The Power of Space: Cities in Late Medieval/Early Modern Italy and ...

Workshop “The Power of Space: Cities in Late Medieval/Early Modern Italy and northern
Europe”
March 11-12, 2010 - the Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York.
From cuckoo’s egg to ‘sedem tyranni’ – the princely citadels in the cities of the Low
Countries, or the city’s spatial integrity hijacked (15 th -early 16 th centuries)
Marc Boone (Ghent university) 1
1. princely citadels in an urban environment: the strategy of the cuckoo
In his ‘il principe’ finished early in 1514, Niccolò Machiavelli himself discusses at length the
question whether fortresses are useful or not in order to foster and perpetuate the exercise of
power by a ruler. His conclusion is that examples do point in different and very opposite
directions: the effects depend heavily on divergent circumstances. ‘The prince who is more
afraid of his own people than of foreign interference should build fortresses’ however, the
overall conclusion for any prince reads as follows: the ‘best fortress that exists is to avoid being
hated by the people’ (The prince, chapter XX) 2 . Machiavelli discusses the example that must
have inspired a great number of his contemporaries, princes of all levels who invested heavily in
fortresses in order to keep cities within their territories under control: the fortress built by the
Sforza rulers in Milan, and still prominently present in today’s urban landscape: ‘The castle of
Milan, built by Francesco Sforza, has caused and will cause more uprisings against the House of
Sforza than any other source of disturbance’ 3 . The message is clear: the visible mark of the
ruler’s political ambitions in the heart of a city is an incessant source of continuing rebelliousness
in the hearts and minds of his subjects. The way in which the ruler hijacks urban space in this
very deliberate way was clearly seen as an inspiration for resentment and political opposition
against his person and his policy.
In such a process, as numerous examples in this paper will show, religious symbolism is never
far away and the way in which the interventions of different rulers affected the religious map of a
city and therefore intervened in the underlying processes of community building, is a most
important aspect of the impact of the establishment of a citadel. And again: this may work in
opposite directions, both the building as well as the destruction of a citadel shows how the
religious and cultural elements interfere with very down-to-earth ‘concrete’ undertakings in the
field of politics and power relations. Patrick Boucheron who has abundantly studied public space
in late medieval Milan emphasizes how in 1447 the burghers of Milan, after having attacked the
Visconti ‘castello de porta Giovia’ turned the destruction of this in their eyes unquestionable
symbol of tyranny into a civic ritual, by recuperating the stonework of the destroyed fortress,
1 Research made possible by the IAP programme of the Belgian Science Policy, phase VI number 32 see:
http://www.cityandsociety.be/
2 This and subsequent citations from Machiavelli are drawn from the English translation by George Bull (Penguin
classics, 1961), the fragment cited here: p. 118-119 (penguin edition of 1974). On this chapter see J. HALE, To fortify
or not to fortify? Machiavelli’s contribution to a renaissance debate, in: J. HALE, Renaissance war studies, London,
1983, p. 189-210.
3 On this example: P. BOUCHERON, Les expressions monumentales du pouvoir princier à Milan au temps de
Francesco Sforza (1450-1466), in: Les princes et le pouvoir au moyen âge. XXIIIe congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. Brest
mai 1992 (Paris, 1993) (Publ. de la Sorbonne, série histoire ancienne et médiévale 28), p. 122-23.

transporting it to the cathedral, and allocating it to the building of the latter 4 . It is therefore an
interesting topic to wonder to what extent these recipes that, by the present standards of urban
history, seem to stem from a multitude of Italian examples can be observed as being at work also
in thé other late medieval and early modern urban landscape par excellence, that of the Low
Countries.
During the open warfare against some of the major cities in their northern territories and
following the creeping insubordination of urban powers, the princes of the Burgundian and
Habsburg dynasties time and again left the mark of their victories in the urban space. This
process of course does not imply an ‘invention’ by the Burgundian rulers, far from that. Some of
the oldest surviving testimonies of princely presence in the cities of the former Low Countries
already conveyed a similar message. Most prominent, though heavily marked by the romantic
reconstruction which was imposed on the building from 1888 on, is the castle of the counts,
which in its present form still refers to the stone castle built in Ghent by count Philippe of Alsace
in the years following his return from the crusade in 1178. In the ambition of leaving no doubt
about the message the building was supposed to convey, an inscription (still visible) was put
above the entrance stating that ‘anno incarnationins MCLXXX Philippus, comes Flandriae et
Viromandie, filius Thirici comitis et Cibilie, fecit hoc castellum componi’ 5 . But already in that
early period of urban expansion and growth, the manifestation of princely presence on the urban
soil was embedded in the struggle between princely ambitions and urban elitist policy. In the
eyes of many contemporaries (clergy men without any exception) the castle of the counts
responded to the unacceptable social prominence the members of the city’s elite sought to
express by building their own towers and fortified stone dwellings, imitating thus the look of the
castles of the nobility, questioning in the same movement the social order.
The burgundian dukes came to power in the county of Flanders in 1384, following the death of
the last count of the house of Dampierre Louis de Male. They did so in the context of the socalled
Ghent-war, a general rebellion of the county under the direction of Ghent and lasting from
1379 till 1385. Immediately the first duke, Philip the Bold, confronted with this state of affairs,
used fortifications and interventions in the urban tissue to affirm his presence. The duke
belonged to the French royal family of the Valois and was imbued with the high standards of
royal power his brother, king Charles V, had established and which were ideologically
underpinned in a remarkable way (authors such as Christine de Pisan and Raoul de Presles come
to mind). The architectural expression of this power strategy was given shape by the new Louvre
and, more in line with the theme of citadels, the castle of Vincennes 6 . In early burgundian
Flanders, several important building projects stand out, two of them implying a very high level of
investment: the fortification of Sluis (l’Ecluse) enabling the duke to control the estuary of the
Zwin, the gateway to the economic heart of the county, the city of Bruges, and the fortification of
the city of Lille facing in the direction of Ghent (not of France, giving a clear indication of where
the first duke Philip the Bold expected the danger to emerge from). In total, four new urban
castles were developed or refounded: Courtrai, Oudenaarde, Sluis (l’Ecluse) and Nieuport.
