra reason for being so contemptuous of Maximilian. The year before, the town’s estates had demanded budgetary control of Flander’s finances. The upshot of this was that the city’s high bailiff, a popular figure called Jan van Dadizele, was murdered. It was widely believed that this had been committed by the Duke’s men and popular blame fell on the Lord of Gaasbeek, Phillip de Heurne, who was a ducal ally. This, on top of all the myriad of grievances we went into last episode, incited Ghent to throw its weight around in such an incongruous way.

In July, 1482, the Three Members of Flanders set up an ‘act of eternal union’, which was almost immediately shown to be neither united, nor eternal. Bruges and Ypres were open to supporting Maximilian as regent, while Ghent remained irascible in its resolution. Then, the city wildly gave Maximilian the fiscal finger and started minting its own coins in the name of young Archduke Philip. This, naturally, caused outrage at the ducal court. Ghent had incurred the violent wrath of Flemish counts more than several times in the past, and often for less incendiary and rebellious acts than this. However, at this time Maximilian simply did not have the imperium necessary to make Ghent accountable. What’s more, they literally had his two young children in their possession. What is the saying? Possession is 9/10 of the law? They had the young Archduke Philip, so would bloody well mint coins in his name. They also had his younger sister Margaret, so they decided to sell her off to France in return for peace. Ghent was not afraid to utilise Maximilian’s children in much the same way that high-born children were routinely being used and, by this stage, we should not be surprised. For centuries now, we have seen the temerity of urban citizens in the Low Countries, but particularly in Ghent, to defy their sovereign rulers and then find ways to justify having done so. This had been an issue for the Counts of Flanders, going all the way back to Guy of Dampierre and beyond. Having seen off the Valois-Burgundian dukes, Ghent was not going to back down in the face of the Habsburg dynasty.

Maximilian had little option but to concede to Ghent’s demands in order to get them back onside. He offered to sack whatever ducal administrators they had major problems with, and then finally signed the Treaty of Arras, in December 1482. The previous Treaty of Arras, which we banged on about for a long time after its conclusion between Philip the Good and Charles VII in 1435, had been very favourable to Burgundy, essentially granting it independence from France and giving it those hotly contested Somme towns. Nearly 50 years later, this Treaty of Arras would be the opposite, almost completely to the advantage of France and the now ailing king Louis XI. If you are keen on the detail of late-medieval peace treaties, Philip de Commynes lists 69 of the conditions therein. But the short and curlies of it were that there would be perpetual peace between France and Burgundy (yea, right); that Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret of Austria, was to be married to the dauphin and, until she was of an age enough to do this, was to be sent off to Arras and given to the custody of one of the French Princes of the Blood, whereafter “the king shall take care to bring her up as his eldest daughter.” The lands of Artois, Burgundy, Franche-Comte, as well as other, fancy-sounding French places, Marconnois, Auxerrois, Salms, Bar-sur-Seines and de Noyers “shall be given in dower with her (Margaret) to the dauphin, to be enjoyed by them , their heirs by that marriage, whether male or female, for ever ; but in failure thereof, to return to duke Philip (her brother) and his heirs…” Another big addition to this treaty was that the Parliament of Paris would be once more recognised as the higher court of justice in Flanders. As for what the French had to give up, this included removing the troops Louis XI had recently sent to Luxembourg as well as discontinuing his support for rebels in Liege and Utrecht. Article 61, according to Commynes, reads: “The king, after the peace, will assist the duke against William de Aremberg , a Ligeois…” This William de Aremberg is, drum roll, William de la Marck, the Wild Boar of the Ardennes. As all of this had been happening in 1482, the Wild Boar had roused himself to action, taken out a prince-bishop, and become a big enough threat to warrant a place of his very own in this new treaty.


The Wild Boar of the Ardennes

The Wild Boar of the Ardennes is a character who has been mythologised throughout the centuries in such a way that the fact and fiction of his life have become so intertwined that it is sometimes difficult to separate one from the other. In 1823, centuries after he had died, Scottish writer and one of the forerunners of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott immortalised de la Marck in fiction with his book Quentin Durward, about a Scottish archer in the service of Louis XI. It is historically inaccurate, but here is his description of La Marck, who is one of the antagonists therein, worth relating if only for the fact that it reflects the mythical nature of his character:

“The Wild boar of the Ardennes...a captain of pillagers and murderers, who would take a man's life for the value of his gaberdine, and who slays priests and pilgrims as if they were so many lance knights and men at arms?”

