Episode 40: The Rhyme and Unreason of Treason
After being forced to sign the Treaty of Arras in late 1482, Maximilian of Habsburg found his authority in Flanders challenged by a group of powerful nobles and patrician merchants from the big cities of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres. Using their social, economic and political clout, as well as the physical possession of Maximilian’s children, an alternative government was set up in Flanders in the form of a regency council, allied to the French king. But when Louis XI died in 1483, and the rest of the Low Countries decided they preferred Maximilian to the Flemish, the course was, once again, set for full scale revolt, open warfare and Flemish cities fighting against the man who claimed the right to rule them. Welcome back to your favourite podcast, the History of Flemish revolts.
Implications of Treaty of Arras
The Treaty of Arrass’ conception and negotiation by the Flemish estates can be considered the opening phase of the Flemish Revolts of 1482-92. During those ten years, there were two large revolts against Maximilian, the first of which we are going to cover in today’s episode. The question of whether Maximilian would rule for his son Philip facilitated a fracturing of Flemish society into fervent factions fueled by friction. On the one hand were the Monetans, those who support Maximilian, while on the other were the Philippins, who were wealthy Flemish burghers and nobles who sought to wrest the regency control of the young child, Philip, away from Maximilian, and so rule Flanders more independently of a central Burgundian government. In the months before the treaty of Arras was signed, it was these Flemish power-brokers, sometimes-allied with similar Brabantine power-brokers, which included high nobles and wealthy merchant patricians, who imposed their will on the States General and on Maximilian, by acting on behalf of his authority, negotiating with the French king. Like we said in the previous episode, most of this Flemish resistance was being driven by the leading citizens of Ghent. This included its pensionary, Willem Rym, who also represented Ghent at meetings of the states general, one of its leading aldermen, Daniel Onredene and one of the city secretaries, Jan van Coppenhole.
The power and influence that these people in Ghent wielded was such that they had compelled the Habsburg prince to agree to the treaty, which he did in absentia via a no-doubt grumpy-faced proxy. As for the French king, Louis XI, his overarching aim in all this was to undo much of what the previous Treaty of Arras of 1435 had accomplished. In that agreement Burgundy, under Philip the Good, had managed to extricate itself from the suzerainty of the French king and take possession of the Somme towns; via the treaty, Philip the Good had been given a wider pathway towards centralisation of the Burgundian Low Countries, while also keeping the rich Flemish urban elite somewhat in check. In this newer version, however, Louis reinstituted the Parliament of Paris as the highest judicial court over the one Charles the Bold had established in Mechelen and emphatically highlighted, without question, that he was the suzerain of Flanders; the new count, Mary and Maximilian’s young son Philip, would be required to pay homage to the French king once he came of age.
On an international level, the timing of the treaty suited Louis’ designs. One of his biggest impediments was the alliance that had formed between Burgundy, England and Brittany. Back in 1477, Louis XI and the English king, Edward IV, had agreed to the Treaty of Picquigny, in which Edward agreed to call off the invasion of France he had promised to Charles the Bold, in exchange for a nice, yearly bribe, I mean “pension”, from Louis XI. One of the conditions of the Treaty of Picquigny had been that Edward IV’s daughter, Elizabeth, was to marry the dauphin, Charles. Over the next few years, Margaret of York had worked hard to rebuild relations between the court of her older brother in England and those of her Burgundian husband and step-daughter, and then of her step-son-in-law. But in England, Edward IV had made the most of his immense power by consuming an immense amount of food and drink. Furthermore, in 1482 he had gotten his army involved in an expensive and useless campaign to support the overthrow of the Scottish throne. When Louis and the States General, acting on behalf of the central government, negotiated the Treaty of Arras, they omitted the inclusion of any representative from England or Brittany, as would have been custom given the alliance. Leaving them out effectively ended the alliance and would leave Maximilian standing around holding his own sword; a shame, given all the hard work that had been done to rebuild that alliance.
