Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance

432

William Monter

A Bewitched Duchy

Lorraine and its Dukes
1477-1736

LIBRAIRIE DROZ S.A.

11, rue Massot

GENÈVE

2007

Mentions légales

Résumé

Situé aux frontières linguistique et politique entre la France et le Saint-Empire, l’état tampon de la Lorraine a maintenu une neutralité précaire depuis la défaite de Charles le téméraire en 1477 jusqu’à la Guerre de Trente Ans. Entravée par le cardinal de Richelieu pendant les années 1630, l’autonomie politique de la Lorraine ne fut perdue qu’un siècle plus tard et le dernier duc de Lorraine se réfugia chez les Habsbourg. A Bewitched Duchy est la première histoire de Lorraine en langue anglaise.

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**

Abstract

Drawing on basic archival sources in Paris and Vienna as well as those in Lorraine itself, William Monter (Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University and a well-known historian of early modern western Europe) offers the first English-language history of this important European buffer state. From the defeat of Charles the Bold in 1477 to the marriage of its last duke with the Habsburg heiress Maria Theresa 260 years later, the united duchies of Lorraine and Bar straddled both the linguistic and political boundaries between France and the Holy Roman Empire, maintaining a precarious neutrality between them until the Thirty Years War.

Monter blends a political account of its ruling dynasty with the history of Lorraine’s unusually extensive involvement with punishing witches (not to mention homicidal pigs!), and demonstrates how they had converged by the time Cardinal Richelieu permanently crippled Lorraine’s political autonomy in the 1630s -- starting a process which took the French more than a century to complete, while Lorraine’s ruling dynasty fled to the Habsburgs.

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ISBN-10 : 2-600-01165-X

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ISSN : 0082-6081

Copyright (2007) by Librairie Droz S.A., 11, rue Massot, Genève.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements 

9

Abbreviations

13

Preface

15

1. In the French orbit, 1477-1523

21

2. Fragile neutrality

39

3. Lorraine at its apogee: Charles III

59

4. Epigoni and exorcisms

85

5. A “bewitched duchy” collapses, 1625-1634

103

6. Four French occupations

123

7. Three trips to Vienna

141

Conclusion

159

Appendices:

1. 

Liber Omnium

(1582)

165

2. Pigs executed in Lorraine and Bar, 1477-1670

171

Index

173

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project began during the academic year 2000-2001 as an investigation of the political background to Lorraine’s witchcraft prosecutions, funded by a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and assisted by a residential fellowship at the Camargo Foundation. Thanks to numerous brief opportunities for further on-site research during my service as Secretary to the European Science Foundation’s program on “Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400-1700,” it has continued after my retirement from Northwestern University in 2002, but changed its emphasis because of the absence of any political history of early modern Lorraine that transcends outdated French and German nationalist biases. Today’s federated Europe deserves something more suitable, preferably composed in its most widely-read language. I have only sampled the widely-dispersed major holdings about the history of early modern Lorraine and its ruling house – although I have read enough to appreciate the daunting scope of my topic and hope that this essay can help orient future studies.

Every scholar is deeply indebted to capable predecessors, and some aspects of Lorraine’s early modern history have been handled by twentieth-century local historians with laudable skill. A survey of the articles published in its leading academic journal, the

Annales de l’Est

, since its creation after World War II confirms that the two best-served specialties have been Lorraine’s economic history

1

and its post-Tridentine religious history.

2

However, the political history of the autonomous duchies of Lorraine and Bar has attracted few major talents. Perhaps its last genuine local luminary was an eighteenth-century erudite Benedictine, Dom Augustin Calmet, whom Voltaire simultaneously respected and ridiculed. Mid-nineteenth-century Lorraine produced some notable epigoni, particularly Auguste Digot’s multi-volume historical

aggiornamento

based on Calmet,

3

and baron Othenin d’Haussonville’s multi-volume study of Lorraine’s gradual absorption into France, which drew heavily on the

archives of the French ministry of foreign affairs.

4

As the footnotes to this essay testify, much valuable scholarly work about Lorraine’s political history has been published since the mid-nineteenth century under the auspices of the local

Société d’archéologie lorraine

, driven originally by a tireless local archivist, Henri Lepage.

