Maximilian elected King of Romans and emprisoned

Transcript

In this episode the 15-year long war over the Burgundian succession will come to its end. You may have thought it was done last time, but no. The revolutionary spirit of the Flemish cities is not yet broken and their most audacious move is still to come. And this time they are not going up against an archduke and regent, but against a newly elected king of the Romans.

Maximilian of Habsburg’s experience in Burgundy swung between moments of utter delight and happiness and depths of death, destruction and despair. It shaped this young duke who arrived aged 18 full of dreams of chivalry and left, aged 31 an battle hardened general with a clear view of where he wanted to take the empire. Get ready for the ultimate roller coaster.

But before we start just a quick update on the History of the Germans tour. I must say I was completely overwhelmed by the response. Effectively we were overbooked within 24 hours. That left me on the one hand elated that so many of you want to come along, but also with the unpleasant task of having to choose. As I mentioned before, we were giving patrons priority, and as it happened there were so many patrons signing on, that we could not even accommodate all of you. As they say in Jaws, “I think we need a bigger boat”. Since we have no bigger boat, I have decided to do another tour next year, summer 2027, likely on a similar route. I will let you know about it sometime in July. To all of you who we could not take along, let me say that I am really sorry, but hopefully it works out next time.

And with that, back to the show…

Recap

Our last episode is now 3 weeks old, a couple of things have happened that may have diverted your attention, so I should probably give you a quick reminder of where we are. Maximilian of Austria, the son of the emperor Friedrich III had married Marie of Burgundy, the heiress of the richest state in Europe. These lands that at their largest extent comprised modern day Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Picardie, Burgundy, Franche Comte and very briefly Lorraine were a massive thorn in the side of the French monarchy. During the Hundred Years War an alliance between Burgundy and England had almost forced the Valois kings of France into submission. When Maximilian took over the management of Burgundy, the French king Louis XI moved heaven and earth to crush him and break up Burgundy.

By the year 1485, it looked as if Maximilian had largely won this war. His last struggle had been with the two greatest cities of his realm, Bruges and Ghent, where popular uprisings fueled by French money had attempted to separate them from the Burgundian state. Through a combination of smart military tactics, brute force and fostering internal conflict, Maximilian had occupied first Bruges and then Ghent. The French troops sent to support the Ghent rebellion had to leave by the back door.

Meanwhile the smart king Louis XI of France had died and his son, Charles VIII was a minor, which slowed down French aggression. With Burgundy pacified and France contained, Maximilian could, for the first time in a decade turn his attention to the empire and to his ancestral homelands in Austria.

The Fall of Vienna

Things in Austria had gone from bad to worse. Maximilian’s father, the emperor Friedrich III had spent the last years trying to fend off a simultaneous attacks by the Ottoman empire and the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus. Matthias and Friedrich had a very ambivalent relationship. On the one hand they both claimed the title of a king of Hungary and had clashed before. But that conflict had ended in a compromise that had left Friedrich with a small part of Hungary and the rights to carry the title, whilst Matthias received the Hungarian crown back and the two men recognized each other as heirs of their respective lands, should either die without male offspring.

But these agreements were not sufficient to contain Matthias’ ambitions. He commanded one of the largest, best equipped and best trained armies in Europe and he was keen to put it to good use. He fought a long war with Bohemia that brought him Silesia and Moravia. When that concluded in a peace agreement in 1478, he turned his eyes on Austria. In 1482 Matthias sent towards Vienna. The always skint Friedrich III fought back but realistically never stood a chance on his own. He begged and pleaded with the princes to fend off this foreign invasion into the empire. He called diet after diet, but no help was forthcoming.

Much like with Maximilian’s Burgundian efforts, the princes did regarded the Habsburg quarrels with their neighbors as a private matter, not one that affected the empire in its composition. They clearly did not see it in the same vein as the siege of Neuss where plucky Rheinlaenders were holding out against Charles of Burgundy who they regarded as a French prince. And since I am mentioning Neuss, let me pass on a recommendation from my old schoolfriend and avid listener of the show, Ulf. It is the History of the siege of Neuss by the city’s scribe, Christianus Wierstraet, one of the earliest print products and much more lively in its descriptions than earlier chroniclers. There is for instance a story about how the defenders of the city threw diluted pig manure on the attackers with devastating effect and lots more. Just check out his comment on the episode 214 webpage.

And another matter was driving the princes and electors, the issue of imperial reform. This topic had been on the table since at least 1410 and we are entering the hot phase of constitutional reform. For now I will only mention this in passing, but do not worry, we will get deep into it when we reach the diet of Worms in 1495.

We are still 10 years away from that, in 1485, and Matthias Hunyadi has just taken Vienna almost to the day when Maximilan marched into Ghent. This shifted the political situation in the empire at least a little bit. The princes were initially only mildly uncomfortable about a Hungarian taking over Austria, but they were actually concerned when Matthias assumed the title of duke of Austria without even asking for any kind of confirmation from the empire. That could be interpreted as a removal of Austria from the commonwealth. Losing Austria would be embarrassing and the world was still sufficiently medieval for embarrassment to be an important factor in politics.

What was even more embarrassing for all concerned was the 70-year old emperor Friedrich III who had suddenly become homeless. Over the next few years he would move from one city or monastery to the next, demanding being housed and fed and left once the imperial credit at the  local tailors, butchers and bakers had been exhausted. Friedrich put his worldly possessions into his cousin Sigismund’s garage and left him his beloved daughter Kunigunde to look after. As we have heard in episode 197, the care and attention of the old roue did not extend to preventing her running away with one of Friedrich’s many enemies, duke Albrecht of Bavaria-Munich.

The Election of Maximilian I

To break out of this rather awkward situation, Friedrich III and Maximilian made a move that was at the same time long overdue and audacious.

All throughout the time Friedrich III wore the imperial crown, there had been discussions about electing a King of the Romans. Initially the princely reform faction had proposed Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate and then Georg of Podiebrad, the king of Bohemia. And then Charles the Bold had put his golden hat in the ring during the meeting in Trier. In 1486 another slate of potential candidates were discussed, including Albrecht of Saxony, a close ally of the Habsburgs and even more bewildering, Matthias Hunyadi, the Hungarian king and invader of the empire.

This constant debate showed first and foremost that the empire remained dissatisfied with the lack of initiative of Friedrich III and his reluctance to tackle the issue of imperial reform beyond the Landfrieden, the general peace he renewed in regular intervals. The princes and the public opinion had had enough and demanded a more proactive figure at the helm of the empire.

At the same time, electing a king of the Romans whilst the emperor was still alive had happened only once since the days of the Hohenstaufen. In 1376 emperor Karl IV had burned through literally millions to get his feckless son Wenceslaus elected, and that was no good precedent at all.  

Still, in 1486 six Prince electors gathered in Frankfurt to elect a new king of the Romans. There were only six of them present because we now have two kings of Bohemia, Wladislaw Jagiello who ruled Bohemia proper and the already mentioned Matthias Hunyadi who had received the title along with Silesia and Moravia in the peace agreement that ended his Bohemian campaign. And neither of these men were fans of Maximilian and Friedrich, so they were NFI.

Which tells you who was the key candidate for the crown here, and that was of course Maximilian, by now 27 years old, a battle hardened general who had been at war continuously for 9 years, who had defeated the mighty king of France and had subdued the haughty cities of Flanders. In massive contrast to his father, he was young, dynamic, full of ideas and hinted that he may be open to a reform of the empire.

Though it had all been set up and arranged by the Habsburgs, the outcome wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Some of the Electors, including the now very aged Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg had their reservations about electing Maximilian, Hungarian and French agents were distributing bribes and spreading discontent, and there was the obvious question, whether the election should be made conditional upon at least a first step towards imperial reform.

Another issue that had often been cited in the past was however a non-issue. Maximilian and Friedrich III had not seen each other since the fresh-faced prince had set off for his Burgundian adventure. And whilst Maximilian’s star was rising rapidly, Friedrich’s already somewhat matt rays had dimmed even further. And Friedrich had made Maximilian swear not to interfere in matters of the empire until the day his father had indeed shuffled off his mortal coil.

Some writers took these circumstances and concluded that Friedrich III had been jealous of his son and opposed Maximilian’s election. It is true that Maximilian had asked for an election long before 1486 and his father had turned him down, but that may not have been down to animosity or jealousy, but more a function of the still unstable situation in Burgundy. Hermann Wiesflecker, whose three volume biography of Maximilian is the benchmark secondary source, argued convincingly and based on detailed analysis, that Friedrich III was very much the engine behind the election of his son as a way to free up resources for a reconquest of Austria.

So, on February 16^th, 1486 the Prince electors gathered in the church of St. Bartholomeu in Frankfurt, the church that is today called the Frankfurt Dom. Unusually the election was presided over by the reigning emperor, Friedrich III who kept things in check. Maximilian I was duly elected king of the Romans.

At the same time the Landfrieden, the general peace was extended by another 10 years and the Kammergericht, the professional imperial court, was revived to adjudicate disputes. And then there was the main reason the Habsburgs had come to Frankfurt and had spent significant amounts bribing the electors, and that was to get the imperial princes to help pushing the king of Hungary out of Austria. More on that issue in a moment.

Before we get to the business end, we have to talk about the coronation, which at that point still took place in Aachen, complete with seating on the throne of Charlemagne and weird rituals involving oats. But the best bit was the feast. Of course the great princes and bishops were served an innumerable number of dishes, Maximilian and Friedrich on gold plates, not silver, a Burgundian tradition. As for the people, they were provided with some fine dish that leaves even the legendary Turducken in its wake. The court chefs roasted an Ox, stuffed with a pig that was stuffed with a goose that was stuffed with a chicken, which was stiffed with a pheasant. That is what we call stuffing!

Return to the Low Countries

That ox wasn’t the only one who got stuffed right royally that day. The emperor Friedrich III was the other. No help for the eastern lands was forthcoming. Not even his son Maximilian wanted to go with him to Innsbruck to muster an army against Hunyadi. Instead, Maximilian returned to his new home in the Low Countries. For a few days Friedrich wandered aimlessly around the empire before he reluctantly accepted his son’s invitation to join him in the splendor of the Burgundian court.

The father-son dynamic over the next few months was unusually modern. In an aristocratic society built on inheritance, you rarely hear stories of sons or daughters proudly showing off their achievements to their parents. But that is exactly what happened now. Maximilian dragged his aging and homeless father from one astoundingly rich and beautiful city in his realm to the next. Everywhere he ordered the Full Monty of grand entrances, tournaments, dances, visits to the arsenals and cloth halls, introductions to the great artists alive and dead, peeks into the vaults of the Burgundian treasure houses etc., etc. As a proud homeowner I find this exceedingly relatable.

But Maximilian’s decision to leave the ancient positions of the House of Habsburg to the enemy was not just because he craved the recognition of his old man. It was also driven by a fundamental geopolitical view that Maximilian had developed over the previous decade.

As we have followed the house of Habsburg over the last almost 20 episodes, their focus had been the south and east, Bohemia, Hungary, Tirol, Switzerland, further Austria, Dalmatia which put them in conflict with whoever ruled Bohemia and Hungary, Venice, the Swiss and the Wittelsbachs.

Burgundian politics had one primary focus, and that was France. In the same way that Burgundy’s existence was an existential threat to France, a powerful French king was an anathema to the Burgundian rulers. The foreign policy of the grand dukes of the West aimed to isolate and surround France through alliances with England, Brittany, Savoy and the Spanish Kingdoms. If they had any involvement with the eastern end of the empire, it was driven by romantic notions of the crusades, not hard politics.

Maximilian’s formative years had been spent in his war with the French and he had swallowed the Burgundian worldview hook, line and sinker. In his mind, the victory in the west was a precondition of success in the east – where have we heard that before…

The French coming back to Flanders

And looking at the situation in 1486/87 Maximilian was right. Given the reluctance of the imperial princes to help against Hunyadi, any chance for the Habsburgs to regain Austria depended on a firm hold over the Low Countries and their tax revenues. And in 1486 the Low countries were again unstable – the French were back on the warpath.

The French regent, Anne of Beaujeu, the only one of Louis XI’s children to have inherited his cunning, had taken advantage of a serious mistake Maximilian had made. In the previous year, specifically on August the 22^nd, an English king is said to have uttered the unforgettable words “ A horse, a kingdom for a horse” before being put eight feet under a car park.

The battle of Bosworth Field was a major setback for Maximilian. He had kept a close relationship first with Edward IV and then Richard III of England, in large part because Margaret of York, the sister of these kings, was his mother in law and a major pillar of his regime. When Richard III fell and Henry Tudor took over as Henry VII, Maximilian supported the Yorkist opposition, including the imposter Perkin Warbek. That did not endear him to the new rulers of England who pivoted the usual alliance structure and lined up with France against Burgundy. Maximilian firmed up his friendship with duke Francois of Brittany and the Spanish monarchs to fend off the renewed threat.

Whilst Maximilian was showing off Brussels and Bruges to his dad, the French attacked his southern border. Maximilian had to go to the Estates General once again and ask for money. Reluctantly he was given some cash and he recruited mercenaries, some Swiss but many from southern Germany where a new pool of military forces was getting established – a pool that would become known as the Landsknechte.

Swiss Reislaufer and German Landsknechte have one thing in common, they fight for money. And money as we know by now is what Maximilian keeps running out of all the time. The net result was that Maximilian fought a number of reasonably successful engagements, but could not follow through, because he constantly lacked the cash at the crucial moment. Another issue was that the Swiss were leaning more and more towards the French whose payment discipline was significantly better than the Habsburgs’. So, when Maximilian was trying to drive his forces into French territory, the Swiss refused and went home. This will become a fixed pattern in the forthcoming conflict between France and the Habsburgs.

And then, in the summer of 1487, things went properly off the rails. A detachment of 1,300 riders and 1,600 infantry, led by some of the most important Burgundian nobles fell into an elaborate trap. The entire division was either cut down or taken prisoner.

Maximilian a Prisoner in Bruges

The defeat set Flanders alight. The horns of rebellion sounded once more. The lower classes in Ghent and Bruges took over the government again. Jan van Coppenhole, the leader of the last rebellion returned to Ghent and established a revolutionary government, complete with a revolutionary guard called the White Squires that kept order through blood and iron. The French, who had harbored and supported Coppenhole for a decade, offered the city of Ghent the status of an independent city republic within the French Kingdom.

Maximilian was once more confronted with an uprising by his richest cities. And as before, means to defeat them had to come from the other parts of his lands, from Brabant, Hainault and Holland.  But they too were now exhausted. The constant wars and the marauding mercenaries who made no difference between friends and foes left them destitute and disenchanted with Maximilian’s rule.

That is when Maximilian came up with a madcap plan. He decided to go straight into the Maw of the Flemish Lion. He took 500 men and entered Bruges. He took up residence in the ducal palace and opened negotiations with the Estates general he had convened there. For about a month things looked as if there was a way to reach a compromise. Maximilian sent some of his men out to reinforce the army he intended to lead against Ghent. But when he tried to join them, things got out of hand.

The city closed its gates and they gathered on the market square, all 52 guilds with banners, weapons and guns. Maximilian, accompanied by his remaining 150 Landknechte appeared on the square and tried to reason with them. The citizens complained about the greedy bureaucrats, the oppressive taxation levels, the marauding mercenaries and the disruption of the trade with France. Maximilian listened and promised to resolve these issues – how, god knows, but that was the kind of thing one says in that situation.

The people went home , but by the next morning they had concluded that Maximilian was not going to do anything they wanted. Once again the grand bell, the Roland rang across Bruges, the shutters went down on the shops and the citizens donned their armor and gathered on the market square. They plundered the houses of Maximilian’s allies and demanded to see him. Once more he appeared on the square, this time he left the Landsknechte at home and brought just 20 local noblemen. The mob demanded he handed over his senior administrators so they could be tried and hanged, which he refused. Rumors spread that he had ordered a great army to come down from Antwerp and that if they let him out, he would order his soldiers to massacre them all. You can imagine the screaming accusations, Maximilian’s increasingly irritated defense and the city leaders trying to calm the situation. This time bloodshed could be avoided and Maximilian returned to his palace.

The next day began as a replay of the previous two. Maximilian once more tried to reason with the increasingly enraged citizenship. The Bruggelinge had by now received a message from the revolutionaries in Ghent telling them not to let the king escape. Maximilian promised not to leave Bruges, but that promise was not enough. The locals pressed forward, took Maximilian and brought him to the house of a spice trader called the Kranenbourg. That is where he would remain for 16 long weeks, a prisoner of the city of Bruges.

That was an event that made all of europe gasp. Maximilian had been crowned king of the Romans, a process that had elevated him to be god’s anointed, almost a different kind of being to mere mortals. The great unwashed laying hands on his royal person and locking him up in the house of a commoner was not just shocking, but close to sacrilege.

It is not clear who had given the order to grab the king, whether there had ever been a plan to imprison their city’s overlord. My guess is that the citizens of Bruges were as stunned by developments as Maximilian himself.

But now that they had committed their unspeakable crime, the only way was forward. They demanded that Maximilian gave up his guardianship of his son Philipp who he had safely sent back to Mechelen before the chaos had broken out, they demanded an account of what happened to the money, they wanted him to hand over the German administrators who they accused of theft and corruption, they wanted him to make peace with France and even give Ghent and Bruges the monopoly of the textile trade.

Maximilian refused. They raided his lodgings, looking for weapons and treasure. Maximilian refused. They took away his last remaining companions, saying that a few heads need to roll to appease the people. Maximilian refused. They put metal rods in front of his windows and set up gallows below them. Maximilian refused. They tortured and then hanged Maximilain’s advisors. Maximilian refused. They plundered the ducal palace and sought out the Landsknechte and killed them. Maximilian still refused.

Like so often in revolutions, the breakdown of one set of rules leads to the next set of institutions to fall, until there are no safeguards left. The executioners of Ghent and Bruges were working overtime. Maximilian was placed into another prison. He now truly feared for his life. He wrote to his father begging him to come, otherwise he will soon be dead by poison or by violence. He would later say that he often saw a man aiming his crossbow directly at him when he passed the window.

Kunz von der Rosen and the escape from Bruges

There is a story about one of Maximilian’s closest associates, a man by the name of Kunz von der Rosen. He was the son of a prosperous merchant from Kaufbeuren, a small free imperial city. He had ascended rapidly in the archducal and now royal service due to quote “the utmost diligence in his work, an open and courageous character, but more than that, the ability to find the cheerful side in all situations in life, and his ever-ready wit.” He would often describe himself as the emperor’s fool and is depicted as such in the Maximilian’s monumental triumphal march. But he was a joker with a poker. He fought in most of Maximilian’s battle and became a hugely influential advisor. There is a story that he gained access to Maximilian in his prison disguised as a Franciscan monk, complete with tonsure and shave, and offered to take Maximilian’s place, letting him leave in his costume. Maximilian refused, unwilling to sacrifice his friend who would undoubtedly be torn to pieces by the mob.

The situation turned into Maximilian’s favour when the empire finally rallied behind him. Though the princes still saw the low countries as a Habsburg private project, the incarceration and threatening of their king was an unbearable attack on their honor and status. By April 1488 a sizeable army gathered and marched towards Bruges.

That caused a re-evaluation of options amongst the citizens. Calmer heads prevailed and they allowed Maximilian more freedom and luxuries. And negotiations over a formal peace began. Maximilian confirmed the rights his wife Marie had granted the estates of the Low Countries in the great privilege of 1477. Effectively giving them almost complete autonomy. He promised to honor the peace of Arras from 1482 that gave France a third of the former Burgundian state, to  remove all German and foreign advisors, to send his mercenaries home and renounce the guardianship of his son and the regency. And of course he agreed that what happened in Bruges, stayed in Bruges. There was a weird ceremony in the church of St. Jakob where Maximilian smiled and declared that now finally they would all have peace. There was a lot of singing and jubilation, and Maximilian finally left Bruges. At the gate, he promised once more that he would stick to all of his promises, but ominously added that of course, he could not guarantee that his father would.

Four More Years of war

Well, he wouldn’t, wouldn’t he. Friedrich III put Ghent under siege. The pope issued an interdict against Bruges. Maximilian got around his oaths and promises by simply saying that it was only binding on him, not on the emperor or the imperial princes. Still Maximilian thought it more appropriate to leave the leadership of the campaign against Bruges and Ghent to his father and the imperial princes. He focused on fighting the French and the pirates.