Rumours about the Dauphin
In towns and the countryside there was a general relief that peace terms had been reached and that there might not be any more bands of marauding French soldiers roaming around in the near future. But in the county of Artois - which as part of the treaty was included in young Margaret’s dowry, and so effectively handed to the dauphin - one of its main cities, St Omer, was virulently anti-French. They decided that they would not allow the dauphin to take possession until his marriage had been consummated which, given young Margaret’s age, would not be for quite some years. High-level opponents of the marriage arrangement began to spread rumours about the actual legitimacy of the dauphin, and that he was not Louis XI’s son, but rather that of Louis’ son-in-law, Peter II of Bourbon, who was married to Louis’s eldest daughter Anne. Saucy stuff.
These rumours spread beyond Artois and into Flanders, causing murmurs of discontent along the lines of division between the different factions, despite the growing strength of the Philippins. Remember that, in an age before instagram, you had to take somebody’s word for whether something - or, indeed, somebody - else actually existed. The dauphin could not just send out a TikTok video to prove that he had TikTok. By now, the rumours had taken on their own life, and people in houses and drinking halls across Flanders were leaning in to their compatriots and whispering things like “nobody has actually ever seen the dauphin, perhaps he doesn’t even exist”, all the while knowingly raising a conspiratorial eyebrow as proof. Such was the general uncertainty that a bunch of Flemish ambassadors were soon sent off to France, to go and see the Dauphin with their own eyes and get some verification. Sure enough, the dauphin did actually exist and so was paraded in front of the Flemish ambassadors and a crowd of their servants that had basically forced themselves in to make sure of it. During this spectacle, the dauphin gave away his expensive tabard - like a coat - to one of the commoners. As Jane de Longh writes in her biography of Margaret of Austria “without his coat, Charles was even better to be seen, and letters from eyewitnesses told admiringly of his sturdy calves”. Again, saucy stuff. Ooh look at those calves. Calves, of course, being the backside of his legs, and not a bunch of young, stout and good looking cows that followed him around.
Margaret of Austria becomes engaged to the dauphin
it was not until spring of 1483 that the weather was deemed good enough for the three year old Margaret to make her journey to the French court, to begin life as the first woman of France. As described by Jane de Longh “for this great journey she wore a little black satin dress, all embroidered in gold thread, and a black velvet hat without a brim, over a white muslin veil.” Her step-grandmother, Margaret of York, watched on as the young Margaret of Austria was loaded into a coach decked out in typical, spectacular Burgundian fashion. She was to be handed over to the French at Hesdin, and along the way was escorted by a large retinue of powerful Flemish and Brabantine nobles and clergy, such as the Lord of Ravenstein, Adolph of Cleves, as well as Wolfert van Borselen, the lord of Veere, the chancellor of Brabant, their respective wives, about 30-40 other ladies in waiting and the abbotts of a bunch of powerful monasteries. This grand procession was not only coming along to enjoy the festivities which they were expecting would take place, but also to make sure there wasn’t any last-ditch effort by Maximilian to try and retake control of his daughter. The procession wound its way from Ghent to Lille, where they halted for a couple of weeks before receiving word that Louis’ eldest daughter, Anne de Beaujeu and her husband Peter were ready for their arrival at Hesdin.
Upon arrival in Hesdin, there were several days worth of solemn ceremonies where the French and Burgundian nobles went through the formalities of arranging the marriage. At one point, Anne de Beaujeu and her husband were given permission to look at the infant Margaret in the nude, to make sure everything was how it was supposed to be, which is another clear example of how the children of nobility back then were basically treated like finely-clothed livestock. Satisfied with what they saw, the next day after mass, the official engagement ceremony was conducted in the hall of the castle, where all the important people from both sides packed in to listen to the marriage contract and peace terms being read out loud. After this was done, Margaret of Austria, the - don’t forget - three year old child for whom all of this fuss was being made, and who had probably been sleeping on her nurse’s lap the entire time, was officially handed over to the Lord of Beaujeu, who then, to quote the chronicle of Bresin which this story has been coming from, “replaced her in the hands of her nurse”. And that was it!
After the ceremony, the Flemish delegation had been expecting that there would be some kind of extravagant feast, as tradition would have had it. But much to their displeasure, there was nothing - not even a small get together for a barbecue and a chat about the fortunes of English football. So the next day, as they prepared to return to Flanders, the women who had accompanied Margaret put on all of their fanciest clothes which they had packed for the party which never was, as a means of letting their disappointment and anger be seen, and parted ways with the French, glittering in aggrieved chagrin, trotting away in a wave of petulance, precious stones and pointy hats. Margaret - this baby - was left with the French, only her nurse Jeanne de Bousanton being permitted to remain with her. After this, they would whisk her back to Amboise in France, where she would finally meet her fiancee and be educated at the French court. Although this won’t be the last we see of Margaret of Austria, for now, let us bid her adieu.