Over centuries his reputation certainly cemented itself as a fearsome one. As for contemporaries of La Marck, however, what they thought of him probably depended on what they thought of the Burgundian government, where their loyalties lay in regards to Liege and what they thought of the French king. La Marck had originally been a supporter of Charles the Bold, but then had become a thorn in the side of Louis of Bourbon, the Prince-Bishop, and in 1474 had even burned down a church and killed one of Louis’ servants. Louis of Bourbon had attempted to pacify La Marck by ceding him the lands of the Franchimont. Jean de Molinet, who was a Burgundian court poet-cum-chronicler and successor to Chastellaine, but whose work has also been doubted for its veracity or usefulness, tells us that, following this, the relationship between La Marck and the Prince-bishop was “good and cordial”. This, at least, is supported by Commynes, who tells us that he was someone whom Louis de Bourbon had “entrusted and preferred”

Molinet goes on to tell us that after his accession to rule in the Franchimont, La Marck became more confident and enjoyed wider support in Liege than Louis de Bourbon himself who, as we know, never really enjoyed the total support of the Liegois. Soon, and this is paraphrasing Molinet, their relationship deteriorated and their enmity was at higher levels than it had ever been. La Marck found himself being banished from Liege, whereupon he made his way south and more into the orbit of Louis XI who was more than happy to give succour to anybody who was giving strife to Burgundian allies like the Prince-bishop of Liege. Although he did not receive ordinances from the French king, he was allowed to raise a force with which to try and re-take Liege. 

The Chronicles of Monstrelet go into far greater detail than Molinet and Commynes, but this is a friendly reminder that Monstrelet himself had been dead for nearly thirty years by this stage and someone else was cracking on with his work. So Monstrelet-non-Monstrelet, or the Mon-non-Mon as we have taken to calling them, tells us that in the autumn of 1482: 

“Sir William de la Marck, surnamed the Wild Boar of the Ardennes, conspired to levy a bloody war against that noble prince, and reverend father in God, the lord Louis de Bourbon, bishop of Liege, by whom he had been brought up and educated. His object was to assassinate the bishop, that his brother might succeed him in the bishopric. To assist him in his abominable enterprise, the king of France supplied him with men; and he collected in and about Paris a body of three thousand good-for-nothing fellows, whom he clothed in scarlet jackets, having on their left sleeve the figure of a boar’s head. They were lightly armed; and in this state he led them into the country of Liege…”


The Murder of the Prince-Bishop of Liège, Louis de Bourbon

Meanwhile, an army was raised in Liege by the Prince-Bishop, Louis de Bourbon, and gathered in Huy, while another was also assembled in Liege, to be commanded on his behalf by Jan van Horne. Suddenly, Maximilian had yet another issue heaped on his buffet-table of crises, as a French-funded rebel force was threatening the stability of Liege, which he was keen to try and get back into the Burgundian orbit. He sent troops led by the Prince of Orange to their aid and the general advice was for Louis de Bourbon to sit tight, in Huy, and await their arrival. For some reason, however, Louis and Jan van Horne did not do this, but rather decided to go out and take on de la Marck’s force. According to Mon-non-Mon, this was because de la Marck had loyal agents embedded within the bishop’s retinue who he instructed to encourage the bishop that confrontation was the best course of action. 

“Under pretence, therefore, of attachment to his person, they advised him strongly to march against the enemy at the gates, and assured him that they would all follow him in arms, and support and defend him to the last drop of their blood, and there was not the smallest doubt but the wild boar would be defeated with disgrace.”

Whatever the reason, on August 30, 1482, an army marched out of Liege and straight into the waiting arms of La Marck’s force. Soon, The Wild Boar had the upper hand, vanquishing the vanguard of this Liege force and then turning his attention to the force coming from Huy.

According to Mon-non-Mon, it was at this point that the treachery of the Liegois was unveiled. Having convinced Louis to go out and take la Marck down:

 “The bishop complied with their advice, sallied out of Liege, and advanced to where La Marck was posted. La Marck, observing this, quitted his ambush, and marched straight to the bishop; and the traitors of Liege, now finding their bishop in the hands of his enemy, fled back to their town without striking a blow. The bishop was greatly dismayed at this, - for he had now no one with him but his servants and vassals, while La Marck came up to him, and without saying a word, gave him a severe cut across the face, and then killed him with his own hand. This done, La Marck had the body stripped and placed naked in front of the cathedral church of St Lambert in Liege, where he was shown dead to all the inhabitants who wished to see him.”

Commynes and Molinet both say that his body was thrown into the river, but whatever the exact details, it was in this manner that the reign of Louis de Bourbon ended; the puppet bishop whom Philip the Good had installed as sovereign of the troublesome territory in 1456, who had faced revolt and unrest from the beginning and who despite being despised by large and powerful segments of the territory for his indulgent lifestyle had somehow managed to hold on to his tenuous position for nearly three decades. If Mon-non-Mon, the works of which tended to favour Burgundy over France, is to be believed, then Louis had underestimated the lingering dissent in the city of Liege and fallen into a trap that involved his deceit by elements in Liege who were either coordinated by or at least in consultation with La Marck. Is anybody really surprised that this happened? We are not. Au dieu, Louis de Bourbon.


