Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess

by Christine Weightman

  CHAPTER 4

  1477

  ‘HER HANDS ON THE REINS.’

  The siege of Nancy began on 22 October and despite the most urgent arguments of his advisers Charles refused to withdraw for the winter. Throughout December, as the snow began to fall and ice gripped the countryside, the Burgundian army remained in position. The reinforcements sent from the Low Countries went little way to replacing those who deserted or died in the harsh winter weather of Lorraine. In his camp Charles continued to plan for his victory and to read about the heroes of ancient Rome. But his enemies were also making preparations and by late December they had collected together a huge army at least three times larger than the Burgundian force. During the last days of December this army of more than 20,000 men set off over the frozen roads towards Nancy. As at Grandson and Murten before, Charles appears to have been totally oblivious to the advancing danger and he continued to expect the imminent surrender of the town.1

  On 5 January it was snowing steadily and by midday with hardly any warning the besiegers found themselves surrounded by a large force of Swiss infantry supported by mounted knights led by René, Duke of Lorraine. In a devastating attack the Burgundian artillery was overrun, their infantry wiped out and many great lords were taken prisoner in the confusion. All the cannons, tents and baggage were seized and the last of the four great Valois Dukes of Burgundy vanished into the mêlée. It took two days to find his body and then only after a patient and macabre search over the battlefield. It appeared that his horse had fallen while trying to jump a frozen stream and the Duke had been killed by a mighty blow to the head, which left him totally unrecognizable, except to his Italian valet who knew him by his long fingernails, and to his Portuguese doctor who identified him by the old battle scars on the stripped and frozen corpse.2

  The news of first the defeat and then the death of Duke Charles spread across Europe in a frisson of both horror and delight. Here was the most feared and redoubtable prince, the richest tyrant in Europe laid low by an army made up from cities and small principalities, albeit with the covert support of the King of France. The imagination of writers ran riot: ballads, epitaphs and epics poured from their pens in German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin. The ambitious Duke would have been well satisfied to find himself compared to all his old heroes, to Hercules, Hannibal, Caesar and Alexander and to hear his military and political exploits exalted and extolled. Many could not believe the news, the whole story seemed incredible, and for several decades rumours circulated that Charles was still alive and concealed either as a prisoner in some Rhenish castle, or as a penitent hermit in a cave high up in the forests. He was absorbed into the world of sub-history and legend as another Arthur awaiting a resurrection.3 The Duke’s death was one of the momentous events of the century. As the Venetian Senate concluded with their usual circumspection:

  The fate of the Duke of Burgundy cannot be otherwise than that of the greatest importance and seriousness because so much depended on him. It should surely provide food for thought for many a year in the minds of all intelligent men who are concerned with what the future will bring.4

  For those who seek to parcel out our unwieldy past into neat packages, the Duke’s death might be regarded as the end of the Middle Ages. The period from Nancy to the accession of the Duke’s great-grandson as Emperor Charles V was to be half a century of dramatic transition. The maritime monarchies of England, France and Spain became increasingly powerful and there were fewer opportunities for the assembly or survival of those opportunistic collections of fiefs, which had been so well exemplified by the Duchy of Burgundy. It is ironic that the victors of Nancy, the free cities of the Rhine valley, also suffered and their independence, security and prosperity also declined along with the vanquished Burgundy.

  Nowhere were the shock waves felt more strongly than in the Duke’s own lands. With his death the whole process of Burgundian expansion was halted. Up to 1477 it had seemed likely that the Burgundian Dukes would succeed in establishing themselves as new monarchs controlling the crucial wedge of strategically valuable territory between France and the Empire. With historical hindsight, the political unreality of the old middle kingdom of Lotharingia is in sharp contrast to its geographical, economic and cultural unity, but Duke Charles’ efforts to consolidate these lands had been taken very seriously by his contemporaries. Moreover the dream of a middle kingdom did not die with Charles. As late as 1903 the Kaiser Wilhelm II was reported to have told an astonished King of the Belgians that he would remake Lotharingia. In 1476 Lotharingia had been closer to reality than at any time since the tenth century. This had been the achievement of the four Valois Dukes, who had patched together one of the greatest patrimonies in Europe. But with the sudden death of Charles and the accession of a young, unmarried and inexperienced heiress, the whole edifice cracked from top to toe.

