Ever since the end of the fourteenth century the position of the duke of Burgundy was such that action by him, whether political, military or diplomatic, had repercussions across the length and breadth of Europe. He was, first of all, a French prince: Philip the Bold and, after him, John the Fearless and Philip the Good, all had ambitions to play a major role in the affairs of the French kingdom. During this period, and above all during the first half of the century, the dominant political problem was to be the conflict with England.
On the death of his father in 1404, Duke John wanted to regain the influence which the former had exercised at the seat of government as the result of the illness of the French king, Charles VI. His first attempts to do this led him into confrontation with Louis, duke of Orleans, brother of the king. The two were playing for high stakes: whoever controlled the decision-making body controlled the royal finances. John’s aim was to become once again the beneficiary of gifts from the crown. He also needed to influence diplomatic policy for, as duke of Burgundy, and in complete contrast to the duke of Orleans, he was an advocate of a negotiated solution to the English problem, preferable, in his view, to the state of war which, after long periods of truce, dominated Anglo-French relations. The duke was, in this sense, the supporter of his Flemish subjects and, in particular, of the ‘Four Members’ who, as trading partners of the English, sought to secure the safety of the seas.
The struggle for power was to lead to the assassination of the duke of Orleans (23 November 1407), a crime organised by Duke John. This murder of the king’s brother, committed in the very heart of Paris, was to lead to civil war which continued for the next twenty-eight years. At first, the duke of Burgundy was able to take advantage of the situation. Thanks to the support of a group of members of the University of Paris, led by the theologian, Jean Petit, author of a justification of tyrannicide, Duke John organised an intense campaign of propaganda to justify his action. With the support of the university and of a part of Parisian society, helped by a strong military hand and encouraged by the victory achieved over the rebels of Liege in 1408, John was able to silence any opposition and take power. But after 1410 that opposition began to crystallise around the person of Charles of Orleans, son of the late duke, and his father-in-law, Bernard, count of Armagnac. Their quarrel soon entered an active stage, punctuated by truces which few respected. In 1413, after the Cabochians, the duke’s most active supporters in the capital who were led by the guilds and, notably, by the butchers, had compromised his popularity through their excessive violence, John lost both Paris and his hold on power. He would regain neither before May 1418.
In the meanwhile, as the result of English military intervention in 1415 in support of the claim to the French crown, the situation had become more confused than ever. Having crushed the French army at Agincourt (25 October 1415) and set out to conquer Normandy two years later, the English king, Henry V, was now a threat both to the ‘Burgundians’ and their rivals, the ‘Armagnacs’. These, however, found the differences between them too great to allow them to unite against the growing danger from England, in spite of the attempts by Duke John to convince the dauphin (the future Charles VII), leader of the opposing party, to join in common cause against the English invader. It may be noted that John’s own attitude was not entirely unequivocal for he was, at the same time, negotiating with the English. Finally, at a meeting with the dauphin at Montereau on 10 September 1419, Duke John was murdered by his rival’s Armagnac councillors, thus avenging the death of Louis of Orleans a dozen years earlier.
This event had important results for Anglo-Burgundian relations. The new duke, Philip the Good, and his councillors, taking account of the situation thus created and strongly influenced by economic considerations, decided to enter into negotiations with the English. An Anglo-Burgundian agreement was made in December 1419 followed, on 21 May 1420, by the Treaty of Troyes. The French royal government, now controlled by the Burgundians, as well as Duke Philip himself, accepted the creation of a double monarchy of France and England, to be ruled by Henry V and his heirs to be born of his marriage to Catherine, daughter of Charles VI and sister of the dauphin. This treaty was to dominate Burgundian policy for the next fifteen years.