Considered together they reflect the strategic option to thwart the forces that had rendered so
4 P. BOUCHERON, « De l’urbanisme communal à l’urbanisme seigneurial. Cités, territoires et édilité publique en Italie
du Nord (XIIIe-XVe siècles) » in E. CROUZET-PAVAN (éd.), Pouvoir et édilité. Les grands chantiers dans l’Italie
communale et seigneuriale, Rome,2003 (Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome, 302), p. 69.
5 See with abundant references to the older literature and sources: M. BOONE, TH. DE HEMPTINNE, Espace urbain et
ambitions princières: les présences matérielles de l'autorité princière dans le Gand médiéval (12e siècle - 1540), in:
W. Paravicini (hg.), Zeremoniell und Raum, 4. Symposium der Residenzen-Kommission der Akademie der
Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Potsdam 25. bis 27. September 1994 (Residenzenforschung Band 6), Sigmaringen,
Thorbecke Verlag, 1997, p. 281-283.
6 The literature on Charles Vth is abundant, a recent overview and synthesis is to be found in the handbook by B.
BOVE, Le temps de la guerre de cent ans, 1328-1453, Paris, 2009, p. 190-227.

difficult and painful the final years of his father-in-law’s reign: the English (by reinforcing the
coastal defences in Sluis and Nieuport) and Ghent, the city whose lines of supply, the rivers
Scheldt and Leye were controlled in Courtrai and Oudenaarde 7 . Among the two most important
projects, the first consisted of the replacement of Sluis’ wooden fort by a full stone castle, and by
the building of a tower (la Tour de Bourgogne) on the other bank of the Zwin. It has left
relatively few traces (even archaeological ones) to this day, and is mainly known thanks to the
accounts and financial documents. Inspiration came, again, from French royal examples; even
the architect involved came from Paris, since the duke hired the royal architect Raymond du
Temple 8 . The tower of Sluis inaugurated the triangular relationship between the duke, his Italian
banker Dino Rapondi and the finances of the economic heart of his northern territories (and of
North-western Europe at that moment), Bruges 9 . The second building project developed under
Philip the Bold recalls the later undertakings which are central to this paper, the castle, known as
the ‘royal castle’ (Château royal) 10 . As the dukes of Burgundy belonged to the royal dynasty of
the Valois, the castle the duke ordered to be built and to be rebuilt was literally embedded within
the traces of the royal castle built by several late Capetian kings at the beginning of the 14 th
century with the clear ambition to root their political ambitions in the French-speaking part of the
county of Flanders, using this part of Flemish territory as a stronghold with the eye on the
annexation of the county as a whole. Philip IV the Fair (between 1297 and 1302) and Philip VI
de Valois (in the years 1332 and 1339) had already launched the building programme. The castle
in Lille clearly reveals, in the convincing analysis of Gilles Blieck, the strategic ambition
inherited from the French kings in the course of the 14 th century: to dispose of a military
stronghold where the ‘ost’ the royal army could gather, and prepare it to invade ‘Flandre
flamingante’, the Flemish-speaking part of the county where the bigger cities were situated and
rebellions took shape. The castle therefore took the form of a real citadel, facing the North (in the
direction of Courtrai and Ghent) as if mounting a defence of the central institutions, council and
chamber of accounts established by the same duke in the city of Lille. In the following decades
and more precisely in the course of the second quarter of the 15 th century, the presence of highranking
servants of the duke of Burgundy Philip the Good and/or bastards of the dynasty itself in
castles surrounding Ghent, the biggest and most rebellious city in the dukes’ northern territories,
continued. An ever tightening circle consisting of castles and military strongholds around Ghent
was constructed, offering the ducal army numerous strongholds in the final military
confrontation which developed in the years 1451-1453 and ended on the battlefield of Gavere in
July 1453 11 . In other words, even when the reigns of the last Valois duke of Burgundy, Charles
the Bold, and his Habsburgs heirs, Maximilian of Austria and Charles V, show a remarkable
unity and continuity concerning the theme of how princely citadels modified urban space, they
7 See on the supply routes towards Ghent from a economic point of view: M. BOONE, M. C. HOWELL, Becoming
early modern in the late medieval Low Countries. Ghent and Douai in the late middle-ages, in: Urban History, 23,
1996, p. 300-324.
8 R. VAUGHAN, Philip the Bold. The formation of the Burgundian state, London, New York, 1979 2 , p. 171.
9 B. LAMBERT, The city, the duke and their banker. The Rapondi family and the formation of the Burgundian state
(1384- 1430), Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800, 7), Turnhout, 2006, p. 108-110.
10 On this dossier (and also for what is following) the last synthesis has been written by the archaeologist of Lille: G.
BLIECK, Le château royal de Lille sous le règne du duc de Bourgogne Philippe le Hardi (1384-1404), in: G. BLIECK,
PH. CONTAMINE, N. FAUCHERE, J. MESQUI (éd.), Le château et la ville. Conjonction, opposition, juxtapositiion (XIe-
XVIIIe siècle), Paris, 2002 (Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, 125), p. 89-132.
11 See the remarks in this respect in the analysis of the flemish mobility in the burgundian period by F. BUYLAERT,
Eeuwen van ambitie. Edelen, steden en sociale mobiliteit in laatmiddeleeuws Vlaanderen, Universiteit Gent, 18
december 2008, unedited PhD (a publication in the series Verhandelingen of the Royal Academy in Brussels is in
preparation), p. 316-320. A similar geo-strategic use of noble castles and strongholds aiming at covering a given
territory seems to have been the case in the duchy of Brabant, see a forthcoming research by Buylaert. On the Ghent
war during the reign of Philip the Good: J. HAEMERS, De Gentse opstand 1449-1453. De strijd tussen rivaliserende
netwerken om het stedelijk kapitaal, Courtrai, 2004 (Anciens Pays et Assemblées d’Etats, CV).

do continue a tradition well under way in the Low Countries. This tradition was reinforced and
became gradually clear over the reigns of the preceding dukes of Burgundy, and allow for a link
with a French royal ideology, to which the burgundian dukes and several of their policy makers,
in the first place the chancellors, belonged intellectually.
