Mary of Burgundy

Early years

Mary of Burgundy was born in Brussels at the ducal Palace of Coudenberg, to Charles the Bold, then known as the Count of Charolais, and his wife Isabella of Bourbon. Her birth, according to the court chronicler Georges Chastellain, was attended by a clap of thunder ringing from the otherwise clear twilight sky. Her godfather was Louis, Dauphin of France, in exile in Burgundy at that time; he named her for his mother Marie of Anjou. Reactions to the child's birth were mixed: the baby's grandfather, Duke Philip the Good, was unimpressed, and "chose not to attend the [baptism] as it was only for a girl", whereas her grandmother Isabella of Portugal was delighted at the birth of a granddaughter. Her illegitimate aunt Anne was assigned to be responsible for Mary's education and assigned Jeanne de Clito to be her governess. Jeanne remained a friend to Mary later in life and was one of her most constant companions.

Heir presumptive

Philip the Good died in 1467 and Mary's father assumed control of the Burgundian State. Since her father had no living sons at the time of his accession, Mary became his heir presumptive. Her father controlled a vast and wealthy domain made up of the Duchy of Burgundy, the Free County of Burgundy, and the majority of the Low Countries. As a result, her hand in marriage was eagerly sought by a number of princes. The first proposal was received by her father when she was only five years old, in this case to marry the future King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Later she was approached by Charles, Duke of Berry; his older brother, King Louis XI of France, was intensely annoyed by Charles's move and attempted to prevent the necessary papal dispensation for consanguinity.

As soon as Louis succeeded in producing a male heir who survived infancy, the future King Charles VIII of France, Louis wanted him to be the one to marry Mary, even though he was thirteen years younger than Mary. Nicholas I, Duke of Lorraine, was nine years older than Mary and controlled a duchy that lay alongside Burgundian territory, but his plan to combine his domain with hers was ended by his death in 1473 (he started having stomach pains three days before his death; poison was suspected). Another suitor was George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (supported by his sister Margaret of York, Mary's stepmother), but his brother Edward IV, King of England, prevented the match for both political and personal reasons (he initially wanted to support his brother-in-law Anthony Woodville). The king's move angered the duke, who seemed to lose control and restarted conflicts with his brother, which ultimately led to his death.

Reign

Mary assumed the rule of her father's domains upon his defeat in battle and death on 5 January 1477. In addition to the Duchy and County of Burgundy, her territories included the duchies of Limburg, Brabant, Luxembourg, and the counties of Namur, Holland, Hainaut. King Louis XI of France seized the opportunity to attempt to take possession of the Duchy of Burgundy proper and also the regions of Franche-Comté, Picardy, and Artois.

She called on her people to stay loyal to the house of Burgundy (there are still extant letters that Mary wrote to the Duchy of Burgundy and Arras asking for their support). Louis XI took over Arras, but the people refused to submit without her approval. Eighteen burgesses were decapitated by the king as they were discovered trying to go to see her. He ordered a mass expulsion and renamed the town Franchise.

The king of France was anxious that Mary should marry his son Charles and thus secure the inheritance of the Low Countries for his heirs, by force of arms if necessary. By February 1477, neither her advisors nor the States General imagined that they could resist the French army. Chancellor Hugonet led a delegation to discuss the prospect of Mary's marriage to the six-year-old Dauphin (later King Charles VIII). The negotiation ended in failure as Louis XI demanded unacceptable terms, including the surrender of the Duchy of Burgundy and the French territories acquired by Philip the Good and Charles the Bold. The king then betrayed her secret letters to the burghers of Ghent, who then seized two men who were named in those letters – Hugonet and the Sire d'Humbercourt, two of her father's most influential councilors, and despite her pleadings, executed them on 3 April 1477. They then took away her other advisors too. Koenigsberger suspects that Louis XI might have forged the letters.