Maximilian and the Flemish come to loggerheads
In May, 1483, then, having seen the Flemish basically sell his daughter to the French, Maximilian took out his anger on five deputies of the estates of Brabant, including a knight and government officials from Antwerp, Brussels and Leuven who were arrested by the Duke’s men. Members of this group had been integral in the construction and negotiation of the Treaty of Arras. Maximilian had them charged with treason and executed. This, in the long run, would turn out to be a turning point in how the other territories of the Burgundian Low Countries related to Flanders. Brabant itself was becoming suspicious of the dominance coming from Flanders, especially in that the young prince-naturel was not being let out of Ghent and brought, say, to Brussels. As C.A.J Armstrong put it in his chapter of the New Cambridge Modern History, titled the The Burgundian Netherlands, 1477-1521, this would become a turning point for how events would unravel in the decades and, I suppose, the centuries to come: “The unswerving loyalty of Antwerp towards the central authority dates from this event.”
As for Flemish society, and as was usual with these matters, there was no unity on the issue of whether Maximilian should be the mambour to his children. Much like 21st century is divided into pro and anti-vaxxers, in the late 15th century, Flanders was divided into pro and anti-Maxxers. Especially in those good old hot-spots for the foment of revolt, Bruges, Ghent and Ypres, the competing sides had solidified into the anti-max Philippins and the pro-max Monetans. We do not need to remind you that although these factions might have broadly aligned from city to city, they all had their own localised differences and characteristics based on already existing political schemings and alliances. One of the Philippins cliques in Bruges, led by a wealthy merchant called Jan Moreel, came to hold sway locally. Moreel’s men were put into positions of power throughout Bruges and Moreel himself became the main man in town, much as had happened in Ghent, under the auspices of Willem Rym, Daniel Onredene and Jan van Coppenhole.
A regency council is formed in Flanders
A coalition of some of the most powerful lords in the Low Countries also aligned themselves with the anti-Max powerbrokers from the towns. These were pretty much the same people who accompanied Margaret on her journey into the clutches of France and some of whose names have been popping up a fair bit during our most recent, previous episodes. Adolf of Cleves, the Lord of Ravenstein; Philip of Burgundy, the Lord of Beveren, who was the son of the famous Bastard of Burgundy, so therefore bastard grandson of Philip the Good; Louis de Gruuthuyse - formerly the large-library owning stadhouder in Holland; Adrian Vilain, the Lord of Rasseghem; Wolfert van Borselen, the Lord of Veere who had disastrously chosen to support the Hook faction during his short term as stadthouder of Holland and Zeeland; and Jacob of Savoy, the Count of Romont. By the time the treaty was signed, this coalition of town burghers and nobles had by now well and truly taken it upon themselves to call the shots on behalf of the young archduke Philip. To this end, and from this coalition, a regency council was established. Jelle Haemers, whose work we have leaned upon heavily for this period, points out that they were not trying to wrest total, independent control away from the overarching Burgundian structure, but rather that:
“The cities did not dismiss the central state, but reinterpreted it as a federation, a political union comprising a number of partially self-governing cities united by a central ("federal") government, the regency council.”
The council’s argument for legitimacy rested upon the original marriage contract between Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian, which had specifically disallowed either of them inheriting each other’s lands and titles. As you may recall, they had later signed a secret annulment of that clause between each other. There was also a precedent that had been set in Brabant, when the states had appointed just such a council to rule during the ducal regency of John IV, who had been that useless second husband of Jacqueline of Bavaria, who we covered in episode 21.