Dynastic history requires biographies. Although lives of its last ‘local’ ruler, Stanislas Leczynski, done mainly by locals, appear with monotonous regularity, Lorraine’s other rulers from preceding centuries still await theirs. René II, the victor of 1477, Venetian

condottiere

and founder of the united duchy of Lorraine-Bar; Antoine

le bon

, who defeated the Alsatian peasants and established the neutrality of his possessions during the chronic wars between his French and German suzerains; Charles III, who ruled Lorraine for almost fifty years and schemed to claim the French throne; even Charles IV, who dethroned his own wife in a

coup d’état

, spent many years imprisoned in Spain, and was expelled from his duchy twice by the French – none of them has tempted twentieth-century biographers.

Apart from random debris from the old duchy’s state papers, what remains most useful for Lorraine’s political history is primarily its unusually rich series of financial records, which the French monarchy kept in their original location primarily in order to collect taxes more effectively. Special thanks in my exploration of Lorraine’s history are owed first to M. Hubert Collin, the very obliging director, and his staff at Nancy’s Archives Départementales de Meurthe-et-Moselle, who facilitated my access to its variety of fiscal and political source materials. Local historians have exploited these fiscal sources to reconstruct Lorraine’s early modern demographic history; but because it lacks such conventional sources for political history as well-ordered diplomatic correspondence, Lorraine’s central treasury records, which are almost complete between 1520 and 1633, have also provided invaluable evidence for revealing various aspects of its political history.

5

Lorraine’s archives preserve traces of over a thousand witch-trials, which have attracted considerable attention from both local and foreign historians, most recently Robin Briggs of Oxford.

6

If anyone rash enough to investigate

Lorraine’s political history in the Old Regime faces the daunting task of reconstructing a puzzle whose key pieces often survive in Paris or Vienna, the task of investigating Lorraine’s early modern witchcraft prosecutions offers the practical advantage of exploring records concentrated at Nancy and nearby Bar-le-Duc. Although both Lorraine and Bar possessed centralized judicial institutions, neither duchy preserves an archival series that one could properly label judicial; therefore, all our information about witch-trials – including the secret trials manipulated by its rulers -necessarily comes from fiscal sources.

An author always appreciates opportunities to try out some of his ideas and arguments in front of informed and critical audiences; for such invitations I must thank my European colleagues Louis Chatellier at Nancy, Wolfgang Behringer (then at the University of York), and Rita Voltmer at Trier; and to my American colleagues at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Preparing a contribution for a Festschrift

7

and offering an article to a new journal

8

have greatly helped my efforts to organize a recalcitrant topic. Exemplary collegial co-operation with this project has come from my predecessor in sifting and explaining Lorraine’s witchcraft trials Robin Briggs of All Souls College, Oxford. Serving on the doctoral jury of Maryse Simon at the University of Strasbourg provided invaluable exchanges with him and with my ESF Director, Robert Muchembled, another witchcraft expert of far longer acquaintance. My warmest thanks go to Josef and Isa Konvitz for offering hospitality and helpful suggestions in Paris, and to Erik Thomson of the University of Chicago for timely bibliographical help. As always, it is first and foremost the patience, forbearance, support and indispensable help from my wife Rosellen that has enabled me to complete this project.

William MONTER Wilmette (IL), January 2007

p.9

1

The outstanding work is Cabourdin’s

Terre et hommes

(above, n. 2).

2

The classic thesis of René Taveneaux,

Le jansenisme en Lorraine, 1640-1789

(Paris, 1960) began a tradition continued by his successor at the University of Nancy, Louis Chatrellier.

3

Digot,

Histoire de Lorraine

, 6 vols. (Nancy, 1856).

p.10

4

d’Haussonville,

Réunion,

4 vols. (Paris, 1860). Parisian archives have recently been mined to create a 400-page study of Cardinal Richelieu’s policies towards Lorraine: Marie-Catherine Vignal Souleyreau,

Richelieu et la Lorraine

(Paris, 2004).