The successive deaths of Henry V and Charles VI (August and October 1422) and the minority of the young Henry VI did not allow Duke Philip to gain control of the government, as the regency of the kingdom of France came into the hands of John, duke of Bedford, uncle of Henry VI. The fact is not unimportant, as the duke of Burgundy slowly began to distance himself from the government of France in a way which contrasted with the policy followed by both his father and grandfather. Without acting against the terms agreed at Troyes, Philip followed a policy which was independent of them. Thus he never lost contact with Charles VII who, faced with an ‘English France’ ruled by the duke of Bedford, still controlled half the kingdom; in September 1424 he even went so far as to arrange a truce with him. Elsewhere, his policy of expansion into the Low Countries brought him up against the ambitions of Bedford’s brother, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. This confrontation undoubtedly helped to sour Anglo-Burgundian relations within France itself. Duke Philip was mainly intent upon securing control over Picardy, keeping open the routes leading from his territories to Paris as well as those, running through Champagne, which gave him access between the territories in the north and the two Burgundies in the south. It was only these three objectives which could justify Burgundian military aid to the English in their own war against the dauphin and his supporters.
From 1429—30, the reversal of the military situation, to the advantage of Charles VII (finally crowned king of France in July 1429), prompted Duke Philip to consider breaking the Anglo-Burgundian alliance. Discussions undertaken by the chancellor, Nicolas Rolin, with representatives of Charles VII in 1432 were to lead to a reconciliation at Arras in 1435 which marked the official end of the civil strife which had begun in 1407. In exchange for territorial concessions agreed by Charles VII, the Burgundians abandoned their allies, the English, to join the French who were able to retake Paris in the spring of 1436. A major military operation, organised by Burgundy, to besiege Calais failed. Further setbacks were experienced at the hands of the English in Picardy and Flanders, and through a revolt in Bruges (1436—7). As a result, Duke Philip took part in negotiations with the English at Gravelines in 1438 in order to safeguard the economic interests of Flanders and, in 1439, he even offered to try to negotiate a lasting peace between France and England.
By the beginning of the 1440s, therefore, the duke of Burgundy had managed, without great loss, to put himself on the periphery of the Anglo-French conflict. By now he ruled a group of principalities to whose number he was constantly adding and which, in geopolitical terms, constituted a vital element within the very heart of western Europe. On the French side, the duke had secured important territorial concessions at Arras in 1435: Charles VII had confirmed the cession of three important lordships in Picardy, Roye, Peronne and Montdidier which had originally been ceded to Duke J ohn in 1418; in addition, the king now pledged to Duke Philip the county of Ponthieu and the ‘Somme towns’ (Saint-Quentin, Corbie, Doullens, Amiens and Abbeville) which he could buy back for 400,000 ecus. In addition, in the region of the duchy of Burgundy itself, Charles VII now ceded the towns of Bar-sur-Seine, Auxerre and Macon.
Turning in a more easterly direction, Burgundian expansion into imperial territory was achieved in several stages and through diverse means in the years 1420—40. Duke Philip began by negotiating the purchase of the county of Namur in 1421; the count, Jean III, surrendered this territory in exchange for a life interest and the sum of 132,000 ecus. In fulfilment of this agreement, the county duly became Burgundian in 1429. The next stage was to prove more difficult. In 1425 war broke out between Philip the Good and his cousin, Jacqueline of Bavaria, heiress to the counties of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, who enjoyed the support of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. It took three years of war to bring the countess to terms; in July 1428, by the Treaty of Delft, she made the duke of Burgundy her heir before finally abandoning all her rights to him in April 1433. In the meanwhile Philip had succeeded in seizing the duchy of Brabant following the deaths of his cousins, Jean IV in 1427 and Philippe de Saint-Pol in 1430: having no children, this last bequeathed his inheritance upon Duke Philip. In spite of some reluctance on the part of the estates of Brabant, who showed considerable hostility to him, Philip finally made his formal entry (joyeuse entree) into Brussels in October 1430. Thus, within a matter of twelve years, he had secured control over what may be called the Burgundian Low Countries, termed, in contemporary language, ‘the lands on this side’ (‘les pays de par dega’). The process was completed with difficulty with the acquisition of the duchy of Luxemburg which the duchess, Elizabeth of Gorlitz, ceded to Duke Philip in 1441, but which he had to secure by force of arms two years later when he encountered the opposition of the duchy’s subjects and the claims of William, duke of Saxony.