William de la Marck’s death and legacy

As for La Marck, well it only makes sense if we wrap his story up too, even if it takes us a bit further into the future than we might wish. Following Louis’ murder he aimed to have his son installed as the new Prince-bishop of Liege, by forcing the chapters of St Lambert to appoint him. He had the houses of rich patricians in the city destroyed and forced anyone who had reason to fear his wrath to flee Liege, including many of the clergy who were responsible for appointing the next bishop. Of those that remained, he had them declare him as the new governor of Liege and insisted that his son be named bishop. This last matter became hotly contested, and so word was sent to Pope Sixtus IV to make the final decision.

La Marck’s other challenge was that, by now, Maximilian had raised an army of Brabanters who were heading towards Liege to take La Marck’s newly won lands from him. La Marck might have been able to counter this given that he had enjoyed the financial support of the French king up until this point. The problem he faced now, however, was that by this time Maximilian had ceded to Louis XI and agreed to the Treaty of Arras and, as we mentioned earlier, the French king agreed to stop supporting the Wild Boar of the Ardennes. The Burgundian ducal forces began rampaging back across Hainault and Liege and La Marck and his kin, in turn, went rampaging around themselves, creating general havoc and confusion for anyone just trying to live their lives. They attacked a Brabantine army in early 1483 and suffered heavy losses, having to basically fortify themselves in Liege and Huy. 

As everybody waited to hear who the pope would choose for bishop, the places where the Wild Boar still ruled became prone to paranoia and violence, as he was fiercely against peace and was likely to murder anyone who suggested it.  Despite this, the town of Liege brokered a peace with the Prince of Orange in April, 1483. Everything still depended, however, on the papal verdict on who would be the bishop. When word of this decision arrived, it was not de la Marck’s son, but rather Jan van Horne selected to take over from the murdered Louis of Bourbon. The Wild Boar was displeased, took up arms and threatened to go on a destructive rampage once more, but was talked down by being given some more fancy titles and a large chunk of money. The new bishop took a conciliatory view to it all and endeavoured to maintain the peace by bringing the Wild Boar into his favour.

Jef Leunissen wrote of this transition of power:

“It is typical of the mentality of the time that an excommunicated and exiled murderer, arsonist, looter and traitor was now treated as a friend by the new prince-bishop, whose predecessor he had single-handedly killed.”

However, it was not long before the new Prince-Bishop, Jan van Horne, found de la Marck to be overbearing and meddlesome, and continually pushing for more power in the region. He claimed the castle of Grevenbroek and made alliances that were clearly offensive to Burgundian stability. Eventually, Maximilian decided that something needed to be done about this and charged the Lord of Montigny, Frederik van Horne, with the task of getting the Wild Board of the Ardennes to Maastricht, where he could face the courts of both Brabant and Liege. This did not happen until the middle of 1485, for it would have taken quite some coordination, including the knowing participation of the new Prince-bishop. 

In June, the prince-bishop and La Marck made a trip to Sint-Truiden and stayed in the manor that La Marck had there. They were joined in the evening by the prince-bishop’s kin, Frederik van Horne, whose mission remained secret. At some stage during the evening’s feasting and chat, Frederik came to challenge La Marck to a horse-race. La Marck foolishly took the bait and, following dinner, they went off to a field outside where Frederik’s men were waiting in ambush. They took La Marck prisoner and showed him Maximilian’s order for his arrest. Then, he was carted off to Maastricht where he immediately faced a court of the commons, which promptly sentenced him to death. The following morning he was brought to the Vrijthof in Maastricht, and put upon a scaffold, where his head was deprived of its connectivity with his neck. One Liegois history written in the 19th century related that, as he stood on the scaffold, he scanned the crowd of observers and deliberately found the new prince-bishop, Jan van Horne, who had deceitfully led him to capture. After locking eyes, the Wild Boar of the Ardennes promptly lifted his beard to better expose his neck. Although probably apocryphal, he apparently proclaimed that his neck would bleed for a long time. Prescient words if true, given that his sons and brothers maintained a bloody civil war across Liege that would continue until 1492.

An interesting tid-bit to the story of the Wild Boar and his (let’s say) rocky relationship with Louis de Bourbon, is how the event has inspired later works. Earlier, we mentioned the 1823 novel Quentin Durward by Sir Walter Scott, who is often cited as the first historical novelist. Even though he set the story in 1468, Scott anachronistically employed the actual murder of Louis of Bourbon by William de La Marck to inspire the penultimate scene in Part II. The context of the assassination is vastly different, however, Scott writing it as the Wild boar and the riotous people of Liege feasting and celebrating, when Louis de Bourbon is suddenly dragged in and La Marck incites his followers to murder the bishop and sovereign of Liege. Some five years after its publication, the French Romantic artist Eugene Delacroix (who we wanted to mention if only because of how satisfying it is to say Dela-croix) produced a painting called The murder of the Bishop of Liege, based on Scott’s work, commissioned by the then Duke of Orleans but eventual last king of France, Louis-Philippe. The painting is small, but super impressive. Today it hangs in the Louvre so if you ever find yourself there and want to impress somebody with information and context behind a random painting, then we hope we have provided The murder of the Bishop of Liege by Eugene Delacroix as an option to you. If you want to sound really swanky, you can quote this critique of the work from 19th century art critic, Théophile Gautier, who wrote of it:

“...for the movement and fury of its composition, it is an inimitable masterpiece, a painted whirlwind, everything moving frantically in this little space, emerging from which one seems to hear lamentations and thunder; never have we seen thrown onto a canvas a crowd more hard, more swarming, more screaming or more enraged. This painting is truly tumultuous and loud ; we hear it as much as we see it…”

The Utrecht Civil War 1481-1483

For the second part of this episode we are going to return to the Stichtse Oorlog, the civil war in Utrecht, the opening salvos of which we saw last episode with the Battle of Scherpenzeel. Similar to pretty much every other part of the Low Countries at this time, the party factionalism inside Utrecht had been developing already for a while (this war isn’t sometimes referred to as the ‘“Second” Utrecht civil war’ for no reason). But despite having its own indigenous origins inside Utrecht, as we discussed in the previous episode, one of the key factors in this war was the simultaneous Hook and Cod war in neighbouring Holland. The fighting in Holland had spilled over into Utrecht, where exiles from Holland were harboured by sympathetic allies. The prince-bishops of Utrecht had long clashed with the counts of Holland as the latter grew in strength and took over lands which had previously been ruled by Utrecht. We talked about this way back in Episode 11 - the Murder of Floris V. So it shouldn’t really be surprising that these two conflicts coalesced into a conjoined conflagration of connected consequences.

By the end of 1481, the Hook and Cod wars in Holland had essentially resulted in victory for the Cods. With support from Maximilian, they had taken over important towns such as Leiden, Delft, the Hague and Amsterdam. However, across the border in Utrecht and the Sticht, those with a long-standing disaffection with the Burgundian puppet bishop, David of Burgundy, had become aligned with Hook partisans who had been forced to flee Holland. Here, under the leadership of Jan III van Montfort, they had successfully kicked David out of Utrecht (again) and he was left twiddling his thumbs in his castle at Wijk bij Duurstede, hoping Maximilian would find a chance to come and help him out. The rebellious city of Utrecht was joined by Amersfoort in this uprising against their prince-bishop. Maximilian, embroiled as he was in the war with France, appointed his stadhouder in Holland, Josse de Lalaing, to lead his forces against this new, Hook aligned uprising against his late wife’s uncle, David of Burgundy.

After the Battle of Scherpenzeel, in October 1481, Lalaing sent an army from Holland to secure the Lekdijk, just south of Utrecht. The ultimate objective was to reseat David on his throne, but by securing the river Lek the Burgundian forces would be able to blockade Utrecht and put the pinch on the Utrechters by cutting off their supply lines. To this purpose, Lalaing’s army pillaged the town of Jutphaas, which lies between Utrecht and the river Lek, destroyed some manors of Hook partisans and, to drive his point home, Lalaing had the main tower in Jutphaas burned to the ground.

In response, the Hook leader in Utrecht, Jan van Montfort compelled a civilian force of, it is thought, around 2000 uppity and upset Utrechters, to get in small boats and set off to break the blockade. At the same time, the mayor of Utrecht, Jan van Lantscroon, led another civilian force out by foot and, together, these bodies surprised the Hollander army, earning themselves a pretty tidy victory at the Battle of Vreeswijk. On their return to the city, they were greeted as heroes and Montfort handed out a couple of knighthoods. Different sources give different numbers, but a significant number of Hollander prisoners were brought back into Utrecht, reportedly earning the city around a year’s worth of income via their ensuing ransoms.

In early December, the Utrecht/Amersfoorters dealt another blow to Holland and Maximilian when they plundered the town of Naarden. Naarden’s main income came from weaving. On the 9th of December, a large wool fair was held annually in the town of Deventer, meaning that a large portion of Naarden’s population had left the town to attend this fair. A group of around 600 armed men from Utrecht and Amersfoort stealthily moved towards Naarden and hid themselves just outside the town. Although Naarden was ripe for the taking, the Utrechters did not have any siege weapons, so decided that the best course of action was deception. On the 10th of December, three of them dressed up as farmer women, each complete with an egg basket under their arms. They kidnapped a real farmer woman and brought her to one of the gates, where she said the appropriate words to the unsuspecting watchman to get them in. When the porter opened the gate, the ruse must have quickly become clear to him when he fell victim to a bit of stabby stab stab to the throat. They quickly signalled to the rest of the troops that the way was clear, and the lot of them went about plundering Naarden. The people remaining in Naarden who had not gone to the trade fair tried to flee, with many running to the church for sanctuary. But the rampaging soldiers ignored any notion of sanctity that they thought the church may provide for them and butchered 17 people inside. In total, about 50 people died in Naarden and a further 200 or so were taken prisoner and sold for ransom. The Utrechters left the city about a day after the attack when they started getting jumpy about the potential consequences of their actions. Unfortunately for Naarden, this is not the last time the town is going to be violently violated by vicious veterans.