What followed was another four years of atrocious warfare. The imperial army may not have been as successful in open battle or at sieges as Maximilian had been, but they were experts in the art of devastation. The initial model of various electors, archbishops, counts and dukes came to avenge their king of the Romans was quickly replaced by a more modern approach.

Duke Albrecht der Beherzte, „the Couragous“ was a very wealthy imperial prince and founder of the line of dukes of Saxony that ruled in Dresden and rose to royal titles. And he was also a war entrepreneur. We will talk a lot more about the Landsknechte and how they operated in one of the upcoming episodes. For now it is enough to say that we are in a time period where it was more effective to hire an army of well trained and well equipped mercenaries then to bring a feudal levy of knights. Albrecht had the funds to raise and maintain such an army and was an excellent general hardened in dozens of campaigns. He had fought against the most famous war leaders of the time, Charles the Bold and Matthias Hunyadi and he had a very rare quality that Maximilian and Friedrich appreciated even more- he was willing to work on credit.

Though Maximilian’s rule of the Low Countries came again close to collapse, Albrecht’s persistence and ability to pay his soldiers won through in the end. The French king Charles VIII made peace in 1489 and the cities of Flanders finally signed on the dotted line in 1492. The 15 year long war of the Burgundian succession was finally over.

But at what cost. The land was utterly destroyed. The population had shrunk dramatically due to famine and a return of the Plague. When Maximilian’s son Philipp took the reign in 1494, he kept the Low Countries out of his father’s conflicts. This state that once sustained the exuberant splendour of Philipp the Good and the impressive war machine of Charles the Bold no longer had the resources to do any of these things. As for Ghent and Bruges, the major trading houses had enough of war, siege and death and left for Antwerp.

What came out of the Burgundian Experience

Did Burgundy make the Habsburgs rich? Ultimately, no. These were the wealthiest lands in Northern Europe, but even after they had recovered, the debts Maximilian had built up in the wars of succession took until the middle of the next century to be repaid, and raising taxes remained a precarious process as everyone remembered the riots and rebellions. On Maximilian’s P&L the Burgundian state ranked roughly on par with Tirol and Austria and in terms of balance sheet well below the silver mines of Schwaz.

But the legacy of these 15 years was only partially fiscal. Maximilian had lived and fought there between the ages of 18 and 31. This is the time when the frontal lobes fuses, it is the time we today may spend at university and in our first jobs, and I may just be speaking for myself, but that was the time when my view of the world of friendships and values were formed. And in my case, that was a normal experience. But for Maximilian, that was – even by the standards of the time – an exceptional experience.

He arrived coming from the modest, almost austere court of his father to the most luxurious, most sophisticated society in Northern Europe. Literally every piece of clothing, art, armour, every painting and every tapestry was made by one of the greatest artists of the time. The parties, the tournaments, the dances, the music, everything was so much more refined. Court etiquette allowed for openness and  interaction between the sexes that was utterly alien to conservative Styria. And then the hunts. Sure there was some great hunting at his father’s castle in Wiener Neustadt, but these Burgundian palaces, they had menageries with lions, leopards, rare birds. The letters he writes home to his friend Prüschek are almost breathless in their descriptions. He goes through the classic trope of country bumpkin in the big city complete with falling in love with a much more sophisticated, beautiful lady. There is a whiff of Crocodile Dundee here.

All this luxury was however not an empty display of epic consumption. The Burgundian court was the final manifestation arguably the high point in chivalric culture. Each one of the grand dukes would dream of going on crusade, on fulfilling their true purpose of protecting Christendom. Their art is suffused with medieval ideas, not with the aesthetic of ancient Rome or Greece. This is in a way a backward looking world and in that respect not far from the world of the 95 lords of Austria Maximilian had grown up in.

But at the same time this was a very modern reality. The painting techniques of a Jan van Eyck or Rogier van der Weyden were in many aspects much more advanced than their Italian contemporaries whose subjects focused on a more secular, individualistic world.

The economy that underpinned the state of Burgundy  was equally a modern one. It was trade and industry that had created Burges, Ghent, Ypres, Arras, Brussels, Tournai and these other dozens of cities larger and richer than Vienna. Equally modern and forward looking was the military with its advanced artillery and disciplined infantry.

It is this mixture of idealism and realism that Maximilian fully embraced and made his own. He would be remembered as the “Last Knight” who wanted to resurrect the medieval empire of Barbarossa and Otto the Great and go on crusade to Jerusalem, whilst he was at the same time the father of the Landsknechte who fought with them on foot, the man who helped Antwerp becoming the most significant trading centre North of the Alps and the first ruler to take full advantage of the printing press.

Maximilian’s modern biographer, Hermann Wiesflecker makes the argument that Maximilian picked up much of the sophisticated Burgundian state craft and implemented it in Austria and Tyrol. In particular the concept of a central fiscal infrastructure with annual budgets and tax income forecasts had been imported from the Burgundian state. That view has been challenged by recent historians who point out that in particular the Tyrol had  a sophisticated fiscal infrastructure already. I haven’t got the time to dig through all of these arguments, but I am convinced that Maximilian came away from 15 years of war and endless discussions with the Estates General with a clear understanding that such matters, boring as they may look, are what decides the outcome of war.  

Against all that brightness, Maximilian also experienced some terrible tragedy . Marie’s sudden death shook him deeply and he kept her memory alive until his death. The loss of his children must have been exceedingly painful, only one of whom he gets back young. His daughter had become a teenager by the time he meets her again.

Being imprisoned by the mob, watching his senior servants being tortured unable to protect them was a shock, that left him with a lifelong hatred for Ghent and any form of city autonomy.

And let’s not forget the endless litany of betrayals and disappointments, the imperial princes that refused to help, his cousin Sigismund stabbing him in the back, the constantly shifting allegiances of the great cities and treachery even of some of the members of his order of the Golden Vlies.

Given all that, Maximilian could have easily ended up like his father, a withdrawn, depressed ruler who trusted no one. Instead he remained a man with many lasting real friendships and his famous Leutseligkeit, his ability to speak to anyone from beggars to barons.

Whilst this did not happen, the Burgundian adventure left him with the conviction that war was always the only solution. The solution to his conflict with France, the solution to the occupation of Vienna, the solution to the French invasion of imperial Italy we will talk about soon.

For Maximilian war was not a means to achieve a near term tangible political objective, it was fought for the complete destruction and defeat of the enemy. This idea was probably the most enduring idea he took away from Burgundy. The struggle between France and Burgundy he inherited and that shaped his formative years, was a war for survival. Both sides were convinced that only the complete defeat and erasure of the other guaranteed their existence.

For Maximilian and many of his successors, the west was where the decision over world domination and survival was going to be made, not in the east. This will leave the Habsburgs with a strangely lopsided strategy that left the Balkans and Hungary to Turkish aggression for a long time, even let them besiege Vienna, whilst throwing so much of their resources into the struggle with the Kings of France.

As you can imagine, though the war of the Burgundian succession is now over, this is not going to be the last clash between Habsburg and Valois. But next week we are going back to the heart of the empire, we will see how Maximilian and Friedrich regain Austria, prevent the Tyrol from getting sold to the Wittelsbach and lay another of the many foundations that will bring them the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. Soon we will get to the imperial reforms, the Swabian Bund and the last war with the Swiss. And that can only mean one thing, we will finally exit the 15^th century…..and you thought that would never happen.

32 destinations chosen entrely subjectively

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the second part of your Christmas bonus, my entirely subjective list of places to visit in Germany. Today we will cover the remaining Bundesländer, namely Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thüringen and two more places that I have chosen entirely because I can.

One of the legacies of the Holy roman empire is that Germany does not have just one place where everything happens,  where politicians, entrepreneurs, bankers, artists, and actors travel on the same underground trains and eat at the same restaurants. Berlin is the capital with its political class of members of the Bundestag, journalists and lobbyist and at the same time a major gathering place for artists, musicians and thespians of all stripes and home to many tech startups. But the bankers are in Frankfurt, the headquarters of the major companies are in Stuttgart, Munich, Düsseldorf and spread around everywhere. Several of the major publishing houses are in Hamburg, the private TV stations in Munich, but none of these places have a monopoly on any of these activities. There are banks headquartered in Munich and major corporates in Frankfurt, there is great theater in Düsseldorf, Dresden and Schwerin, there are world leading companies headquartered in tiny towns like Künzelsau.

And that cuts through to the major cultural sites. Though the quip that there were 365 states in the Holy Roman empire is vastly exaggerated,  there were once a hundred capital cities, from splendid Dresden to tiny Hohenzollern-Hechingen, each with its princely residence, cathedral, grand monastery and theater. The great artists either travelled from court to court, leaving behind their works here or there, or stayed in one of the free imperial cities, operating large workshops.

Therefore what you cannot do in Germany is to go to one city and see all the major treasures the country has “collected” over the centuries, as you can do in the Louvre or the British Museum and the National Gallery. In Germany you have to move around, see one thing at the time, always in the knowledge that its significant counterpart is a few hundred miles north, south, east or west of you. This is one of the legacies of the medieval empire that Germany has in common with Italy.

And hence we are going through each of the Bundesländer trying to pick out one absolute must-see and one place where you are likely to encounter fewer people. And as we have covered 9 Bundesländer up to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern already, the next location we will have to get to is Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany’s most populous state.

Nordrhein-Westfalen

If we talk about must sees, Aachen is where every upstanding listener of the History of the Germans will go, and it is undoubtably the right thing to do. The imperial chapel, with its Roman columns brought across from Rome and Ravenna and Barbarossa’s magnificent chandelier provided suitable surroundings for the coronations since Otto the Great. And if you happen to go there, take a look at the treasures in the Dommuseum, worth every second of it. And do not forget to listen to the ghoulish opening of Charlemagne’s grave by Otto III in episode 14  .

Cologne

A close second place you should not miss is Cologne. The city has been mentioned 500 times already in the show and there are likely another 500 incidences to come. Germany’s most venerable and for a long time largest city has been the stage for events from the Prologue episode to the siege of Neuss we discussed in episode 214.  As the seat of one of the seven Prince electors, a major pilgrimage destination and the main hub in the trade between the empire and England, Cologne often played a decisive role. Its history is so varied and significant, it warrants its own podcast, the History of Cologne by Willem Fromm.

Of the things to see in Cologne, the Cathedral and its shrine of the Three Wise Men is unavoidable. I would also recommend the Römisch-Germanische Museum, that displays items related to the long history of Roman presence in Germany and specifically in Cologne.  And do not miss the remains of Cologne’s history as a free imperial merchant city and senior member of the Hansetag League. The Overstolzen House, a 13th-century Romanesque house, and the Town Hall, with its 16th-century porch, the Gürzenich, or Banquet Hall, of the merchants of the city (1441–47), and the 16th-century Arsenal are all reconstructed on the outside, though the interior has sadly been lost to war damage.

These alone would justify a visit, but what makes it a must see are the 12 great Romanesque churches including Sankt Gereon, Sankt Severin, Sankt Ursula, Sankt Maria im Kapitol, Sankt Kunibert, Sankt Pantaleon, Sankt Aposteln, and Gross Sankt Martin. Few places in Europe can boast such a density of sacral architecture erected between the 4^th and the 13^th century.  

Once you have done this marathon, head down to Früh’s, Sünner im Walfisch or Sion for a refreshing Kölsch and the unique atmosphere of a classic beer house. If you do that, you have to take the S-Bahn down to Cologne’s eternal rival, Düsseldorf and taste their Altbier in one of their traditional beer houses like the Füchschen, Schiffchen or Uerige.

Essen – Zeche Zollverein

18 million people spread over 34,000 km² making Nordrhein-Westfalen one of Europe’s most densely populated areas, in particular the almost continuous urban landscape between Düsseldorf and Dortmund, otherwise known as the Ruhr.

I would love to say that the Ruhr is pretty, but that would be pushing it. There are pretty places though, like the Bredeny lake and its park with the villa of the Krupp family or the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal. Several of these cities are very old; Essen abbey boasts an Ottonian Westwerk and 10^th century artworks and Dortmund had been a member of the Hanse and still retains some vestiges of that time, whilst Mercator established a cartography business in Duisburg.

If people travel here from afar, it is usually related to football, or soccer for our American friends, given the region hosts some of the most successful and most storied clubs.

But there is another way to get an understanding what made this state where almost one fifth of Germans live. And that is a visit to Zeche Zollverein, a coal mining industrial complex that counts amongst the largest of its kind in europe. It operated from 1847 to 1986 and has now been turned into a museum, or to be more precise, one of the many buildings on the site is now the Ruhr Museum providing an insight int how this region turned into one of the largest industrial agglomerations in the world.

But what impressed me more than the exhibits is the sheer scale and awesome beauty the structure. It comprises two large complexes, the mine with its Shaft 12, built in the Bauhaus style that is the basis of the claim that this is the most beautiful coal mine in the world. And then there is the nearby coking plant, a 600m long behemoth.  The canal that ran alongside once held water used to cool down the coke. Today it is used In winter as one of the coolest ice rings I can imagine.

Zeche Zollverein has a museum but is not a museum, it is a vibrant centre with 150 start-ups and corporations using the space, a range of cultural institutions, a branch of the university and shops. Since opening in the 1990s, Zeche Zollverein has become a weekend destinations for people from all around, including my cousin who took me there and left me speechless.

That is unfortunately all we can cover in Nordrhein-Westfalen, leaving such gems as Paderborn (see episode 19) and Münster for later exploration.

Rheinland-Pfalz

It is time to head down to Rheinland-Pfalz, the state created in 1946 from chunks of Prussia’s Rhine province, Rheinhessen and the Bavarian Palatinate. This is the land of the archbishops of Mainz and Trier, the Counts Palatine on the Rhine, the counts of Nassau and most significantly the various barons on their castles overlooking the Rhine river.

Which gets me to the must-see in Rheinland-Pfalz, and that is the Rhine valley, namely the bit between Mainz and Bonn. I know, it is on everybody’s bucket list for a visit to Germany, but so is Heidelberg and we covered that as well.

What is most fascinating is the gap between its preception and what it actually signifies in German history. Turner and Byron had made the rhine valley into one of the main destinations on the grand Tour and many a mylord travelled along citing  these stanzas from Childe Harold’s pilgrimage:

childe harold audio – Google Search 2:11:20

   The castled crag of Drachenfels

   Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine.

   Whose breast of waters broadly swells

   Between the banks which bear the vine,

   And hills all rich with blossomed trees,

   And fields which promise corn and wine,

   And scattered cities crowning these,

   Whose far white walls along them shine,

   Have strewed a scene, which I should see

   With double joy wert THOU with me!

The river nobly foams and flows,

   The charm of this enchanted ground,

   And all its thousand turns disclose

   Some fresher beauty varying round;

   The haughtiest breast its wish might bound

   Through life to dwell delighted here;

   Nor could on earth a spot be found

   To Nature and to me so dear,

   Could thy dear eyes in following mine

   Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!

And as the boat floated between the Lorely and Katzenellenbogen the representatives of Thomas Cook sold the tourists steel engravings of Burg Katz, the Mäuseturm in Bingen or Stolzenfels castle which they would hang on their walls to dream of grim robber barons, helpless prelates and damsels in distress. All these images and dreams of the Romantic Rhine ended up in the rubbish bin when Germans and Brits faced each other across their trenches in World War I.

But that romantic yearning for crumbling castles, picturesque towns and to quote Byron again: peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,  And hands which offer early flowers” was not an exclusively British obsession.

The Germans were at it too, Goethe, Hölderlin and Kleist started the literary tradition that peaked with Heinrich Heine and Clemens von Brentano, Schumann and Liszt composed piano pieces, symphonies and Lieder, Wagner’s ring of the Nibelungen takes place on the Rhine, before we get into the less salubrious world of the “Wacht am Rhein” and Carl Zuckmaier’s famous Wine, Women and Song. During the 19^th century rich industrialists and the Orussian royal family turned the castle ruins into what a fairytale gothic castle was supposed to look like.

The whole place is so drenched in narratives, myths and anecdotes, it is a dreamworld made into reality. A dreamworld that obfuscates its real significance. The Rhine had been the backbone of the European economy for centuries, the main transmission line that connected the Low Countries and Italy. Its castles were toll stations funding princely ambitions, may they have been territorial, political or religious all through German history. Its cities were centres of trade and innovation, its villages made the world’s favourite white wine etc., etc.

And it is gorgeous!. Take a trip down the river either on the train that follows the banks of the river, or on a ship or boat….

Trier

Going from one of the absolute top destinations in Germany we now go to one that is quite incomprehensibly overlooked, and that is Trier. Trier may not formally be Germany’s oldest city, but it is certainly the one that holds more ancient Roman buildings than any other in Germany, and could easily compete with better known places in France or Spain.

Augusta Treverorum became one of the four capitals of the Roman empire in 293 AD and grew to between 75,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. It retains its famous city gate, the Porta Nigra from this period, the Aula Palatina, the basilica that once served as the throne room of emperor Constantine was preserved as a church, making it the largest extant hall from classical antiquity, it’s cathedral goes back to a church commissioned again by the emperor Constantine, and retains much of the old structure, with later additions in the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th century. Trier obviously comes with the usual complement of amphitheatre, ruins of the impressive Roman bath, and a still fully functioning 2^nd century bridge. The Rheinische Landesmuseum holds more exhibits from Roman times, including the famous Wine ship of Neumagen that explains a lot about trade on the Moselle and Rhine and Roman navigation and the largest treasure of Roman gold coins ever found.

And if you have time, drop into the city library that holds the Codex Egberti, one of the great Ottonian illuminated manuscripts, a reminder that Trier was not just important in roman times but had been a crucial archbishopric throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. Who could forget Baldwin of Luxemburg, brother of emperor Henry VII and eminence grise of the empire for most of the 14^th century.

That is of course only a small selections of the delights of Rheinland-Pfalz. You will almost certainly want to go to Speyer as well and marvel at its great cathedral we described already in episode 25 or spend some time in Mainz, home to the most senior of Prince Electors as well as of Johannes Gutenberg (episodes 186 to 188), or follow the river to Worms, original home of the Salian emperors and site of the Nibelungenlied.

Saarland

Fortunately our next destination is not far. The smallest of the territorial German states, the Saarland is where we go next. And I have to make a grave admission, I have never done more than drive through. I will of course remedy that, but what it means is that for now I cannot offer any personal recommendations.

Amongst the things I found that could entice me to go to the Saarland is first up the Saarschleife, a gigantic bend in the River Saar caused by the stream hitting a hard Quarzite rock. It looks cool.

The other location would be the Volklinger Eisenwerke, the only fully intact steel works from the 19^th and 20^th century. There are visiting tours and a museum explaining how this enormous facility operated, as well as special exhibitions. So if you decide to skip the Zeche Zollverein in Essen, and you want to better understand Germany’s industrial past, this might be a suitable replacement.

Sachsen

Our next Bundesland is almost due east from here – it is Saxony in all its splendour. And when we talk about Saxony as in the kingdom and now Bundesland of Saxony, as opposed to the stem duchy of Saxony,  we are talking about a state created by and for the House of Wettin. For much of the 17^th and 18^th century this principality outshone Prussia, its neighbour to the north. Augustus the Strong and then his son Augustus III were both electors of Saxony and kings of Poland. They maintained two capitals, Dresden and Warsaw where they made a credible attempt at competing with the Versailles of Louis XIV. This expenditure relegated the dynasty back to the second league, but left behind some of the grandest and most impressive baroque architecture on German soil.

In other words, Dresden is a must-see. Several of the structures that had been heavily damaged, even wiped out by the Bombing of Dresden in February 1945 but much has now been reconstructed. In particular the Frauenkirche has become a symbol of reconciliation and rebirth. The whole process had already started under the GDR government with the reconstruction of the Semperoper  in the 1980s and continued with the almost complete rebuild of for example the Taschenberg Palais and the Residenzschloss. I worked in Dresden in 1991 and I had the chance to visit the building site of the Residenzschloss. Seeing the concrete walls of what is today the audience chamber of Augustus the Strong was one of the weirder experiences I ever had in sightseeing.

But whilst much of the city centre had suffered horribly, there are several absolute gems of the heyday of baroque Dresden that have survived largely unaltered. There is the Alte Gemäldegalerie that houses the collection of Italian renaissance art put together by the otherwise hapless Augustus III, and the Grüne Gewölbe, the treasury of the House of Wettin that had been made accessible as a museum in 1729 as a means to project its immense wealth.