Under duke Charles the Bold the policy of imposing in a more direct way ducal policy upon the
interior ‘enemy’, the urban political communities, entered into a new stage. Indeed, both the
means at his disposal and the ideological background -- a mix of biblical, literary and judicial
arguments propounded by the duke and by his close circle of collaborators -- allowed for a more
direct policy, intervening directly in the urban spatial tissue 12 . From Charles’ reign a clear line
goes forth towards his Habsburg heirs, though concerning the reign of Charles the Bold himself,
the warning pronounced by Richard Vaughan in 1973 still stands. When considering the reasons
why the ducal policy failed he wrote: ‘Of course, relations with France take their place in any
history of Burgundy, but it is as well to remember that the prince who tore up the privileges of
Ghent, sacked Dinant and demolished Liège was later successfully defied by Cologne and Neuss
and finally destroyed by the citizen militias of Bern, of Zürich, of Basel and of Strasbourg’ 13 .
2. the late Burgundian and early Habsburg rulers in the Low Countries: to mark the urban
soil by the ‘sedem tyranni’
Charles the Bold indeed was the first ruler to effectively order at the very beginning of his reign,
as if to mark his attitude towards rebellious cities, the destruction of cities within his sphere
influence, though - the difference is meaningful - not belonging to his own territory: Dinant (in
1466) and Liège (in 1468). The two cities on the river Meuse which underwent this fate, were
part of the prince-bishopric of Liège. In the same years, when discussing the way in which to
punish the city of Malines, where disturbances had accompanied his entry, the ducal
administration had brought to the attention and memory of Charles the Bold the arguments his
father had taken into account when considering in 1438 the possible destruction of Bruges, after
he had dealt with the rebellion of that city 14 . In the case of Dinant similar considerations were of
no avail. Shortly after the burgundian troops had entered the city, its destruction and a massive
execution of its inhabitants were ordered 15 . When however the question of reconstructing a city
was put forward, other arguments were formulated and finally adopted.
Already in the case of Liège two elements stand out: a reconstruction around religious symbols,
since most of the churches were being rescued from the looting which the Burgundian troops
12 I’ve given an overview of this development in: M. BOONE, Charles le Téméraire face au monde urbain: ennemis
jurés et fatals?, in: KLAUS OSCHEMA, RAINER C. SCHWINGES (dir.), Karl der Kühne von Burgund. Fürst zwischen
europäischem Adel und der Eidgenossenschaft, Zürich: NZZ libro, 2010, p. 185-201.
13 R. VAUGHAN, Charles the Bold. The last Valois duke of Burgundy, London 1973 (reedited in 2002 by Boydell in
Woodbridge with an update by W. Paravicini), p. 40.
14 Archives Générales du Royaume [AGR] (Brussels), Trésor de Flandres, 1e série, n° 2230. The ducal counsellors
had argued that Malines 'est une moult bonne et forte ville et tres bien assise pour son seigneur et l'achaté feu le conte
Loys de Flandres, tres grande somme d'argent, pour par icelle adez avoir a son besoing entree ou pays de Brabant
auquel il avoit souvent different pourquoy elle ne seroit bonne destruite (...) pour le bien de mon dit feu seigneur et
ses successeurs vauldroit mieulx fonder une pareille ville comme celle de Bruges avant que l'en la demolisist; et ainsi
semblablement porroit l'en dire a la noble correction toutesvoyes de mon dit tres redoubté seigneur, de la ville de
Malines, qui est tel notable membre comme il appert'. Cited in part by W. BLOCKMANS, La répression de révoltes
urbaines comme méthode de centralisation dans les Pays-Bas bourguignons, in : Publications du Centre européen
d'études Bourguignonnes (XIVe-XVIe siècles). N° 28, Rencontres de Milan (oct. 1987), Neuchâtel, 1988, p. 8.
15 Bibliothèque Nationale de France [=BNF] (Paris), manuscrits français, n° 5036 f° 8r°-v°: 'L'an de grace mil CCCC
soixante six le XXVe jour d'aoust, landemain du jour de la feste de Saint Berthelemy environ six heures au vespre, se
rendit la ville de Dinand a monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne et a monsieur de Charolais son filz a en faire leur
voulenté. La voulenté a esté telle que la dicte ville a esté toute abatue, arsé, mise en ruine et abatu tous leurs murs,
portes'.

were invited to carry out, and the construction of a military stronghold, on the island in the
Meuse, baptised ‘Brabant’ since the law of the duchy of Brabant was henceforth to be
respected 16 . This last move clearly aimed at reminding Liège of previous defeats in which their
traditional enemy, the duke of Brabant, and his policy of expansion at the expense of the princebishopric
of Liège had played a decisive role. In 1212 duke Henri I of Brabant had ordered the
sack of the city of Liège 17 . The way in which the ducal representative and plenipotentiary, the
close collaborator of duke Charles the Bold, Guy de Brimeu, lord of Humbercourt, dealt with the
urban landscape of Liège reveals a clear drive to eliminate the old central functions and symbols,
in the first place the ‘perron’ (symbol of communal judicial identity) already taken away to
Bruges in 1467 after a preceding punishment had been inflicted upon the city of Liège and the
city hall and palace of the bishop 18 . The latter were replaced by a citadel, and stronghold on the
‘Isle de la cite’ henceforth know as 'Isle le duc lez Liege' or simply ‘Brabant’. As stated above,
religious symbols played a crucial role in the punishment and reconstruction of the urban
community of Liège. Already when the city was destroyed, ecclesiastical buildings, above all
churches, were systematically preserved although looted, an operation again supervised by ducal
lieutenant, Guy de Brimeu 19 . The reconstruction of Liège was organised and centred around
these same ecclesiastical buildings and not the city hall or the 'perron'. The latter, symbols of
urban resistance par excellence, were only reconstructed after 1477, when the sudden death of
duke Charles the Bold filled Burgundian authorities with dismay. In the meantime, duke Charles
had posed as the forgiving father, offering the cathedral St. Lambert in Liège the well-known
golden reliquary representing St. George and Charles the Bold. It represents the duke, kneeling
on a cushion wearing a full suit of armour, the Order of the Golden Fleece hanging around his
neck. The saint, also in a suit of armour raises his helmet in salutation, his features strikingly
resembling those of the duke 20 . The accounts of Charles' household reveal that in the aftermath
of the first victory over Liège in November 1467, the duke visited the cathedral to venerate the
relics of St. Lambert, the patron saint of Liège. The reliquary was commissioned from Gerard
Loyet, goldsmith in Lille, a man who made numerous votive gifts representing the duke (and
often related to his military deeds) shortly after the first punishment was inflicted on Liège in
1467. The new fatal uprising of a year later took Charles by surprise. During the dramatic days of
the sacking of the city the duke is said to have protected personally the relics of Saint Lambert,
though the contents of the church's treasury were allotted to his half-brother Antoine, the great
bastard. The statuette containing the relics was finally given to the city in 1471. In doing so, duke
Charles emphasized his role as protector of the saint, of the church and of the city, imposing in
the meantime his authority and his order, both sanctified by the city's saint. The prince who
decided to give back the city's most precious relics decided as representative of divine power on
the city's fate, thus putting the principle 'civitas mori potest' as formulated by 14 th century Italian
jurist Baldus de Ubaldis into practice.