Maximilian’s upbringing and demeanour meant that, to his mind, what he and the Duchess had agreed together, insofar as their lands and titles went, far outweighed what a bunch of haughty commoners in the States General had tried to impose upon their wedding contract, and whatever precedent had been set by Brabant. These same commoners had forced a peace treaty on him which they had treacherously negotiated with France themselves - after all, even the French king had seen Arras as an agreement ‘with those of Flanders’ - and to go with this humiliation, Maximilian had lost his only daughter to the whims of the French court and his son was in the clutches of the very same haughty commoners who had contrived it all. But it was at this very moment that Maximilian found himself needing to go deal with yet another set of haughty commoners and put the city of Utrecht under siege, which we spoke about at the end of the last episode. If he went north with things still up in the air, he may have lost control of the situation in Flanders completely, so bereft was he of economic, social and political capital in the county. As such, on the 5th of June 1483, he ratified the creation of the regency council, if only to buy himself some time, while he went to sort out Utrecht.
In return for this temporary agreement, Flanders was compelled to pay an annuity of 20,000 crowns in return, which is an unusual solution to the original problem that had given rise to this Flemish power-grab, which was them always having to pay money to the ducal court. The terms agreed upon at this point clearly do not represent Maximilian ceding control to the regency council. He gives them responsibility to “care, charge and conduct the affairs of our country and county of Flanders as long as we please.” And it probably won’t surprise you to learn that it will not please him for very long.
The Universal Spider finally dies
No doubt, one of the key factors which had emboldened the Flemish rebellion against Maximilian had been the support they had enjoyed from the French king Louis XI, who himself no doubt revelled in watching the seeds of discord he had been sewing come into bloom. But, alas for Louis, enjoying these successes would be short-lived, and so too would he. On the 30th of August, having suffered another stroke, the man who some called “the Universal Spider” because of the webs of intrigue and deception that he wove, finally wove his way off this mortal coil. Louis XI has been journeying with us since way back in episode 27. We have seen him go from a royal baby, born in the midst of dire times for his family during one of France’s lowest ebbs in the Hundred years war; to become an exiled prince and enemy of his own father. He charmingly endeared himself to his Burgundian hosts while plotting their eventual downfall and, when he became sovereign of France, wielded all the tools of manipulation he had to punish his enemies and remain one of the continent’s most powerful people, as well as, it is worth pointing out, reforming many aspects of French society in ways that we don’t care about because this is not the History of France podcast. His rule, at the beginning, had been immediately caught up in a civil war with the strongest French nobles and Charles the Bold. In fact, there had scarce been a time during his 21 year reign that France was not at war with somebody and not least with itself.
The spider, however, had managed to outlive pretty much all of the major enemies he had made in that time. Chief among these were the kings of Aragon and England, and the Dukes of Milan and Burgundy. His relationship with Charles the Bold, in particular, seemed to represent a personal distaste of the Low Countries, and especially Flanders, being under Burgundian control. That was Louis XI’s way: using his immense skills of deceit, manipulation and a flexible understanding of the term ‘loyalty’ as means of achieving his desired ends. Perhaps the best example is how he reacted to the news of Mary of Burgundy’s death, in 1482. He was, by then, already of poor health, but Commynes tells us that ‘The king told me the news with a great deal of joy and satisfaction.’ Indeed, one of the last moments of celebration that the old, French king had enjoyed, was marking the death of his God-daughter; a woman who, when just a new born baby, he had cradled in his arms, having awaited her arrival outside the birth chamber while her actual father was hunting. That sums up Louis XI, the universal spider. And now, he was dead, and France would once more fall into the complex vagaries of dynastic succession and tumult of regency and we can try not to talk about them for a while.
Order of the Golden Fleece attempt to mediate
By September, 1483, Maximilian’s fortunes were changing. A few days after Louis XI’s death, the peace was signed in Utrecht which maintained his control over that bishopric as well as Cod-dominated Holland. Back in the south, at a fair in Antwerp in September, 1483, he publicly disbanded the regency council. The regency council, for its part, basically ignored this. As insults and barbs were traded back and forth, the alternative government slipped into being a revolutionary one, completely dismissive of the archduke’s authority over them. In a manifesto published in October 1483 Maximilian wrote “we know expressly that this arises from a few of low rank, frivolous and haughty people, a small number of evil-doers who more consider their own special advantage over the welfare of my son, such as Adriaan van Rasseghem, Willem Rym, Daniel Onredene and Jan van Coppenhole”. A vicious stalemate ensued over the winter and the two sides began inflicting economic pain on each other. In March 1484, Maximilian ordered all foreign merchants to leave the rebellious city of Bruges. On the Flemish side, Ghent blocked grain supplies to other parts of the Netherlands; while Bruges organised the construction of a building that could blockade the Scheldt, and dry up the goods coming into Antwerp.