Going a bit further afield, you may want to see Meissen where the principality started and its castle where  Johann Friedrich Böttger established the famous Meissener Porzellanmanufactur, the first place where porcelain was produced in Europe. Porcelain was an obsession amongst aristocrats in the 17^th and 18^th century, but had gone into total overdrive amongst the German princes. Everyone had a porcelain collection, usually housed in small “Chinese” room full of mirrors and golden wall shelfs. In Dresden you had an entire palace to house the collection, the Japanese Palace in the Neustadt.

Today the collection is shown in the Zwinger, once part of the city’s defences but repurposed by Augustus the Strong as, a party palace, orangery, garden, just something very unique and strangely wonderful. A Japanese palace was of course not enough exoticism for the spendthrift Saxon rulers, so they had a Chinese palace too, in Pillnitz, just a few miles upriver.  Pillnitz is of course not just one small Chinese villa, but three separate buildings, one on the water, one on the hill and one in the middle. And there is Moritzburg, the fairytale castle in a lake full of hunting trophies..and, and, and.

I am going to shut up now. And if you go to Dresden, just spare a few days for Leipzig too. Where Dresden was where the money was spent, Leipzig is where it was made. And today Leipzig is arguably the more vibrant of the two cities.

Bad Muskau

When it comes to overspending, the two Augustuses are hard to beat, but it can be done. The man who achieved that sheer impossible feat was Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau. He is today mostly remembered for Fürst Pückler ice cream, a mix of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavours he did not even invent himself but was just named in his honour by the Prussian court cook.

He was a famous dandy who kept a team of white stags to pull his carriage down Unter den Linden, but his true achievement was as a gardener. His two parks, one in Bad Muskau in Saxony and the other in Branitz in Brandenburg are absolute high points in European garden architecture. Laid out in an English style the park stretches 5.6 km² across what is now the German-Polish border. As you would expect, this is an artificial landscape of lakes and hills dotted with various follies and pavilions.

The sheer scale of the project pushed the man who was born as one of the richest nobleman in Germany deep into debt. In a desperate attempt to raise funds he and his wife divorced so that he could go to England and marry a wealthy heiress. That scheme turned out to be a touch too obvious and the British press made a mockery of the German prince’s attempts to woo an English rose. Pückler described events in hilarious letters to his now divorced but still much loved wife. She then published these letters to rustle up cash, which turned into a best seller. Like modern a day sailing youtuber, Pückler embarked on a new career as a travel writer. He journeyed across the Ottoman empire, even made it to Ethiopia and Sudan. One of the souvenirs he brought back from his trips was an11-year old Ethiopian enslaved girl that he installed in Bad Muskau where she promptly succumbed to the inclement climate, and probably just utter misery.

Money eventually ran out completely and Pückler had to sell his castle and gardens in Bad Muskau in 1845 and moved to Branitz where he could not stop himself and got gardening again. He died in 1871. Like his lifestyle, his religious convictions were at odds with the conservative world of 19^th century Germany. Since cremation was not yet permitted, he went around the problem by having his heart dissolved in sulphuric acid, and ordered that his body should be embedded in caustic soda, caustic potash, and caustic lime. These granular remains were then buried underneath a pyramid in his garden.

His life cries out for its own episode.

Sachsen-Anhalt

Moving swiftly, or in fact not so very swiftly on, we come to Sachsen-Anhalt. This is the land of Otto the Great who is buried in Magdeburg cathedral and his father, Heinrich the Fowler whose grave is somewhere underneath the abbey church of Quedlinburg. Even Barbarossa squeezed himself in on the Kyffhauser, which is shared between Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen.

Naumburg

And the must-see place here is also linked to these early medieval days, it is the Cathedral of Naumburg, and more specifically the Stifterfiguren, the sculptures of the founders of the church. These include the legendarily alluring Uta von Ballingstedt, but also the other 11, each carved by an absolute master of the craft in the 13^th century. If you are following me on social media you can find a post going through every single one of the 12 figures and their histories.

The second destination in this state is Dessau. This is another of these tiny capitals, in this case the seat of the dukes of Sachsen-Anhalt-Dessau. Not much of the old city of Dessau is left, apart from a ducal palace. But halfway between Dessau and Wittenberg, famous for Luther’s theses, is the garden landscape of Dessau-Wörlitz, a set of interwoven palaces and parks that cover an impressive 142 km²

But that is not the only reason why I would suggest to go there, the real attraction is the Bauaus. You can visit the original building where the Bauhaus school moved to after it had been more or less expelled from Weimar in the 1920s. It is a fascinating structure that, like much of the other ideas of the Bauhaus had enormous influence on the way the world looks everywhere from Texas to Tokyo. The Bauhaus museum is by the way not in the actual Bauhaus buildings, but in the centre of Dessau.

Schleswig-Holstein

Time to take our last trip up north and have a look at Schleswig Holstein. As a sailor, this is my place, along with Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It is just stunningly beautiful if you have a soft spot for hard winds and sandy beaches.

Culturally the must see place is of course Lübeck, the queen of the Hanse. We did a whole series on the Hanse and the role of Lübeck within it, we talked about the art and culture that in the main centred here – episode 127, so I am not sure what I can add in this episode. Maybe take a marzipan safari. Whilst Niederegger has become the leading brand for German Marzipan, there are four more manufacturers in Lübeck and true aficionados prefer either Mest or Martens or Carstens or Lubeca over the better known fare. Lots to discover…

As for the second location in Schleswig Holstein, there are of course the islands, namely Sylt which provide a uniquely German summer holiday experience and of course any kind of water sports in the Förde on the Baltic shore, including but not limited to sailing.

But I would like to break a lance for the city of Schleswig, the seat of the dukes of Holstein-Gottorp who occasionally ruled Denmark, Sweden and Russia, though not all at the same time. There is an impressive palace here with gardens and the like.

Beyond that there are three unique and compelling things here. The first are the remains of Hedeby or Haithabu, a Viking settlement that dominated the trade in the Baltic between the 8^th and 11^th century. You can see reconstructed Viking houses and a Viking museum explaining the significance of the place in international trade.

In the 7^th century the Danes built a line of fortifications from Haithabu on the Baltic to the North Sea shore which remained the main Danish line of defence against invasions until the Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864. The great wall of China, begun around the same time, is admittedly more impressive, but lost its military function in the 17^th century.

And then you have the cathedral of Schleswig, itself a lovely gothic church with an impressive carved main altar. The funky bit is in the cloister. Like so many churches and monasteries, Schleswig too was given a massive makeover in the 19^th century. The creative renovation work here included the discovery and enhancement of a frieze underneath the massacre of the innocents. The frieze depicted various animals, including some quickly identified as turkeys.

This caused some confusion given the original decoration dated back to 1320. The only viable explanation was that the Vikings must have been to America before and had brought the motif of the turkey back from their journeys. That rapidly turned int0 a whole narrative of brave Nordic sailors spreading out to the American continent long before any Spaniard had ever held a compass. Under the Nazis the story that men from Schleswig had discovered America became canon. It wasn’t until 1948 that Kurt Wehlte used x-ray to prove that the turkeys were indeed a turkey placed there by the 19^th century “restorers”.  

Thüringen

Congratulations, we have made it to the last Bundesland in alphabetical order, but by no means the least.

If you look on a map of the Holy roman empire from say after the peace of Westphalia, you see several large entities, Austrian and Spanish Habsburg, Bavaria, Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Hessen, Brunswick etc. And then in between all these tiny places. And Thuringia is one of the regions where the chart says things like “various Saxon duchies” or “unmappable microterritories”.

Weimar

And here in Thuringia is the probably most famous of these duodez principalities, Sachsen-Weimar. This tiny principality whose political position was so insignificant, they did not have to contribute their own soldiers to the imperial Reichsmatrikel but simply paid an equivalent tax, managed to attract Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Wielandt and Gottfried Herder to its court. And they came there and lived there during the absolute height of their fame. There is no real equivalent, unless you were to say that Charles Dickens, George Elliot, Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen had decided to live together in the grounds of Belvoir Castle. Very pretty, but a bit off the beaten track.

Weimar retains much that reminds one of these days when the country’s greatest writer was also the prime minister of the tiny state and walked across the park to have tea with the duchess and her court of local baronesses.

Weimar is of course also the place where the national assembly hunkered down to write the constitution of the republic in 1919, since Berlin was simply too dangerous.

Wartburg

Thuringia has many more of these smallish state capitals, including Gotha, home of Prince Albert and Meiningen, capital of the Duchy of Sachsen-Meiningen until 1918, complete with theatre and one of the oldest orchestras in the world. And of course Erfurt, beautifully restored to its late medieval glory. I could go on.

But the other place I would suggest you see in Thüringen would probably be on most people’s must see list anyway.  But again, I actually do make the rules, so I can break them if I want to.

Perched high above the town of Eisenach, Wartburg castle offers sweeping views over forested hills that immediately justify the journey. This is where Martin Luther found refuge and translated the New Testament into German—an act that shaped the language and transformed European religious life. Walking through his modest room gives you an intimate connection to ideas that changed the world.

Beyond the Reformation, Wartburg is also a cradle of German identity. Medieval legends of competition between singers, the courtly life that disgusted Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia, and 19th-century nationalism all converge within its walls. The architecture itself is striking, blending Romanesque foundations with later restorations that reflect changing artistic ideals.

Equally compelling is the setting. Wartburg sits amid hiking trails and quiet woodland, allowing you to combine cultural discovery with nature. It is everything with everything on it.

Odd Ones Out

And that is where I could, or maybe should end it. But no. I promised you two more places that are purely subjectively my favourites amongst the must-sees and the not so well known.

Bamberg

And top of the pops, the place to be that others also go, at least for me is Bamberg. If you go and see one piece of art in Germany, make it the Bamberger Reiter. Yes, I know that the Nazi used him as an archetype of the Nordic race and national ideal. Which makes it even more ironic that he may or may not depict a Hungarian and was likely made by a French artist.

Put all this away in a box and just look at it. The serenity of the figure, the elegance of the shapes, the mystery of its meaning and the unusual position of an equestrian statue inside a church, all makes this wonderfully bewildering and captivating.

And the Dom is full of other wonders, the marble sarcophagus of pope Clement II that appears more Roman than medieval, the stunning carvings of Tilman Riemenschneider on the grave of Henry II and Cunigunde and the modest box that holds the remains of Konrad III stuffed into a corner of the crypt by his ungrateful nephew Frederick Barbarossa. And more 13^th century sculptures that take your breath away.

The city below too is stunning, one of the few that survived intact, including a town hall on a bridge across the river. There is an episcopal palace by Balthasar Neumann, not as breathtaking as the one in Würzburg, but still impressive. And in the Bamberg Museum you can see what may be the absolute pinnacle of Ottonian illuminated manuscripts, the Bamberg apocalypse.

And since you are in the area, nip across to Bayreuth, not necessarily for Richard Wagner, but to see the theatre, built for the wedding of a daughter of the Margrave in 1750 and still standing, almost unchanged in all its epic gold and red splendour. A unique survivor.

Weikersheim

And now for the very, very last place, Weikersheim. If we talk about tiny states with artistic and architectural ambitions far beyond its resources, Weikersheim takes the biscuit.

The state its capital had once been, Hohenlohe-Weikersheim ended to far beyond the border of the princely park. But still, they built themselves a palace in the finest 16^th century style. Its great knight’s hall sports a 40 metre long ceiling, decorated with hunting scenes by Balthasar Katzenberger, whose skill lay more in colouring in, than actual painting . On the walls count Wolfgang II ordered his hunting trophies to be displayed as part of plaster reliefs of the actual animals they belonged to. Once seen, you will never forget the  Weikersheim elephant.

In the 18^th century another count of Weikersheim remodelled the castle again. This time it was brought up to the latest fashions of aristocratic living, complete with a defile of rooms for him and her and a mirror cabinet to show off their collection of Chinese porcelains.

What makes a visit so spectacular is that literally nothing had been changed inside and  out since the line of Hohenlohe Weikersheim died out in 1760. The house became a secondary residence for another branch of the family and remained that until the family had to sell it to the state of Baden-Württemberg in 1967.  

One consequence of 200 years as a secondary residence was, that the place was never heated in winter. The furniture and artworks have become so used to the seasonal changes in temperature and relative humidity that heating the castle would now result in the destruction of the decorations. So when you visit in winter, you very much keep your coat on.

For me Weikersheim epitomises so much about Germany. The fragmentation into so many smaller entities has led on the one hand to political insignificance followed by overcompensation in the 19^th and 20^th century, but at the same time has massively enriched the country. A place the size of Weikersheim in France or Britain would not harbour quirky works of art and a history all of its own.

I hope me droning on about places, gardens, cathedrals and coal mines has given you an idea of how diverse Germany is and maybe you found something you feel you want to visit…and in case you cannot join me on this year’s History of the Germans Tour and glide down the Main and Rhine Rivers this summer, there may be another tour in 2027.

Thanks for listening and usual service will resume on January 8^th when we find out how Maximilian of Habsburg fares as King of the Romans.

32 destinations chosen entrely subjectively

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Transcript

A very, very merry Christmas to you all.

As you are still awaiting your presents, mine has already arrived, which is the chance to make this show. Despite all my occasional moaning and groaning about how much work it is, I have never enjoyed anything as much this. Who could have imagined that digging through often dusty books and articles and trying to put together an interesting and compelling narrative together for a discerning audience was that much fun. And the reason I can do all this is you, the listeners and patrons of the History of the Germans Podcast. So thank you, thank you and thank you.

Now let’s get to your Christmas present. I had promised you 5 to 10 places I particularly love and that are not on the standard itinerary for a trip to Germany. But when I shortlisted the places I particularly like, I noticed a bit of a pattern. They were all within a limited range, basically near places I had lived or that have some link to my family. That is human, but not exactly helpful. Because if you want to go to Germany and for some inexplicable reason choose not to spend all your time in either Hamburg or the sunniest, most beautiful and culinarily attractive area that is Baden, then this episode would be profoundly useless to you.

I clearly needed some discipline. The plan is now to go through each Bundesland and point out two places, one that is a genuine must-see, and the other a place fewer people go and that is still interesting in its own right. That makes it 32 locations plus 2 bonus ones where I will fully indulge myself by dragging you into deepest Tauberfranken. And I know that still leaves room for enormous bias, in particular when it comes to the larger or richer Lands. But note, this is my Podcast and a choose when I want to.

Still it is a lot. And I can imagine that you may want to play sections on one or two places you really like to your friends of family as a way to convince them of the wisdom of going to Germany. So to make it easier to find, I will set up chapters for each Bundesland. If you listen on a podcast app like Spotify, you can go to the episode details, find the chapters and navigate to the bit you want to listen to. Alternatively, you can go to the episode webpage on my website at historyofthegermans.com, where you find the transcript again with headlines for each Bundesland. The order of progress is alphabetically, again hoping this helps you find things.

Baden Württemberg – Heidelberg and Freiburg

And so, without any further ado, let’s begin with the alphabetically and in any other aspect first Bundesland on the list, Baden Württemberg.

Heidelberg

And the must see place there, no ifs, no buts, is Heidelberg. As I had mentioned before, it is here where I went to school, went through the trials and tribulations of adolescence and am therefore completely unable to be objective. But then, this is objectively one of the 10 most beautiful cities in Germany, its settings, architecture, history is just stunning.

Sure, it is an absolute tourism hotspot. But most of them are day trippers who leave for Frankfurt airport before nightfall. In the evenings this is still a city for the locals and students and you can get a decent meal and lovely glass of the excellent Palatinate wine even on the central square and the street that leads down to the Alte Brücke. We did talk about Heidelberg, its castle and university in episode 189 and 190 already, so check those out before you go.

If you happen to stay a bit longer in the city, you may want to go up the Heiligenberg the hill opposite the town. You can follow the Philosophenweg, a 2km walk that provides stunning views of the city and holds reminders of the 19^th century philosophers and writers who had made Heidelberg famous.

If you climb further up, you come past the monasteries that once owned the surrounding lands before the counts Palatine arrived and built their capital here, and finally you get to see the Thingstaette. Opened by Joseph Goebbels in 1935 as the home to the Reichsfestsiele, the Nazi equivalent to the Salzburger Festspiele. It is an open air stage, allegedly inspired by Greek and Roman theatres. But that is where the comparison ends. The acoustics were terrible and complex amplification systems had to be installed so that the actors could be understood. The plays and events staged there were meant to induct the people into the National Socialist faith. It is much smaller than the Reichsparteitagsgelande in Nurnberg, but it still conveys some of that mishmash of Greco-Roman, medieval and Nordic elements that were used and abused to foster the Nazi ideology. Post war the place fell into disrepair and staged some of the coolest raves in the eighties and nineties…home to a very different German spirit.

And since we are here, you could also take a short train ride to Schwetzingen. The palace there was one of the houses the counts palatine moved to once the Schloss in Heidelberg had been destroyed in the War of the Palatine Succession. Its park, rather than the palace itself is the main attraction, featuring the classic far reaching baroque axes you would expect but also a more natural garden in the English style with dozens of follies, including bathhouses, temples, pavilions and of course the famous Schwetzinger Mosque.

It is here, that in 1668 the Count Palatine Carl Ludwig ordered his gardeners to plant white asparagus for the princely table. This king of vegetables was a delicacy only available to the very rich who could afford the complex process of growing the plants under mounts of sand.  It became more widely available when Max Basserman, a local entrepreneur established large scale agricultural production and found a way to keep them fresh in tins. White Asparagus is a German obsession, with various locations claiming to produce the highest quality, though of course Schwetzinger has to be the best. As I said, this is an entirely biased and subjective episode. So if you have never tried it and you are coming between Mid April and St. Johannis or June 24^th, give it a go. Not everyone gets why it is so special, but once you have fallen for it, you will wait every year for Spargelzeit.

As for my second recommendation in Baden-Württemberg, I was torn simply because there is so much. We talked about Stuttgart and Tübingen in episode 190 and 192, Karlsruhe in 191, Ravensburg in episode 193  and of course Constance and its council in episodes 171 to 174. It then boiled down to the monastery in Maulbronn, one of the best preserved Cistercian abbeys in Europe and the city of Freiburg. And as this is an entirely subjective show, Freiburg it is.

Freiburg im breisgau

The city founded by the dukes of Zähringen in the 12^th century (see episode 15) became the administrative center of the Habsburg ancestral lands, known as Further Austria. It has its university, which as you may have heard me mention, I attended, and which is still going strong.

Freiburg does not impress with oversized castles or dramatic location. Its charms are on a more human scale. Its main square, the Münsterplatz is pure delight. In its center rises its gothic Cathedral, that had been built as a parish church and hence has just one, not two towers. Nor is it the tallest steeple, but, according to Jacob Burckhart, the most beautiful spire in all of Christendom. It is so compelling that when the church of St. Lamberti in Munster, one of the city’s most venerable and largest, needed a new church tower, they built an almost 1:1 replica of the Freiburg Minster. It is also one of the few major gothic church towers in Germany that were completed during the Middle Ages.  Cologne, Ulm and Regensburg all sport 19^th century spires.

The interior is of course impressive with its high Altar by Hans Baldung Grien and the gothic sculptures inside and out. But is again the human scale of everything that makes Freiburg so lovely. Sitting outside in one of the wine bars on the Münsterplatz, preferable the stalwart, Oberkirch and drinking a glass of the truly excellent Baden wine is hard to beat. We would go there as students, nursing a tiny glass and hoping one of these old duffer would turn out to be an alumni of the university who would happily foot the bill for the evening in exchange for reminiscing of his or her student days. And today, when I go, I am that old duffer and I pay for drinks and tell stories that only I find really interesting. It’s the circle of Life…

And do noy forget, you are in the epicenter of German fine dining. Baden cuisine can easily hold its own against the Alsatians on the opposite shore of the Rhine. The climate that provides more days of sunshine than anywhere else in Germany provides the produce needed to satisfy a demanding clientele. The city itself boosts 5 Michelin star restaurants and the surrounding area another 20 or so. If you go north from there to the small town of Baiersbronn, which can claim to be amongst the places in the world with the highest density of Michelin stars per head in the world, including  two three star restaurants. I personally do not care that much about going to 3 star restaurants. But I do believe their presence elevates standards across a whole region. And that results in restaurants that receive what I believe to be the much more desirable Michelin award, the Bip Gourmand. That is given to restaurants that offer excellent quality food at reasonable prices, which is right up my street. If I could pass on one tip that makes life better, it is to download the Michelin guide app and seek out restaurants with the Bip Gourmand. It has never failed me and brought me to truly exceptional places. I am not paid to advertise this, this is simply a tip  from me to you. And – you may have guessed – Freiburg and the Black Forest is chocker block full of Bip Gourmand restaurants.