5

Marie-José Laperche-Fournel,

La Population du Duché de Lorraine de 1580 à 1720

(Nancy, 1985).

6

Most notably Etienne Delcambre’s three volumes known as

Le Concept de la sorcellerie dans le Duché de Lorraine aux V

e

et XVII

e

siècles

 :

L’Initiation à la Sorcellerie et le Sabbat

(Nancy, 1948);

Les Maléfices et la Vie supranormale des Sorciers

(Nancy, 1949); and

Les Devins-guérisseurs dans la Lorraine ducale: Leur Activité et leurs Méthodes

(Nancy, 1951), published by the Société d’Archéologie Lorraine in its

Receuil de documents sur l’histoire de Lorraine

. See also

idem

., Les procès de sorcellerie en Lorraine: psychologie des juges,” in

Revue d’histoire du droit

21 (1953), and “La psychologie des inculpés lorrains de sorcellerie,” in

Revue d’histoire du droit français et étranger

, (1954). The outstanding current expert is Oxford’s Robin Briggs,

Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft

(London and New York, 1996). See also his chapters on Lorraine in his earlier work,

Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France

(Oxford, 1989).

p.11

7

“

Tu, Felix Lotharingia, Nube

.” in S. Ehrenpreis and U. Lotz-Heumann, eds.,

Festschrift für Heinz Schilling zum 65. Geburtstag

(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007).

8

“Financial Sources for Witch-Trials,” in

Magic Religion and Witchcraft,

vol. 2 (2007).

ABBREVIATIONS

ARCHIVES

ADMM Archives Départementales Meurthe et Moselle, Nancy

ADM Archives Départementales de la Meuse, Bar-le-Duc

ADV Archives Départementales des Vosges, Epinal

BNCL Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Collection de Lorraine

BNP Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

HHSA, LH Haus-, Hofund Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Lothringisches Hausarchiv

REGIONAL HISTORICAL JOURNALS

MSAL

Mémoires de la Sociéte d’archéologie lorraine

Series 1, vols. 1-8 (1849-1858); series 2, vols. 1-14 (1859-1872);
series 3, vols. 1-28 (1873-1900); series 4, vols. 1-25 (1901-1939).

JSAL

Journal de la Société d’archéologie lorraine

(1845-1900, vols. 1-49)

BSAL

Bulletin de la Société d’archéologie lorraine

(continuation, 2d series, 1901-1929, vols. 50-73)

RHL

Revue historique de la Lorraine

(continuation, 3d series, 1930-1939, vols. 74-83)

AE Annales de l’Est

(1950-present)

BOOKS

Cabourdin,

Temps Modernes

= Guy Cabourdin, ed.,

Les Temps Modernes

, 2 vols. (Nancy: Presses Universitaires, 1990-91 : collection

Encyclopédie Illustrée de la Lorraine

), I.

De la Renaissance à la guerre de Trente ans

; 2.

De la paix de Westphalie à la fin de l’Ancien régime

.

Poull,

Maison

= Georges Poull,

La maison ducale de Lorraine-Habsbourg, devenue la Maison impériale et royale d’Autriche, de Hongrie et de Bohème,

preface by H. Collin (Nancy: Presses Universitaires, 1991).

D’Haussonville,

Réunion

= Baron Othenin d’Haussonville,

La réunion de la Lorraine à la France

, 4 vols. (Paris, 1860).

Cullière

, Ecrivains

= Alain Cullière,

Les Ecrivains et le pouvoire en Lorraine au XVI

e

siècle

(Paris: Librairie H. Champion, 1999).

PREFACE

The modern history of the Duchy of Lorraine begins in 1477, when an army formed primarily of German-speaking Swiss infantry and subsidized by the French king ‘liberated’ it from the cosmopolitan forces of the famous Burgundian duke Charles the Bold, who was killed at the battle just outside its capital of Nancy. The chief beneficiary from this event, Lorraine’s young duke René II, soon afterwards acquired the duchy of Bar, bordering Lorraine to the west. René’s final testament declared that both duchies would be joined permanently, thereby creating one of western Europe’s more important mid-sized states, whose dukes remained politically significant for over 250 years. Balanced delicately between two extremely powerful neighbors, the king of France and the Holy Roman Emperor, to both of whom they owed homage, they maintained complete independence for over a century and finally relinquished their state only after marrying a Habsburg heiress.