  In spite of the loss of the Duchy of Burgundy itself, together with most of the southern French lands, enough was salvaged for the inheritance to be known as Burgundy for yet another half century. This was largely due to the valiant rearguard action fought by the Duke’s inheritors. No one fought for the inheritance with more stubborn determination than Margaret herself, who was resolved to thwart Louis XI’s plans to dismember and destroy the duchy forever. Without Margaret’s intervention, 1477 would have been an even more decisive date in European history and little of the administrative and political unity of the Low Countries would have survived.

  All her life both as Duchess of Burgundy and, before 1468, as a daughter of the House of York, was a preparation for the catastrophe which confronted Burgundy in January 1477. For Margaret at least there was a strong sense of déjà vu about the dreadful news which began to reach Ghent on the 8 or 9 January. Sixteen years earlier she had waited with her mother for the confirmation of the deaths of her father and her brother at Wakefield. Nor was it the first time that Margaret and her stepdaughter had received reports that Charles was dead. This had happened after the battle of Murten, when they were relieved to hear that he was alive and safe in Franche Comté. No doubt this time too they continued to hope for better news, before confronting the full extent of the disaster. The grim wheel of fortune had certainly taken a sharp downward turn. Margaret was well steeled to face this downfall and she was also able to draw on her deep religious faith. The new Duchess Mary would have received strong and reassuring support from her stepmother during the dark days of January and February.

  It is not known exactly when the first news reached the two women at the heart of the crisis. Louis XI heard the first reports of the battle late on 8 January. He announced the Duke’s defeat on the following day and gave orders for his armies to seize the Duchy of Burgundy, Mâcon, Picardy and the Somme towns. He was not, however, entirely confident in the accuracy of his messengers for he qualified his instructions to the Lord of Craon to move into Burgundy with the phrase, ‘if it is true that the Duke of Burgundy is dead’.5 Four days later however, he was certain of the Duke’s death and commanded the citizens of Poitiers, where he was staying, to stage a procession celebrating the deaths of his two greatest enemies, Charles and the Sforza Duke of Milan, who had been murdered on 26 December.

  The palace of Ten Waele at Ghent is hardly any further than Poitiers from Nancy. Like Louis, Margaret and Mary may have had the first bad news by the night of 8 January. However they continued to hope that the rumours were unfounded. On the 15th, Margaret was still writing to Malines that ‘we are hoping that by the grace of God he is still alive and well and out of the hands of his enemies’.6 In their first letter to Louis on 18 January the two women repeated their increasingly forlorn hope that Charles might still be alive. It was not until three days after this that the official memorial service was held at St Jan’s Church in Ghent (now St Bavo’s) and it was four days later before Margaret assumed full mourning for her husband.7

  In this interim period Margaret and Mary acted jointly, Mary using the title of Duchess and Margaret styling herse
lf ‘Duchesse Mere de Bourgogne’. In spite of their hopes that Charles was still alive they had to act with speed and resolution for the situation was truly appalling. Not only was the French King invading all the French fiefs, but internal rebellions were beginning to erupt all over the Low Countries in an immense upsurge of anger and frustration. Since 1475 three ducal armies had been destroyed and there was general horror at this waste of men and money and at the oppression which had put these lost armies into the field. With few troops left to defend either their territories or themselves, Mary and Margaret faced assaults on ducal authority from every direction. David of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht, was driven out of his bishopric and revolt swept the ducal officials from Guelders. In Flanders the cities were united in their resolve to claw back the rights and privileges which they had been forced to abandon to the powerful and despotic Duke. In their fury they even turned against the popular Mary, for as Commynes sagely commented, ‘the men of Ghent always love the son of their prince but never the prince himself’.8

  1. Falcon and fetterlock badge.

  2. Fotheringhay Church, Northamptonshire.

  3. Hunsdon House, detail from sixteenth century portrait of Edward VI as Prince of Wales, by W. Scrots.

  4. Baynard’s Castle, detail from engraving, View of London, by Claes Visscher, c. 1625.

  5. King Edward IV.

  6. Queen Elizabeth Woodville.

  7. Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, presenting his translation of the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers to King Edward IV.

