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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Charles the Bold Biography CHARLES THE BOLD (trans. of Fr. Charles le Téméraire) (1433-77). The last Duke of Burgundy. He was the son of Philip the Good, of the house of Valois, and of Isabella of Portugal, and was born in Dijon, Nov. 10, 1433. During his father's life he bore the title of Count of Charolais. He was of a fiery, ambitious, and violent disposition. From an early period to the end of his life he was a declared enemy of Louis XI of France, the nominal feudal superior of Burgundy, and when Louis caused Philip to deliver up some towns on the Somme, Charles left his father's court and formed an alliance with the Duke of Brittany and some of the great nobles of France for the maintenance of feudal rights against the crown. Their forces ravaged Picardy and Ile de France, threatened Paris, and defeated the King at Montlhéry (1465). The result was a treaty by which the Count of Charolais obtained the towns on the Somme and the counties of Boulogne, Guines, and Ponthieu for himself. In 1467 he succeeded his father as Duke of Burgundy. The Burgundian realm comprised Flanders, Brabant, and nearly all the rest of the Netherlands, in addition to Burgundy and Franche-Comté. Richer and more powerful than any other prince of his time, Charles the Bold conceived the design of restoring the old Kingdom of Burgundy, which involved the conquest of Lorraine, Provence, Dauphiny, and part of Switzerland. War raged between him and France afterward with but little intermission till 1475. In September of that year Charles found himself at leisure to attempt the prosecution of his favorite scheme of conquest and soon made himself master of Lorraine. In the following year he invaded Switzerland, stormed Granson, but was soon after terribly defeated by the Swiss near that place and lost his baggage and much treasure. Three months later he appeared again in Switzerland with a new army of 25,000 men and laid siege to Morat, where he sustained in June, 147 6, another and still more overwhelming defeat. Nevertheless he refused to listen to terms and laid siege to Nancy in the fall of 1476. His army was small, and, in a battle fought on Jan. 5, 1477, before that town, he was overwhelmed by René of Lorraine and his Swiss mercenaries and lost his life. His daughter and heiress, Mary, married the Emperor Maximilian I. With his life ended the long resistance of the great French vassals to the power of the centralized monarchy. Consult Kirk, History of Charles the Bold (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1864-68), and Lavisse, Histoire de France, vol. iv (Paris, 1902). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. V (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 73-74. |