The Great Privilege

Mary was compelled to sign a charter of rights known as the Great Privilege in Ghent on 10 February 1477, the occasion of her formal recognition as her father's heir (the "joyous entry"). Under this agreement, the provinces and towns of Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut, and Holland recovered all the local and communal rights that had been abolished by the decrees of the dukes of Burgundy in their efforts to create a centralised state on the French model out of their disparate holdings in the Low Countries. In particular, the Parliament of Mechelen (established formally by Charles the Bold in 1470) was abolished and replaced with the pre-existing authority of the Parlement of Paris, which was considered an amenable counterweight to the encroaching centralisation undertaken by both Charles the Bold and Philip the Good. The duchess also had to undertake not to declare war, make peace, or raise taxes without the consent of these provinces and towns and only to employ native residents in official posts. The Great Privilege also determined that Nederlands would be the language of the joint States-General.

Marriage

Mary soon made her choice among the many suitors for her hand by selecting Archduke Maximilian of Austria (future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I), who became her co-ruler. Mary and Maximilian were second cousins as Mary's father, Charles the Bold, and Maximilian's mother, Eleanor of Portugal, were grandchildren of John I of Portugal and Philippa of Lancaster. The marriage took place at Ghent on 19 August 1477, she was 20 years old, while he was two years younger. Mary's marriage into the House of Habsburg initiated two centuries of contention between France and the Habsburgs, a struggle that climaxed with the War of the Spanish Succession in the years 1701–1714.

When they had time, the couple indulged themselves with dancing, hunting, music and the love for animals. Mary tried to teach him iceskating, which he struggled to master. They read romances together. Soon after the wedding, she brought falcons into their bedroom (which they shared instead of living in separate apartments, and which already had a dog). Mary nursed the children herself, ordered the menus and dined out with merchants from Dijon. Mary cheered for her husband in tournaments, during which he proved a magnificent jouster, not just in feats of strength but in the luxury he lavished on the equipments, horses, accessories and ornaments as well. At first, they talked to each other in Latin.

According to Haemers and Sutch, the original marriage contract stipulated that Maximilian could not inherit her Burgundian lands if they had children – this means that, the fact the couple produced heirs would give Maximilian troubles later. Some report that the original marriage contract stipulated that only common children of Mary and Maximilian could claim her Burgundian inheritance after her death. But one month after their marriage, she made an amendment that designated Maximilian as the heir in the case they had no children - a clause that the estates would try to repudiate after her death.

Co-rule with Maximilian

With Maximilian by her side, Mary's position became stronger, politically and militarily. Although he came with no money nor army, nor support from the Empire, and no prior experience in governance, his competence in military matters and his prestige as the son of an emperor boosted the stability of her realms. He took over the war effort, concerning both military and financial details.

By this time, the Burgundian side had lost a lot of military captains owing to defections to France both before and after Charles the Bold's death. The loss of the Duchy of Burgundy cut down the whole government's backbone, consisting of high administrators and military commanders who came from the French-speaking nobility in Burgundy and Picardy. Philip of Cleves, her cousin and childhood friend (who had been put forth as a bridegroom candidate for Mary by his father Adolf of Cleves; Mary and Philip were rumoured to be former love interests, although this is disputed by Arie de Fouw), whom she appointed as Stadtholder-General in 1477, now acted as Maximilian's lieutenant as Admiral of the Netherlands. Despite the reputation of the Burgundian court as luxurious and rich, Charles the Bold had lost his whole fortune in his last three disastrous campaigns. The Low Countries were rich but the Estates were reluctant to pay. Moreover, the Burgundian state had lost one quarter of its tax revenue and due to new restrictions, a half of its government revenue in total. Thus the initial financial situation was very tense and Mary had to pawn a lot of her heirlooms to finance their armies. She also had to yield to the estates' demands regarding some of their privileges, in exchange for final support for Maximilian's war against France.

Violet Soen shows that by political manipulation, Mary managed to tie the powerful Croÿ family to the crown.

Mary would not gain back the Duchy of Burgundy, occupied by the French king, but she was able to keep her remaining lands intact. In 1478–1479, Maximilian carried out a campaign against the French and reconquered Le Quesnoy, Conde, and Antoing. He defeated the French forces at Guinegate (modern Enguinegatte), on 7 August 1479. Despite winning, he had to abandon the siege of Thérouanne and disband his army, either because the Netherlanders did not want him to become too strong or because his treasury was empty. In addition, he proved as ruthless as Charles in suppressing rebellions in the Low Countries. When conflicts broke out again between the Hooks and the Cods, the archduke was able to put the conflict under control and assured the Cod domination, disregarding the Great Privilege in the process. After a five-year hiatus (because most of the members had either died in Charles the Bold's wars or defected to France), the Order of the Golden Fleece also got reorganized by Maximilian, as the new sovereign of the order.