16 The last synthesis concerning the destruction of Liège is to be found in A. MARCHANDISSE, I. VRANCKEN-PIRSON,
J.-L. KUPPER, La destruction de la ville de Li ge (1468) et sa reconstruction, in: Destruction et reconstruction de
villes, du moyen >ge Β nos jours. Verwoesting en wederopbouw van steden, van de middeleeuwen tot heden. Actes
du 18e colloque international - Handelingen van het 18e internationaal colloquium Spa, 10-12.IX.1996, Brussel,
1999, (Crédit communal de Belgique, série historique in-8Ε, nr. 100), p. 69-96. A publication for a larger public : J.-
L. KUPPER, PH. GEORGE, Charles le Téméraire de la violence et du sacré, Liège, 2007.
17 A. MARCHANDISSE, I. VRANCKEN-PIRSON, J.-L. KUPPER, La destruction de la ville de LiΠge (1468), p. 90-92.
18 W. PARAVICINI, Guy de Brimeu. Der burgundische Staat und seine adlige Führungsschicht unter Karl dem
Kühnen, Bonn, 1975, (Pariser Historische Studien 12), p. 302-307, 461.
19 See the abundant description by PARAVICINI, Guy de Brimeu, p. 198-207.
20 The details about the statuette are drawn from the most comprehensive recent study by H. VAN DER VELDEN, The
donor’s image Gerard Loyet and the votive portraits of Charles the Bold, Turnhout, (Burgundica IV).

What happened in the case of Liège had undoubtedly a pedagogical aspect: it was meant to be a
warning to other cities which had rebelled in the past and could be suspected of doing so again in
the future. Ducal propaganda made deliberate use of the spectacular case of Liège in this sense.
The correspondence of Charles the Bold during the days following the punishment of Liège
shows that all major cities within his territories were kept informed of the events. The so-called
'Members of Flanders', the big cities of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, were directly informed or had
representatives at Liège who sent them an eyewitness-report 21 . When at the end of November
1468 the duke came back to his residence in Brussels, official delegations from the big Flemish
cities came to welcome him and to pay their respects in a very humble and submissive tone 22 .
Ghent showed it had understood the message perfectly by suggesting itself acts of submission
such as an adaptation of its government in a way cherished by the duke, or the handing over of
banners of the guilds and, indeed, the closing of certain gates 23 . The way the German cities of
Nürenberg and Frankfurt-am-Main reacted in writing to the aldermen of the cities of Aachen and
Cologne, asking to be informed on the fate of Liège, underlines how strongly Charles the Bold’s
handling of the Liège-crisis had both worried and impressed German cities 24 . In this battle for
the hearts and minds of the subjects, both parties did not refrain from using heavy metaphors,
depicting their respective adversaries as worthy stand-ins for the real danger western Christianity
was facing: the infidels, in one word, the Turks. Charles the Bold was depicted as embodying the
Turkish threat, while, according to the eye-witness the papal legate Onofrio de Santa Croce, his
father duke Philip the Good had in 1466 depicted the city of Liège and its inhabitants in the
following words: ‘Hic populus mihi Turcus erit’ 25 .
The ‘normal’ ideological and intellectual justification for a ruthless approach towards urban
opposition, referring to antiquity and placing medieval rulers in line with the great examples of
classical past, the kings, emperors and generals tamers of cities, was thus reinforced by a clear
21 W. PARAVICINI, Der Briefwechsel Karls des Kühnen (1433-1467). Inventar, tome 1, Frankfurt 1995, (Kieler Werkstücke.
Reihe D: Beiträge zur europäischen Geschichte des späten Mittelalters), p. 335-39.
22 'Te welcommene ende reverencie te doene alsoot behoorde' as it is stated in the accounts of the city of Ypres;
'omme an hem te volghene ende vercrighene gracie van zijnder qualic ghepaeytheit' so it reads, remarkably, in the
Ghent accounts: Willem Pieter BLOCKMANS, Handelingen van de Leden en van de Staten van Vlaanderen (1467-
1477). Excerpten uit de rekeningen van de Vlaamse steden, kasselrijen en vorstelijke ambtenaren, (Brussels, 1971)
51-52.
23 See the events related by Dagboek van Gent van 1447 tot 1470 met een vervolg van 1477 tot 1515, ed. Victor
FRIS, II (Ghent, 1904) (Maatschappij der Vlaamsche Bibliophilen, 4e reeks, nr. 12) 217-20. On the submission of
Ghent, shortly after the destruction of Liège: IDEM, La restriction de Gand (13 juillet 1468), 'Bulletijn der Maatschappij
van Geschied- en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 31', (1923) 59-142. More recently: M. BOONE, Législation
communale et ingérence princière: la 'restriction' de Charles le Téméraire pour la ville de Gand (13 juillet 1468), in:
J.-M. CAUCHIES, E. BOUSMAR, 'Faire bans, edictz et statuz': légiferer dans la ville médiévale. Sources, objets et
acteurs de l'activité législative communale en Occident, ca. 1200-1500. Actes du colloque international tenu à
Bruxelles les 17-20 novembre 1999, Bruxelles, 2001, (Publications des Facultés universitaire Saint-Louis, vol. 87), p.
139-151.
24 The letters are edited in E. FAIRON, Régestes de la Cité de Liège. Tome IV: 1456 à 1482 (Liège, 1939) 307-12.
25 La citation chez : P.F.X. DE RAM, Documents relatifs aux troubles du Pays de Liège sous les princes-évêques
Louis de Bourbon et Jean de Horne 1455-1505, Bruxelles, 1844, p. 238. Sur l’idéal de croisade chez les ducs, en
dernier lieu : J. PAVIOT, Les ducs de Bourgogne, la croisade et l’Orient (fin XIVe siècle – XVe siècle), Paris, 2003.