The slaughter of Westbroek

After the loss at Vreeswijk and the sack of Naarden, Lalaing was out for revenge. He raised a force of around 4-5 thousand men from the Zuiderkwartier of Holland, which at this point referred to anything south of the IJ, meaning towns such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Gouda, Dordrecht among many others. The forces were led by Jean Salazar, that Basque noble who had led the fight at the Battle of Scherpenzeel. In the cold environs of late December, this Hollander army set out from Het Gooi through land which was normally impassable, but due to the freezing conditions could now be traversed. They focused their wrath on the areas north of Utrecht, where the towns of Eemnes, Baarn and Soest were all laid to waste. Following this, they seem to have taken a break for Christmas, after which they moved on to the village of Westbroek, which was destroyed on the 26th of December, which they called St Steven’s day, but in Australia we call Boxing Day, or cricket and leftovers day or, in recent times, St Steve Smith’s day. Every wooden building in Westbroek was set ablaze, with the exception, according to the chronicles, of ones which nursing mothers and dying people were in. The stone church which had only just been built that year was also left un-defiled.

The destruction at Westbroek was clearly visible from the nearby city of Utrecht. A civilian force was hurriedly raised there. But this was far from a well organised army. A Utrecht chronicle suggests that it was more like a bunch of brave lads who were so shocked by what they had seen that they rushed towards Westbroek as quickly as possible to try and help the innocent people there. It tells us “the civilians and mercenaries ran disorganized out of town, whoever ran the fastest considered himself the bravest.” There are countless times in history when the words ‘brave’ and ‘stupid’ should probably be interchanged. Perhaps if these Utrechter lads had taken a little bit more time to assess what was happening, they might have made such a swap. From the walls of the city, they had only been able to see a smaller part of the Hollander force. They did not realise that the army had in fact been broken into three until they approached and were quickly surrounded on three sides by a much larger army than they had reckoned upon.

Realising the precariousness of their position, one of these brave/stupid men, a city administrator called Aernt Ruuys, who was holding a red banner, quickly suggested that they turn around and get back to safety behind the walls as soon as possible. Another man, a captain of the cavalry named Vincent van der Zwanenburch countered this by saying “let us stand our ground, because if we flee, then we will all be killed or taken prisoner.” Despite these prescient words of advice, however, panic quickly set in within the Utrechters and they broke. Aernt Ruuys, the guy holding the banner, either threw it to the ground or ripped it in half. Seeing this, the Hollanders did pretty much exactly what van der Zwanenburch had predicted and mercilessly chased down the Utrechters, murdering any they could get their hands on. It is suggested that up to 1500 men, including some of Utrecht’s leading citizens, children, mercenaries and farmers, died, either at the hands of the Hollanders or by falling through the ice into the wet peat bogs, in which they either drowned, bled out, or froze to death. The chronicle says that women from Utrecht walked over the battlefield for days after the slaughter, trying to find their husbands’ bodies, where they found dead men frozen into the ice, who looked as though they were still living. The Battle of Westbroek was a huge victory for the Cod/Holland forces, which came at an immense cost for the people of Utrecht and the surrounding areas.

Support comes from Engelbrecht of Cleves

The Utrechters needed allies and, in these days of division and discord, it was not difficult to find some. Given what a good job they were doing at being a pain in Maximilian’s backside, Louis XI was, of course, willing to flirt with them enough for them to have hope in that direction. Another suitor to their cause was the new Duke of Cleves, John II. His father, John I, had been pro-Burgundian and had fought with William of Egmont in Guelders to try and ensure a pro-Burgundian government would stay in power there after Charles the Bold’s death. The younger John had fought alongside Charles the Bold at Neuss and the Battle of Nancy. Despite this, however, he could not pass up the opportunity to wrench the powerful, ecclesiastical seat of Utrecht from the grasp of the Burgundian apparatus. He intended on having his brother, Engelbrecht, installed in David’s stead. Engelbrecht was keen! So he raised his own army and, in collaboration with Jan of Montfort and the Hooks, entered Utrecht so as to be appointed ruwaard, or placeholder, of the bishop. The local clergy denied this but when men pointed swords at them they reluctantly agreed. It left David of Burgundy standing isolated, on soggy, sinking soil, left bereft of local, noble support, basically now counting on Frederick van Egmont, the Lord of IJsselstein, as his one, solid ally. As the year spun into another, there was no resolution to the civil war in sight.

On the 1st of January, 1482, the Utrechters made a New Year’s resolution to break open the Lekdijk, which protected the floodplains between Utrecht and Holland. They pierced it it about half a kilometre upstream from a church at ‘t Waal, but ‘twas a cold and icy winter, with a fierce and frozen wind prevailing. Great ice floes rammed into the breach they had made in the dijk, widening the hole. Over the next two months this had the unintended effect of allowing the waters to flood more into Utrecht than Holland, causing their own people the greatest amount of suffering as a result of their tactic. The devastation wrought on the people meant that, by the end of February, Montfort had to order them to repair the hole, which in and of itself took three days’ labour. Even though the idea did not work, and also that it wasn’t the first time that Lowlanders had tried to manipulate the waterways for militaristic means, it was still a gnarly attempt whose theory was sound, and of which historian Ad van Bemmel said:

“All this shows that in the fifteenth century people knew well where the dike had to be pierced in order to hit Holland as much as possible.”