Bayern – München and Regensburg

Enough about what Americans would call “my home state” and go across to Bavaria. You may know by now that my relationship with Bavaria is, to say it politely, ambivalent. But that may be nothing but envy of this blessed land.  Or, to be more historically accurate, Bavaria is at least two lands, Bavaria and Franconia, and arguably the Upper Palatinate and Upper Swabia are also under Bavarian occupation.

Munich

When it comes to the absolute must sees in Bavaria – Bavaria, the answer has to be, as much as it pains me – Munich. If like me your spiritual homeland in Hamburg, then Munich is just wrong in any conceivable way. The ostentation, the language, the fashion, the undisguised arrogance… up here in Hamburg we look down on people in a much more sophisticated manner.

That being said, Munich is stunningly beautiful. My favourite thing is to go for a run early in the morning through the Englischer Garten and finish off under the arcades of the Hofgarten giggling at the pomp and pathos with which the 19^th century frescoes depicted the high points in the history of the House of Wittelsbach. The rest of the Residenz, one of Europe’s largest palace complex is definitely well worth visiting, in particular the treasury.

And once you are worn out of courtyards, state rooms, corridors and theaters, take a quick look around the corner at the Old Court, where my favorite Wittelsbach, Ludwig the Bavarian lived. Whilst he was really powerful, interesting and consequential, his palace is positively minuscule compared to those of his lesser descendants. Just saying…

I would not dare making a list of places to go in Munich, simply this is ultimately down to your interests and style, all possible variations thereof can be catered for. The Old Pinakothek hosts the art collection of the Bavarian rulers, who had been buying, inheriting and stealing stuff for centuries, the Lenbachhaus is home to masterpieces by the German expressionists and the Deutsches Museum is where you can hear all about Fortschritt durch Technik.

There is one art museum I would add to the list that few people go to, and that is the Villa Stuck. Franz von Stuck, whose house and atelier the villa was, was Germany’s most celebrated artist in the late 19^th century. His art oscillated between Jugendstil, the German version of Art Nouveau and symbolism. These striking pictures often diving into mild eroticism and dark myths has gone quite comprehensively out of fashion. But that may not last forever. Fashion changes, even when it comes to older art. I can remember a world where hardly anyone had heard about Caravaggio. And these late 19^th century artists, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Nazarener and Symbolists might be on the way up. So grab the chance to be able to say that you had been to Villa Stuck long before everybody else went.

Ok where to go after Munich. Of course none of you would dare – or dare to admit –to visit that abomination in the foothills of the alps, that cardboard grandeur built by a pseudo absolutist who sold his country to fund his architectural fever dreams. There are 20,000 castles in Germany and you go for that one? Cinderella’s castle in Disneyworld is more authentic.

Ok, if it isn’t Neuschwanstein, then where. We have already covered a number of must-sees in Bavaria in separate episodes, Nürnberg in episode 153, Rothenburg ob der Tauber in episode 193,  Augsburg in Episode 194 and Landshut in episode 197.

Regensburg

Let me break a lance for Regensburg. When I said Heidelberg is one of and not the most beautiful city in Germany, the place I thought about was Regensburg. Like Heidelberg, it old town suffered only little damage in World War II, which is a rarity. What you will find very often in Germany is that the area around the great cathedral or town hall is made up of late 20^th century structures, not all of which have aged well. The reason for that is not that Germans were keen to tear down the old and build the new in its stead, but that almost all cities had been bombed to the ground. Not the worst impact fascism had, but probably its most constant reminder.  

In Regensburg you can see what a grand late medieval city looked like. Its stone bridge, built in the middle of the 12^th century had seen first Konrad III and then Barbarossa setting out for their respective crusades. Its cathedral is another masterpiece of Gothic art. And from 1594 onwards the estates of the Holy Roman Empire gathered here in the town hall of Regensburg, from 1663 in a permanent session.

This is where imperial laws were passed and conflicts between the different sates resolved, probably more effectively than they are given credit for. And there is the palace of the Thurn and Taxis family, the imperial postmasters, who gave their name to my favorite means of transport.

But the reason Regensburg is special is not the individual attractions, but the coherence of the whole city. There are so many corners that have literally remained unchanged for 500 years allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the world of the medieval free cities. And if you take into account how much bigger and richer Nürnberg or Augsburg were at the time, you can get an idea of the scale and beauty of these late medieval trading hubs.

Another interesting aspect of Regensburg is that the city, despite remaining the seat of a catholic bishop and home to three imperial abbeys, was a major center of the protestant faith offering sanctuary from religious prosecution and spearheading missionary activities. The two communities lived side by side for centuries which  led to a duplication of institutions like schools, churches, hospitals and the like. There were several free imperial cities that operated on that basis, a sign that religious tolerance isn’t solely an invention of the 18^th century and thrived even in Bavaria.

Since we go about these things in alphabetical order, our next stop is as far as you can get from Bavaria, not geographically, but culturally, and that is of course Berlin, the home of people Bavarians call ”Saupreiß”.

berlin

What is there to see in Berlin? Pointing things out in the capital is a real problem for me, or more precisely two interrelated problems.

The first issue is that my favorite places in Berlin have closed. one permanently, the other temporarily. The Pergamon Museum where you can go through the market gate of the roman city of Millet and then the Ishtar gate of Babylon before hitting the Altar of the Hellenistic city of Pergamon, well that museum is closed at least until 2027 and only scheduled to fully reopen in 2030.

My other favorite was the Tacheles, an artist community that squatted in a former department store and proudly displayed a Mig 21 Russian fighter jet in the courtyard and other not quite health and safety compliant works. That lasted for a surprisingly long time, but closed in 2012 and has now been turned into luxury apartments, one of which recently sold for a cool 10 million Euros. Another sign that the times when artists and tech firms came to Berlin for its cheap rents and amazing spaces are over.

But even without the Pergamon and the Tacheles, there is no shortage of world class art in Berlin. From Nefertiti to Bruce Naumann, everybody is in Berlin. Check out not just the Museums but also the private galleries that make Berlin the capital of contemporary art in Europe.

The other problem I have with Berlin is that things move so fast. In most German cities not just the main historic sites, but even the restaurants and bars barely change. The top nightclub in Munich is still the same it was in the 1980s. In Berlin though, things move far to fast for me to keep up.  

But I have a solution to this problem. Its name is Jonny Whitlam. He is a tour guide in Berlin and a fellow podcaster and on whose show, History Flakes, I have appeared before. Jonny really knows his stuff and is great fun to have around. I put a link to his website in the show notes.

Brandenburg

Surrounding Berlin is Brandenburg, and again the must see place here is without a doubt Potsdam, the true capital of Prussia. Yes Berlin was the official capital, but Potsdam is where Frederick II spent his evenings chatting with Voltaire and the intellectuals of the Berlin Academy and his mornings in very different exchanges with his strapping guardsmen.

As you travel from Berlin to Potsdam you cross the Glieniker Bruecke, the place where the US and Soviets exchanged their spies. There you enter a landscape of interconnected lakes and royal and imperial palaces from the forbidding Neues Schloss built solely to prove that Prussia was not bankrupt after the 7-years war,  Sansouci, Friedrich II’s pleasure palace, Babelsberg a 19^th century beauty and Cecilienhof, where  the Potsdam conference consigned Prussia to the scrap heap of history.

Having seen this, the most appropriate thing to do then would be to seek the very beginnings of the state of Brandenburg-Prussia. So head for the Spreewald, famous for its intricate network of natural canals, lush forests, and wetlands, often called Germany’s “bayou”. It is also home to the Sorbs, one  of the few remaining communities of Slavic peoples who once occupied the entirety of the lands between the Elbe and the Polish border. You can visit the Slavic castle of Raddusch, a replica of the circular fortresses that Albrecht the Bear found so hard to overcome, he had to resort to murder and complex back room dealing to get in, as we have learned in episode 106.

The other things you should do in the Spreewald is go on a boat trip through the canals, buy some of the exceptional pickled cucumbers, as regularly featured on my favourite Instagram account, DDR Mondbasis.

Bremen

Still stuck with the letter B, we are moving on to the smallest of the Bundesländer, Bremen. Small, but perfectly formed. The Rathausplatz with the ginormous statue of Roland, the Dom, the town hall and the Schütting is one of the greatest ensembles of Hanseatic architecture.

Do not be fooled by the peace and serenity of the location. Bremen’s history is a ruthless and bloody one, as we have seen in episode 126.

And underneath the Rathaus, in the Ratskeller you find one of the oldest wine cellars in Germany, which you would not expect so far north. All that goes back to a privilege from 1330, that reserved the right to sell wine for the city council. Like all monopolies, it did not initially strive for quality, so for centuries the citizens of Bremen could only choose between two kinds of wines, the common and the better. That may explain why Bremen turned into the home of world famous breweries like Becks and the main Coffee traders in the country. Still, things improved over time and now you will be offered the choice of 650 different German wines in the Ratskeller and you can gaze at the oldest still unopened wine barrel in the country, containing some I am sure delicious 1653 Rüdesheimer Riesling.

Bremen is, as I mentioned small and perfectly formed, which means everything is close by. So do not miss the Boettcherstrasse, just around the corner from the Rathaus. Built between 1922 and 1931 on the initiative of Ludwig Roselius, a coffee trader, it is a rare example of architectural expressionism, a structure that tries to replicate the ideas and aesthetics of the Blaue Reiter in a three dimensional medium.

The state of Bremen is actually two cities, Bremen and Bremerhaven. Now I cannot honestly recommend a visit to Bremerhaven, unless you want to see the place where some of your ancestors embarked on their journeys to New York, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires.

What makes Bremen really special – at least for me – are the people. They have that Hanseatic openness with a brilliant dry sense of humor and charm.

Hamburg

As much as I love Bremen, if I ever were to move back to Germany, I would move to Hamburg, no two ways about it. Germany’s second city fits me like a glove. It has the space and the sky, the doorways are made for people of stature, they drive nice but not ostentatious cars, their sensibly sized houses are decorated in the best possible, not the latest fashion and they sport that healthy glow that comes from summer holidays spent on bracing walks on the north sea beaches.

The downside of all that style and restraint is that Hamburg cannot offer much in terms of splendid palaces, massive art collections or cathedrals with Puttos dripping from the ceiling. Tourists come and walk through the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, built along canals, entirely from brick between 1883 and 1927. At its end you find the Hafen City, one of Europe’s largest urban regeneration projects that culminates in the Elbphilharmony, a truly spectacular concert hall overlooking one of the five largest harbors in the world.

Much of the old city that once must have looked like Lübeck or Bremen vanished in a massive city fire in 1842 and then in the Hamburg Firestorm in July 1943. But what you see today has been built in the 19^th century and then again in the late 20^th, all – as one would imagine – in discreet elegance.

The best way to enjoy the true beauty of the place is by taking an Alsterdampfer, a passenger boat that takes you round the two lakes in the center of the city. You get to see canals and bridges, of which Hamburg claims to have more than Venice, the graceful white washed villas where perfect children playing on the grass that leads down to the water’s edge. Get off at Alte Rabenstrasse and grab a seat at Bodo’s Bootssteg, a waterside bar, order an Alsterwasser, beer with lemonade, stare into the sun and feel happiness.

Hessen – Kassel and Marburg

This is where I would love to end on, but the tyranny of the alphabet pushes us on. We have barely covered 6 of the 16 Bundesländer and the next one is Hessen.

If you come by plane, you will most likely arrive in Frankfurt, making this city an inevitability. But not a bad one at all. Frankfurt was one of the three “capitals” in inverted commas of the Holy Roman Empire. The Golden Bull determined that all emperors had to be elected in Frankfurt, a process that took place in a side chapel in the church of St. Bartholomew nowadays called the Kaiserdom. This goes back even further to the Franks of Merovingian and Carolingian times who elected their kings on the hallowed ground of their homeland, Franconia. The election was followed by a celebratory dinner in the Kaisersaal of the Römer, the houses that form the medieval town hall, whilst the people were given the greatest of delicacies, the sausage that became known as the Frankfurter.

And in 1848 Frankfurt witnessed the very first freely elected German parliament holding its constituent session in the Paulskirche. This first stab at democracy did not succeed, but at least we tried.

There are some great museums in Frankfurt, but if you want to go a bit further afield, I recommend two cities, Marburg and Kassel.

Kassel – Wilhelmshohe

Let’s start with Kassel, once capital of the landgraves of Hessen-Kassel. Whilst their old palace had disappeared in 1811, the grandest of the monuments of these otherwise monumentally awful rulers draws all the views, the Bergpark Wilhelmshoehe. 2.5 square kilometers of baroque and English garden design on a hillside that is overlooked by a 40 metre tall pyramid on its summit, which in turn is crowned with an 8.5m tall golden statue of Hercules. Beneath it runs a water feature that comprises a Baroque water theatre, grottos, fountains, two hydraulic organs, and several waterfalls. Water tumbles down the 350m long great cascade into the of course great pond, from where the once tallest fountain in the world sprays water 50 metres into the sky. That is what selling your soldiers to the highest bidder gets you.

The best time to visit Kassel is during the Documenta, an art exhibition that takes place every 5 years, always creates all sorts of controversies with resignations and accusations as only the art world can produce. Visitors and artists give this otherwise rather sedate town a particular buzz, a counterpoint to the overwhelming impression the Bergpark gives you.

MArburg

At the other end of the spectrum is Marburg, like Kassel once a capital of the Landgraviate of Hessen. Some cities have a university, Marburg is a university. During term time ancient medieval streets have a much more youthful flair than the surroundings would suggest.

And it was also once the home of Saint Elisabeth of Hungary, wife of Landgrave Ludwig of Thuringia. Those of you who support the show can listen to a whole episode about Elisabeth of Thuringia, whose life story of persistent abuse by her confessor is amongst the saddest stories about medieval piety I can think of. The Teutonic knights built a magnificent church over her grave, the Elisbethenkirche, and in 1236 once the apse was constructed her body was translated there. Emperor Friedrich II served as one of her pallbearers, a sign of the recognition she enjoyed a mere 5 years after her death.

We covered her daughter’s fight for her son’s inheritance and the creation of the state of Hessen in episode 186. Another descendant of Saint Eisabeth, landgrave Philipp, in the spirit of the reformation had her remains dug up and sold them off to catholic princes.

Niedersachsen – Hildesheim and Rammelsberg/Goslar

The next Bundesland on the list is Niedersachsen, Lower Saxony, or as we would call it, Saxony. Now in most cases the capital of the state is often a must see destination or at least in the top 10. Niedersachsen is the exception. Hannover, apart from a claim to speak the cleanest form of Hochdeutsch is sadly not very exciting.

Hildesheim

What is exciting, at least for history geeks like us is Hildesheim, the see of my favourite ballsy bishop, Bernward of Hildesheim.  He was the tutor and later advisor of Otto III and rescued his lord when he rushed into an angry mob of Romans, brandishing the Holy Lance.

But beyond personal bravery he was also an enormously cultured man. From high nobility he advanced quickly through the ranks of the church but his true passion was mathematics, painting, architecture and the manufacturing of liturgical objects in silver and gold. And once placed on the bishops’ throne he embarked on a massive building program.

He left behind two masterpieces of Ottonian architecture, the cathedral of St. Mary and the church of St. Michael. St. Mary holds the greatest treasures, namely the St. Bernward doors, coast in Bronze around 1015 and completely unique in scale and quality of decoration.

And the column of St. Michael, where Bernward had Trajan’s column replicated in Bronze only that instead of Imperial armies, loot and prisoners of war, it depicts scenes of the old testament.

St Michael’s cannot offer the same level of treasures, despite featuring a rare ceiling made from 1300 pieces of wood and again extremely rare. But since St, Mary was rebuilt after Bernward’s death, St, Michael is clearer expression of the bishop’s architectural ideas. As the Unesco World Heritage convention acknowledged, quote: St. Michael’s is one of the rare major constructions in Europe around the turn of the millennium which still conveys a unified impression of artistry, without having undergone any substantial mutilations or critical transformations in basic and detailed structures. The harmony of the interior structure of St Michael’s and its solid exterior is an exceptional achievement in architecture of the period. Of basilical layout with opposed apses, the church is characterised by its symmetrical design: the east and west choirs are each preceded by a transept which protrudes substantially from the side aisles; elegant circular turrets on the axis of the gable of both transept arms contrast with the silhouettes of the massive lantern towers located at the crossing. In the nave, the presence of square impost pillars alternating in an original rhythm with columns having cubic capitals creates a type of elevation which proved very successful in Ottonian and Romanesque art.” End quote

Rammelsberg/Goslar

So where did all the money come from that allowed bishop Bernward to create his grand churches. For that we may want to go to Rammelsberg in the Harz Mountains where you can visit the silver mine that once provided the material wealth that propelled Otto the Great and his successors to the top of the political pyramid in western europe. The miners and engineers that worked there in the 10^th century passed their knowledge on to their sons who spread out across europe, bringing crucial skills to Saxony, Tyrol, Bohemia, Hungary, Sweden and, and, and; laying the foundation for the metal bashing industry that still forms the bedrock of the country’s economy.

And whilst there, you go to the other side of town and visit the Kaiserpfalz in Goslar, home of Emperor Henry III and his intended permanent capital.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – Schwerin and Mecklenburgische Seenplatte

And now we get to the 9^th Bundesland in the alphabet and last one for today, Mecklenburg Vorpommern. And here the capital is a must see, Schwerin.

Like Hamburg, there is a lake in the centre of town, but that is where the comparisons end. On an island sits a castle like no other. When the dukes of Mecklenburg commissioned a complete remodelling of their main residence in the middle of the 19^th century, they pulled out all the stops. This is often called the Neuschwanstein of the North, but that can only be an insult. Neuschwanstein was a stage designs inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner, Schwerin was built on the walls of an actual castle that dates back to the 10^th century and by some of the greatest historicist architects, Gottfried Semper, best known for the Semperoper in Dresden. The family that once reigned there is no less unusual.

As you enter, you pass underneath a giant statue of Niklot, the pagan Slavic leader of the Obodrites and opponent of Henry the Lion. We covered his life and story in episode 104 and the broader conflict between the Saxons and the Obodrites in episode 101. Niklot’s descendants once converted to Christianity, became the dukes of Mecklenburg who played a major role in Northern European history. And this was their home. Sure the 19^th century embellished things and the decorations are ludicrously over the top, but that is also its charm.

Wismar, Stralsund und rügen

What else is in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern? There are the Hanseatic cities of Wismar, Stralsund and Rostock that had made their regular appearances in the episodes about the Hanse and are well worth visiting for their brick gothic architecture. Wismar is the best preserved, whilst Stralsund gives you access to Rugen and its fantastic sandy beaches. By the way, Anglo-Saxons have a false impression of the Baltic, expecting its water to be very cold, they even use the term Baltic to denote freezing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Given the see is shallow and does not pull in much icy Atlantic water, it warms up quickly in summer, making Rügen, Hiddensee, Usedom, Heiligendamm and so forth ideal places for summer holidays by the seaside, in particular when you have small children to cater for.

And if you want a truly perfect holiday, charter a sailboat or bring your own. I did that two years ago and cannot wait to get back.

Mecklenburger Seenplatte

But there is one trip I have not done and that is still on my list, and that is sailing through the Mecklenburger Seenplatte, the system of interconnecting lakes between Berlin and the Baltic shore. There are allegedly over 1000 lakes and inland waters here, some quite busy, but also still many that are quieter. You can charter a sailboat or a motorboat from one of the dozens of charter companies and set off. The boats are tiny and not at all luxurious, but you can anchor in a secluded bay, go for a swim and sleep on deck looking at the stars. That would be my kind of thing.

So, we worked through 9 out of 16 Bundesländer, which means we are not yet finished. But I am. So, if you have been listening in bed whilst the kids are rustling about the living room in search of presents, get up and smell the Turkey.

As for me, I have already got my presents since we Germans do it on the evening of the 24^th. All I have to do today is get up, pack the kids in the back of the car and drive to my lovely in-laws for Goose and even more presents. Though as I said, the greatest of them all has already arrived.

So, thank you all so much for listening and supporting the show. And have a very merry Christmas. I will be back with the second instalment next week.