“What does the public know about Lorraine’s past?” rhetorically asked a recent French author, immediately responding “Not very much, one must admit.”

9

There is much corroborative evidence for this assertion.

10

France finally annexed Lorraine 250 years ago after several preliminary attempts, but she has also contributed to the difficulties of writing its history.

11

And if Lorraine’s history remains underdeveloped, that of Bar, the smaller adjoining duchy to which it was permanently united in 1506, truly suffers from flagrant neglect.

The contemporary situation of their respective princely residences provides an eloquent symbolic contrast. The one at Nancy now houses Lorraine’s major historical museum and gets three stars in the

Guide Michelin,

while its crumbling counterpart at Bar-le-Duc is also a museum but earns no stars.

During the golden age of the nation-state between 1789 and 1945, Lorraine’s intermediate location between France and Germany provided additional complications for experts trying to understand its modern history (like the old duchy itself, they have been mainly French but with a significant German minority). As recently as 1994, a German historian began his excellent study of Lorraine’s late seventeenth-century involvement in

Germania Sacra

with the tart but accurate observation that “the history of Lorraine’s dynasty has been treated in equally stepmotherly fashion by both French and German research.”

12

However, sixty years of mutual cooperation between France and Germany have now made it possible to imagine a more ‘European’ perspective on this subject. In this case, being an author who is neither French or German obviously brings different nuances of neutrality, which should not be confused with impartiality.

Its mixed Franco-German situation helped make early modern Lorraine a crossroads for Europe’s ruling dynasties. Its traditional capital still celebrates its most famous local ruler, a twice-dethroned eighteenth-century king of Poland named Stanislas Leczynski, whose statue dominates Nancy’s exquisitely harmonious main square. His most colorful predecessor (who, like Leczynski, was parachuted in and never enjoyed complete authority) was a larger-than-life princess named Christine of Denmark, twice widowed by age 23, who governed Lorraine for several years in the mid-sixteenth-century. It seems completely typical that the first contact with Lorraine’s capital encountered at random by an economic historian exploring the duchy’s links with the mid-sixteenth-century metropolis of Antwerp concerned a cask of smoked ham and sugar sent to her, the new Duchess of Bar, via a Genoese merchant in 1542 ; more than twenty years later, after she had returned as a dowager Duchess of Lorraine, another Italian was purchasing jewelry for her at Antwerp.

13

But, illustrating why Lorraine too often remains a “bewitched duchy,” Christine’s two twentieth-century biographers studied her life and career through entirely different collections of sources. Before World War I, an Italophile English-woman drew heavily on Belgian and Italian sources; she even located bits of Christine’s “state papers” at a private library near Pavia among the documents

left by her confidential Italian secretary, who was probably murdered at Nancy in 1552.

14

However, this author never explored the archives of Lorraine, the only place actually governed by her subject. Meanwhile, a subsequent biography by a local expert was based overwhelmingly on local information and completely ignored his predecessor, probably because he could not read the language in which she wrote.

15

Although fascinated by Leczynski, Lorraine’s historians generally record little about this equally-cosmopolitan personage. For example, Chistine is by far the most important figure of Lorraine’s political history whose portrait is absent from the otherwise superbly-illustrated relevant volume in the

Encylopédie illustrée de la Lorraine

— although Holbein’s portrait of her as a girl of seventeen hangs in England’s National Gallery, while a miniature of her made in 1558, attributed to Clouet, is in Belgium, and an older version, representing Christine alongside two other princesses, belongs to Madrid’s Prado. This princess, twice widowed by age 23, once had her extensive titles inscribed on the gate of a salt mine (the financial pillars of Lorraine’s rulers), which she had had restored to working order: “by the grace of God Queen of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Sovereign of the Goths, Vandals and Slavonians, Duchess of Schleswig, Dittmarsch, Lorraine, Bar and Milan, Countess of Oldenburg and Blamont, and Lady of Tortona.”