During those first months of 1482, David of Burgundy and Josse de Lalaing set about implementing another set of offensives. In the middle of January, David set out with 125 knights from his stronghold at Wijk bij Duurstede, south-east of Utrecht, while Josse de Lalaing, who was in the recently pillaged Naarden, north of Utrecht, took his men and did likewise. They set about plundering the lands of Utrecht and the Sticht, trying to egg the Utrechters on and compel them to come and make open battle. When this didn’t happen, they looted a couple of cloisters, trod on a few relics, smashed church windows and stole whatever they could get their hands on. The women in one cloister fell to the bishop’s feet begging him for protection. He was, after all, supposed to be their bishop, so also supposed to be their spiritual protector. David of Burgundy remained unmoved, however, simply answering that he would do no such thing. Inside the city of Utrecht itself, conditions were beginning to deteriorate as the blockade on its supply lines began to take its toll. The price of grain skyrocketed. The city was falling into a financial blackhole, what with all the disruption to its incomes and the need to pay for all of this military action. 

Some inside Utrecht began to call for peace. In February, during peace talks between Lalaing and the Hollanders (on behalf of Maximilian) on one side and the rebellious Utrechters on the other, there were claims made by the Utrechters that Engelbrecht of Cleves had no problems with Maximilian himself and that the only issue they had was with David of Burgundy. Unbeknownst to them, however, Engelbrecht had actually sent so-called ‘vetebrieven’ to both David of Burgundy and to Maximilian himself. A ‘vetebrief’ is kind of like a letter where you announce that you are renouncing peace with someone and that violence should be expected. When these letters were brought out and shown to the Utrechters, they were embarrassingly put in their place. The peace negotiations stalled.

It was around this time that Mary of Burgundy had her horse-riding accident and died. Maximilian was thrust into a period of mourning, as well as into all of those political issues in Flanders regarding his regency over young Philip, which we spoke about in the first part of this episode. In his grief, Maximilian briefly escaped the political tumult to again go hunting in the Veluwe. David of Burgundy sent a message to him asking for more help, in response to which Maximilian sent out a group of knights to join in the general harassment of Utrecht and the Sticht’s supply lines. Although this would be useful, it was not enough to bring about any quick resolution to the war. As such, the violence in Utrecht and Holland dragged on.


The Leap of Jan van Schaffelaar

As we have seen, the Utrecht civil war was characterised by a series of smash-and-grab raids, tit-for-tat retributive attacks and pillaging. Although it must have been misery for those stuck in the middle of it, for the sake of brevity, those of us who aren’t stuck in the middle of it are going to skip over a bunch of them. Having said that, however, in July 1482, perhaps one of the most famous incidents in this war occurred, which we must quickly talk about: the leap of Jan van Schaffelaar. 

The only account of this story comes from Anthoneus Matthaeus, who in 1698 published a book known as the Analecta, which contained a copy of the chronicle we referenced earlier. It was written by an unknown author and the original version of it has long since disappeared. There is much debate as to who the author of this chronicle must have been, but although there is no consensus most historians seem to agree that it was written by somebody close to the events. So, as this anonymous author tells it: 

On the 16th of July, 1482, a Cod-force of 19 soldiers who had been based at the castle of Rosendael took over the church of Barneveld, about 10km from the rebel stronghold of Amersfoort. They had probably been ordered by David of Burgundy to do whatever they could to disrupt the supply of the city of Utrecht. This small troop of Cod soldiers were led by a mercenary from Guelders named Jan van Schafelaar. When in Barneveld, they were encountered by an enemy force of rebellious Amersfoorters, accompanied by fellow Hook knights from Nijkerk, who killed several of the Cods and forced van Schaffelaar’s men to seek refuge in the tower of the church. The Hooks brought cannons and began to shoot at the tower, leading the troops inside to beg for a parlay. But the Cod troops had little leverage and the rebels stated, rather masochistically, that they would only treat with them if they threw their commander out of the tower. The men refused. But van Schaffelaar gave this some thought and, having made a decision, stood up and said to his troops “Lieve gesellen, ic moet ummer sterven, ic en wil u in geenen last brenghen”, which translates roughly into “Dear brothers, I must die someday, and I do not wish to put you under any burden.” 

With that, (and this is with our attempted translation from 17th century Dutch):

“he went up to the top of the tower, and stood with his hands by his side, and he leaped from the top to below.”

Van Schaffelaar somehow survived his fall, but was mortally injured and apparently then finished off by the Hook soldiers who had originally demanded his demise. 

