Spilt Wine

45. The Burgundy

I pointed across the room to the bookshelves. "There's an old volume on French history over there that I used to read on my visits. It has wonderful maps which will give better sense to my story."

"Go get it, then." Catherine grimaced in pain as she rose from lying on my lap.

"Sure you're okay? Do you need to return to the hospital? Maybe have a doctor come and examine you."

"I'm fine. It's just the bruised muscles." She placed her hands on her belly and pressed. "The doctor said they will be sore to use for a while. Go get the book."

A short while later, after I had returned and Catherine had again settled with her head in my lap, I thumbed through the book to a map I remembered. "This will help your understanding."

While she examined it, I quietly spoke, "Okay ... Where do I start? The Dukes had built the Burgundy into the wealthiest and the most cultured region in Europe, and its influence was steadily growing, its territory expanding. The future King Charles VII of France felt threatened.

"The Duke's family had for generations married very well, linking noble families through much of western Europe. Philippe used family ties and the great wealth from generations of prosperity to expand the Burgundian reach. A decade into his reign he purchased Namur in the southern Netherlands from one of his relatives. A few years later, through war settlement, he acquired Holland, Friesland and Zeeland in the lowlands at the mouths of the Rhine and Meuse Rivers. He inherited the Duchies of Brabant and Limberg and the region around Antwerp on the death of a cousin. In the 1440s he purchased Luxembourg –"

"It sounds as if he assembled Europe like Burgundy families here now assemble vineyards into domains."

"I like that." I gave her a wide smile. "Can I use it?"

"Sure, I thought you'd like it ... But back to the story."

"Yes ... Anyway, by the time of his death in 1467, he was the most influential ruler in Europe. His court was seen as the most splendid, the Burgundy was Europe's centre of music, and it became the accepted leader of taste and of fashion. This fed the Burgundian economy as their luxury products were sought by the elites throughout the continent. Many of the luxury products were from Flanders where oil painting and other fine arts were flourishing. The Burgundy was the centre of art and culture long before the cobwebs began being disturbed in Florence and Venice with the Italian Renaissance. Oil paints were introduced to Italy from the Burgundian Netherlands in the 1460s."

Catherine looked up into my eyes and said, "The history I was taught in school missed these things. We were told the Italian Renaissance was the beginning of European culture."

"That's the Church – the popes much later began manipulating history to add to their power. The papacy had left Rome for what is now France in the early 1300s. Then, there was the struggle of the schism until the early 1400s. The Roman popes began to emphasise all things Italian and diminish any French influence."

I breathed a contented sigh as I looked down at her lying across my lap. "The Italian Renaissance thing is what I was taught by the nuns. But, back to the story of Philippe-le-Bon. During his reign, the Hospices de Beaune was built, a huge charitable hospital for the people. That was in 1443, the year he had bought Luxembourg. He was a benevolent ruler, thus the name, Philippe-the-Good."

"And after his death in the 1460s ... What happened to the Burgundy? Was there still good?"

"His son, Charles the Bold succeeded in 1467, consolidating the family holdings and expanding them, acquiring the Alsace among other territories. Burgundy's size then rivalled France to its west and the Habsburg Empire to its east, and it exceeded them in most other ways. He began a campaign to acquire the Lorraine to link his Duchy to the Burgundian territories in the north: Luxembourg, Flanders and the Netherlands. Louis, the King of France, felt threatened and negotiated with the Duke of Lorraine, some of the Habsburg dukes, Swiss free towns and others to band together against Charles. He was killed in battle in the Lorraine, at Nancy in 1477."

"And after he was killed? What happened to the Burgundy?"

"Immediately after his death, King Louis sent troops to Dijon in a ploy to protect Charles' daughter Mary, now the new Duchess of Burgundy. She was just nineteen and unmarried. The King was trying to get her to marry his son and finally bring the Burgundy and its vast holdings into the Kingdom of France. Mary fled north, and several months later, she married Archduke Maximilian of Austria, to whom she had much earlier been betrothed. The Burgundy lands, which had become the buffering boundary between France and the Germanic Habsburg Empire, fell to the Habsburg side.

"France seized the Duchy of Burgundy. Most of its most skilled, talented and wealthy people fled northward to Flanders and the Netherlands, and in the following century, they helped build that region into the richest and most influential in Europe. Alsace, Lorraine and southern Flanders continued for centuries as disputed territories, and the struggle for their possession sparked many wars, including the two World Wars this century."

Catherine squeezed my arm lightly, "So, Philippe was called the Good, Charles was the Bold, what was Mary called?"

"Mary the Rich."

"You love history, don't you? I see your eyes alive, your face full of energy as you tell me things like this."

"I couldn't stand history in school." I shook my head and winced. "My teachers and their teaching methods made it so boring."