Why there are no more City States

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 219 – The Fall of Ghent, or why there no city states no more.

The words High and Late Middle Ages conjures up images of fog rising up over a field where knights in shining armor are trading blows with double handed swords, mighty bishops overseeing the construction of monumental cathedrals and peasants toiling on the land as serfs.

The reason we see it that way goes back to the chivalric literature that celebrated the aristocratic lifestyle where tournaments and poetry mattered more than the humdrum world of business.

But let’s just take a look back at the High Middle Ages, the time of Richard the Lionheart, Saint Louis and Frederick Barbarossa. Who controlled access to the great endeavor of the time, the conquest of the Holy Land? Who re-opened up the connections to the wider world, from Novgorod to India and China? Who were the most ferocious fighters who neither expected nor granted any quarter? Who had all the money?

These were the great cities of Italy, of Flanders, of Picardie and Provence and of the Holy Roman Empire. Verona under the Della Scala in the 14^th century generated tax revenues twice as high as those of England, Venice capacity was sixty percent of what France could generate. And these cities fielded armies that, as we know, defeated the Holy Roman Emperors, even the most capable ones like Barbarossa and Frederick II time and time again. Their absolute dedication to fight to the end was evidenced by their extremely heavy and slow war carts, the Carroccios and by the bravery of the Flemish Militia at the Battle of the Golden Spurs. And the first European since Roman times to make to India and China wasn’t a Knight errant, but a Venetian merchant, nor were the vast lands on the Eastern side of the continent linked up by military force. The crusades, the grand project of the age was as much a venetian mercantile adventure as a religious pilgrimage, culminating in the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that the medieval city states played a much larger military and economic role in the 1200, 1300 and 1400 than the 19^th century novels of Sir Walter Scott and the plays of Friedrich de la Motte Fouquet had made us believe.

At their height there were 65 free and imperial cities, maybe the same number of Italian city states, and probably several hundreds of cities that enjoyed significant autonomy from their sovereign. Today, the UN recognises only two city states, Singapore and Monaco, as well as the Vatican City as an observer, so, amongst us girls, there is only one real city state left.

What happened? Where did all these city states go? And why?

That is what we are going to discuss today, when we look at the showdown between Maximilian of Habsburg, widower of the last duchess of Burgundy and father of Philip, the universally recognised heir of the Low Countries and the Flemish cities, and specifically its largest, the city of Ghent.

But before we start a quick correction. Last week I mistakenly said that Margaret of York was the mother of Marie of Burgundy. That is of course incorrect. Her mother was Isabella of Bourbon, the first wife of Charles the Bold.

And as punishment for my mistakes, I cannot allow myself to wax lyrically about the benefits of supporting the show on historyofthegermans.com/support, but am limited to expressing our gratitude for keeping the show advertising free to Andy K., Patrick R., Sprocket Tinkerwind, Mani R., Vasilisa, Ethan B., Casper H, and John S.

And with that, back to the show…

Last week, we left Maximilian pushed out of the guardianship and regency of the Low Countries. And worse, he saw his 2-year old daughter taken away to France to be brought up as a future French queen and his 4-year old son and heir Philip put under the tutelage of the Estates General. According to the chronicler Olivier de la Marche, Maximilian complained his life had turned into that of saint Eustace, whose son was taken by a wolf and his daughter by a lion.

Contemporaries as well as historians have regularly pointed out how vastly different the old emperor Friedrich III and his son were. Where Maximilian thrived in tournaments and war, Friedrich was always cautious and hardly ever appeared in person on the battlefield or in Tournament, Friedrich III was always secretive and closed, whilst Maximilian was open and engaged with anyone from barbers to barons, Friedrich’s court was a dour affair, in part as a function of the shortage of money, whilst Maximilian fully embraced the splendor of the Burgundian court and its never-ending sequence of tourneys, dances, musical recitals, solemn masses and grand entrees in stunning cities, the elaborate hunts in the rich forests etc., etc.

But they are still father and son. Both of them were interested in the latest developments in technology, in mining, minting, manufacture of guns and armor etc. They were curious about what they called the dark arts, from alchemy to necromancy, and had a habit of collecting precious stones. And when it came to personality, they both held the unshakeable belief in the destiny of the House of Austria and from that derived a persistence, even stubbornness that kept them going even when anyone else would have concluded that the chips are down and it was time to go home.

And it was this infinite resource and tenacity, that kept Maximilian from giving up after he had been forced to sign the treaty of Arras in spring 1483. This tenacity may be somewhat admirable from the distance of 500 plus years, but if you had been living in the Low Countries during these years, you would have preferred a more malleable duke.

The Estates General had intended for Maximilian to be ousted from his role as guardian and regent in all the lands of the dukes of Burgundy. But the estates themselves were not a balanced body. The number of delegates and their selection process had not been formalized, so that sometimes entire provinces were absent from the debates. And given the meetings were often held in Ghent or Bruges, the representatives of the cities of Flanders were usually over represented. And it was the cities of Flanders that were most adamant in their desire to get rid of Maximilian, whose wasteful wars and rapacious German administrators were destroying their lands, or so they said.

That view was not necessarily shared by everyone. Brabant and Hainault took a more favorable view of Maximilian, whose victory at Guinegate had protected these provinces from French occupation. Which is why Maximilian went straight to Mechelen, Antwerp and Brussels.

What happens next will be shocking to many fans of the Last Knight, the great chivalric hero. But we should not forget what he was fighting for. Not just for some piece of land he had hoped to rule thanks to an advantageous marriage, he was also fighting for the continued existence of his dynasty, whose survival in Austria was threatened by the king of Hungary, and even more importantly, he was fighting to one day see his children again, the boy and the girl who he had promised his dying wife to protect. With that much at stake, he did not take prisoners. The war in the Netherlands is turning even nastier.

His first act was to go to Liege where William de la Marck, the wild Boar of the Ardennes had not only unseated the prince bishop but had also split his head open with an axe. A battle fought outside the walls turned into a brutal massacre where Maximilian’s heavy artillery tore through the city militia. The terrified Liégeois threw the French out and let Maximilian in. The archduke, instead of punishing the murderous partman hired William into his army. William did get his just desert a few years later, not for his crimes but because he had betrayed Maximilian once too often.

Still raging with anger, Maximilian had all city councillors and noblemen in Brabant arrested who at some point had supported the French. They were tried and convicted and five of them were executed, including the mayor of Antwerp. This blood court led to a further hardening of position, not in Brabant, but across the border in Flanders. Led by Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, the estates established a regency council that comprised the city governments and several senior aristocrats, some of them members of the order of the Golden Fleece.

Though before Maximilian could turn his forces against his main opposition in Flanders, he had to deal with another problem, Utrecht. The prince bishopric of Utrecht, like Liege, had been an associate part of the Burgundian state and its bishop was chosen by the dukes. The current officeholder was David, an illegitimate son of Philip the Good, or as they called it at the time, a bastard of Burgundy. David’s position as bishop of Utrecht had been precarious, ever since his father had pushed his nomination against the opposition of the Hooks, and he had not helped things when he forced through a radical centralisation policy. When the death of Marie of Burgundy created a political opening, the Hooks in Utrecht captured their bishop and paraded him around in a cart filled with manure before putting him in jail.

That mistreatment of a member of the ducal family called out for revenge. Maximilian brought his heavy artillery before Utrecht and systematically pulverised the city walls. After 2 months the eminent citizens came out of the gates barefoot and with ropes around their necks, begging for forgiveness. The city was fined 40,000 gulden, ordered to dismiss all their troops, give up their privileges as an independent city and had to permit the construction of a fortress inside its walls.

Over the subsequent months he reestablished his hold over Guelders and Holland, took Arnheim and made peace with the duke of Cleves.

He now held the entirety of the North of the Low Countries and had his back free. It was time to turn on the rebellious cities of Flanders.

And another event strengthened Maximilian’s hand. King Louis XI, the wily adversary whose intrigues had sent Charles the Bold into his frozen death and whose spider’s web of allies and bribery agents had already brought 6 years of war and devastation to the Burgundian state, died on August 30^th, 1483.

The cities of Flanders sent an embassy to Paris to congratulate the new king of France, the 13-year old Charles VIII and renewed the treaty of Arras. Maximilian had the envoys arrested for treason before they could return to Ghent.

Then he declared the regency council dissolved. His agents distributed pamphlets claiming the regency council, including the knights of the Golden Fleece who served on it, had harmed duke Philip, his son and their hereditary lord. The regency council responded, stating that they were loyal subjects of their true lord, archduke Philip, and that Maximilian had been fighting ruinous and useless wars and had allowed the remaining cash to be taken out of the country by his corrupt German advisers. Hence the only way to protect the Netherlanders from eternal subservience to the Germans was if Philip was educated as a Netherlander, here in the Low countries.

Before we get on with this story, it may be worth while to ask the question, what the deep underlying reason for their objection to Maximilian’s rule was. Sure the points they made about corruption and the independence of the Netherlands from foreign control were truly felt. But if we go one abstraction level up, and look into Maximilian’s broader political objectives, we see something that is much more traditionally Burgundian. The young Habsburg wasn’t introducing new and foreign policy instruments, what he was doing was continuing the policies of Philipp the Good  and Charles the Bold, who had tried to forge their diverse territories into one coherent and ideally contiguous state, a kingdom even. That would include one central appellate court in Mechelen, a central fiscal and administrative organization and a standing army.

All that sounds fairly modern, so why did the elites in the Flemish cities whose business network spanned the known world and who were more literate and better educated than most, why did they object? The reason we live – more or less happily – in centralized states today is because the state holds a monopoly on violence, protecting me from bandits and baddies, ideally from invasions too. The advantages of safe roads and borders should be evident to a Flemish merchant, but apparently it wasn’t. They were prepared to go all the way to thwart such centralization and modernity. Why?

One part is simply pride, pride in your city, pride in the long list of charters a place like Ghent had wrestled from reluctant princes that granted self determination and freedom. Freedom is always a great rallying cry, though it can mean very different things to different people.

Given my background and world view, I also believe there was a strong commercial motive her. And so it may be a good idea to go to the father of economic understanding, Adam Smith and one of his most famous quotes:

“In all countries where there is a tolerable security, every man of common understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command, in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit.[..] A man must be perfectly crazy, who, where there is a tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands, [  ] in some one or other of those [..] ways. In those unfortunate countries, indeed, where men are continually afraid of the violence of their superiors, they frequently bury or conceal a great part of their stock, in order to have it always at hand to carry with them to some place of safety, in case of they being threatened with any of those disasters to which they consider themselves at all times exposed.” End quote. Source: Wealth-Nations).

Montesquieu makes this even more explicit:

 “Great enterprises in commerce are not found in monarchical, but republican governments….An opinion of greater certainty as to the possession of property in these [republican] states makes [merchants] undertake everything….Thinking themselves sure of what they have already acquired, they boldly expose it in order to acquire more…” end quote

And to bring in a modern instead of an 18^th century source, here are Bradford de Long and Shleifer in their 1991 paper on Princes and Merchants: quote

“As measured by the pace of city growth in western europe between 1000 to 1800, absolutist monarchs stunted the growth of commerce and industry. A region ruled by an absolutist prince saw its urban population shrink by 100,000 people per century relative to a region without absolutist government. This might be explained by higher rates of taxation under revenue maximizing absolutist governments than under non-absolutist governments, which care more about general economic prosperity and less about state revenue.”

Bottom line, what the Gentenaars feared, beyond the impact on their personal freedoms and privileges, was the impact that a centralizing, authoritarian government could have on their business. The history of the Flemish cities is full of counts and duke whose political objectives were fundamentally at odds with the economic interests of the burghers, resulting in a never-ending string of uprisings and wars. This latest revolt against Maximilian was therefore nothing new or unusual.

If one was a betting man, the odds were very much in favor of the cities of Flanders. Ghent, Bruges and Ypres were the by far richest cities in Northern Europe. The networks of their merchants and the reputation of their cloth stretched across the whole of europe. They were home to the branches and counting houses of the bankers of Florence, the traders of Genoa, Venice, Barcelona and Lisbon, the merchants of the Hanseatic league and the wool-sellers of England and Wales.

And beyond the all important coin, they could rely on support from the French. Sure, young king Charles VIII was no match to his father, but his elder sister and the current regent of France, Anne de Beaujeu was. She became known as “Madame la Grande”, on account of her masterful management of France during the troubles following Louis XI’s death. Her father called her “the least foolish woman in France”, which is another black mark against an already thoroughly blackened reputation.

In any event, she was no pushover and French support for the Flemings, and in particular the Gentenaars, the inhabitants of Ghent and Bruggelingen, the citizens of Bruges was firm. I cannot believe I missed out on these most excellent terms over these last episodes. There is also Brugse Zotten, which I understand is very rude and will be reserved for next week’s episode.

There we go, the Gentenaars, Bruggelingen et. al. put together an army and recruit a suitable commander, Jacob of Romont, once a friend and lieutenant of Charles the Bold and – according to some – the true engineer of Maximilian’s victory at Guinegate.

As for Maximilian, his financial resources had never been great, but now, without the tax income  from Ghent and Bruges, his tresury in truly dire straits. His debts had already built up to one million florins. But then…

Maximilian had, as we just described, brought Brabant, Hainault, Holland, Seeland, Guelders, Liege and Utrecht under his control. These lands may not be as rich in coin as Flanders, but almost as populous.

And these places followed Maximilian not just out of fear. When the Estates General established the regency council and their guardianship over little Philipp, they had set up a rotational system whereby the young duke was to be passed around the different provinces of his realm, so as to get to know their institutions and customs. But that never happened. The Gentenaars never let little Philipp stray beyond the walls of their city out of the justified concern that Maximilian may capture/free him. But that left the other provinces suspecting a takeover by the Flemish.

And finally, inside Ghent and Bruges, there were different factions. Not everyone was sufficiently concerned about the long term impact on their economy to bear the near term pain of a prolonged war, the burning of the countryside and eventually a siege of the city.

The division also had a social component. In Ghent the pro- French, pro war party relied heavily on the lower classes, led by a sock maker, Jan van Coppenhole and two other men, called Rijm and Ondrede, which in Dutch could be translated as Rhyme and Unreason, whilst the “friends of Austria” tended to be the upper classes of cloth merchants and long distance traders.

Hostilities began with Gent and Bruges arming two fortresses that overlooked the entrance of the Scheldt River, interrupting commercial traffic into Antwerp, right around the time the annual great fair was supposed to take place. Maximilian responded by first destroying the fleet of Flanders’ privateers before taking the two fortresses and hanging all its defenders.

The next target was the small, but strategically important city of Dendermonde. Maximilian disguised his soldiers as monks and pilgrims, even persuaded an abbess to provide additional credibility, and sent them into Denderonde. They got to the gate, and whilst the city guards were debating whether to let the abbess in, the pretend monks jumped off their carts and ran the guards through and secured the gate. Maximilian rode into the city with a large detachment and Dendermonde submitted.

The Gentenaars and Bruggelingen responded with a massive attack on Brabant, including Brussels. That nearly broke Maximilian’s alliance, but through sheer strength of personality he stiffened the resolve of the Brusseleers and raised the militia of Hainault that drove the enemy back.

Now it was Maximilian’s turn. He took the city of Oudenaarde where his supporters opened the gate. Again, Maximilian rode onto the main square, asked the citizens to yield, or he would unleash his mercenaries.

These successes had swelled the ranks of his army, which now counted 20,000, mostly men of foot. And he had some extremely heavy artillery that had allowed him to break the walls of Liege, Utrecht ad so many other places.

That was the plus side, but on the other side of the equation, the French now officially entered the war. M. de Crevecoer, who had risen to Marshall of France despite his extremely poor management of the battle of Guinegate, slipped 4,500 top notch French troops into the city of Ghent, reinforcing the 16,000 solider under Romont.

Maximilian’s senior officers advised against an attack of Ghent. The enemy forces were too strong and the walls reinforced. Still Maximilian was determined to get the greatest city in his land under his control and get his son back.

His solution to overcome the strength of Ghent was to play on the two greatest human motivators, fear and greed. When the wind stood in the right direction, he ordered his soldiers to burn the suburbs, including the extremely expensive and crucial windmills. As the smoke was drifting into the city, the Gentenaars feared for their livelihoods and streamed out of the gates to extinguish the fires. Meanwhile Maximilian’s army had advanced towards Ghent under the cover of the smoke. Once they deemed to be close enough they spurred on their horses and rushed down towards the gates. Some militiamen tried to fend off the attackers, but most of them ran back towards the gate. Everything happened so fast, a number of Maximilian’s riders had overtaken the fleeing Gentenaars and had gone through. The guards on the gate had to make a painful decision, wait for everybody to get back inside, which meant letting Maximilian get through, or let the gate crush down and leave your fellow citizens outside to be captured or hanged. They decided to drop the gate.

Maximilian’s attack had not succeeded, but it had rattled the Gentenaars. He sent messages into the city asking whether he ever had demanded as much in taxation and hardship as their new city government was now exacting. And all that to withhold his son from him? Was that destruction of their lands worth, just to live without a prince?

His supporters in the city begged him to halt the plundering of the countryside for 15 days, enough time they said to change the minds of their fellow citizens.

Maximilian granted them this reprieve and took his army away from Ghent to tackle the other rebellious city, Bruges. This time he opted for an attack by sea. He went to Antwerp and requisitioned a 100 ships, loaded his soldiers on board and went for Sluis, the commercial harbour of the great trading city. He captured a number of ships and threatened to burn and bomb those moored up in the inner harbour. That was enough for the merchants of Bruges. They opened their gates and Maximilian entered under great jubilation. He did punish the leaders of the pro war party harshly, confiscated all French ships in the harbour but confirmed the great city’s rights and privileges.

When news of the fall of Bruges arrived in Ghent, the radicals led by Rijm, Odenrade and Coppenhole prepared for a last stand. They seized what remained of the ducal treasury and sent it down to the mint to hire replacements for the mercenaries that were leaving the city every day. That was the moment the guilds sided with the patricians and overthrew the government. They put them on trial, accusing them of having called in the French and broken the peace. Rijs and Odenrade were beheaded, but Coppenhole managed to escape.

The Gentenaars opened negotiations with Maximilian.  They accepted Maximilian as the guardian and regent for their lord, young Philipp, paid reparations of 360,000 Ecus and opened their gates. In return Maximilian promised not to take Philipp out of the Low Countries, grant a general amnesty and not bring more soldiers into Ghent than he had brought into Bruges.

When Maximilian arrived before Ghent, his son Philipp was awaiting him. The chronicler Jean Molinet described the scene as such: And when the son saw his father, he took off his hat, and as they approached each other, they did honours to one another; and when they came together, they embraced and kissed each other, whereupon the hearts of those who saw them were so filled with joy that they wept copious tears.” End quote.It had been more than 3 years since the two had seen each other. After Philip and Maximilian’s reunion, the young Count of Flanders was sent off to live under the guidance of his grandmother, Margaret of York, in her dowager town of Mechelen.

Maximilian entered the city of Ghent with 6,000 men. And this time, the victorious entry was not led by knights on horseback. Instead his army marched on foot, eight abreast, even his generals, most of them noblemen like the count of Nassau, the Lord of Montigny, the Lord of Palmes, and others had dismounted .

A whole string of battles, Crecy, Muhlberg, Morgarten, Sempach, Grandson, Murten, Nancy, Guinegate and so forth had proven the superiority of disciplined infantry over knightly forces.  This was the first time the new military order was recognised in a victory parade.

But there were some issues that made the people of Ghent nervous. Maximilian had brought 6,000 of his best soldiers, not 500 as he had promised in the peace treaty. And these men may be disciplined in the field, in a city, particularly in a defeated city, they were not. Here is what jean Molinet tells us happened next:

“The following Monday, the eleventh of July, at about noon, four Germans went to the prison [..] on the grain market to retrieve three or four Germans who had been imprisoned there by the townspeople for attempting to break into their lodgings. The four Germans immediately took the keys from the prison guard, whom they locked up in a room. They opened two doors and approached the prisoners, but were unable to do anything more, for the guard cried out so loudly for help that many people from in front of and behind the prison immediately came to see what was happening, so that the Germans did not dare to leave. The people who had gathered in front of the prison, informed of the situation,[…] went to the town hall, where the court was assembled, and demanded justice […].

