Charles the Bold, Last Duke of Burgundy, 1433-1477. Ruth Putnam
Ghenters succeeded in possessing themselves of the castle of Poucque by force, and of the village of Gaveren by stratagem, taking advantage in the latter case of the castellan's absence at church.
When every part of his dominions had been canvassed for troops, and Philip was prepared for his first active campaign against Ghent, he was anxious to leave his heir under the protection of the duchess, conscious that the imminent contest would be bitter and deadly. A pretence was made that the young count's accoutrements were not ready, and that, therefore, he would have to remain in Brussels.
"But he whose ambitions waxed, hastened the completion of his accoutrements, and swore by St. George, the greatest oath he ever used, that he would rather go in his shirt than not accompany his father to punish his impudent rebel subjects."13
The approaching hostilities were watched by foreign merchants in dread of commercial disaster.
"On May 18th, the nations 14 of the merchants of Bruges departed thence to go to Ghent to try to make peace between that city and the Duke of Burgundy, and there were nations of Spain, Aragon, Portugal, and Scotland, besides the Venetians, Milanese, Genoese, and Luccans."15
But the men of Ghent were beyond the point where commercial arguments could stem their course. The very day that this company arrived in the city, the burghers sallied forth six or seven thousand strong, fully equipped for offensive warfare.
Both the actual engagements and guerilla skirmishes that raged over a minute stretch of territory were characterised by an extraordinary ferocity. Around Oudenarde, which town Philip was determined to relieve, men were beheaded like sheep.
In the first regular engagement in which Charles took part, he showed a brave front and learned the duties of a prince by rewarding others with the honour of knighthood. Among those slain in the course of the war, were Cornelius, Bastard of Burgundy, and the gallant Jacques de Lalaing. Philip grieved deeply over the death of the former, his favourite among his natural sons, and buried him with all honours in the Church of Ste-Gudule in Brussels. The title by which he was known, hardly a proud one it would seem, passed to his brother Anthony. Lalaing, too, was greatly mourned, thus prematurely cut down in his thirty-third year.
There was so much fear lest the duke's sole legitimate heir might also perish in these conflicts where there was no mercy, that Charles was persuaded to go to visit his mother in the hope that she would keep him by her side. She made a feast in his honour, but, to the surprise of all, the duchess, who had wished to protect her son from the mild perils of a tourney, now encouraged him with brave words to return to fight in all earnest for his inheritance.16 He himself was very indignant at the efforts to treat him as a child.
The first truce and negotiations for peace, initiated in the summer of 1452, were broken off because the conditions were unbearable to the Ghenters. Another year of warfare followed before the decisive battle of Gaveren, in July, 1453, forced them sadly to succumb. There was no other course open to them. Not only were they defeated but their numbers were decimated.17 With full allowance for exaggeration, it is certain that the loss was very heavy. Terms scornfully rejected at an earlier date were, in 1453, accepted with every humiliating detail. More, the defeated rebels were bidden to be grateful that their kind sovereign had imposed nothing further to the conditions. As to abating the severity of the articles, he declared that he would not change an a for a b.18
The chief provisions were as follows: The deans of the gilds were deprived of participation in the election of sheriffs. The privileges of the naturalisation laws were considerably abridged. No sentence of banishment could be pronounced without the intervention of the duke's bailiff, whose authorisation, too, was required before the publication of edicts, ordinances, etc. The sheriffs were forbidden to place their names at the head of letters to the officers of the duke. The banners were to be delivered to the duke and placed under five locks, whose several keys should be deposited with as many different people, without whose consensus the banners could not be brought forth to lead the burghers to sedition. One gate was to be closed every Thursday in memory of the day when the citizens had marched through it to attack their liege lord, and another was to be barred up in perpetuity or at the pleasure of their sovereign. To reimburse the duke for his enforced outlay, a heavy indemnity was to be paid by the city.
July 30th was the date appointed for the final act of submission, the amende honorable of the unfortunate city. The scene was very similar to that played at Bruges in 1440. Two thousand citizens headed by the sheriffs, councillors, and captains of the burgher guard met the duke and his suite a league without the walls of Ghent. Bareheaded, barefooted, and divested of all their robes of office and of dignity, clad only in shirts and small clothes, these magistrates confessed that they had wronged their loving lord by unruly rebellion, and begged his pardon most humbly.
The duke spent the night of July 29th at Gaveren, prepared to march out in the morning with his whole army in handsome array. Philip was magnificently apparelled, but he rode the same horse which he had used on the day of battle, with the various wounds received on that day ostentatiously plastered over to make a dramatic show of what the injured sovereign had suffered at the hands of his disloyal subjects.
The civic procession was headed by the Abbot of St. Bavon and the Prior of the Carthusians. The burghers who followed the half-clad officials were fully dressed but they, too, were barefoot and ungirdled. All prostrated themselves in the dust and cried, "Mercy on the town of Ghent." While they were thus prostrate, the town spokesman of the council made an elaborate speech in French, assuring the duke that if, out of his benign grace. he would take his loving and repentant subjects again into his favour, they would never again give him cause for reproach.
"At the conclusion of this harangue, the duke and the Count of Charolais, there present, pardoned the petitioners for their evil deeds. The men of Ghent re-entered their town more happy and rejoiced than can be expressed, and the duke departed for Lille, having disbanded his army, that every one might return to their several homes." 19
The joy experienced by the conquered, here described by La Marche, as he looked back at the event from the calm retirement of his old age, was not visible to all eye-witnesses. The progress of this war was watched eagerly from other parts of Philip's dominion. His army was full of men from both the Burgundies, who sent frequent reports to their own homes. Some passages from one of these reports by an unknown war correspondent run as follows:
"As to news from here, Monday after St. Magdalen's Day, Monseigneur the duke got the better of the Ghenters near Gaveren between ten and eleven o'clock. They attacked him near his quarters. … The duke risked his own person in advance of his company in the very worst of the slaughter, which lasted from the said place up to Ghent, a distance of about two leagues. The slain number three or four thousand, more or less, and those drowned in the river of Quaux about two hundred. … This Tuesday, the date of writing, the army departs from their quarters to advance on Ghent to demand the conditions lately offered them, and the bearer of this letter will tell you what is the result. M. the duke and his army marched up to Ghent and I have seen the bearing of the citizens. They are very bitter and despondent. M. the marshall has been parleying. I hear that matters have been settled. I hear that the Ghenters' loss is thirteen to fourteen thousand men. I cannot write more for I have no time owing to the haste of the messenger."
This was written July 23d. There is another despatch of July 31st, giving the last news, which was "very joyous." The public apology had just been enacted—
"and afterwards, in token of being conquered and as a confession that my said seigneur was victorious, those