In June, 1484, an unexpected attempt to mediate the conflict emerged in the form of the Grand Bastard of Burgundy, Anthony. This long-lasting and powerful bastard son of Philip the Good had switched allegiances to the French court following the defeat of his half-brother, Charles the Bold, at Nancy. But now, what with France dissolving into its own crisis of regency, he flip-flopped his way back towards where he believed the winds of his own fortune were blowing and re-entered the Burgundian fold. Having been away from the local political scene for the last seven years, he was broadly accepted as a somewhat impartial mediator while also remaining intimately related to the ducal family. The court in which he would attempt this mediation was, of course, that of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Maximilian had revived the order in 1478, negating Louis XI’s attempts to bring it into his web. Remember it was strictly forbidden for the members of the Order of the Golden Fleece to wage war with each other. But now five of the Order’s members were on the Flemish council of regency, in blatant opposition to the sovereign of the Order himself!
The mediation attempt represented the first time that the Order of the Golden Fleece was seen as a court that recognised and gave validity to wider interests rather than just those of its sovereign. On June 14, the Knights of the Order submitted to Maximilian their opinion on the two sides of the argument. As outlined by Wim Blockmans in his essay Autocracie ou polyarchie?, they found that Maximilian and Mary had
“not entered into a firm marriage contract and proposed that Maximilian say he was ready to solemnly declare: 1. that he claimed no other right than the regency and the mambournie of the rights of his minor children; 2. that he would be called during this minority, as “father and mambour” of his official son; 3. that the use of the coat of arms of the House of Burgundy would not prejudice the rights of the heirs of the Duchess.”
Unsurprisingly, though, in reaction to this, the representatives of Ghent, Willem Rijm and Daniel Onredene, reacted by rudely walking out. The chronicle of Despars, which was later written by the Brugeoise mayor Nicolas Despars decades after these events, but based on contemporary chronicles as well as the work of his grandfather, said of this defiant action by the two Ghent aldermen:
“it was all a waste of effort, since the aforementioned archduke did not answer other than that he would have no dealings with the boors and clowns of Ghent but that he would be regent and guardian of his children, whether they liked it or not.”
As an aside, the names of those two leading figures in Ghent, Rijm and Onredene, can basically be translated into English as “Rhyme” and “Unreason”, which… is just beautiful and apt.
Armed conflict begins
With the unsatisfying conclusion of these negotiations, open warfare between Flanders and Maximilian was becoming the most likely outcome. In October, Flanders signed an alliance with the regents ruling in France for the underage king Charles VIII, once more bringing the French into the matter. Not only this, but they appointed a new lieutenant general to lead the Flemish forces, Jacob of Savoy, the Count of Romont, also known as Jacob the Aggressive which...you know...tells you a bit about how he went about things. Flemish economic power was great, and Maximilian’s own financial situation was very poor comparatively, but these outright acts of Flemish independence were seen as an overt and dangerous act of self-aggrandisement by the remainder of the territories represented in the States General, and particularly Holland. By November, Maximilian felt that the only solution to this problem would be to take a rampaging army into Flanders and crush the rebels, once and for all. It was not necessarily what he wished to do, but what he had to do. As he reportedly once told his nephew, he really just wanted to spend some time hunting and dancing, but feared he would have to kill 10,000 Flemings before he could do so in peace.
Now with pretty general support across the Low Countries, with the exception of Flanders of course, Maximilian began to rustle up troops, easily propagandising that Flanders had to be crushed for the good of the whole Burgundian realm. In November, 1484, he called a meeting of the States General, which, unsurprisingly, Flanders did not attend. The rest of the States General officially gave the go ahead to war. Soon, Dutch troops and German mercenaries were marching into Flanders. Dendermonde was the first to fall, but it was through deception rather than all-out attack. A sort of Trojan horse ploy was concocted. Maximilian’s troops, dressed as monks, nuns, merchants and other peasants, clambered into three wagons which set off from Mechelen at about 4am on the 26th of November. Reaching Dendermonde at around 11am, they put an abbess and some nuns in front to talk with the porters at the gate. While this distraction was underway, the wagons ground to a halt and the troops within leaped down and secured the gate to the town, as Molinet put it “...by means of suitable instruments”. By which he pretty much means swords. When Maximilian arrived, alongside 800 knights, he led them into the town, whose anti-Maxxer faction was trying to rally a stout defence. A little bit of fighting ensued, which left a few of Max’s nobles dead on the road, but otherwise the plan worked admirably. The fighting for Flanders had begun.