16

Note that Lorraine (where the salt mine was located) and Bar ranked third and fourth on Christine’s list of duchies; even Blamont, her dower in Lorraine where she was then living, only came second in her ranking of counties. But it is also symptomatic that the inscription itself has long since disappeared. One certainly cannot call the united duchies of Lorraine and Bar a ‘failed state,’ but it does not seem inappropriate to describe them as a ‘lost state’ of early modern Europe.

A major reason for the underdevelopment of Lorraine’s political history is the geographical dispersion of its state archives. Although rarely as widely scattered as Christine’s personal records, they still resemble a gigantic jigsaw puzzle scattered in several different places, usually far removed from each other; and even under the best of conditions, they fit together imperfectly because so many pieces have disappeared. The fundamental explanation is that after 1635, the history of the duchies of Lorraine and Bar and the history of its ruling house have basically followed separate trajectories. After several lengthy occupations (1635-61, 1670-97, 1702-14, 1737-66), their inhabitants finally became subjects of

the French king, whereas their ruling house eventually migrated to the court of France’s Habsburg opponents in Vienna, where they found shelter during the Thirty Years’ War, military glory in the age of Louis XIV, and where Lorraine’s last duke ultimately attained the rank of Holy Roman Emperor in 1745.

A recent diagram

17

outlines the consequent fate of Lorraine’s state papers after 1634, when Richelieu’s army captured its key central archives, which had been sent for safekeeping to the fortress of La Mothe in the duchy of Bar. The French sent this valuable booty to the famous

Sainte-Chapelle

of the Paris Parlement, where it remained for thirty years, accompanied by other key documents culled next year from the remaining documents at Nancy by a famous French jurist, Theodore Godefroy, in what Lorraine’s current archivist describes as a “state theft” (

larcin d’état

). Many of these records still remain in Paris, dispersed among six different locations, while other portions were returned in 1665 during the brief restoration of duke Charles IV. The amputated central archives were soon recaptured at the next French invasion in 1670 and moved to the Parlement of Metz, where Louis XIV’s jurists manipulated them in order to create their notorious “reunions” of lost French fiefs. Returned after Lorraine’s next restoration in 1697, the remaining archives were divided at the resignation of duke François III when he agreed to exchange Lorraine for Tuscany in 1737. A thousand volumes went to Paris, where most of them form the “Collection de Lorraine” at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The remainder, including numerous original “private” documents of Lorraine’s rulers in this era were sent to Florence, but soon moved to Vienna after the last Duke’s wife, Maria Theresa, inherited her father’s lands in 1740. In 1923 the Austrian Republic eventually returned most of these, considered more “public” than “private,” to Nancy. However, over 225 cartons relating to Lorraine’s dukes remain today as the

Lothringisches Hausarchiv

in Vienna’s

Haus-Hof-und Staatsarchiv

, accompanied by about 450 original official documents from the twelfth century to 1753 forming the

Lothrinigische Urkunden.

Over half of these are dated between 1477 and 1730 ; fifty of them cover the first two reigns studied in this essay, providing valuable information about a sketchily-documented period

.

18

Today, early modern Lorraine is arguably better known for its witch-trials than for its political history. Although these topics have never been treated together, the exercise of juxtaposing the history of this Franco-German buffer state with one of western Europe’s most extensive recorded witchcraft persecutions gives a particular flavor to the history of a “bewitched duchy.” Its earliest recorded witchcraft executions occurred only eight months after the battle of Nancy; more than a century and a half later, Cardinal Richelieu’s

blitzkrieg

simultaneously crippled Lorraine’s political autonomy and stopped its witch-trials. Almost midway between these events, an elaborate compromise about criminal jurisdiction between Lorraine’s duke and many local lords who claimed rights of high justice was negotiated at a little-noticed Estates General in August 1569. It triggered a surge of recorded witch-trials, beginning abruptly in 1570 and continuing without interruption for over sixty years. However (again illustrating how Lorraine’s history remains ‘bewitched’), the local archivist who described this negotiation magisterially in 1952

19

never connected it to the history of Lorraine’s witchcraft prosecutions, about which he had recently published three densely-researched volumes.

p.15

9

Henry Bogdan,

La Lorraine des ducs. Sept siècles d’histoire

(Paris: Perrin, 2005), 9.