Considering the amount of time, as well as the massive social, economic and political transformations that are going to occur in the Low Countries between the 1480s and the 1690s, when this anonymous account was published, it is impossible to know what bearing in truth this story has, if any. After all, the idea of a Dutch national identity was essentially brought into being during that period. It is not too difficult to imagine that Schaffelaar’s troops just accepted the demands and threw van Schaffelaar out of the tower to buy a chance to free themselves, and we would have no idea. They could have come out and just told everyone, ‘yea, Jan, what a great bloke. Hero, threw himself off the tower for us. Promise. Cough.’ All we have is that Matthaeus recounted the story and it has since grown into legend. 

Van Schaffelaar has been portrayed as a volksheld, a folk hero, whose actions have since been framed as displaying bravery, sacrifice and dignity. Like William de La Marck, the story of van Schaffelaar provided great fodder for romantic writers and artists. In 1838, only about a decade after Walter Scott used the character of La Marcke in his book Quentin Durward, the Dutch romantic Jan Frederik Oltmans (who used the pseudonym ‘Jan van den Hage’) wrote a historical novel called De Schaapherder, or ‘The Sheepherder’, in which van Schaffelaar was his protagonist, while nearly 150 years after that, in 1983, Thea Beckman used him as a character in her book, Hasse Simonsdochter. Numerous Dutch artists and, particularly, printmakers such as Tieleman Cato Bruining in the 19th century, have used the moment that van Schaffelaar leaped sacrificially off the tower, as a powerful subject matter. In fact, during the 1800s, the study of history was being aligned to the significant political and social changes that were occurring across Europe. W.A Elberts, who wrote the Geschiedenis des Vaderlands, History of the Fatherland, in 1855, used the story of van Schaffelaar to justify covering the Stichtse Oorlog to the extent he did. He wrote “I would have swept you away from this war, had it not been for a heroic fact that fully deserves to be remembered by you.” So from this angle, an unverifiable and possibly mythical story was more important in projecting values onto a national identity, than the details of the war itself. The importance of this story to the forging of Dutch national identity is demonstrated by the fact that a large mural of Jan van Schaffelaar standing on the edge of the tower, arms by his side, looking determinedly forward as he prepares to jump is depicted on one of the walls of the Front Hall of the Rijksmuseum, the Dutch national history museum. In 2020, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests and the worldwide discussions about colonial statues, one right wing populist politician in the Netherlands shared a photo of himself online laying flowers at the statue of Jan van Schaffelaar in Barneveld with the caption “Our Hero”. It is remarkable to see how the mythical idea of somebody can, over centuries, become far removed from the historical facts of their life… as far as I can tell, a guy killing himself during a civil war in Utrecht in the 1480s doesn’t have much to do with systemic racism in the 2020s. But I digress.

The Dung Wagon and the Siege of Utrecht

So despite the overblown importance that will be attributed to Jan van Schaffelaar’s leap in later history, at the time it was a nothing event which made no major impact on the course of the war. There were further attacks by the Hooks throughout Holland. They made a failed attempt to capture Dordrecht in April and briefly took Hoorn in July before being forced out again by Lalaing’s forces fighting under Jan III van Egmont. De Lalaing was able to capture two strongholds nearby Utrecht, Harmelen and Ter Haar, whilst Engelbrecht of Cleves sent men raiding through the Sticht. On 1 August, 1482, Pope Sixtus IV weighed in on things, issuing a papal bull which demanded obedience to Prince-Bishop David and put a halt to all church activities in the city. Jan van Montfoort encouraged Engelbrecht to appeal against the papal bull and continue on with the struggle, and he forced the priests inside Utrecht to ignore the pope and continue with their work too. It’s amazing what a sharp sword can achieve.

You might recall that one of the most important allies David of Burgundy had inside Utrecht itself was the Lord of IJsselstein, Frederick van Egmont. Engelbrecht of Cleves and the rebellious Utrechters decided that their next move would be to nullify him by laying siege to IJsselstein. There was a great dislike between Utrecht and IJsselstein. 18th century historian Jan van Wagenaar writes that, “There was an old saying in Utrecht, that the Lords of IJsselstein, before they were born, were already enemies of Utrecht”. The city was lightly defended and should have been easily captured by the force of 6000 men, but they were able to hold out for long enough for Frederick van Egmont to gather enough men to break the siege six weeks later. The momentum of the war was beginning to shift in favour of the Hollanders and the loyalists inside Utrecht, though they were forced to bring the campaigning to an end for the year when the most Dutch of all things, terrible weather, set in. It was also at this time that peace of Arras, which we spoke about in the first part of this episode, was signed, meaning that one of the last remaining hopes the rebels in Utrecht had for getting powerful, foreign support, was snuffed out. Louis XI and Maximilian had explicitly agreed that there would be no French intervention in Utrecht. So now, the rebels in Utrecht, much like those in Liege, would have to face the wrath of Archduke Maximilian alone.