On the image of Charles the Bold as incarnation of the Turkish threat, popular among the Swiss confederates : C.
SIEBER-LEHMANN, ‘Teutsche Nation’ und Eidgenossenschaft. Der Zusammenhang zwischen Türken- und
Burgunderkriegen, in: Historische Zeitschrift, 253, 1991, p. 600, and C. SIEBER-LEHMANN, Der türkische Sultan
Mehmet II. und Karl der Kühne, der ‘Türk im Occident’, in: F.-T. ERKENS (ed.), Europa und die osmanische
Expansion im ausgehenden Mittelalter, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, Beiheft 30, 1997, p. 13-38.

link to the very medieval crusader tradition 26 . Taming a city became a ‘normal’ element of the
behaviour of a prince; this 'theocratic descending' idea of government was favoured by Charles
the Bold, but it remained popular with Habsburg rulers such as Philip II, who viewed himself as
prince as the vicarius Dei 27 . Rebellion against such a ruler and his authority was equal to lèsemajesté,
punishable by death or by destruction, if the transgressor happened to be a community.
The same duo who organized and supervised the destruction of Liège, Charles the Bold and Guy
de Brimeu, lord of Humbercourt, appear to have been involved in the conception of a master
plan to handle in a partly similar way the city which for generations had embodied urban
resistance against princely power, the biggest city of Flanders, and even of the Burgundian
Netherlands as a whole, Ghent. After having nipped in the bud a potential revolt in Ghent at the
beginning of his reign, the subsequent humiliation of Ghent, which followed in a ceremony in his
residence in Brussels, was turned by Burgundian propaganda and historiography into what was
called the first ‘magnificence’ (out of twelve, the allusion to Hercules is clear) of Charles the
Bold 28 . Communication and propaganda worked, again, also in opposite directions, though
historians have, for obvious reasons related to heuristic realities, paid much more attention to the
princely view. When in 1477, after the news of Charles the Bold’s death in the battle before
Nancy had reached Ghent, in the course of the subsequent revolt of the subjects of the whole of
the Low Countries not only a remarkable set of constitutional privileges was granted but also
accounts were settled with those who had incarnated the autocratic policy of the late duke, his
chancellor Guillaume Hugonet and Guy de Brimeu, the man responsible for the destruction of
Liège. Both were executed in Ghent on April 3,1477 29 . An anonymous Liège testimony recalls
the general feeling of relief caused by the knowledge that these extremely dangerous men were
no longer in power: 'Sic perierunt hostes sancti Lamberti et incendiarii urbis inclytae Leodiensis
et respirabat terra aliquo tempore' 30 . In the preceding years de Brimeu had been co-responsible
for previewing the plan to erect a citadel in Ghent on the place where the abbey of Saint Bavo
stood, one of the oldest and most venerable religious institutions of the city. This operation too
involved Guy de Brimeu who, as we saw, had set up a similar operation in Liège 31 . Why Charles
the Bold chose the site of Saint-Bavo in 1469 is not known; it may be supposed, however, given
his negative experience with the procession of Saint-Lieven, that he also aimed at this saint's cult.
The yearly procession in honour of this local saint had in 1467 coincided with the duke’s entry
into Ghent and had almost changed it into a fatal occasion 32 . Now this procession, traditionally a
26 On the classical inspiration see: M. TANNER, The last descendant of Aeneas. The Hapsburgs and the mythic image
of the emperor, Yale, London, 1993.
27
M. VAN GELDEREN, The political thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555-1590, Cambridge, 1992, p. 30.
28 W. PARAVICINI, Die zwölf 'Magnificences' Karls des Kühnen, in: G. ALTHOFF, Formen und Funktionen
öffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter, (Vorträge und Forschungen LI), Stuttgart, 2001, p. 323-327.
29 M. BOONE, La justice en spectacle. La justice urbaine en Flandre et la crise du pouvoir « bourguignon » (1477-
1488), in : Revue Historique, CCCVIII, 2003/1, p. 49-59, an episode which illustrates how urban space was
reconquered after the duke and his court had taken hold of it.
30 KERVYN DE LETTENHOVE, Chroniques relatives Β l'histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de
Bourgogne (textes Latins), Bruxelles, CRH in -4Ε, 1876, p. 488.
31 De Brimeu stayed in Ghent when the plan to punish the city was discussed, among the re-building of several ducal
possessions, talks concerned 'certaine place et pourpris prez de Saint Bavon lez Gand contenant ung grant chasteau
d'une forte soubtille et maistrieuse fachon ouquel y avoit beaucop d'ouvraige': PARAVICINI, Guy de Brimeu, 461.
32 See on the incidents of 1467: P. ARNADE, Secular charisma, sacred power: rites of rebellion in the Ghent entry of
1467, in: Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, XLV, 1991, p. 69-94, put into
a larger context in his book P. ARNADE, Realms of ritual. Burgundian ceremony and civic life in late medieval Ghent,
Ithaca-London (Cornell univ. press), 1996, p. 145-158. See also E. LECUPPRE-DESJARDIN, La ville des cérémonies.
Essai sur le communication politique dans les anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons, Turnhout, 2004 (Studies in European
Urban History, 4), p. 294-302.