10

For example, the official editors appointed by the

Société d’Histoire de France

to prepare the final volume of Cardinal Richelieu’s Memoirs, mistakenly corrected the manuscript concerning a complaint by Lorraine’s duke in 1629 that “the Pope and every prince in Christendom except the French king gave his father [not “brother”, as the “correction” claims] the title of duke.” (Richelieu,

Mémoires

, X, 131 and n. 1). The Parisian experts had not consulted the huge “Collection de Lorraine” at their National Library, which would have reassured them that the duke was indeed complaining about his father’s claim to be titled Duke François II.

11

A Paris-based historian with experience in Lorraine (a rare occurrence) provided some useful details to contextualize a local study of Duke Leopold’s unusually thorough census of 1708 : Michel Antoine, “A propos des dénombrements de population des duchés de Lorraine et de Bar sous le règne de Léopold,” in

AE

(1953), 79-85, complementing François Visine, “Préface à l’étude de quelques elements statistiques relatifs aux duchés de Lorraine et de Bar en 1708,” in

ibid

. (1950), 171-206.

p.16

12

Herbert Wolf

, Die Reichskirchenpolitik des Hauses Lothringen (1680-1715

) (Stuttgart, 1994), 7 :

Die geschichte der lothringischen Dynastie wird von den französichen und deutschen Forschung gleichermassen stiefmutterlich behandeln

.

13

Emile Coornaert, “Le commerce de la Lorraine vu d’Anvers à la fin du XV

e

et au XVI

e

siècle,” in

AE

(1950), 114-15.

p.17

14

Julia Cartwright,

Christine of Denmark, Duchess of Milan and Lorraine 1522-1590

(London and New York, 1913), 347-48, 375.

15

Compare Cartwright’s biography with Emile Duvernoy,

Chrétienne de Danemark, duchesse de Lorraine

(Nancy, 1940).

16

Recorded by Lorraine’s famous 18

th

-century historian, Dom Calmet (quoted by Cartwright, 472).

p.18

17

Hubert Collin, G

uide des Archives de Meurthe-et-Moselle

, 2 vols. (Nancy 1984-2002), II, p. 312.

18

For example, the largest documentary collection concerning Duke Charles IV’s persistent but futile attempts to nullify his 1621 marriage fills three thick cartons in Vienna and contains about 1800 pages (HHSA, LH, K 32-34). Since France tried to prevent its nullification, a 450-page bound volume in the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs covers much of the same ground (Archives du Ministère des affaires étrangères, Paris, Documents Historiques, Lorraine 6). Another 150 pages of information about Charles’ earlier efforts to nullify his marriage lies at Nancy among the five hundred volumes forming the so-called

Fonds de Vienne

(ADMM, 3 F 425, fols. 105-286).

p.19

19

Etienne Delcambre, “Les ducs et la noblesse lorraine, 3 : la compétence en matière criminelle de l’échevinage de Nancy,” in

AE

(1952), 191-209.

CHAPTER 1
IN THE FRENCH ORBIT, 1477-1523

VICTORY AT NANCY

On a frozen field slightly east of Lorraine’s capital, the most significant battle fought in this region for several centuries ended in early January 1477 with a decisive victory for the formidable Swiss infantry. But its major political beneficiary was Duke René II of Lorraine, who commanded a few thousand cavalry drawn largely from his own subjects. The victory enabled him to reclaim control of his duchy from its recent occupier – western Europe’s richest, most powerful, feared, and envied prince, Charles the Bold of Burgundy. For the young duke of Lorraine, who had acquired the territory from his mother in 1473, the victory was a very close thing. After he changed sides to oppose Charles of Burgundy, his duchy had been invaded and his capital occupied in November 1475. A euphoric Duke of Burgundy had thereby acquired a strategic block of territory which would enable him to connect his northern possessions in the Low Countries with his southern possessions, the “two Burgundies.”

