Charles the Bold

Love.

Her father, Charles the Bold, had just died.

And so Mary had inherited this incredibly valuable collection of territories, including the Low Countries, which were the Burgundian Netherlands.

Nice.

Wow.

So Philip the Handsome.

Now Philip takes after his father by marrying to expand his power and he marries Juana of Castile.

Wow.

In practice, they had created a powerful and largely autonomous state, and at times they allied themselves with the English kings against France.

After the death of Charles the Bold in fourteen seventy-seven, the Duchy of Burgundy itself was taken back by the French Crown, while many of the Burgundian territories in the low countries passed to the Habsburgs.

When kings were powerful and respected like Richard I in England or Philip IV or Louis IX in France, their vassals stayed in check.

But when kings were weakened, there was always a risk of fragmentation or civil war in the kingdom, so kings traveled, and receiving them was an honor, but also a big burden because their court had to be fed, housed, and entertained for weeks before they moved on to their next destination.

And so the main player of concern is the Duke of Burgundy.

who is Charles the Bold at this point, and he is interested both in fighting with France, but also in fighting with the Swiss and just about everybody else, which is part of the problem for him, and desperately trying to assert authority over his own territories and the Low Countries.

So it's his fighting with the King of France, who's technically his sovereign lord, that's causing most of the immediate problem in Dijon.

because they're concerned that the French are going to attack within the county of Burgundy, which belongs to the Duke of Burgundy.

which is like a thousand-year-old state in France.

Charles the Bold of Burgundy gets into a fight with Bern over the control of the Alsace region.

It's a very big deal.

I will say, I've put this in the notes, but Charles the Bold is the first person where I've seen a painting of a man from the 15th century who has iPhone face.

Of the lands he had won in France, and even of those he had inherited in that country, nearly all had been lost.

Calais, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and a few other places still remained, but Gascony had revolted, and a declaration of war had been received in England from Charles V, the son of that king of France who had been taken prisoner at Poitiers.

Edward found it impossible in his declining years to maintain his old military renown.

His illustrious son, the Black Prince, only tarnished his glory by the massacre of Limoges.

Equal housing opportunity.

The English also were deceived in their expectations of aid from the Duke of Brittany against France.

John de Montfort, Duke of Brittany, had done homage to Edward III for his duchy and had been assisted by Edward against his rival Charles of Blois, supported by the King of France.

His son John, who was now Duke with an undisputed title, had fought side by side with the English and since Richard's accession had been placed in command of a portion of the English fleet.

Armor glints, horses snort anxiously, banners snap in the chill air.

In the shadow of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, ruler of one of Europe's mightiest armies, tension hangs like the blade of a guillotine.

Across a strip of churned earth stand the Swiss.

Peasant soldiers, mostly farmers, wielding pikes twice a man's height.

His cavalry and artillery labored under the greatest disadvantages among the Swiss mountains, and he lost two great battles by a disregard of common prudence.

He is commonly spoken of in English as Charles the Bold, but the French still more truly name him Charles the Rash.

End of section 36.

Section 37 of The Houses of Lancaster and York by James Gairdner.

Edward, on the other hand, had been induced by the prospect of this alliance to make peace with Louis on more easy terms, perhaps, than he might otherwise have granted.

Time passed away, however, and Louis took no steps to bring the matter to a conclusion, till at last a great opportunity presented itself of violating his engagement openly.

Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, had been defeated and slain at Nancy in 1477.

He left an only daughter, Mary, to inherit his rich dominions, which included not only Burgundy, but a great part of the Low Countries.

From her he received at the age of four the first rudiments of education and learned to sing those Saxon ballads which he afterwards recited with so much effect in the Danish camp.

At the age of five, Alfred was sent to Rome, probably to be educated, where he remained two years, visiting on his return the court of Charles the Bold, the center of culture in Western Europe.

The celebrated Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, the greatest churchman of the age, was the most influential minister of the king, at whose table also sat John Erigna, then engaged in a controversy with Gottschalk, the German monk, about the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the earliest notable theological controversy after the patriarchistic age.

Alfred was too young to take an interest in this profound discussion, but he may perhaps have received an intellectual impulse from his visit to Rome and Paris, which affected his whole subsequent life.