(1433–1477). Duke of Burgundy. Charles was the last of the four Valois dukes of Burgundy, whose state, based in the Netherlands, became a European power in the 15th century. Although his French sobriquet,“le Téméraire,” means “the Rash,” Charles has usually been called “the Bold” in English, and his most recent biographer has emphasized the greater appropriateness of the latter name.
The historiography of Charles, inextricably bound up with that of his great antagonist, Louis XI of France, has long relied on colorful but inaccurate narrative sources. Charles hated and feared Louis, but his international ambitions were almost all directed toward the empire rather than France, and it was enemies in the empire, not Louis XI, who eventually caused his ruin.
Charles succeeded his father, Philip the Good, on June 15, 1467, inheriting a state that included most of the Low Countries and a southern cluster of lands around the duchy of Burgundy. Between these two large parcels lay Alsace and Lorraine, both of which Charles tried to acquire, although not placing great emphasis on linking up his lands into a compact territory. He also pursued territorial ambitions in the northern Low Countries and in Savoy to the south. His great desire was to gain a crown, preferably the imperial title. In his elaborate diplomacy, his only child, Mary, was a valuable pawn as Europe’s most marriageable heiress.
Allied with Edward IV of England, Charles waged inconclusive border warfare with France in the years 1471–75 while he pursued his imperial ambitions.
He gradually overhauled the Burgundian army, turning it into a professional body. By 1475, he had occupied Lorraine and had a virtual protectorate over Savoy and the Vaud. Throughout his career, his treatment of towns was harsh, as at Liège in 1468. Townsmen feared him greatly and resisted him bitterly, as at Beauvais in 1472 and Neuss in 1475. A coalition of imperial cities at last determined to drive him from Alsace and Lorraine. At the beginning of March 1476, a largely Swiss army defeated him at Grandson on Lake Neuchâtel. On June 22, a far more serious defeat at Morat (Murten) removed Savoy from Burgundian control. To recover Lorraine, Charles rebuilt his forces and laid siege to Nancy in November. Marching to the rescue at the end of the year, the Swiss won their third victory in ten months on January 5, 1477, a battle in which Charles met his death.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
Vaughan, Richard. Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974.
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