What made the battle of Nancy so decisive was that it abruptly ended Burgundian power because its Duke died on the battlefield, leaving a young girl as his heiress. His fall was sudden and sharp. Only fourteen months before his partly-frozen corpse was extracted from a pond a few miles away, Charles the Bold – dressed in the flamboyant finery characteristic of Burgundian dukes and surrounded by such luminaries as a Papal legate, a Milanese ambassador, the son of the king of Naples, a Norman bishop, a German lord, and various dignitaries from the Order of the Golden Fleece – had given a triumphant and almost megalomaniac speech to Lorraine’s Estates-General at Nancy; some observers claim he even hinted at making Nancy his new capital.

1

The Swiss consider the battle of Nancy as merely a concluding postscript to their crushing defeat of Charles the Bold at Morat in 1476, after he had invaded their territory; the dispossessed Duke of Lorraine had fought valiantly alongside them, enabling him to collect Swiss soldiers easily and rapidly in late autumn 1476 by paying them subsidies from the French king. Since it was primarily a Swiss victory, nearly all of the earliest written reports on the battle of Nancy were written in German or Latin and derive from Swiss sources. “Instant reporting” is nothing new: a brief pamphlet by Hans Erhard Tusch was printed twice at Strasbourg in 1477 ; an anonymous rhymed work called the

Burgundische Hystorie

, also printed at Strasbourg, survives in a single copy at Paris.

2

The loot taken by the victors was dispersed. If René II sent Charles the Bold’s helmet as a gift to Louis XI and his valuable ring was sold at Milan in 1478, three Burgundian flags taken at this battle remain in Switzerland at Solothurn and the duke’s silver bowl is still displayed at Liestal, near Basel.

3

At Nancy, the battle is still commemorated by an equestrian statue of its victorious duke. Perhaps more significantly, a small plaque on the Grande Rue, the principal thoroughfare in its old city, marks the house where the corpse of Charles the Bold remained on public display for several days that January. Afterwards, René II buried him in Nancy’s ducal church with full honors, erected a stone cross on the spot where he fell, and proceeded to enjoy thirty tranquil years of rule in Lorraine, founding a dynasty which would endure far into the eighteenth century. Fully aware of the momentous consequences of this victory, his officials instituted annual processions to commemorate it. Although Charles the Bold’s corpse was sent to Bruges in 1550, these processions did not end until 1733.

4

To readers accustomed to European nation-states, the extensive multinational contexts surrounding the battle of Nancy may come as a surprise. In 1476, Charles the Bold had garrisoned Nancy with 300 English mercenaries under a non-noble captain. Before the battle, the king of Portugal, a French ally, visited Duke Charles at Nancy; Louis XI used a Greek captain to return him safely to Portugal. From 1459-1484, the strongly pro-Burgundian Prince-Bishop of the region’s largest city, Metz, came from the princely house of Baden. On the battlefield of January 1477, a mixed Francophone and Germanophone force of Swiss infantry and local cavalry, plus some German mercenaries (nearly all of them subsidized by the French king), greatly outnumbered a “Burgundian” army which included Dutch, Italian and Savoyard infantry, a thousand English archers, and Italian cavalrymen. Commynes blamed Charles’s defeat on treason by a Neapolitan mercenary captain, the Count of Campobasso. A chronicler in Metz noted that the task of identifying the Burgundian duke’s corpse (made relatively easy by Charles’s missing tooth, ingrown toenail, and extremely long fingernails) was performed by his Roman valet, Battista Colonna, his Portuguese personal physician, “Master Mathieu,” and by his chaplain, Olivier de la Marche, assisted by two of Charles’s bastard brothers, Antoine and Baudouin, both of whom were promptly ransomed by king Louis XI of France. This identification was vitally necessary; Charles’ subjects in Artois, reported the chronicler, refused to believe he was dead, claiming instead that he would do seven years of penance in Germany before reappearing to govern his possessions – reminiscent of the legends surrounding Portugal’s king Sebastian a century later.

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One even finds a hint of east-central Europe: the “cross of Lorraine,” the banner used by René II at this victory, which he afterwards had stamped on his coins and which eventually became Charles de Gaulle’s symbol, came originally from Hungary via René II’s Angevin ancestors

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE

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