Jacob the Aggressive, who was commanding the Flemish forces, had about 16,000 troops at his back. His reaction to the fall of Dendermonde was...well...aggressive. They began raiding through Flanders, pushing right up to the borders of Brabant, particularly threatening Brussels. They cut down trees, burned farmlands and violated surrounding villages for two weeks, the people in the regions they were attacking were only spared when disease swept through their ranks.
Maximilian’s army pressed on, taking Oudenaarde in January 1485, where he named Philip of Cleves as the castle’s temporary governor. People in the rebellious cities who were not fully in line with the regency government began to see which way the wind was blowing and began looking abroad for help. A delegation of Ghent citizens was again sent to France to try and press them for help with more than words. In April 1485, Maximilian’s armies took Geeraardsbergen and Ninove and Ghent found itself surrounded on three sides. But then, rather surprisingly, a French army of 4500 troops under the command of Philip de Crevecouer showed up and were able to maneuver their way around Maximilians armies and get to Ghent. Maximilian made an attempt to take the city but was unable to get inside.
The tide turns Maximilian’s way
Inside Ghent itself, one of the anti-maxxer leaders Jan van Coppenhole listened as the words ‘vriendt Oostenrijk’ or ‘Friend of Austria’ began to ring through the streets; the citizens from whose mouths they came wanted it to be known to Maximilian’s forces when they inevitably did make it into the city that it was not they who had commited injustice upon him. In the middle of June there were coups in Bruges and Ghent, with the leaders of the radical anti-maxxer governments arrested by the Monetan loyalists or forced to flee. This included Rijm and Onredene in Ghent on the 13th of June, who, in classic Ghent fashion, were shortly thereafter hastily tried and relieved of their heads. Coppenhole managed to escape from his arrest and did the smart thing in terms of preserving his own life, promptly fleeing to France, where he would take up residence at the French court and bide his time. We will see him again in another episode shortly. Adrian Vilain, the Lord of Rassegem, was released the day after Rijm and Onredene were executed and helped organise the peace with Maximilian. Worried about also being prematurely parted with his head by a mob of angry Ghentenaars, however, he also then promptly fled to Tournai.
At this point the civil war / this phase of the revolt was basically over. The French troops which had been at Ghent behaved so poorly that they ingloriously retreated back to France via Tournai. In April of 1485, one of the regency council members, the son of the bastard of Burgundy, Philip the Lord of Beveren, defected back to Maximilian’s side and helped organised peace with Bruges. Louis of Gruuthuse was taken into custody and would spend the next few years languishing in custody in various prisons throughout the Low Countries. In this mopping up, the Monetans were helped by men working for Adolf of Cleves, the Lord of Ravenstein, who had also sat on the rebellious regency council, but was now - what with Max on the verge of victory - more amenable to reingratiating himself with the archduke.
Maximilian knew what it meant to have no supporters in the Low countries, and that having Ravenstein behind him would be extremely handy. The two were able to reconcile and Adolf, the Lord of Ravenstein, once again went into paid service for Maximilian. In the diversity of punishments which were meted out upon the urban patricians and the nobility who had rebelled, it definitely paid to be in the latter of the two groups, and even more so if you happened to be related to or married into the Burgundian bloodline. If you weren’t lucky enough to be married into the governing clan then, certainly, this was the perfect time to do so if you could. This is exactly what Wolfert van Borselen and Jacob of Savoy, the Lord of Romont did, van Borselen arranging for his daughter Anna to marry Philip of Burgundy, the Lord of Beveren, whilst Jacob of Savoy arranged a marriage between his wife’s sister and Phillip of Cleves, saving their own lives by trading the future inheritance of their lands.
Maximilian arrived in Bruges on the 22nd of June, 1485 and a treaty was arranged between him and the Flemish estates on the 28th of June. The urban city leaders of the rebellion in Bruges, led by Willem Moreel and his compatriots, were left out of this peace and Moreel fled to Tournai, where he, too, would linger in exile, waiting for another opportunity to revolt.