Death and legacy

In 1482, a falcon hunt in the woods near Wijnendale Castle was organised by Adolph of Cleves, Lord of Ravenstein, who lived in the castle. Mary loved riding and was hunting with Maximilian and knights of the court when her horse tripped, threw her in a ditch, and then landed on top of her, breaking her back. She died several weeks later on 27 March from internal injuries, having made a detailed will. She was buried in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges on 3 April 1482. She was pregnant.

Maximilian was devastated. She had initially hidden the extent of her injury to calm him down. When he continued to display uncontrollable grief, she had to force him out of her chamber so that she could discuss matters of the state with her nobles, concerning which she asked them to keep their loyalty oath to him and their children. Maximilian was not present when she said her last words.

The bankrupted court honoured her with a glorious funeral, as Maximilian melted down the silverware for the occasion.

Her two-year-old daughter, Margaret of Austria, was sent in vain to France, to marry the Dauphin, in an attempt to please Louis XI and persuade him not to invade the territories owned by Mary.

Louis was swift to re-engage hostilities with Maximilian and forced him to agree to the Treaty of Arras of 1482, by which Franche-Comté and Artois passed for a time to French rule, only to be recovered by the Treaty of Senlis of 1493, which established peace in the Low Countries. Mary's marriage into the House of Habsburg proved to be a disaster for France because the Burgundian inheritance later brought it into conflict with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1493, Emperor Frederick III died. Maximilian became the de facto leader of the Empire and relinquished control of the Netherlands to his and Mary's son Philip. By this time, rebellions against Maximilian's authority had been subdued by force and a strong ducal monarchy was established. He made sure that during their son's inauguration, Philip confirmed only the rights granted to territories by the time of Philip the Good.

In arts and popular culture

Arts and legends under the rule of Mary, Maximilian and the Habsburgs

The Faust legend is strongly based on a legend involving Mary, Maximilian and the priest, abbot and humanist Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), who was suspected by many to be a necromancer. Through his 1507 account, Trithemius was the first author who mentioned the historical Doctor Faustus. Being summoned to the emperor's court in 1506 and 1507, he also helped to "prove" Maximilian's Trojan origins. In his 1569 edition of his Tischreden, Martin Luther writes about a magician and necromancer (understood to be Trithemius) who summoned Alexander the Great and other ancient heroes, as well as the emperor's deceased wife Mary of Burgundy, to entertain Maximilian. In his 1585 account, Augustin Lercheimer (1522–1603) writes that after Mary's death, Trithemius was summoned to console a devastated Maximilian. Trithemius conjured a shade of Mary, who looked exactly like her likeness when alive. Maximilian also recognized a birthmark on her neck, that only he knew about. He was distraughted by the experience though, and ordered Trithemius never to do it again. An anonymous account in 1587 modified the story into a less sympathetic version. The emperor became Charles V, who, despite knowing about the risk of black magic, ordered Faustus to raise Alexander and his wife from death. Charles saw that the woman had a birthmark, that he had heard about. Later, the woman in the most well-known story became Helen of Troy.

In her lifetime, Mary's preferred symbols, which were often associated with her official image, were the falcon and the horse. Ann M. Roberts notes that the falcon seemed to be a substitute for the sword (which was used by her grandfather and father for their seals), that denoted her status and prowess and also seemingly equated her skills as a huntress with her husband's skills as a military leader. Also according to Roberts, the posthumous portraits produced during her husband's later reign (which were much more numerous) show a completely different image: he tended to utilize the profile portraits that portrayed her as a young (with less personal features and only recognizable by her items, such as the hennin, the brocaded garment, necklaces and brooches), virtuous, pious, passive bride whose wealth he possessed and could do with as he wanted and for whom he constructed a mythology of romantic love between the two.