At  this time, the duke found himself at the town hall, greatly astonished by this gathering and their unusual behaviour, asked the Flemings to go back to their homes; which they refused to do, saying that they were not asking anything of the duke, but wanted punishment for the said Germans. The duke agreed, but that was no longer enough for them; for by around six o’clock in the evening, they brought their banners to the old market, which they closed off with carts and set up their serpentines, bombards, culverins, falconets and other instruments of war.

Seeing this, the duke, wishing to know their intentions, sent the bishop of Cambray to them, who informed them that the duke was very displeased with them and sought to pacify them with gentle and kind words, but they took no heed of his remonstraions. At about ten o’clock at night, they left the Old Market, in battle formation, with all their weapons, and marched towards the ducal palace, reaching the bridge near the Augustinians, the Place Sainte-Vierge and the bridge where heads are cut off. When the duke learned of their departure, he gathered the Germans and his other men at Ten Walle, his fortress, and commanded each of them to carry the banner of St. Andrew’s Cross in front and behind them; and it was decided to attack the said Gantenaars and put everything to fire and sword;

But Monseigneur Philippe of Ravenstain and several good burghers of Ghent fell to their knees before the duke. He relented, and with the duke’s consent, the lord of Ravenstein and the count of Chimay went to appease the aforementioned Flemings. But they were rebuffed and lost many of their hats, coats, slippers and other clothing, which greatly displeased the duke; and worse still, the people of Ghent rang the great Roland, that is to say, the bell of alarm;

Maximilian then sent a small number of Germans and Angles to skirmish with them. They did good work on all sides; and drove people and animals into the river; and some Flemings were killed. {…]; the Gantenaars retreated to the old market. The duke then offered forgiveness, on condition that certain persons be taken from both sides to satisfy them for the injustices they had suffered; so they withdrew their banners to their homes at about six o’clock in the morning on Tuesday.

That same day, the Duke, accompanied by his nobles and a well-ordered group of Germans, came to the town hall at about nine o’clock, where, after much lengthy discussion, he demanded the imprisonment of the leaders who had instigated or were the cause of this armed uprising and mutiny. Five or six men were arrested that same day and taken prisoner.

The duke hastily brought back his men-at-arms who were in the town and castle of L’Escluse,; he also called his garrisons from Ath, Enghien, Tenremonde and Audenarde; and around noon, Monseigneur Philippe de Ravestain, accompanied by four hundred Englishmen, took up positions in the crossbowmen’s fortress located in front of Thostel in the town, where they spent the night in arms, the Germans moved into another quarter near the old market to subdue the said Gentenaars;

The Duke of Austria {…] had the people of Ghent themselves rebuild the five bridges that they had broken during the war, near his fortress in Ten Walle, so that he could leave as he wished.

The people of Ghent had built on their fish market a staircase eighteen to twenty feet high, on which stood four lions, one bearing the arms of the king (of France), another those of Duke Philip, the third those of the county of Flanders, and the fourth those of the city of Ghent. The duke had the king’s arms removed in broad daylight and replaced with his own. The duke had the artillery of Monseigneur des Querdes, as well as that of Ghent, taken to his fortress; and the people of Ghent returned to him his tapestry, his cross, his library and other jewels amounting to a great treasure; and they offered to pay him one hundred and twenty-seven thousand gold escudos within a year.

The mutineers who started this dispute were tortured to the number of forty. On Saturday, seven Gantenaars were executed, two of whom had paid twelve hundred pounds of gros. End quote.

Maximilian had achieved what no other Burgundian duke had been able to do. He had subdued the rebellious city of Ghent by military force. Not even Philipp the Good had achieved that.

Which gets us back to the initial question, why there are so few city states left.

In previous centuries Ghent and most other medieval cities have been able to withstand the power of territorial princes. The Hanseatic League had defeated the king of Denmark, the Lombard league of Italian cities pushed out the emperors Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II, countless German cities shook off the overlordship of their bishops, dukes and counts during the 13^th and 14^th century.

From the middle of the 15^th century, that process went into reverse. Many members of the Hanseatic League came under the control of local princes, some venerable places like Mainz faced financial collapse and had to seek shelter with a territorial ruler, the Italian cities were taken over first by local tyrants in the form of the Signoria and then by the great territorial states of Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States, Ferrara, Mantua and a few more.

The still prevailing theory argues that this was the result of changes in methods and scale of warfare. The use of artillery and infantry required early modern armies to be trained to coordinate across the different arms, something that required either a standing army or the use of mercenaries. Either of these were exponentially more expensive than warfare had been in previous centuries. Only larger state entities were able to deploy violence on this scale, making city states obsolete.

If we look at the events of Maximilian’s campaign to regain control of the Low Countries between 1483 and 1486, I am not sure it supports this theory. Maximilian’s resources were limited compared to the combined force of Ghent and France. His success was built more on cunning, personality and the internal divisions amongst his opponents than brute force of his army.

There is a countertheory that says that the formation of modern, territorial states was actually a phenomena on the European periphery, in France, Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia, whilst in the areas that formed and still forms the economic heartland of europe, the famous Blue Banana that is made up of Northern Italy, Western Germany, the Low Countries and England had remained somewhat fragmented exactly because the cities had the resources to fend off the pressure of larger territorial entities, which again allowed them to benefit from the absence of absolutist rule.   

This question, whether the scale and structure of the military forced consolidation or whether there were other drivers in play will be a constant companion in the episodes to come.

Either way, for Ghent this affair had long term dire consequences. The 8 years of constant warfare, the destruction of the land and the uprisings unsettled many of the richest merchants and entrepreneurs. Antwerp, not far away in Brabant seemed a much more stable centre of operations, away from the French border. And after all that had happened, Maximilian was now intent to promote his duchy of Brabant over the unreliable Gentenaars and Bruggelingen. A slow exodus to Antwerp and Brussels began. That exodus will accelerate even further, when the Flemish cities attempt for one last time to get rid of Maximilian three years later.

But in-between Maximilian will return to Holy Roman Empire where things have gone seriously wrong. The same day Maximilian entered Ghent in triumph, Matthias Hunyadi, the king of Hungary did the same in Vienna. His father, the emperor Friedrich III had become homeless, the ancestral lands were lost. The Wittelsbachs were stretching their mitts out to gain Tyrol from the feckless Siegmund and the Turks, the Imperial Reform, everything was stalling. The victor of Flanders, the ruler of the Burgundian Netherlands was needed back home.

How he fares there is what we will discuss, well not next week, since next week is when I will drop you some travel advice, but the week after that. And then there is Yuletide, which, in the German tradition, takes place at midnight on the 24^th of December, exactly as it says in St. Luke, not on the 25^th as these godless Anglo-Saxons believe. And with that caveat, Merry Christmas to you all.

The Burgundian War, 1477-1483

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 218 – Hedgehogs and Herons, The Burgundian War

By 1477 the rules of war that had been enshrined in the laws of chivalry are gone. The contest between the French and the Habsburgs over the inheritance of the Grand Dukes of the West gives us a foretaste of the things to come.

This war isn’t just fought between the opposing armies lining up for the decisive battle, but include wholesale starving out of the population, funding local uprisings and using propaganda and bribery to incite rebellions on the enemy’s homefront.

No one in 15^th century Northern Europe is better at this new game than the industrious spider, king Louis XI of France. But a plucky 18-year old Austrian duke who had arrived in Ghent with not much more than the clothes on his back, abundant energy and a budding military genius gave him a run for his huge amounts of money, until tragedy struck.

Lots of deception, drama and devastation today….

But before we start, let me tell you again about this History of the Germans trip that may or may not happen. The idea is to travel on a barge on the Rhine river from Aschaffenburg to Cologne, or maybe beyond. The boat looks lovely and we could see Frankfurt, Mainz, the castles of the Middle Rhine, Bonn, Cologne and of course, Aachen. Some of you have told me they would be interested, but at this point not enough for me to go ahead with it. So, if that is something you would be interested in and you are free for a week end of June/early July let me know at historyofthegermans@gmail.com. It would help me a lot to decide whether or not I want to go ahead with it.

And with that, back to the show

Last week ended on the wedding night of Maximilian of Habsburg and Marie of Burgundy, one of the rare occasions where dynastic marriages created a brilliant match. The two of them really got on. Maximilian was writing letters to his friends back home in Styria, waxing lyrically about how gorgeous his new wife was and how much fun the two had together. Marie in turn spoiled her husband with clothes, armor, tournaments, mummeries, and above all hunts, for fox, stag, boar and even bear.

Maximilian was, one can be sure, delighted, but above all, he was relieved. Because this marriage was built on false premises. Marie, her mother the duchess of York and all of Burgundy believed that Maximilian was going to bring with him a great imperial army that would beat back the attacks by the industrious spider, king Louis XI of France.

When he showed up empty handed, things could have turned sour very quickly. This was a time where violence, even against princes and mighty dukes was a common way to express dissatisfaction with someone’s behavior, level of support or simply, existence. Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy had been murdered on orders of the dauphin of France in plain sight. That was revenge for the murder of the duke of Orleans, the uncle of that same dauphin, later king Charles VII. Across the channel in England, Humphrey duke of Gloucester, George duke of Clarence and the princes in the tower disappeared in the Tower under mysterious circumstances. In Italy Giuliano de Medici and Galeazzo Maria Sforza were in the way and then got out of the way in broad daylight. And these were just the successful and obvious attempts on princely lives. Poison was an ubiquitous tool to re-arrange the line of succession or the college of cardinals, and a suitable means to remove a groom whose assets came up short.

When Maximilian rode up to Burgundy, he took his life into his own hands and hoped for the best. And somehow things had worked out really well, at least so far. The notoriously rebellious city of Ghent had received him with grand fanfare, chronicler described his appearance as that of an angel having descended from heaven and some even held up banners saying: “Whatever you tell us to do, we will do it”. Spoiler alert, that banner will not be used ever again.

But still, things had been much better than anyone could have hoped. The day after the marriage celebrations had concluded, the citizens of Ghent swore him allegiance as the new duke, and even more importantly raised 500,000 Ecu for the defence of the realm.

And Maximilian got to work immediately. He sent two of his senior generals out to relieve the cities of St. Omer and Valenciennes, halting king Louis’ advance in Artois and Picardie. As early as September 1477, merely a month after the wedding, king Louis signed a truce and handed back several small towns as well as the imperial city of Cambrai.

The reason for Louis’ hesitancy to continue the war was a letter from the emperor Friedrich III demanding the return of all imperial fiefs accompanied by the threat of imperial war. Louis was a cautious man who avoided major military conflict wherever he could and tried to achieve his objectives through what could benignly be called diplomatic means, though many of his cultural attaches were dual use operators.

Equally, the estates of the low countries were basing their contribution to the war effort on the idea that at least in time, the empire, or at least the Habsburgs would weigh in on the fighting.

Hence during the winter of 1477, Maximilian found himself in some sort of precarious limbo. On the one hand, his father’s letter and the decisive moves on St. Omer and Valenciennes had reduce the military conflict to a trickle of border skirmishes. On the other hand, if he could not mobilise the empire and/or his family to send military aid by the spring, his complete lack of resources would become apparent to everyone. King Louis would redouble its efforts and the estates may well withhold further support for the war.

Maximilian wrote to his father that though he was now a mighty lord and owned many lands and cities, all this could be gone in 10 to 14 days. If he, his father does not send him support soon, they would likely never meet again. He and Marie had already pawned their jewels for 100,000 gulden, even the famous golden coat that Charles the Bold had worn when he entered Trier in 1473, gone. There will not be peace here unless the emperor comes and sends this king of France back beyond Paris. There is no bigger and more cowardly villain in the whole world, wrote Maximilan. He never gives battle, but keeps his troops on the border to wear us out financially.

All this begging was however to no avail. The King of Hungary, Matthias Hunyadii had formally declared war on Friedrich III and invaded Styria; meanwhile the Turks continued to raid the emperors homeland, as they had been doing for years now; a peasant revolt had kicked off in inner Austria and feuds over the archbishopric of Salzburg and the bishopric of Passau were raging. Friedrich was indeed in no position to send help.

His cousin, Sigismund of Tyrol, owner of the richest silver mines in Europe, was equally reluctant to help. He had arguably benefitted most from the demise of Charles the Bold, having first received the purchase price for the Habsburg lands in Alsace from the duke, and then regained those thanks to the league of Constance. But instead of passing on these funds, Siegmund sent Maximilian a bill for 150,000 gulden of reparations for the damages caused by the wars of Charles the Bold. Sigismund’s reluctance was in part caused by the annual subsidy of 50,000 gulden he received from Louis XI. But there was also something else. Sigismund was in the process of selling the Tyrol and further Austria to the House of Wittelsbach, specially Albrecht IV of Bayern-Munchen. We covered these shenanigans in episode 197. The Wittelsbachs, who had managed their lands much, much better than the hapless Sigismund were rich enough to buy him out, and if they had succeeded, the Bavarian-Tyrolian complex would have outearned the remaining Habsburg lands by factor 2 or even 3. Had Maximilian then failed in Burgundy, the Wittelsbachs would have ended up on the imperial throne and Munich, not Vienna would have become the capital, most likely of all of the German speaking lands.

Bottom line, powerful forces prevented the house of Habsburg to come to the aid of their sole remaining male heir. And as for the other princes in the empire, they looked at the conflict, which at this point concentrated on Flanders, Artois and Picardy, aka on French fiefs, and regarded it as a private matter of the house of Habsburg. There was no national awakening here, as had appeared when Charles the Bold besieged Neuss.

There was however one person, Maximilian could rely on to rally power to his side, and that was his mother in law, Margaret of York. The sister of king Edward IV was dragging her brother kicking and screaming into first a commercial and over the years into a military alliance with Burgundy. This return of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, which included a promise to Edward IV of a coronation in Reims naturally terrified king Louis XI of France, which further entrenched the conflict.

With Edward IV, or indeed even before that alliance was firmed up, came duke Francois of Brittany. Brittany was at this point still independent from France.

And last but not least Margaret and Maximilian established diplomatic ties with a new major power that had emerged in the south, Spain. Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile had married in 1469 and thereby unified Spain – to the degree that Spain is unified. With Castille a traditional ally of France and Aragon a rival, the political leanings of a unified Spain could go either way. Thanks to Maximilian and Margaret’s diplomacy Spain swung behind the empire and against the kingdom of France.

Some historians date the beginnings of the European political landscape that lasted until the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 to these events in 1477. For centuries European politics were dominated by an alliance of Spain, the Habsburgs, the Empire and England pushing against the richest, most populous and most expansionist country in Europe at the time, France. And in a way this lasted into the 20^th century, when France was the “Erbfeind”, the hereditary enemy of the Germans.

As always in history, the protagonists themselves are at best vaguely aware that their actions may result in fundamental changes to the balance of power on their continent. Maximilian’s concerns were not about some major geopolitical shifts, he was just trying to make it through, and have some fun in the process.

He was only 19 years old, freshly married to the woman of his dreams who had made him not just happy, but also rich beyond his wildest dreams. As Marie introduced him to the treasures of Burgundy, to the 20 cities in her lands that were bigger than Vienna, the grand festivities of their entrees into Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, and of course Bruges. There were the magnificent castles and palaces in the cities, all infinitely larger and more ornate than Wiener Neustadt, 2 dozen moated country seats, so many venerable monasteries, that just one of his counties, Hainault had 20 of them larger than anything in Austria.

Then the court life, the dresses and robes made form silk and the famous Flemish cloth, the precious ornaments worn by both women and men. The rooms decorated with tapestries from Arras, Tournay and Brussels and the jewel-like images of van Eyck, Memling and all the other so disparagingly called primitives. Libraries full of the most accomplished miniatures and armories that took his breath away.

Art and music were a shared passion for Maximilian and Marie, alongside the hunting, the tournament and the mummeries. And so the winter of 1477/78 was filled with dread about the increasingly precarious situation of the low countries but at the same time resonated with the laughter and thrill of an endless sequence of tournaments, dances and hunts.

What is truly impressive is Maximilian’s energy. Despite the constant reveling and the exigencies of young love, he worked his way through the rather dull accounts of the Burgundian state. And he came to the almost inevitable conclusion that Charles the Bold, or to give him the proper translation of his moniker, Charles the Reckless, had indeed been reckless. He may as well have left a note saying “I am afraid, there is no money left, best of luck”.

Charles the Bold had already pushed up taxes to near breaking point leaving very little what the treasury would today call “headroom”. As for the gold and silver treasures that in Trier had impressed the Habsburgs to the point of irritation, all of those, even the silver table service, had already been sent to the mint.

And there were two other headwinds Maximilian faced as went up to the Estates, asking for fresh funds. One was that by now everybody realized that no help would come from the empire, that Maximilian had brought with him no more than the clothes on his back. And the second was that Louis’ agents spread the rumor that all these taxes would end up in the pockets of Germans who were taking the cash out of the country. This unfounded story became so persistent, it hampered Maximilian’s efforts for the entirety of his reign.

The war that began again in the spring of 1478 had to be fought in four separate theatres. One was the official war, which was fought in the Artois and Picardie between the armies of Louis XI and the Burgundian forces. The second theatre was in Holland, where Louis’ money had rekindled the eternal conflict between Cods and Hooks we had hears about in episodes 198 and 199. These factions, like the Guelfs and Ghibellines in Italy no longer reflected any economic or political differences but were built on hatred passed on from one generation to the other, which made them so persistent.

Theatre three was the duchy of Guelders. Charles the Bold had occupied Guelders using a conflict within the ducal family. Now that Charles was gone but several of the Guelders claimants were still around or had heirs and successors, the province rose up. What did not help at all was that Guelders was rammed full of strong castles and surrounded by rivers and marshland, leaving it a thorn in Maximilian’s side for decades to come.

There are other conflicts that flare up from time to time, like for instance in Liege and Utrecht, the true fourth theatre of war was public opinion. I keep mentioning it and will continue talking about the fact that the printing press was rapidly changing the world. News and pamphlets, printed in one of the 1,000 printing presses that had sprung up in the five decades after Gutenberg, spread facts and opinions further and faster then ever before. And that was even more the case in the densely populated and broadly literate society of the cities of the low countries, of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels, Ypres, Lille, Amsterdam, Nijmegen, the Hague, Delft, den Bosch and the dozens and dozens I have not mentioned.

And as so often with new technologies the systems and safeguards that ensured the accuracy of the information and the honesty of the opinions were not yet in place, leaving ample room for propaganda, lies and deception. Louis XI was a man of the early modern period and he wasn’t shy of using these new tools, alongside the more traditional methods of bribery and incitement.

That being said, Maximilian had some serious shortcomings in the eyes of his new subjects. He was a foreigner, no doubt, and he brought in some of his and his father’s trusted allies, friends and advisers. And these allies, friends and advisers took over some important and lucrative jobs, fueling fear of a German takeover. Further the presence of three theaters of war, each separated by a distance of several days ride meant Maximilian was constantly moving from one place to the next. And once there, he was under enormous time pressure to resolve conflicts quickly. One way to accelerate things is extreme brutality. Maximilian’s tactics did include execution of his opponents after surrender, the burning of the suburbs as cover for his attacks and the cutting down of fields as a means to starve out the defenders.

But the biggest drawback to his popularity was financial. The hope of the Habsburg marriage was that the cost of defending the Burgundian state would be shared. But that was not going to happen. The entire cost of the he effort had to be borne by the low countries and in particular the big cities. That meant even higher taxes than before and if there is one thing people do not like is higher taxes, combined with no improvement in services.

As we follow the Burgundian war, what we will see is the interconnection between these elements, the increased brutality and destruction feeding more unrest, which in turn requires more taxation, which in turn feeds more unrest and so forth and so forth. If there was a way to get out of this vicious circle it would be a decisive battle that forces the King of France to make real peace. And as we know a powerful state on its eastern border was an existential threat to the kingdom of France, meaning peace with the king of France required a truly decisive battle.

In 1478, that battle did not take place. Maximilian was constantly pacing from the French border to Holland and then to Guelders and back again. That left little room to gather a large force and challenge the French king, a French king who was not keen on the vagaries of an open battle in the first place.

Louis’ idea was to pursue a war of attrition, keeping up the pressure that required Maximilian to keep his hugely expensive army in the field, which meant he had to keep taxes up or even increase them, making him ever more unpopular. So in June 1478, Louis once again offered a truce to last one year, which Maximilian accepted. These truces never brought peace, just reduced the cost for Louis who switched to local raids, whilst Maximilian needed to maintain the full scale border defenses.