source of social disturbances in the city of Ghent involved two confraternities active in the abbey
and identified with it, while on the other hand a half-brother of Charles, the ducal bastard and
bibliophile Rafaël de Mercatel, was to become from 1478 on abbot of this very rich and
influential ecclesiastic institution 33 . In a arrangement with Mary of Burgundy and her husband
Maximilian of Austria, heirs to Charles the Bold, Mercatel obtained the interdiction of using the
abbey as military barracks for soldiers 34 . A certain military function seems therefore to have
been ‘accustomed’ during Charles’ reign. Anyway the plans for a citadel were formally made, a
task bestowed upon the ducal painter Hannecart 35 . Maximilian of Austria, after having dealt in
1492 with the tedious rebellion of Flanders and of the city of Ghent, thanks to the military
wisdom of his commander in chief Albert of Saxony, reactivated the plans of his father-in-law
concerning the way a citadel should be constructed in order to mark the urban space of Ghent. In
a letter of June 20, 1492 he ordered the construction of ‘ung chasteau a Saint-Bavon qui se
prendra a une tour, qui est au bout du dit Saint-Bavon, sur la riviere l’Escaut’ adding to this
plan the destruction of the béguinage of Saint Elisabeth on the other side of the town, and
incorporating it with the ducal residence ‘le lieu que l’on dit le beghinaige sera rompu et
comprins avec icelle hostel pour le fortifier a l’encontre de la ville jusques a la petite riviere qui
court en la rue de la porte de Bruges et comprendra l’on la dicte porte de Bruges dedens le dit
fort qui sera ung chasteau et seront abbatuz tous les fors de la ville qui pourroient estre a
l’encontre du dit chasteau’ 36 . Even the finances necessary for this farreaching and impressive
intervention in the urban tissue were foreseen: the city had to finance the operation, as part of the
financial repression it had to face after the rebellion was crushed, and might need to mobilize, so
the same text had calculated, between two to three thousand workmen to get the job done 37 .
Besides this firm attack on the city’s financial integrity, what remains as very striking is the
obvious wish to implant two military strongholds in the city at two crucial spots, dominating the
links, by water and over land, towards the two economic nodal points of the moment, the cities
of Bruges and Antwerp. The obvious ease with which ecclesiastic institutions were to be
integrated into and subjected to a mere political and military logic is equally remarkable, I’ll
come back to this theme later on. For the moment at the end of the 15 th century, all of this
remained an aspiration. It took another confrontation with yet another, even more powerful
monarch, the emperor Charles V to have finally the spatial integrity of Ghent – his native city –
altered in a way already projected by both Charles the Bold and Maximilian.
Under Charles V some new developments reinforced each other. Among them, the fact that the
heir to the Burgundian heritage had become emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and king of
Spain thus providing him with more concrete power and financial resources and with a much
stronger ideological argument, the Emperor incarnated the ultimate assumption of power. In the
meantime the traditional needs to fight the internal urban opposition and to keep at bay the
equally traditional threat from France continued to influence imperial policies. When all of these
33 On the procession and the saint’s cult: M. BOONE, De Sint-Lievensbedevaart. Bouwsteen van de stedelijke
identiteit van Gent (late middeleeuwen en vroege 16 de eeuw), in: Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis
en Oudheidkunde te Gent, n.r. LXI, 2007, p. 105-122.
34 G. BERINGS, C. LEBBE, L’abbaye de Saint-Bavon à Gand, in: Monasticon Belge VII province de Flandre
Orientale, 1er vol., Brussels, p. 62.
35 J. DUVERGER, Wilde Karel de Stoute een burcht tegen Gent oprichten in het domein van de Sint-Baafsabdij ?, in:
Miscellanea historica in honorem Alberti De Meyer, 2, Louvain-Bruxelles, 1946, p. 748-750.
36 State archives in Ghent, Varia 3, nr. 243, enveloppe ‘1492’ (n° 35). I thank my collaborator and colleague Jelle
Haemers who drew my attention on this remarkable text. He published a recent synthesis on the revolts against
Maximilian: J. HAEMERS, For the Common Good. State power and urban revolts in the reign of Mary of Burgundy
(1477-1482), Turnhout, 2009 (Studies in European Urban History 1100-1800, 17)
37 M. BOONE, Les pouvoirs et leurs représentations dans les villes des Anciens Pays-Bas (XIVe-XVe siècle), in: E.
CROUZET-PAVAN, E. LECUPPRE-DESJARDIN (éd.), Villes de Flandre et d’Italie (XIIIe-XVIe siècle). Les
enseignements d’une comparaison, Turnhout, 2008, (Studies in European Urban History, 1100-1800, nr. 12), p. 197.

developments came together, they provoked a significant change in the relationship between
state development and urban spatial integrity. Several cities in the realms belonging to this
emperor/king/duke paid an important price to centralisation. In many of these individual cases
however similar features appear so that, even more than was the case with his burgundian
ancestor, after whom the emperor was christened Charles by the way, under Charles V we may
argue that a systematic policy was being developed 38 .
He tackled some of these problems and he seems to have had some good reasons to impose this
policy in particular upon cities where a bishop was present, such as, in the burgundian Low
Countries, Utrecht, Tournai and Thérouanne. The bishops’ sees in the Low Countries were partly
the result of territorial developments that go as far back in time as to the late roman period or
were a final result of a division within older bishoprics (such as the one of Noyon-Tournai) 39 .
Anyway, the map of ecclesiastical territorial divisions did not match that of urbanisation. It
coincided even less with the territorial divisions among the main principalities of the Low
Countries. No surprise perhaps that again Charles the Bold, that inexhaustible champion of
reforms, had already conceived the plan to rationalise and to provide each principality within the
Burgundian Netherlands with a bishop’s see: ‘avoir en chascun pays ung evesque’ 40 . The plan
did not survive its instigator, but it was significantly commented upon in the correspondence of
the 16 th century cardinal de Granvelle, when this influential prelate recalled in 1565 the plans put
forward by duke Charles in 1467 to dismember the Liège bishopric 41 . Finally it was only with
the reform of 1559 (codified in the papal bull Super universas of pope Paul IV) and imposed
around 1570 by the military force of the duke of Alba, representing king Philipp II of Spain, that
the situation changed fundamentally 42 . Already in the preceding decades Charles V had
dismembered the old dioceses of Tournai and Utrecht and had joined them to the ‘Burgundische
Kreis’ (the ‘circle of Burgundy’, a part of the empire, completely disconnected from the Parisian
Parliament and consisting of his enlarged Burgundian heritage). This happened with Tournai in
1521, with Utrecht in 1528 43 . In other words, the reshuffling of the ecclesiastical map went hand
in hand with a policy to impose on these cities a model of domination, embodied by a very
visible military presence, through the construction of a princely citadel. In Tournai the task was
partly rendered easy for Charles, since shortly before he arrived on the scene the city had already
passed into the hands of the English crown, in the years 1513-1519. King Henry VIII had
invested heavily in its defence, more precisely by having a citadel built 44 . In Utrecht things were
38 Several examples of the way Charles handeld urban and other powers which stood up against his policy are given
in M. BOONE, M. DEMOOR (eds.), Charles V in Context: the Making of a European Identity, Bruxelles, 2003 (VUB
press, series of the ‘faculteit der Letteren en Wijsbegeerte van de Universiteit Gent’).