By April, 1483, the mood inside the city of Utrecht had collapsed to the point that people were openly calling for peace. During a raid which Engelbrecht of Cleves led against the town of Rhenen, a group inside the city decided that enough was enough. When David of Burgundy appeared at the walls of Utrecht with an army of 300 soldiers and 30 knights on the evening of April 21, they seized the opportunity that the absence of Engelbrecht had provided them, and opened the gates to him. David was welcomed with a line of blazing torches into the city of Utrecht and once again took possession of his episcopal throne. But the sudden occupation of Utrecht by soldiers from Holland, with whom they had been locked in this bloody struggle for the best part of 3 years, also roused angst amongst segments of the population, who called to Amersfoort for help. On the morning of the 3rd of May, a sort of commando raid took place, where a group of Hook partisans from Amersfoort, led by the Lord of Nievelt, crossed a canal surrounding the city, scaled the walls and successfully kidnapped David of Burgundy. The bishop was thrown naked, onto a farmer’s cart, or, as it has often been described, a dung wagon, and humiliatingly brought back to Amersfoort where he was held hostage. He had really landed in a heap. And speaking of wagon, very late into this episode, it is time for everybody’s favourite somewhat informative but most definitely irreverent segment of the podcast… bet you didn’t know that was the Dutch! The English word wagon, comes from the dutch word… and this will shock you… waghen. Meaning wagon. And if you’re looking for a wagon to jump on, may I suggest the Melbourne Demons bandwagon of 2021. Wagon! Bet you didn’t know that was Dutch.

By this stage, Maximilian had personally travelled to Holland to be formally recognised in his position as regent for Philip there. He decided that now was the time to end matters in Utrecht once and for all. At the head of an army of around 12000 men and 2000 knights, he oversaw an attack on the city of Utrecht. The siege of Utrecht of 1483 would last for two months and the fighting was intense. Engelbrecht of Cleves was taken prisoner by Maximilan after a set of peace talks went wrong and the stadhouder of Holland, Josse de Lalaing, was also killed in action. By the end of August, both sides were ready for peace and on the 3rd of September, 1483, the siege ended when a peace treaty was agreed to. Maximilian then moved on to Amersfoort to free David, but by now the Amersfoorters had realised that the situation was hopeless and they too agreed to lay down their arms.

A relatively lenient peace

In the peace treaty, Maximilian was recognised as the new temporal lord of the Sticht. Remember that as a prince-bishop, David of Burgundy had wielded both the spiritual and temporal power within Utrecht. But not anymore. Although David would remain as the bishop, Maximilian appointed the Lord of IJsselstein, Frederik van Egmond as his stadhouder in Utrecht. The terms of the peace treaty were nowhere near as harsh as we have seen former Dukes of Burgundy foist upon defeated rebellious cities. Eighty of the leading citizens of Utrecht were to appear before him bareheaded, on their knees, begging for forgiveness. The city of Utrecht and Jan van Montfoort would have to pay him twenty thousand Rhenish guelders, as well as repay the damage they had caused in Holland, and the walls of the city which had been destroyed in the siege would not be allowed to be rebuilt. But otherwise, there would be a general peace with all of the rebels, including their leader Jan van Montfoort who, besides having some land stripped from him, went largely unpunished. I’m sure that he will just slip quietly into the night and not cause any further troubles later on. 

And that brings us to the end of our tale of two bishops. We have seen how Maximilian was forced into corners by the Flemish he would’ve rather stayed out of; his son had been claimed by the Ghentenaars and to bring an end to the war with France he had been obliged to basically sell his daughter to the French king. Despite this, with the cessation of that war, he was able to concentrate on curtailing the rebellions in Liege and Utrecht which, in turn, will give him plenty of time to think about how to deal with those ever rebellious Flemish. Maybe we should have considered calling this podcast “The History of Flemish Revolts”. Until next time, doei! 

Sources used:


The Promised Lands by Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier

Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments by Helmut Koenigsberger

The Historical Memoirs of Philip de Comines, Containing the Transactions of Lewis XI and of Charles VIII of France and of Edward IV and Henry VII of England by Philippe de Commyne

‘The Burgundian Netherlands, 1477–1521’ in The New Cambridge Modern History, chapter by C. A. J. Armstrong

Louis XI: The Universal Spider by Paul Murray Kendall

Quentin Durward by Walter Scott

Vaderlandsche Historie (Vol 4.) by Jan Wagenaar

Bisschop David van Bourgondië en zijn stad. Utrechtsch-Hollandsche jaarboeken 1481-1483, by Antonius Matthaeus.

The Chronicles of Monstrelet by Enguerrand de Monstrelet and Mon-non-mon

De kus van de ijzeren maagd by Jef Leunissen

Promenades historiques dans le Pays de Liège, by Jean-Pierre Bovy

De sprong van Jan van Schaffelaar by Antheun Janse

Naarden geplunderd, Eemnes verbrand by T. Pluim

De Kerk van Westbroek

Jaarboekje voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde van Leiden en Omstreken, 1997, Negenentachtigste Deel by De Vereniging Oud Leiden Door Nautilus Leiden

Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden Deel 3 by A.J. van der AA