On the positive side, In June 1478 Marie gave birth to a boy, a major blow to French ambitions. Louis’ agents had spread the rumor that the child was actually a girl. Margaret of York was so concerned about these lies, she took little Philip – which was his name by the way – to the market square and showed his naked body to the people, who broke out in wild cheers.

The next year, 1479 wasn’t off to a good start. As Louis had intended, Maximilian had to go to the Estates General again and ask for more money. Meanwhile Louis’ policy of destroying the countryside by burning or cutting down fields had led to a shortage of grain in the cities. Attempts to import grain from the Baltic and elsewhere were thwarted by a fleet of French privateers. French merchants were also boycotting the fairs in Antwerp and Bruges. Economic depression and famine was engulfing the richest region in Northern Europe. Needless to say that there was still no help coming, not from Friedrich III who was caught up in wars with the Turks, not from Siegmund of Tyrol bribed by France and Wittelsbach, nor from a Holy Roman Empire that did not care.

Hostilities began as soon as the truce ran out in June 1479. Louis attacked Dole and then Douai. Maximilian, who had been occupied with the ongoing uprising in Guelders returned to his southern border, bringing along his army of 20,000, arguably the best force he had been able to gather so far. These were in part mercenaries, some Swiss, some English longbowmen, but also local men, the city guards, the countryside miitia and the knights of Burgundy, including the members of the order of the Golden Fleece, the Burgundian equivalent of the order of the garter.

They enveloped the city of Thérouanne, which forced Louis to finally accept an open battle. The French cavalry outnumbered the Burgundian horse 2 to 1, and a defeat appeared likely, so Maximilian and his generals decided to send the expensive heavy artillery away, and try their luck with just the light guns and Chutzpah.

On August 7^th 1479, a boiling hot day, the two armies came together near the village of Guinegate. Maximilian had placed his infantry, made up of pikemen, arquebusiers and longbowmen in the centre, whilst his two small cavalry detachments were covering his flanks. As the French appeared, Maximilian rose on his horse and addressed his troops, talked about the just cause of the house of Burgundy, the cruel destruction the French had inflicted on their lands, then he dismounted, kissed the earth that may receive his body today and said a prayer. All his men took his example end knelt down in the burning heat, and prayed for victory. When they rose, they shouted Long live Austria and Burgundy, the Lion of Flanders and of course, St. George. Much invigorated by this display of righteousness of their young leader, they waited.

The French kicked off proceedings by running a massive cavalry charge against the Burgundian riders on the left flank. As we heard, the French mounted forces outnumbered the Burgundians 2 to one, maybe even more in terms of heavy cavalry. The charge was a great success, Maximilian’s left flank broke and turned tail. As they rode off into the sunset, the French knights followed them, keen on the rich ransom the great Burgundian lords could surely provide. Even the overall commander of the French forces, Philippe de Crevecoer was dragged along by the excitement and temporarily left the battlefield.

Meanwhile Maximilian’s centre remained under pressure from French artillery and light cavalry forces. The situation was extremely dire. If the main part of the heavy French cavalry returned, they could outflank the remainder of the Burgundian forces and  annihilate them. Maximilians advisers suggested to call it a day and run to save his life. The chroniclers do not mention it, but Maximilian may well remember the last time a member of the House of Habsburg was in a similar situation, Leopold III at the battle of Sempach. And like his ancestor, Maximilian refused to leave the men who were prepared to fight and die for his cause. He stayed with them, up on his horse, below his banner, drawing the enemy fire, ready to die, just as Leopold III had done. He asked his noblemen to dismount and fight with the infantry. They were now all equals and would be victorious together or go down together.

He ordered the carts up from the camp and formed a Wagenburg studded with pikes, which stalled any French attack, may it be by riders of firearms. This giant hedgehog slowly moved forward, engaging the enemy centre, the longbowmen and harquebusiers constantly shooting at the French soldiers. Maximilian was fighting in the front line without regard for his personal safety, an example that encouraged his men. Where have you ever seen a noble lord staying with his foot soldiers after his knights have fled. Encouraged by the progress of their comrades, the Burgundian cavalry regrouped and re-entered the fray.

The battle lasted from Midday to sunset around 08:00, at which point the French withdrew to the city of Hesdin. The French cavalry weighed down by loot passed the battlefield on their return from that fateful chase, but did not even engage.

Maximilian erected his tent on the battlefield, and as per a tradition that went back to Alexande the Great, celebrating his first great victory by spending the night in total control of the field.

The victory of Guinegate was Maximilian’s first major success and though he had some experienced generals around him, displayed many of the traits he would show throughout his career. He was bold, even when outnumbered, able to quickly find creative and clever solutions to challenges and he had this almost magical impact on his troops. His personality, the “leutseiligkeit”, the ability to charm everyone, from peasant to prince, combined with his personal courage to the point of risking his life, inspired the men who followed him through thick and thin.

In the aftermath of his success, his popularity reached a temporary highpoint, in particular in Brabant and Hainault. There were processions and te-Deums all across the Burgundian lands, and given this is the new world of the printing press, he had tales and songs published that spread the news of his great victory, the eternal humiliation of the French.   

But despite all the great proclamations and personal bravery, the reality was not quite as rosy. Louis’ army was damaged, but not at all defeated. And Maximilian himself had suffered severe losses. There was no chasing the French all the way to Paris. Instead, Maximilian had to go back to Ghent and once more, ask the Estates General for money. Meanwhile Louis’ forces kept up the pressure on the border, his agents were inciting rebellions in Holland and Guelders and were now stirring things up in the city of Ghent itself.

The brutality of warfare increased, if that was at all possible. When Maximilian took the fortress of Malannoy, he had the French commanders hanged. The French responded by executing fifty Burgundian captives. One of the issues was that the French had no scruples destroying the countryside and starving the Burgundians, whilst Maximilian was reluctant to do the same on territory he hoped would one day return to the Burgundian state.

1479 ended without much progress for either side. The sound of weapons was muffled by the snowfall of the extraordinarily cold winter of 1479/1480. Another reminder that behind all these political events the so-called Little Ice Age was progressing unabated to its climax that gave us Breughel’s delightful pictures of ice skating peasants but also severe food shortages and wide spread deprivation.

The political situation became even more tense when Maximilian introduced a beer tax in the spring of 1480 that resulted in a string of rebellions, even in regions so far loyal. These uprisings and the reluctance of the estates to properly fund the defense of the realm convinced Maximilian and the political party that formed around him, that he had to resume the centralization policy of Charles the Bold. He appointed a new chancellor and took sole charge of matters of war and foreign policy.

As one can imagine, this went down like a ton of bricks in the brick built cities of Ghent and Bruges. The estates demanded that Maximilan and Marie rein in their spending for all the tournaments and mummeries. They responded by celebrating the baptism of their daughter Margaret with all the pomp and circumstances the Burgundian court was still able to muster.

In some ways 1480 and 1481 brought some improvements. The French advance slowed down as they reformed their army. The battle of Guinegate as well as the long string of victories of the Swiss and Hussites prove the usefulness of infantry forces. The French, always reliant on the prowess of their knights faced up to the changing times. Swiss mercenaries became the mainstay of the French army. This restructuring gave Maximilian some breathing space and then, in February 1481, king Louis XI suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered.

The other theatres of war, in Holland and Guelders did not calm down. Again and again did the young duke take his forces North to separate the cods and hooks in Holland or to bring down another one of the seemingly innumerable fortresses in Guelders. The spiral of brutality tightened further, be it mass execution of Hooks or the sacking of Venlo. But progress was made.

Moreover, the alliance with England too was coming along nicely. Margaret of York had travelled to England was working hard on her brother, and getting through despite heavy bribery by the French. The alliance with Brittany was signed and Marie and Maximilian called their third child Francois in honor of their new  associate. Though this boy died shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile Louis XI’s health kept deteriorating, his end being imminent. His son, the future Charles VIII was still only 12 years old, meaning France would be too preoccupied with regency and infighting to pester the Burgundians.

Hence, in the spring of 1482 the ducal couple could look forward to at least several years of peace and rebuilding of their shattered lands.

 The partying resumed and in March the duchess rode out to a Reiherbeize, a peculiar form of animal cruelty whereby falcons were released to attack and kill herons. Herons were deemed a delicacy and often served at medieval feasts. As she was following her falcon and spurred her horse to jump a ditch, the saddle girth broke and she was thrown off her horse. She landed on a tree trunk and suffered serious damage to her inner organs. It is also likely that she was pregnant. Marie of Burgundy suffered horribly over the following fortnight, before she died on March 27^th, 1482, aged just 26.

On her last day she called the knights of the Golden Fleece to her chamber, explained that she has made her two surviving children, Philip and Magarethe the heirs to all her lands, and Maximilian their guardian. She asked the knights to honor this arrangement and swear fealty to her husband. She said goodbye to Maximilian, Philipp and Margarethe, asked for forgiveness for all the injustices she had committed, receive the last rites, and died.

Maximilian was devastated. He really loved his wife, and for the rest of his life he would treasure her, commission artworks in her memory let her appear in his literary works as the virtuous lady he, as the Last Knight, served for ever. A whole iconography emerged that depicted Mary of Burgundy as the Virgin, a style that found its apotheosis in Albrecht Durer’s Death of the Virgin showing Mary’s last moments.

Despite the empty coffers of the Burgundian state, he staged one of the grandest funerals in Burgundian and that means European late medieval history. 15,000 people from all ranks of society came to pay their respects and accompany her coffin to the Church of Our Lady in Bruges. 2,000 priests and monks wearing black and holding candles, a 1,000 noblemen in mourning clothes, 16 counts and bannermen acted as pallbearers,  followed by the heralds of the Burgundian lands carrying her coats of arms, civil servants and army officers and then  Maximilian and the children. Behind them 500 noble ladies, 3,000 wives of the eminent burghers and then the people.

There is a tale that in 1507 Maximilian asked the abbot Johannes Trithemius, a real person with a reputation as a magician and necromancer, to conjure up his first wife, Mary of Burgundy. Trithemius succeeded and Maximilian even recognized a birthmark on her that only he knew about. But the experience shook him so hard, he forbade the abbot to ever to do it again. This story became the source for the story of Dr. Faustus who in both Marlow and Goethe is asked to conjure up Helen of Troy for the emperor’s enjoyment, but desires her himself.

But that only happened in 1507, right now, in 1482, there are much more pressing matters.

King Louis of France, by all accounts on his very last leg, literally jumped up with joy from his deathbed, as the chronicler Philippe de Commines reports. Even though there was still a formal truce in place, he sets his armies in march to throw out the duke of Austria as he had called Maximilian all along. At the same time his agents and supporters in Flanders and Brabant were working overtime.

On April 28^th, Marie was barely dead a month, the Estates general came together in Ghent and demanded a share in the guardianship of the ducal children and immediate peace with France. The merchants, artisans and common people  may have continued the fight on behalf of the daughter of Charles the Bold, but not on behalf of Maximilian.

And there had also been a material change in the economics that made a peace with France desirable. In the early stages of the Hundred years war, the great cities of Flanders and Brabant had sided with England against France, since they depended heavily on wool from Wales and Lincolnshire to produce their luxury cloth. But since the 1350s, the English had shifted from exporting wool to manufacturing their own cloth. And their cloth now competed with the Flemish product. Therefore the textile merchants of Ghent, Ypres and Brussels cared more about their end markets in France than their dwindling English supply chain.

Almost overnight the will to resist the French evaporated. The cities that Maximilian had designated as border defenses opened their gates to the French without a shot being fired. In May the estates told Maximilian that peace negotiations are unavoidable and that they sought a marriage between the dauphin Charles and his 2-year old daughter Margarethe.

Maximilian objected, but he could not do anything. The estates refused him money to continue the war, his father was now under serious pressure back home in Austria and would have to leave Vienna the year after. The Imperial diet had once again refused to help the Habsburg in their private venture in Burgundy. And his new ally, king Edward IV of England was dying.

Louis then opened another frontier and unleashed William de la Marche, the boar of the Ardennen, on the long suffering city of Liege. This legendarily brutal nobleman, who some called a partman, not quite human, took over the city and by his own hands killed its bishop, Louis of Bourbon a longstanding ally of the Burgundian dukes. As the dead prelate was floating down the Maas, his murderer convinced the cathedral chapter to make his son the new bishop, whilst at the same time French soldiers occupied the key fortresses in the bishopric.

The treaty the estates negotiated with king Louis set forth that the dowry of little Margaret should include the duchy and county of Burgundy, the Artois, Macon, Auxerre, Charolais, Noyers, Salins, Berry and Boulogne, lands that should fall to her husband, the future king Charles VIII, should she die without children. And to make sure Margarete would become a good French princess, she was to leave for Paris immediately.

The County of Flanders was recognized as a fief of France and its highest court, the Parlement in Paris was given jurisdiction over the county. In other words, the richest part of it all, Flanders became a separate entity.

As for 4-year old Philipp, the heir to the now much diminished state of Burgundy, he should remain under the sole guardianship of the Estates General in Ghent.

As for Maximilian, the estates suggested he returned back to Austria to help his father. They, the estates argued, had no need for his military and administrative skills, since peace was now reigning across the lands.

When Maximilian, under much duress signed the treaty in March 1483, Mary of Burgundy’s accident had happened barely a year ago. All he had fought for, the freedom of Burgundy, his family was gone. The town squares and village greens of France were erupting in celebrations, whilst in the streets of Ghent and Bruges people asked openly, what the Austrian was still doing here. Meanwhile Matthias Hunyady’s cannon were breaking the walls of Vienna. A lesser man would have concluded that god had decided the days of the House of Habsburg are over.

But neither father nor son were prone to such thoughts. They were descendants of the 95 lords of Austria that go back to Greek and Jewish Antiquity and they knew that one day A.E.I.O.U. But that day is not today, maybe it will be next week. Listen in and find out.

Last thing, you may know this, but just in case it has slipped your mind, you can support the show by going to historyofthegermans.com/support and sign up for membership or make a one-time contribution.

The Burgundian Wedding, 1477

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 217 – The Lucky Marriage of Maximilian and Marie

How often have you heard this phrase “Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, marry”. It goes back to a whole string of marriages, first Maximilian of Habsburg married the heiress of the duchy of Burgundy, then his son married the heiress of Spain and finally his grandson married the heiress of Hungary and Bohemia. And bish bash bosh, an empire is created in the horizontal.

That is nice and neat but not at all true. Sure the marriages happened, but not in the way at least I have been told. There was a lot more drama and a lot more agency than you think. For a whole six months Maximilian, the Last Knight in his shining armour, left Marie of Burgundy to fend off invasions, revolutions and conspiracies on her own. She was imprisoned, her ministers were hanged and she was told marriage to a 7-year old hunchback was her only way out. How she managed through that and found herself in the very first truly passionate marriage we have heard about in the History of the Germans Podcast, well, that is what we are talking about today.

But before we start a quick question. I have been given an opportunity to organize a History of the Germans trip down the Main and Rhine at the end of June, beginning of July. Is this something any of you would be interested? If so, let me know. That would help me enormously in making a decision.

And as always, I want to thank our patrons, who have signed up on Historyofthegermans.com/support and whose generosity keeps this show going and going advertising free; they are: Stepan P., Michael McG, Tom T., Lorie C., David L. and Heidi K.

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we ended on the 21^st of May, 1477 when Maximilian, archduke of Austria, son of emperor Friedrich III, who had just tuned 18, his head full of tales of chivalric romance, of Lancelot and Percival, Tristan and Roland donned his silver breastplate  and rode out of Vienna to rescue a damsel in distress, who by pure coincidence also happened to be the richest heiress in Europe.

Every story of valiant knights and virtuous ladies needs a monster, a dragon or some villain who throws obstacles in the way of the great hero that he needs to overcome to prove himself worthy of her love. When Maximilian had his journey to Burgundian power turned into a rhymed novel, these villains were three and their names were Fürwittig, Unfalo and Neidelhart.

Out here in the real world, the villain was only one, King Louis XI of France, and he acted not out of low cunning, but for completely understandable political motives. Nor did he die by the executioner’s hand, as  Fürwittig, Unfalo and Neidelhart did in Maximilian’s tale.But in one way the Theuerdank is true to events, the creativity that Louis showed in his schemes to thwart Maximilian was more than a match for his three-headed fictional avatar.

But I am getting ahead of the story.

Maximilian sets out from Vienna on May 21^st, as I said, but Charles the Bold had died on January 5^th, that was more than four months earlier. And it would be the beginning of August before he entered the de facto capital of the Burgundian state in Ghent. What happened in the meantime?

Well, quite a lot actually.

News of the battle of Nancy spread quickly across Europe. But initially the news were contradictory. Participants of the battle had seen Charles ride off on his great charger El Moro, and nobody had seen him fall. It took a few days before his body was identified. And even then, it was impossible to believe that the Great Duke of Burgundy, whose image, if it could have been reproduced by modern means, would have graced the bedrooms of teenage boys and girls from Aragon to Albion, that the chivalric hero of the age, was actually dead.

King Louis XI of France was probably the first of the key protagonists to receive the news. He had established a courier service for government post in 1464, and that service had brought him the news about the battle of Nancy within just 3 days, his riders having covered a distance of 450km.

Therefore just 3 days after the reckless duke had bitten the snow, Louis XI set his plan in motion.

Louis had been expecting the defeat of Charles in his wars with the Swiss for a while now. It was his money and his diplomacy that had encouraged the creation of the League of Constance, the defection of Rene of Lorraine, and paid for the Swiss mercenaries at Nancy. After Grandson and Murten it was clear that Charles was badly mauled, his resources much diminished and hence a window of opportunity had been opening up. Therefore, even before Charles final battle had begun, Louis had already mustered an army in Champagne and Picardy, ready to march into the duchy of Burgundy and into Franche Comte when the time came. And now the time had come.

Officially Louis marched into Burgundy just to keep it safe for his beloved cousin who was so sadly missing. And when the next courier arrived and told him Charles had actually died, the king of France, giddy with excitement, went on to stage two. It was always clear that upon the demise of the last Burgundian duke, his heir would be his daughter Marie. And Marie, Louis declared could not inherit the duchy of Burgundy, which – as per Salian law, could only be passed down in the male line. The fief was vacant and the king of France’s army came to take what was rightfully his. What Louis argued as a reason to occupy Franche Comte, which was still an imperial, not a royal fief, well, whatever. He had guns and men and that should be enough for now.

Louis XI has received a lot of bad press, in particular in the German and English speaking world.  Sir Walter Scott summarized him as follows: “That sovereign was of a character so purely selfish—so guiltless of entertaining any purpose unconnected with his ambition, covetousness, and desire of selfish enjoyment—that he almost seems an incarnation of the devil himself, permitted to do his utmost to corrupt our ideas of honour in its very source. Nor is it to be forgotten that Louis possessed to a great extent that caustic wit which can turn into ridicule all that a man does for any other person’s advantage but his own, and was, therefore, peculiarly qualified to play the part of a cold hearted and sneering fiend.” Machiavelli had only one criticism of Louis XI, that he replaced his national infantry with the Swiss mercenaries he regarded as unreliable.

A true villain then.

Before we jump on the bandwagon and regard Louis XI as President Snow trying to break up the star-crossed lovers, we should take a step back and look at Louis and his Kingdom of France in the broader political context of the 15^th century.

Louis XI was born in 1423, at a time when his father, the dauphin Charles had been disinherited by his own mother and his crown been promised to an English king.  Anglo-Burgundian armies occupied Paris and were inflicting defeat after defeat on the man they called “the king of Bourges” after the rather modest capital of his shrinking territory. When Louis was six, he met Joan of Ark and it was only her divine intervention that made the gradual recovery of the royal house of Valois and the kingdom of France possible. What remained in the personal and institutional memory of the French Kingdom was the notion that the English can be pushed out of the country even if they win all the battles as long as they are alone. An alliance between England and Burgundy however, that could take down the Royal family, even the kingdom itself. And what are the chances God would once again send a 13-year old peasant girl to save the day. Therefore no king of France could sleep soundly as long as there was a  powerful state on their eastern border. When Louis XI attacked Burgundy hours after receiving news of his distant cousin’s defeat, it was not just greed for territory and wealth, but an act of preventive self-defense.

And the sneakiness, the double dealing, the paying of agents and hidden allies – well it wasn’t cricket, but then, he was fighting for the survival of his dynasty that had nearly been wiped out 50 years earlier.

O.K. the state of the Grand Dukes of the West had to go, but how could that be done?