39 See the classic study by F. VERCAUTEREN, Etude sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde. Contribution à l’histoire
urbaine du Nord de la France de la fin du IIIe siècle à la fin du Xie siècle, Bruxelles, 1934 (Mémoires de l’Académie
royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, 2 e s. XXXIII), reedited in Hildesheim-New York, G. Olms Verlag, 1974.
40 W. PARAVICINI, Guy de Brimeu, p ; 150-151 : concerning Liège the cry went that ‘les dis de la cité, pour leurs
grans crismes, offences et malefices se sont rendus inhabiles de jamais avoir le siège episcopal ne la court espirituel
de Liège en ycelle cité’.
41 A.G. JONGKEES, Burgundica et varia. Keuze uit de opstellen van prof. dr. A.G. Jongkees hem aangeboden ter
gelegenheid van zijn tachtigste verjaardag op 14 juli 1989, (ed. E.O. VAN DER WERFF, C.A.A. LINSSENS, B. EBELS-
HOVING), Hilversum, 1990, p. 168 (paper presented at the commemoration of the 500 anniversary of the battle of
Nancy in 1477 and published in the Annales de l’Est, mémoire n° 62, Nancy 1979).
42 M. DIERICKX, De oprichting der nieuwe bisdommen in de Nederlanden onder Filips II (1559-1570), Antwerpen-
Utrecht, 1950, to complete with a fundamental source edition by the same editor : Documents inédits sur l’érection
des nouveaux diocèses aux Pays-Bas 1521-1570, Bruxelles, CRH, 3 tomes, 1960-1962.
43 W. BLOCKMANS, Keizer Karel (1500-1558). De utopie van het keizerschap, Leuven, 2000, p. 77-80.
44 On the english ‘occupation’ as it is often called in historiography, see C.G. CRUICKSHANK, The English occupation
of Tournai. 1513-1519, Oxford, 1971 and M. VLEESCHOUWERS-VAN MELKEBEEK, Un compte de la recette générale
de l’évêché de Tournai (1507-1508) (Londres, PRO, E 36/82), in: Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, CLI,
1985, p. 153-261. On the citadel : C. DURY, La citadelle d’Henri VIII, roi d’Angleterre, à Tournai (XVIe-XVIIe
siècle), in: G. BLIECK, PH. CONTAMINE, N. FAUCHERE, J. MESQUI (éd.), Le château et la ville. Conjonction,

a bit more complicated. In October 1528 Charles V added Utrecht and the dependent territory to
his Netherlands belongings. In so doing he realised the ambition the burgundian rulers had
cherished several decades before: to gain a firm grip on the rich (and only) bishopric in the
northern parts of the Low Countries, for which Maximilian of Austria still had to fight a war in
1483. At the same time he managed to obtain a bridgehead in the eastern parts of the Low
Countries, enabling him to conquer the duchy of Guelders. This traditional ally of the French
crown was finally conquered in 1543 and its territory added as the last province to the 17
provinces of the Habsburg Low Countries. Only days after the surrender of Utrecht, the
construction of a citadel was ordered, with the explicit ambition to control the inhabitants and
subjects of Utrecht, whose loyalty to the new prince was not evident or straightforward. Again
within days, the place where this citadel was to be erected was chosen, a supervising architect
appointed (in this case Rombout II Keldermans, member of a famous family of architects) and a
military adviser, Jean de Termonde, lord of Borgnival, the new captain of the artillery, promoted
to commander of the new citadel. The latter had previously been commander of the citadel in
Tournai 45 . The Utrecht citadel, known as the Vredenburg, was again implanted where up till then
a religious community had lived: the convent and hospital of Saint Catherine, belonging to the
Johannite order. Its position on the direct outskirts of the city made it a handsome choice for a
citadel that was meant not only to protect but also to guard the city and to keep it under control.
From 1545 on, the defences of the city were subjected to a profound adaptation to the modern
‘Italian’ style of defences in the formula of ‘bastions’. This operation involved the Italian
architect Donato de Bono, who in the five preceding years was active in the same business in
Ghent, Antwerp and in another bishop’s see upon which a citadel was bestowed, Cambrai. A
year later the Emperor himself came to Utrecht, in order to preside over a chapter of the Order of
the Golden Fleece. On that occasion he charged Donato de Bono with the further expansion of
the defences of the city and with the construction of a new city hall. In a relatively short lapse of
time the defensive capacity of the city of Utrecht was profoundly adapted, also its urban
landscape. In this mix of Italian architectural knowledge and indigenous construction a certain
message was passed on. The emperor had already modified the seal of the city and in so doing
had influenced the self-image the city conveyed to the outside world through its seal: the
interference of Charles V with Utrecht in 1528 immediately led him to ban the image of Saint
Martin from the city’s seal 46 . In the same movement the political influence of the craft guilds in
Utrecht’s political system was dealt with: the building (and financing) of the citadel, the visible
impact on the city’s image (new town hall and seal) and the political elimination of the guilds
were all elements of a repressive attack on the urban phenomenon 47 . Already at the start of his
government the emperor showed in what direction his policies were to develop and how he
reckoned to handle rebellious cities. In the years 1520-1521 he had dealt with the comuneros or
germanias in Castille, Valencia and Mallorca, and in the following years 1524-26 he crushed in
an even more violent and gruesome way the peasants’ revolt in South western Germany, though
there again the urban element is not to be neglected. Also in this last case, as in Spain, the urban
opposition, juxtapositiion (XIe-XVIIIe siècle), Paris, 2002 (Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques,
125), p. 209-224.
45 The literature on developments in Utrecht is abundant, see the yet unpublished PhD (Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, faculty of engineering) in press with the royal academy in Brussels which uses also the lavishly available
archival documentation: P. MARTENS, Militaire architectuur en vestingbouw in de Nederlanden tijdens het
regentschap van Maria van Hongarije (1531-1555). De ontwikkeling van een gebastioneerde vestingbouw, KUL,
2009, vol. 1, p. 85-137. In the bibliography the reader will find among others references to the manifold works of
Charles Van den Heuvel who published extensively on the subject.