The development of the Burgundian state within imperial lands was not achieved without causing anxieties within the lands concerned. Sigismund of Luxemburg, king of the Romans and then, in 1433, emperor, had witnessed with increasing hostility the bringing together, under Burgundian control, of the counties of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland and the duchy of Brabant, followed, in 1431, by military intervention in the war of succession over Lorraine in which Rene of Anjou was opposed by Antoine, count of Vaudemont. Sigismund had lodged a vigorous protest against the accession of Philip the Good to the duchy of Brabant in October 1430, while in 1434, in the matter of Lorraine, he had given a judgement against the count of Vaudemont whom Burgundy was supporting. In the same year Sigismund declared war against Duke Philip over Brabant, hoping that King Charles VII would help him defeat a common enemy. But the emperor was to be disappointed both by his failure to secure help from the imperial princes and by the reconciliation of France and Burgundy at Arras in 1435. Sigismund’s death in 1437 put an end to the strong hostility of the empire to the growing strength of Burgundy. None the less it is undeniable that, in its dealings with the Empire, Burgundian diplomacy had few successes. It is true that, within Germany itself, Philip the Good benefited from a network of alliances, of which his brother-in-law, Adolf I of Cleves, Albert, duke of Austria, and his Bavarian cousins were the mainstays; but the king of the Romans, Frederick III of Habsburg, who was to become emperor in 1452, while never taking major steps against Burgundy, never gave satisfaction to its ambitions. Even if, between 1445 and 1448, relations were better than in years past, Frederick III continued to uphold the claims of the duke of Saxony to Luxemburg. The proposal that all, or at least some, Burgundian lands within the Empire should be raised to the rank of a kingdom never came to anything.
In 1454 Philip undertook a great tour which took him to Regensburg where the Reichstag was meeting. However, not even the organisation of sumptuous feasts could win the duke any support, nor could he persuade those present to commit themselves to the organisation of a crusade against the Turks. The Turkish ‘question’ was, indeed, one of the major issues of the day. At the Burgundian court, the fall of Constantinople had rekindled the idea of a crusade, an idea which found much favour among the Burgundian nobility. Since the time of Philip the Bold all the dukes of Burgundy had regarded their presence on all the ‘fronts’ of Christendom as part of their calling. In 1396, the future John the Fearless had played an active role in a great anti-Turkish expedition which had ended in disaster at Nicopolis, but one from which, paradoxically, the prestige of the house of Burgundy had emerged with great credit. On his part, Duke Philip the Good always showed interest in the Levant. Certain of his servants, notably Guillebert de Lannoy and Bertrandon de la Broquiere, had, after their travels in the area, drawn up reports of their voyages for their master to read. Burgundian foreign policy was influenced by this factor. Christian states concerned with the struggle against Islam sought out the support of the dukes of Burgundy; such was the case of the kingdom of Castile, neighbour of the Moorish kingdom of Granada. During the 1440s a Burgundian naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea was a reflection of Philip the Good’s active commitment to the idea of a crusade.
When Constantinople fell in May 1453, the duke of Burgundy could not react immediately, for he was already involved in a war against the city of Ghent. But early in the following year, at a great feast dedicated to the Pheasant held at Lille, Philip the Good and several members of the high nobility from his lands solemnly undertook to go on crusade against the Turks, enemies of the Christian faith. The enterprise, however, never took place. Apart from a modest naval expedition under Antoine, Bastard of Burgundy, which went no further than north Africa, the difficulties of organising the project, political problems and the deterioration of the duke’s health conspired together to prevent him carrying out the crusading venture which he had hoped to fulfil.