Maximilian is reunited with his son Philip
On the 6th of July, Maximilian left Bruges to go and deal punishment out on the revolting people of Ghent. Along the way, Adolf of Cleves, the Lord of Ravenstein, met with him and finally handed over the young Duke of Burgundy, Philip, back to his father. According to Molinet: And when the son saw the father, he took off his hat, and at the approach did the honors together; and when he came to join him, they embraced and kissed one another, whose hearts of those who saw them were so full of joy, that they wept with great tears. It had been more than 3 years since the two had seen each other. After Philip and Maximilian’s reunion, the young Count of Flanders was sent off to live under the guidance of his grandmother, Margaret of York, in her dowager town of Mechelen.
To destroy or not to destroy Ghent?
Finally, on the 7th of July, Maximilian made his entrance into Ghent. The city had been taken by Maximilian’s troops, however there was a strong contingent of mercenary German troops in the town who had run rampant through the town over a number of days, sacking and brutalising the locals. Just four days after Maximilians arrival, the Ghent workers’ guilds and militia were once again standing under their banners in the market square, ready to fight these soldiers.
You may recall that in 1453, following Ghent’s revolt against Philip the Good - which we covered in Episode 26 - he had stripped the city of its rights and banned the militia from keeping their banners and assembling. He had also been advised to burn the city to the ground, yet had chosen not to. Well, now, Maximilian rather wished that he had, and seriously contemplated destroying the entire city himself. This time, however, the counsel he received from Philip of Cleves and his step-mother-in-law, the indefatigable Margaret of York, convinced him not to. Philip of Cleves suggested that if he did burn down Ghent, he would “lose the flower and pearl of all of his lands”. The citizens also begged him “to prefer grace and mercy to strictness or rigour of justice.” Before the riot got out of hand, Philip of Cleves was able to use a force of around 300 Swiss mercenaries’ arrest the ringleaders and quash it.
Maximilian was in no mood to deal kindly with the Ghentenaars after this and foisted a peace treaty on Ghent that was separate and harsher than what the rest of Flanders had to bear. He once more stripped them of what rights they had earned back since that previous revolt four decades earlier. In an action which was certainly reminiscent for the common memory of Ghentenaars, one of the archduke’s official publicly tore apart the very favourable town charter which they had wrangled from Mary of Burgundy via the Great Privilege.
There were other things Maximilian was due to enjoy, approaching on the horizon. In November, 1485, fairly soon after subduing Flanders, he would set off to see his father, Frederik III, the Holy Roman Emperor, who himself was approaching the pointy end of life’s stick. It was time for one of the Emperor’s most esteemed titles to be passed on to a successor and Maximilian was that successor. He would head to Germany to be elected as the King of the Romans. What he would do while bearing that crown, ladies and gentlemen, dear listeners...well that is for another day and for another episode of History of the Netherlands.
Sources used
The Rise and Decline of the Market of Bruges by J. A. van Houtte
The high and puissant princess Marguerite of Austria, princess dowager of Spain, duchess dowager of Savoy, regent of the Netherlands by Christopher Hare
West-Vlaanderen Jaargang 6 by Jos de Smet
Geschiedenis van Belgie Deel 3 by Henri Pirenne
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 Commynes
Chroniques de Flandre et d'Artois by Louis Brésin
De Kronieken van de Westhoek - deel 5 by Ivan Verherpe
Philips van Kleef by A. de Fouw
History of the House of Austria by William Coxe
‘War, politics, and diplomacy in England, France and the Low Countries’ by Jelle Haemers
Cronijcke van den lande ende Graefscepe van Vlaenderen by Jo. Nicolaes Despars
The Chronicles of Monstrelet by Enguerrand de Monstrelet
‘Punished and corrected as an example to all’ by J. H. Spijkers
Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments by Helmut Koenigsberger
‘The Burgundian Netherlands, 1477–1521’ in The New Cambridge Modern History, chapter by C. A. J. Armstrong
‘Autocratie ou polyarchie? La lutte pour le pouvoir politique en Flandre de 1482 à 1492, d'après des documents inédits’ by W. P. Blockmans