Well the first step was to take over the southern part, the duchy of Burgundy and the Franche Comte, which happened within just days. But these were the economically and militarily less significant parts and also disconnected from the main territory. So how to get hold of the rest?

There were a couple of cities in what is today the regions of Picardie, Pas de Calais and Ardennes that had been part of the lands of Charles the Bold, but, like the duchy of Burgundy, were to revert to the crown in case of the absence of a male heir. And so Louis dispatches several of his lords to negotiate with the citizens about a handover, and as always provided them with bags of cash to facilitate the process.

But at some point it was clear that he would run into some form of resistance. The question is, what to do then.

Option one was to simply use brute force and invade Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Luxemburg and afterwards Holland, Seeland and Guelders.

Option 2 was to compel the heiress, Marie of Burgundy to break the engagement with Maximilian and marry her to his son, the future king Charles VIII.

Both options had their difficulties. Marie was 20 and Charles VIII only 7 years old and rumored to be extremely ugly. Louis acknowledged that problem and would have offered Marie the alternative of marrying a French prince of more suitable age and appearance.

But even that would not have resolved the other issue, that Marie was engaged to the son of the emperor Friedrich III and that most of her lands were imperial territory. The insult to the empire that would result from the broken engagement and the French expansion deep into the imperial lands could once again galvanize the princes as it had happened during the Siege of Neuss.

So, not as easy a run as some suggested. But definitely an easier run than the brute force approach. Taking all the Burgundian lands from a defenseless princess and without legal justification, that was going to raise even more eyebrows, let alone armies.

Decisions had to be made quickly, since any time now the pesky Habsburg prince could show up in Flanders with a massive imperial army and the game would be up. So Louis did all of it, all at the same time.

He opened negotiation with Marie and her mother, Margaret of York about a potential marriage to his son. At the same time his armies began encircling cities who had not immediately succumbed to French money, flattery or legal arguments.

As for the cities beyond the reach of his guns, he instructed his envoys to bribe city councils, and where that failed, incite revolt. One of these envoys was Olivier le Daim, count of Meulan, a particularly colorful character. Born to humble parents in a village near Ghent, he had  sought his fortune in Paris, where he became a barber. By some unclear mechanism, he got into royal service as the valet and then barber of the king. That was quite a responsible job, since the barber was the only man who was allowed to approach the king with an open knife. It was also well paid given the propensity of the age to hire assassins. He makes an appearance in Vicor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame: quote This barber of the king had three names. At court he was politely called Olivier le Daim (the Deer); among the people Olivier the Devil. His real name was Olivier le Mauvais, aka Olivier the bad.

Skimming the main sources about Olivier the Bad I am not sure that he really was that bad. He was extraordinarily loyal to his king, which is not a surprise given his elevation from barber to baron, but I have not seen an allegation that he was doing the king’s dirty work, the poisoning and murdering, so common in the Renaissance. Which suggests his real crime was rising too high, and when Louis died, Olivier was immediately hanged by the nobility for insolence, ending in the same mass grave as Esmeralda.

Anyway. Olivier was given the most important job, which was to go to Ghent and either convince Marie to marry little Charles VIII of France or, should that fail, stir up things in this legendarily rebellious city. As you can imagine Marie did not yield to the charms or arguments of the royal barber, which is why he concentrated on plan B.

Ok, we have Louis XI bribing and fighting his way into the Grand Duchy of the West, but what was the heir to the Burgundian lands up to?

The anonymous chronicle of Flanders said quote: “And his daughter Marie was left, young and without experience, burdened with so heavy an inheritance that no man would have dared bear it.” This is one of those quotations that is both entirely accurate and utterly misleading. Inexperienced is often equated to naïve, amateurish and hence in dire need of a someone who takes decisions on her behalf. But it could also simply mean that so far she had been kept away from the affairs of state and hence had not experienced what it meant to rule. But she might be a fast learner.

I will leave the judgement to you, whilst I will first talk about why Burgundy in 1477 was a “heavy inheritance” and then tell you how she handled it.

The state of Burgundy had not emerged organically as a product of cultural affinity, but was purely a product of the ambitions of a cadet branch of the French royal family. Its lands straddled the border between the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire. Parts of it, namely the duchy of Burgundy itself, the Artois and most of Flanders were fiefs of the king of France, whilst Brabant, Hainault, Holland, Seeland, Friesland, Limburg, Liege, Utrecht, Guelders, the Franche Comte and Luxemburg were imperial fiefs. Some regions spoke French, other various dialects of low German. There were the great textile manufacturing cities like Ghent, Ypres, Arras, Tournai and the trading hubs of Bruges, Antwerp and Amsterdam, but also large sways of food producing countryside. Some regions were used to tight control by the duke, such as Hainault, others had almost complete independence, like Friesland, in some regions there were long standing feuds like the cods and hooks in Holland, others acted in unison. If you have even just a cursory understanding of Belgian politics, you get the picture.

The grand dukes had been working for a long period trying to forge these diverse components into one coherent and contiguous state, like France and England and Portugal etc. Under Charles the Bold this long held dream was about to become reality. Charles policy had three main components, one was to establish a land bridge between the duchy of Burgundy in the south and the Low countries in the North, that is why Lorraine became one of his key obsessions. The second element was the crown of a kingdom of Burgundy. Like Karl IV had done with the St. Wenceslaus crown in Bohemia, Charles believed by creating a crown as a symbol of his state, he could tie his nobles, cities, even peasants to an idea, a political concept, something that transcended the personal loyalty to him as their duke. And part three of the strategy was to centralise power in his territory. He sidelined the courts on the level of his various duchies and counties and either linked them to or replaced them by a high court in the town of Mechelen. He did the same with the fiscal administration and strengthened central government function, headed by his chancellor.

None of these policies were popular with the proud cities or the estates of his duchies and counties. They pushed back against the ever increasing tax burden that Charles imposed to fund his wars of expansion. They balked at the expense of the court, the splendour of which shifted from a source of pride for the locals to a symbol of extortion. But what they really objected to was the suppression of all their individual rights and privileges, the freedoms they had accumulated over centuries.

These objections had fuelled endless revolts, including those in Dinant and Liege. Charles response had been to burn both cities to the ground and kill its citizens by the hundreds and thousands. At which point Charles needed to build up an ever larger army to both fight abroad and suppress his opponents at home. Which increased the tax burden even more, which in turn accelerated the centralisation policy, which in turn fuelled the anger and resentment against the regime. Which led to more repression, more expense for military forces and so forth and so forth.

When Marie confirmed her father’s death almost a month after the battle of Nancy, all this anger and hatred broke through to the surface. Preachers called the demise of the duke, Gods punishment for his excessive tyranny and it is surprising that the mob did not celebrate it by lighting bonfires and partying through the night.

Almost immediately after the announcement that Charles was definitely dead, the Estates General, aka the assembly of all the powerful people in the Low Countries came together. They did recognise Marie as the legitimate heir to all the lands of her father. But, the centralised state of Charles the Bold was to be dismantled, the court in Mechelen abolished, fiscal authority returned to the estates in the individual duchies and counties, all ancient rights and privileges of the cities to be confirmed and their right of resistance should the ducal government exceed their prerogatives recognised. Marie’s role had become that of a symbol of the state with limited power. But, the good news was, that a least the state continued to exist.

The city of Ghent, the largest agglomeration in the Low Countries, probably even the largest city north of the Alps, became the epicentre of political unrest. The fall of the duke and the broad re-arrangement of responsibilities and powers encouraged the middle classes, the artisans and their guilds to demand more influence in city politics, and in particular protection against the emerging protoindustrial manufacturers of cloth. Young men were now roaming the streets and pulling former Burgundian officials out of their houses and beat them up, sometimes strung them up on lampposts. Well not lampposts since they did not exist, so whatever posts they may find.

Faced with this chaos, Marie gave in to the demands of the Estates General and granted the Grand Privilege which reset the political situation to a fictitious time before the centralisation efforts of the Burgundian dukes. If she had thought this had resolved issues, she was sorely mistaken. Wherever she travelled in the following weeks, she was made to sign similar decrees, handing over her rights as duchess or countess to the estates.

On the positive side, apart from a general recognition of Marie as heir, was that the estates raised troops to defend the borders of Marie’s patrimony. This slowed Louis down, but did not stop him. Cities and fortresses negotiated with the king of France and often times swapped sides as support from Ghent was arriving much slower than the bags of gold from Paris.

Hanging over all of this was now the question who should join Marie and her lands in Holy Matrimony. Louis, as we have already heard, had put forward his son, the hunchbacked dauphin Charles. There were also some other chancers around, one being the duke of Cleves who offered his lands as a neat way to round up the Burgundian territory, then another von Cleves who had no land, but was apparently quite handsome and a childhood friend of Marie’s. Marie’s mother briefly suggested her brother, the duke of Clarence, he who later ended up drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine. And then there was Maximilian.

But it was not entirely Marie’s decision. Now that the Great Privilege had been signed, the Estates General demanded their say in the negotiations. So there were two delegations negotiating with Louis XI, one comprising Marie’s chancellor, Willem Huguonet and one of her courtiers, Guy d’Humbercourt as well as  another delegation made up of the representatives of Ghent and the estates. When the city delegation came to Louis, he saw them as rabble, the typical rebellious folk from Ghent. He was not really interested in doing a deal with them.  Instead he used the opportunity to blow up Flanders for good. He showed the city delegates a letter from Marie’s hand that said in no uncertain terms, that she would only accept terms negotiated by her chancellor and 3 other named individuals. Any arrangements made with the city were of no import to her. As it happened, that was pretty much the opposite of what she had told the Estates General.

News of that, what the people of Ghent variously called deception, betrayal and treason, set the streets alight. Huguonet, Hambercourt and the two others named in Marie’s letter were dragged to the main square, tried for treason and convicted. Marie immediately pardoned them to save their lives, but the pardon was disregarded. All four were hanged on April 3, 1477.

Now the whole of the Burgundian state blew up. Whoever had shown sympathies for Charles’ policies in the past was deposed and sometimes tried and hanged. In Holland the ancient civil war between Hooks and Cods resumed. The artisans and sometimes the mob took control of several towns.

Marie became a prisoner in her palace in Ghent. Her mother and closest adviser was sent away. Communication with the outside world became difficult. Marie’s lady in waiting smuggled one letter out to her betrothed, young Maximilian in Vienna, that he should come as quickly as possible, since otherwise quote: “I would have to do things that I would never voluntarily want to do” end quote.

Young Maximilian meanwhile was stuck back in Vienna. As we heard last week, the king of Hungary and his tremendous and tremendously expensive standing army was preparing to attack Austria. Hunyadi may have received some generous support from Louis XI, though this may not even have been necessary. The Raven King wanted Austria for his grand central European empire.

One can imagine Maximilian being torn between his loyalty to help his father defending their homeland against a hugely threatening, powerful invader, whilst at the same time his fiancée, daughter of his childhood hero was in dire straits, held prisoner by ruffians and attacked by a slippery, scheming French king. It was not an easy decision.

He sent a delegation headed by his protonotary, Dr. Georg Hessler to Ghent to discuss the detail of the marriage contract. Hessler had been closely involved in the negotiations since Neuss and was familiar with all the details. He was by the way another commoner playing a crucial role in these events, just like Olivier the Bad, the French royal barber and Willem Hugueonot, the executed Burgundian chancellor. This is a period of history where society is much more permeable than it had been even just a 100 years earlier and equally more permeable than it would be 200 years later. All these men could rise to incredibly powerful positions on merit alone. This did of course not happen on the back of territorial princes diving deep into predecessors of Adam Smith or John Stuart Mills. The reason they promoted these often highly educated and incredibly bright men, was because they were unencumbered by connections to the leading aristocratic families and they were fiercely loyal, two things the nobles never were.

Hence Dr. Georg Hessler led Maximilians embassy to Burgundy. But though ambitious commoners drive events, the external veneer still had to be embellished by great nobles. So with him came the archbishop of Trier, the bishop of Metz, the Count Palatine Ludwig of Veldenz and 300 riders, their armour polished so as to blind the Ghenters with their reflection.

Instead of leaving these men waiting, as would have been quite common, Marie welcomed them warmly on the doorstep. Once indoors, the bishop of Metz begins the formal proceeding announcing Maximilian’s intention to marry the gracious lady of Burgundy.  He handed over a letter with a diamond inside as a sign of how serious the Habsburg takes this suit. That would normally kick off a procedure that went on for weeks of hard negotiation over the details of apanage, the dowry, the morning gift, the rights of the groom, yada, yada, yada.

This time, the venerable bishop had barely finished his little speech praising Maximilian’s great qualities as husband, warrior and prince, when Marie interrupted him and went – o.k., let’s do it. Like right here and right now. Everyone looked round confused. No, no, her father had said Max was a sound guy and since he told me to marry him, I will marry him. Can we get on with it now?

And indeed, the next evening Marie of Burgundy and Maximilian of Habsburg were married by proxy. Ludwig Count Palatine stood in for Maximilian and in an attempt to make this as permanent as possible, the couple shared a bed for the night, though obviously separated by an unsheathed sword, and presumably a sentry guarding the lady’s honour.

Meanwhile Hessler wrote back to his master saying, get here asap. Do not think about the cost, this is going to be so worth it. The Low Countries alone could throw up 1.2 million guilders per year. For comparison, the imperial title produced just 20,000 and Austria maybe 200,000. And of course with all the bedding of duchesses business, the honour of Austria and the archducal family was now at stake. Come, come, make haste.

The Austrian delegates were doubly keen on the swift arrival of their lord, since the febrile situation in the low countries could easily turn against them and they could join Mrss. Hugueonot et.al. whose bodies were still swinging on the gallows.

Because something quite unexpected had happened. The arrival of the imperial delegation had created a sudden shift in the public opinion. 3 months of exposure to French aggression had caused doubts amongst the citizens of Ghent and the Estates General as to whether the king of France would be an upgrade to Charles the Bold and would respect their ancient freedoms. A quick scan of what was going on in France itself revealed that Louis XI was no less keen on centralisation than the Burgundian dukes, just did not burn down his own cities that often. And the chaos in the streets, the rebellious artisans and renewed fighting made the leading merchants and landowners distinctly uncomfortable. Then news spread that Louis had brought in 4,000 men with sickles and scythes to cut down the harvest, in an attempt to starve out Ghent, Ypres and Bruges. Rumours of hangings and broken promises inside French occupied cities did the rest. Seeing the 300 armoured riders coming in through the city gates reminded them that French Blue wasn’t the only colour.

As the wedding was announced, the people began shouting Kaiser, Kaiser and Maximilian, Maximilian. The garrisons of St. Omer, Aire, Conde and Valenciennes took heart and  stood up to the French tide. The remnants of Charles’ army trickled back from Lorraine and replenished the garrisons. The state of Burgundy was back.

Their hope now rested on Maximilian, and even more so, his father Friedrich III, to bring in the mighty armies of the Empire. They had seen this army before, when it had appeared before Neuss. Its knights, hardened in dozens of feuds, the infantry with their pikes that had fought in the Mainzer Stiftsfehde, the Princes war, the Soester Stiftsfehde, and innumerable now forgotten wars. And let’s not forget that what is now Switzerland was still part of the empire, and these men of Grandson, Murten and Nancy, as the Burgundians had so painfully learned, were invincible.

All eyes turned south, where any minute now the young prince would appear and throw out the French and bring peace, a peace where the ancient freedoms are preserved, just as they are in the rest of the Holy roman Empire.

Maximilian, hearing of the 1.2 million gulden, the support from the local populace and the physical attribute of his betrothed, set off in May. But it took him 3 months before he entered the great city of Ghent.

What has he been doing in the meantime? Well, the problem was that Maximilian understood full well what Marie and the Burgundians expected him to bring as a morning gift, aka a massive army of German supersoldiers. And he also knew that his father, under attack from Matthias Hunyadi, could not give him a massive army of German supersoldiers, in fact he could not spare a single man. All Friedrich could do was to call in favours, officially bestow the imperial fiefs on Marie and wish his son and soon to be daughter in law the best of luck.

Maximilian now travelled from one court to the next begging for men and money to defend the western border of the empire against the machinations of the French. But success eluded him. Louis had been busy bribing German princes not just to refuse help, but to stake their own claims. The king of Bohemia demanded Luxemburg, the Wittelsbachs Holland, Seeland and Hainault and  even cousin Sigismund of Tyrol, Maximilians closest surviving relative said no, whilst counting the 50,000 gulden Louis XI had given him and which he would undoubtably waste on more girls and guns.

Maximilian arrived in Ghent at the beginning of August 1477 with just 1,200 horse, many of those bought with Burgundian money. But many mighty princes and archbishops accompanied him and he himself was the business. Atop his palfrey, clad in white over his silver and gold armour, 18 years old, not really handsome, but physically strong, with a determined face, he appeared, as one chronicler said, like an angel descending from heaven. And Ghent did return the favour. The streets were covered in flowers, triumphal arches had been erected, the burghers hung their hugely valuable tapestries from their balconies and everywhere people shouted You are our duke and prince, defend us or, most unusual for the rebellious Ghent, one banner read, “Whatever you tell us to do, we will do it”.

Straight from the procession, Maximilian headed to Ten Walle, the ducal palace. Having passed through a line of torches he for the very first time encountered his bride. The reception now followed Burgundian court protocol with long speeches, praising each other’s lineage and fecundity. And then we move into something our boy from Styria may not have expected. His intended mother in law told him that Marie had hidden a carnation close to her heart, the symbol of pure love and good luck. To which he may have responded, oh, yeah, cool. But then his mother-in-law insisted that he should go and get it. Question mark, question mark? Maximilian had, had girlfriends before, but he was not used to opening lady’s corsets in public. But that is exactly what the archbishop of Trier now suggested he did….There is a Netherlandish picture of Maximilian in the Kunsthistorische Museum that shows him as a young man, holding a carnation , and frankly, looking utterly bewildered.

They got married the next day in a, by Burgundian standards, modest ceremony. The ongoing war, impending famine and the mourning period for Charles the Bold prevented a full display of the splendour of the greatest of the late medieval courts.

But that was not necessary, because these two, Maximilian and Marie hit it off like we have never seen before in a princely wedding. Maximilian wrote back to his friend, Prüschenk, and forgive me if I do this in German, but it just works that much better, quote: Ich hab ein schöns, froms tugendhafftigs Weib,….und dank Gott. Sie ist ..von leib klein, viel kleiner als die Rosina und schneweiss; ein pruns Haar, ein kleins Nasl, ein kleins heuptel und antlitz, praun undt grabe Augen gemischt, schön und lauter; dann das unter heutel an augen ist herdann gesenkt, gleich als sie geschlaffen hiet, doch es ist nit wohl zumerckhen. Der Mund ist etwas hoch doch rein und rot. Sonst vieler schöner Jungfrauen alls ich all miein tag einer gesehen hab, und frölich“ end quote.

I would like to translate that, but I can’t. Let’s just say that he describes all her little minor imperfections and then says that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. And for all his life he will profess his love to her. She appears in all his pseudoautobiographies as the lady he aspires to be worthy of, he has her depicted as the virgin in his altarpieces, in portraits, forever young, forever beautiful.

But there was none of that detached admiration thing that runs through chivalric literature. She was smart, decisive, and in these first months after her father’s death had shown enormous resilience, so he trusted her judgement. They worked together, and they played together. Both of them were mad about hunting, tournaments, music and dancing. She would ride along chasing boar, stag, fox and cheer him on when he was jousting with an opponent, danced with him at the mummeries he so loved. They were made for each other, and within barely a year she gave birth to a son, Philipp, named after her grandfather and the founder of the Burgundian dynasty.

So, all was great. Tu Felix Austria, Nube. All of Burgundy is now gone to the Habsburgs, the road to an empire where the sun never sets is wide open.

Well, don’t we forget something here? Ah, the army that Maximilian was supposed to bring. Where is that? Well, nowhere to be seen. All he had brought were 1,200 men against Louis XI’s army of 20,000 well trained and well equipped forces. And Louis was not going to give up on Burgundy. He could not. As long as Burgundy exists, every French king is in mortal danger. The war will go on, and next week we will see whether Maximilian can do more than woo an heiress. I hope you will join us again.

And those of you who feel for poor Maximilian who had to bow his head in shame, admitting to his beloved wife that unfortunately, he does not have the money and the power that she had expected, remember, you can put him back in the saddle at least here on this podcast. You know where to go and you know what to do.