The death of the duke led to the collapse of the political edifice which he had created. In the weeks following Louis XI, disregarding the agreement made at Soleuvre, ordered his soldiers into the two Burgundies, Picardy, Artois and part of Hainault. The government of Burgundy was now personified by Mary, daughter and sole heir of the late duke, and by Margaret of York, his third wife and now his widow. In the short term they were obliged to face rebellion in the north. The estates general forced Mary to grant them a ‘Grand Privilege’, limiting her own powers and causing a general restoration of rights and customs previously abolished. They also sought the abolition of the new centralising institutions based on Malines, seen as symbols of princely authoritarianism. In April 1477 the people of Ghent, rising in rebellion, went further by executing two of the late duke’s closest collaborators, his chancellor, Guillaume Hugonet, and the lord of Humbercourt.
Margaret of York and Mary of Burgundy saw that the only way of rescuing what survived of the Burgundian inheritance lay through an alliance with the house of Habsburg. In August 1477 Mary married Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederick III. It would be Maximilian’s task to resist French attempts to settle the Burgundian ‘matter’. In this respect, Louis XI failed to achieve all his ambitions. The Treaties of Arras (1482) and Senlis (1493) brought about only a partial break-up of Burgundian territory. If Louis XI, and then Charles VIII, were able to secure the duchy of Burgundy and Picardy, the Habsburgs, heirs to the rights of the house of Burgundy, maintained control over Franche-Comte and most of the Low Countries. This new geopolitical settlement was to have important consequences for the history of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Writing to the members of the chambre des comptes at Dijon in January 1477, during the crisis of the French invasion, the Duchess Mary urged them ‘always to keep faithful to their belief in Burgundy’. Such an exhortation suggests that a sense of belonging to a historic Burgundy had developed during the fifteenth century within the context of Franco-Burgundian confrontation. The ideological origin of this sense is to be found in the wish of the dukes to discover historical examples with which to support the political ambitions being opposed by the exercise of French royal sovereignty. Under Philip the Good there circulated within court circles a literature which extolled the memory of the ancient kingdoms which had formerly occupied those areas now part of the duke’s principalities: the sixth-century Burgundian kingdom ruled by Gondebaud; Lotharingia; and the kingdom of Arles. However, it is unlikely that the recalling of such names had much influence beyond the narrow circle of the politically aware who lived close to the duke. Among his subjects, the sense of being ‘Burgundian’ developed late and unevenly in the ducal territories as a whole. It was first to be observed as the growth of loyalty to a princely dynasty which knew how to make effective use of propaganda. Then, as the result of armed conflict between ‘Burgundians’ and ‘French’, there developed a hatred of the enemy within the territories ruled by the duke. Thus there came into existence those two elements — devotion to the prince and rejection of a foreign enemy — which are essential for the creation of national identity.
After the death of Charles the Bold, the loyalty owed to the house of Burgundy was redirected to the house of Habsburg, heir to the political ambitions of the Valois dukes. The period of crisis and disarray which followed the events of 1477 was ripe for the development of a sentiment which fed upon a feeling of nostalgia for a glorious past and which was expressed through a political literature written by men such as Olivier de la Marche and Jean Molinet. By their attitude and the very words which they uttered, the princes, too, acted as propagandists for this ideology. Welcomed into Cambrai in June 1493 with the traditional cries of ‘Noel! Noel!’, Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian of Habsburg and Mary of Burgundy, replied ‘Rather, cry “Long live Burgundy.” ’