  8. Margaret of York, artist unknown.

  9. Isabella of Portugal, by Rogier van der Weyden.

  10. The Coronet of Margaret of York.

  11. Charles the Bold, by Rogier van der Weyden..

  12. The Palace at Bruges from an engraving by A. Sanderaus in ‘Flandria Illustrata’ 1641.

  13. Tommaso Portinari by Hans Memlinc.

  14. King Louis XI, J. Fouquet.

  15. Jewelled hat of Duke Charles, engraving after a drawing by J. J. Fugger.

  16. Reliquary by G. Loyet.

  17. The Ducal Palace at Brussels in the seventeenth century.

  18. Louis, Lord Gruuthuyse, artist unknown.

  19. Olivier de La Marche, drawing from the Recueil d’Arras.

  20. Portrait of a woman, possibly Margaret of York, artist unknown.

  21. Margaret and Charles kneeling behind St Colette and St Francis, miniature from Vie de Sainte Colette, manuscript in the Convent of the Poor Clares at Ghent.

  22. Margaret of York, artist unknown.

  23. Tomb of Charles the Bold in the Church of Our Lady, Brugge.

  24. Miniature depicting Margaret performing acts of charity from Benois seront les Miséricordieux.

  25. Mary of Burgundy as a young girl, artist unknown.

  26. Emperor Maximilian I, 1519, by Albrecht Dürer.

  27. Margaret and Mary kneeling in the Chapel of St Anne, Registre de la Guild de Sainte Anne à Gand, in the style of the ‘Master of Mary of Burgundy’.

  28. The Palace of Margaret of York at Malines, engraving R. Blokhuyse, Chorographia Sacra Brabantiae.

  29. Equestrian Seal of Mary of Burgundy, 1477.

  30. Tomb of Mary of Burgundy in the Church of Our Lady at Bruges.

  31. King Richard III, artist unknown.

  32. Edward IV as Hadrian kneeling before Trajan with Margaret of York beside him.

  33. George, Duke of Clarence, artist unknown.

  34. Tomb of John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk and his wife Elizabeth, Wingfield Church, Suffolk.

  35. Queen Elizabeth of York, artist unknown.

  36. Perkin Warbeck, drawing from the Recueil d’Arras.

  37. Deposition, by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden.

  38. Detail of Deposition.

  39. The Verdict of Cambyses or The Arrest of the Unjust Judge, Gerard David.

  40. Probable portrait of Margaret of Austria, Portrait of a Young Princes, Master of Moulins.

  41. Philip the Fair, Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy, artist unknown.

  42. Joanna of Castile, Archduchess of Austria and Duchess of Burgundy, artist unknown.

  43. Margaret kneeling before the Trinity, miniature in grisaille, from Traites de morale, ms.

  44. Reliquary presented by Margaret to St Ursmer’s Church, Binche.

  45. Margaret at prayer, miniature from Benois seront les Miséricordieux studio Jean Dreux.

  46. Autograph dedication on the final folio of Vie de Sainte Colette manuscript.

  47. William Caxton presenting his book to Margaret, frontispiece to Caxton’s edition of the Recuyll of the historyes of Troy by R. LeFevre.

  Margaret was well acquainted with the problems affecting the duchy and she knew that they must be resolved quickly if they were to present a united defence against France. Two days after the first news of Nancy, on 11 January, Margaret and Mary sent out a summons for the Estates General to assemble at Ghent on 3 February. During the next two weeks, messengers were despatched to the cities and provinces urging them to support the new Duchess against the French invaders and promising alleviation of the harsh taxation, better government and more gentleness from the ruler.9 Margaret, then thirty-one years old and with considerable experience in government, was the most constant adviser and supporter of the twenty-year-old Duchess. Their close and trusting relationship ensured that they could cooperate fully.