Olga Karaskova also opines that the manner she was placed in the premier position and her seal superimposed on his in their seals seems to indicate the conception she had of herself and the way she wanted to be seen by her contemporaries. During Maximilian's later reign, he commissioned numerous portrayals of Mary for various purposes. According to Karaskova, the symbol of the falcon did not disappear, but returned as Maximilian needed to assert his and their descendants' right of inheritance. In public portraits, the image of Mary holding a falcon returned once during the inauguration of Charles V. In addition, Maximilian commissioned portraits of Philip the Fair and Charles V holding falcons (thus establishing a connection between them and Mary), so he had to depend on the iconography created by Mary and associated with her, that had not been erased from the memory of their contemporaries. In the Old Prayer Book of Maximilian of Austria (l'Ancien livre de prières de Maximilien d'Autriche, 1486, Vienne, ÖNB, Cod. 1907, f. 61v), there are the depiction of three falcons that seemingly symbolize Mary, Philip the Fair and Maximilian: Mary was with Philip while Maximilian was chasing another bird, symbolically protecting wife and child, next to the German eagle and the combined coat-of-arms of the Houses of Austria and Burgundy. Maximilian also had a tendency to virtually "promote" Mary to the status of Empress in these posthumous portrayals: an image created by Jörg Kölderer in preparation for Mary's statue in Maximilian's cenotaph showed a coat-of-arms that incorporated her husband's symbols as King of the Romans or Holy Roman Emperor (that she could not have used in life).

Later depictions

Mary was the main character in the 1674 novel Histoire secrète de Marie de Bourgogne by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force. The work was a part of the era's literary fairy tale vogue, which was welcomed enthusiastically by contemporaries.

In the 19th century, together with her grandson Charles V, the painters Hans Memling and Jan van Eyck, Mary became a powerful national symbol of Belgium, representing an era in which "the national interest was perceived to have flourish". The depictions had a local dimension as well, showing the particular cities as "receiving the great and the good". A popular trope was the scene of Mary visiting Memling (which Graham and Wintle compare to the relationship between Maximilian I and Dürer in German imagination, or between the Princess of Orange and Bartholomeus van der Helst as depicted by Dutch artists. The first painter who depicted this scene was Nicaise de Keyser in 1847, followed by Eduoard Wallays in the 1860s (in both cases, the scene of the visit was the Hospital of Saint John).

Mary was the main character in the 1833 eponymous novel Mary of Burgundy, or The Revolt of Ghent by George Payne Rainsford James. In the novel, she was depicted as the representation of maternalistic feudalism that the author espoused.

The German dramatist Hermann Hersch wrote a one-act comedy in 1853 and a five-act tragedy in 1860 about her life. Other characters include Maximilian, von Ravenstein, Lady Hallwyn, John of Cleves etc.

In Hieronymus Rides: Episodes in the Life of a Knight and Jester at the Court of Maximilian, King of the Romans, a 1912 novel, written by Anna Coleman Ladd, Mary was once loved by the jester and knight Hieronymus, who served his half-brother Maximilian.

There are two paintings involving Mary and Maximilian among the principal historical paintings of the painter Anton Petter (1791 – 1858): one is Der Einzug Kaiser Maximilians I.in Gent (1822, Belvedere, Wien) in which Mary presented their son to her husband and the other is Kaiser Maximilian I und Maria von Burgund which describes their meeting.(1813, Joanneum at Graz).

An equestrian statue of Mary named Flandria Nostra stands in Golden Fleece Muntplein, created by Jules Lagae.

Family

Mary's son Philip the Handsome succeeded to her dominions under the guardianship of his father Maximilian of Austria.

Issue:

Philip the Handsome (22 July 1478 – 25 September 1506), who succeeded his mother as Philip IV of Burgundy and became Philip I of Castile through his marriage to Joanna of Castile (known to history as "Juana la Loca").

Margaret (10 January 1480 – 1 December 1530), married firstly to Juan, Prince of Asturias, the son and heir of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, and secondly to Philibert II, Duke of Savoy.

Franz or François (2 September 1481 – 26 December 1481).

Titles

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Duchess of Burgundy (titular)

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Duchess of Lothier

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Duchess of Brabant

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Duchess of Limburg

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Duchess of Luxemburg

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Duchess of Guelders

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Countess of Flanders

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Countess of Artois

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Countess Palatine of Burgundy

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Countess of Hainault

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Countess of Holland

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Countess of Zeeland

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Countess of Namur

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Countess of Zutphen

5 January 1477 – 27 March 1482: Margravine of Antwerp