CHAPTER NINE

THE CITY DEFEATED AND DEFENDED. CIVISM AS POLITICAL IDENTITY IN THE HABSBURG-BURGUNDIAN

Peter Arnade

In June 1467 Charles, count of Charolais succeeded Philip the Good as . Aft er a short period of mourning for his father, Charles prepared for his political inauguration by visiting various counties and dukedoms. Instead of a grand liturgy of acclamation upon his assumption of Philip the Good’s titles, Charles confronted urban grief. Entering Ghent on June 28, 1467 as the new count of Flanders, he clashed with pilgrims returning from the annual translation of the relics of the popular Saint Lieven. To make matters worse, trouble broke out elsewhere, the upshot of old quarrels never settled. With the old Duke Philip dead, the powerhouse territory of Brabant and its States immediately began discussions about a way to wangle conces- sions from Charles as a precondition of accepting his lordship. Th ey even debated off ering sovereignty to another prince if their demands were not met. Although this did not happen, Charles’s inaugural visit to Mechelen on July 3 sparked internal turmoil and violence soon aft er the duke’s departure, and Antwerp openly quarrelled with the new duke on the eve of his September 5 entry into the city.1 It was radicals in the prince-bishopric of Liège, however, who most angered the new duke, so much so that war soon broke out. Despite a spirited resistance, Liège surrendered on 12 November 1467 when its radical party crumbled and Burgundian forces entered the city. Th e punishment was severe. Th e city’s walls and gates were dismantled, its houses raided, and its citizens violently assaulted. As punishment, a civic delegation of 340 men performed an amende honorable before the duke, a penitential ritual in which the defeated knelt in their

1 On the Ghent revolt, see Peter Arnade, ‘Secular charisma, sacred power. Rites of rebellion in the Ghent entry of 1467’, Handelingen der Maatschappij voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde te Gent 45 (1992), 69–94. 196 peter arnade undergarments before a triumphant duke to beg his forgiveness.2 A costly peace was brokered. Charles confi scated the city’s prized char- ters of rights and privileges, and had its monument of urban pride, the Perron, removed to Bruges.3 It is all the more amazing that less than a year later in September 1468 the Liègois would revolt anew as return- ing exiles stubbornly provoked trouble. Th is time, Charles disregarded any attempt at reconciliation, foregoing the rhetoric of clemency so important to late-medieval sovereigns. When the city was recaptured on 30 October 1468, soldiers were given a free hand to loot it. Even the churches were turned inside out, though Charles later required the ecclesiastical loot to be inventoried and returned, and famously pro- tected the relics of Saint Lambert.4 One soldier in Charles’s pay wrote that the city was so systematically plundered that he could barely fi nd paper upon which to write his impressions of the horror.5 Charles the Bold’s troubled early reign was a rude reminder that despite his father’s endeavours to command a royal title—a campaign Charles famously intensifi ed—urban defi ance was the Achilles heel of princely authority in the Burgundian .6 Cities in the Low Countries considered themselves as standard-bearers of a political tradition that emphasised their rights and privileges and the authority of the provincial States in which they wielded considerable power. Urban revolts directed against dynastic princes and again municipal

2 For the uses of the honorable amende elsewhere, see Peter Arnade, Realms of ritual. Burgundian ceremony and civic life in late medieval Ghent (Ithaca, 1996), 119–120 and for the southern Low Countries more generally, Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, La ville des cérémonies. Essai sur la communication politique dans les anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons (Turnhout, 2004), 302–311. 3 For the sentence of 28 November 1467, see Recueil des ordonnances de la prin- cipauté de Liège. Première série, 974–1506, ed. Stanislas Bormans (Brussels, 1878), 617–628. 4 A. Marchandisse, I. Vrancken-Pirson and J.L. Kupper, ‘La destruction de la ville de Liège et sa reconstruction’, in Destruction et reconstruction de villes, du Moyen Âge à nos jours. Actes colloque international (Spa 1996), Crédit Communal 100 (Brussels, 1999), 69–96. Compelling accounts of the two Liège uprisings, and its destruction, are Henrici de Merica, Compendiosa Historia de Cladibus Leodiensium, in Documents relatifs aux troubles du Pays de Liége sous les princes-évêques Louis de Bourbon et Jean de Horne, 1455–1505, ed. P.F. de Ram (Brussels, 1844), 135–183 and Th eodoricus Pauli, Historia de Cladibus Leodiensium in ibidem, 188-232, esp. 223–224 on the ran- sacking of religious houses and the fi nal sack of the city. 5 Letter of Antoine de Loisey, dated 3 November 1468, in Régestes de la cité de Liège, ed. Émile Fairon, 4 vols. (Liège, 1939), IV, 302–304. 6 Wim Blockmans, ‘La répression des révoltes urbaines comme méthode de cen- tralisation dans les Pays-Bas bourguignons’, Publication du Centre européen d’études bourguignonnes (XIVe–XVIe s.) 28 (1988), 5–9.