Bart Van Loo - The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire

The

Burgundians

The

Burgundians

A Vanished Empire

A HISTORY OF 1111 YEARS AND ONE DAY

BART VAN LOO

TRANSLATED BY NANCY FOREST - FLIER

AN APOLLO BOOK

www.headofzeus.com

First published in the Netherlands as De Bourgondirs by De Bezige Bij in 2019

First published in English in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright Bart Van Loo, 2019

English translation copyright Nancy Forest-Flier, 2021

The moral right of Bart Van Loo to be identified as the author and of Nancy Forest-Flier to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (HB): 9781789543438

ISBN (E): 9781789543452

Head of Zeus Ltd

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This book was published with the support of Flanders Literature (flandersliterature.be).

Dedicated to my Burgundian spouse, who made her home in Flanders.

The author received a grant from Flanders Literature to support the writing of this book.

No vestige of fright

In the face of each knight,

But courtly and calm,

With steady aplomb,

They stare each other down.

Paul van Ostaijen: Ridderstijd
[The Age of Chivalry] from Music-Hall , 1916

a sky full of bloody red, heavy and desolate with
threatening lead-grey, full of a false copper lustre.

Johan Huizinga: Autumntide of the Middle Ages , 2020

and homesick with a pain that wont be quenched

to see the King for Whom Id longed to fight,

I stride towards Death

and he who hoped to be a man-at-arms

in that most passionate of bygone times,

must now report in long neglected words

on eras that have darkened into tales

bleak and fearsome of Crusades

and cathedrals.

Hendrik Marsman: Heimwee
[Homesickness] from Paradise Regained , 1927

En route to a scandalous joust,

in his iron accoutrements housed

he sings with a hushed virtuosity

of the world and its punctiliosity

thus describing himself to a fault

screwed into his ambulant vault.

Hugo Claus: Ridder [The Knight]
from Almanak , 1982

I
THE FORGOTTEN MILLENNIUM (4061369)

II
THE BURGUNDIAN CENTURY (13691467)

III
THE FATAL DECADE (146777)

IV
A DECISIVE YEAR (1482)

V
A MEMORABLE DAY
(20 October 1496)

Epilogue
THE LAST BURGUNDIAN

Gebicca

[mythical tribal king who, with his son Gundahar, united the various Burgundian kings under him, 407]

Gundahar

[king from 407 to 436, died in a battle with the Huns]

Gundioc

[43774, contemporary of Attila, who ruled from 434 to 454]

Chilperic

[47480]

Gundobad

[480516, ruled for a time with his brother Godegisel, whom he murdered, and later with his son Sigismund, contemporary of Clovis]

Sigismund

[51623]

Gundomar

[52334]

According to Burgundian tradition, power was passed on to the next generation only when the last representative of the previous generation died. Sometimes brothers would reign together for a few years, which often led to fatal conflicts (as with Gundobad and Godegisel). Strictly speaking there were two kingdoms, with a discernible break between the slaughter by Aetius and the Huns in 436 on the one hand and the subsequent flight from Worms to the south on the other. I chose to regard them as one kingdom because in the end it was the same royal family that held sway, albeit over two different regions. It was from the southern region that the medieval and present-day Burgundy would develop.

PLANTAGENET

Edward III (132777)

Richard II (137799)

LANCASTER

Henry IV (13991413)

Henry V (141322)

Henry VI (142261)

(Henry V was a brother of John of Bedford
and Humphrey of Gloucester)

YORK

Edward IV (146183, briefly interrupted by the
return of Henry VI from October 1470 to April 1471)

Edward V (king for two months)

Richard III (148385)

(Edward IV and Richard III were brothers of
Margaret of York, the wife of Charles the Bold)

TUDOR

Henry VII (14851509)

Henry VIII (150947)

Sigismund of Luxembourg (141137)

Albert II of Habsburg (143739)

Frederick III (144093)

Maximilian of Austria (14931519)

Charles V (151956)

SPAIN

Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile (14741504)

Philip the Handsome and Joanna the Mad (150406)

Joanna the Mad until 1555, but not considered able to reign, so the regency was assumed by Ferdinand II and then Charles I (who was Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor, but the first King Charles in Spain)

POPES

Based in Rome until 1305. In Avignon from 1305 to 1378. In 1378 back in Rome, but with antipopes in Avignon until 1417. From 1409 to 1415 there were three popes, the third with his seat in Pisa. From 1417 on a single pope in Rome once again.