  Margaret appreciated the need to win the support of the Estates and she was well aware of their complaints. She had had to listen to their protests regularly during the past two years and her approach had certainly been more conciliatory than that of the other ducal councillors such as the Chancellor Hugonet.10 By the time the Estates began to assemble late in January, Mary was well prepared to meet their demands. In her opening speech she renounced the remainder of the 500,000 crowns levy which had been granted to Duke Charles for six years.

  Within a week the ducal councillors had accepted the draft of the Great Privilege, a charter designed to satisfy the many demands for the restoration of local rights and privileges.11 The new Duchess promised to rule with the advice of the Great Council, which would include delegates from the Estates, and she assured them that all major decisions, such as her choice of husband and matters of war and peace, would be submitted to them for their approval. The Estates would be permitted to assemble whenever they considered it necessary and the rights of regional courts were upheld against the much-hated central court at Malines. The extent of these concessions and the fact that the Great Privilege was available in both Dutch and French by 11 February, suggests that it had been in preparation for some time. Margaret’s advice together with that of the Lords of Ravenstein and Gruuthuyse (who were also in close contact with the opinion in Flanders, Holland and Brabant) guided Mary to make this major move of conciliation as speedily as she did.

  Margaret’s presence during the first months of 1477 was especially important because the young Duchess had so few experienced advisers on whom she could depend. Louis’ claims that, in the absence of a male heir, he had the right to repossess all the French fiefs of Burgundy, caused a clash of loyalties for many of the great lords of the duchy who owned lands in the south. There had already been a drift away towards France during Charles’ lifetime. Commynes was not the only one who preferred the adroit and clever King Louis XI to the hard and stubborn Duke. The calamity of Nancy turned this drift into a landslide. Amongst those who abandoned Mary were her step-uncle Anthony, Count of La Roche, Phillippe de Crèvecoeur, the ducal governor of Picardy and William Biche, Charles’ first chamberlain.12

  As well as the defectors to France, many Burgundian nobles and officials had been taken prisoner at Nancy. It took time to arrange and pay all their ransoms and some of them were not freed until July when Maximilian rode north to his marriage. Among the prisoners were Josse of Lalaing, who had been appointed by Charles as the tuteur for Margaret’s dower lands, Olivier de La Marche and the Counts of Chimay a
nd Nassau. La Marche was fortunate enough to be back in the Low Countries by Easter but Chimay did not return until July.13

  Ravenstein and Gruuthuyse were both members of the Council established by Duke Charles to advise and guide Margaret in his absence. They had long experience, much local prestige and were loyal servants of the duchy. Three others who had also served Margaret and Charles well, but who were not so well trusted by the people of Flanders, were the Chancellor Hugonet, Lord Humbercourt and the Bishop of Tournai. They had earned their unpopularity as the chief instruments of Charles’ oppressive taxation and recruitment policies and were held responsible for the harsh and tyrannical administration. Mary was to find that although these men were both loyal and zealous, she could neither profit from their counsel nor save them from the attacks of the people. In addition to her official counsellors, Mary had one other trusted companion, the Lady Hallewijn, who had been with her for many years. When Margaret had to leave Ghent, leaving Mary a virtual prisoner, it was through this lady that the two women were able to keep in touch.14

  Thus Mary had a limited number of advisers available to help her in Ghent and she had little hope of any real assistance from abroad. Since 1475 the Anglo-Burgundian alliance had become a pale shadow of its former strength and although the Emperor had assented to the marriage of Mary and Maximilian, he was in no position to send an army into the Low Countries quickly. Margaret did her best to stir Edward IV into action and she was also soon in touch with the Emperor, urging him to press ahead with the promised marriage. The death of Charles was known in England by mid January but as late as the 24th of that month Richard Cely was unsure as to what was happening in Burgundy.15 Margaret had contacted her brother by early February and on the 14th the Great Council met at Westminster to discuss Charles’ death, and decide upon their response to the events in Burgundy and also to the French invasion of the duchy.