46 R. VAN UYTVEN, Stadsgeschiedenis in het Noorden en Zuiden, in: Nieuwe algemene geschiedenis der
Nederlanden, 2, Bussum, 1982, p. 221.
47 W. BLOCKMANS, Keizer Karel V, 1500-1558. De utopie van het keizerschap, Leuven, 2000, p. 225 (also published
in english: Emperor Charles V 1500-1558, London, 2002.

population and the traditional political powers within the cities felt the iron fist of state
unification and state power come down on them. Like his burgundian forefathers, however,
Charles seems not to have overburdened his Low Countries subjects or to have exerted a too
harsh repression on them, since a good prince took care not to slaughter the goose that laid the
golden eggs for him 48 . A letter of 1579 addressed to king Philip II of Spain recalls the reasons
why his burgundian ancestor Philip the Good refrained from destroying Ghent after he had
defeated its army in 1453. It formulates this opinion very clearly: 'Qui m'en rendra une autre,
après que je l'auray ruynee? Si ce fust vostre heritaige et patrimoine, vous sentiriez
aultrement' 49 .
One could observe the same in Philip II’s father’s attitude towards the individual cities: no longer
the final destruction but much more a symbolic interference in a city seems to have been
essential. A crucial element of this symbolic intervention was the construction of a citadel. Two
major exceptions at least in the Low Countries seem to contradict this: the bishopric (again) of
Thérouanne and the city of Hesdin were both utterly destroyed on the command of Charles V in
1553 and never rebuilt again (Hesdin was refounded in the same neighbourhood but at a given
distance) 50 . The reasons why Thérouanne was so ruthlessly treated are manifold: the city was,
despite the fact that its bishop’s flock was in majority Flemish or Artesian and thus belonged to
the Low Countries, seen and experienced as a French enclave in Burgundian/Habsburg territory.
‘Thérouanne est un des deux oreillers sur lesquels le roi de France peut dormir en paix’
according to a quote attributed to king François I. Already in the wars Maximilian of Austria had
to fight against French aggression, Thérouanne played a crucial role. The contemporary
observer, the poet and canon Molinet described it as ‘la mauvaise fenestre dont le vent françois
se desgorge’ 51 . Both the siege and destruction of Thérouanne left abundant testimonies in
literature (in French, Dutch and Latin) in which the city was time and again compared to
Carthage or Troy. Antiquity, as in Charles the Bold’s day, served as a handsome point of
reference and at least as an intellectual justification for a ruthless power-game. Thérouanne had
been the theatre of many sieges (by Maximilian of Austria and Henry VIII in 1513, for instance),
of partial destructions, reconstructions and of the introduction of defences in the new Italian
mode involving the Italian architect Antonio Castello (nomen est omen), so much so that the city
had become a symbol of the French military pretensions in what was still considered as the
burgundian ‘heartland’ 52 . It therefore had to disappear and be erased from the collective memory,
just as one chases away a nightmare. That in the process religious buildings, the cathedral church
of one of the old and venerable bishoprics of the Low Countries in the first place, were destroyed
did not halt the course of events. Thérouanne had already been the object, in the context of the
Franco-Flemish wars at the beginning of the 14 th century, of a more general plan presented to
pope Bonifacius VII (formulated in the name of the ‘clerus et populus comitatus Flandriae)to
redesign the ecclesiastical map of the county of Flanders. After the Flemish troops had
conquered the city in 1303, the beheading and profanation on the market place of the statue of
48 A similar impression is left by a comparison of the fiscal burden upon several parts of his composite realm: J. D.
TRACY, War finance and fiscal devolution in Charles V’s realms, in: W. BLOCKMANS, N. MOUT (ed.), The world of
Emperor Charles V, Amsterdam, 2004, p. 69-81
49 L.P. GACHARD, Etudes et notices historiques concernant l'histoire de Pays-Bas, deel 2, Brussel, 1890, p. 407.
50 The last synthesis on this question is P. MARTENS, Militaire architectuur en vestingbouw, p. 211-335, see also
B.DELMAIRE, Thérouanne et Hesdin: deux destructions (1553), une reconstruction, in: Destruction et reconstruction
de villes, du moyen âge à nos jours. Actes du 18e colloque international Spa, 10-12.IX.1996, Brussel, 1999,
(Gemeentekrediet van België, historische reeks in-8Ε, nr. 100), p. 128-136.
51 Cited by P. MARTENS, Militaire architectuur en vestingbouw, p. 289.
52 Ibidem, p. 238-246.

the holy king Louis had greatly added to the reciprocal animosity between French and Flemish 53 .
The destruction of Thérouanne in 1553 is extremely well documented. We know for instance that
both the city magistrates of Saint-Omer and the canons of the local chapter obtained respectively
the urban pavements and sculptures of the cathedral of Thérouanne for their own needs and for
the embellishment of their new church 54 .
In the case of Ghent the plan to chastise the city and impose a modification on its ecclesiastical
map led to a different outcome, though here also one of the most venerable ecclesiastical
institutions of the county, the abbey of Saint-Bavo’s, paid the full price for the way the emperor
sought to punish the city 55 . Drawing on the plans already formulated under duke Charles the
Bold and actualised under Maximilian of Austria in 1492, the abbey was to be replaced by a
citadel. Its plan was drawn up by the Italian architect Donato de Bono Pellizuoli, whom we have
already seen at work in Utrecht in 1528. De Bono originated from Bergamo and would remain
until his death in 1556 in the service of the emperor and his lieutenant in the Low Countries,
Mary of Hungary, the emperor’s sister. Apart from the two citadels in Ghent and Cambrai, his
best known enterprise remains the new fortifications of Antwerp, but de Bono seems to have
been involved in almost all the important military building projects in the Low Countries and
also in the destruction of Thérouanne 56 . The new construction in Ghent responded in an almost
perfect way to the ideal of the Italian-type citadel. Around 1540 this type was firmly established
as a model in military architecture, but it went further than a simple military stronghold. From
the start on a princely residence was foreseen to be installed in the middle of the citadel, a socalled
‘palazzo in fortezza’, following the examples by two Spanish residences Charles had
ordered to be modified in a fundamental way: the Alcazar both in Toledo and in Madrid.
Although the Ghent citadel was finished and ready to be put into use in 1543, the palace was
never completed, though still in the 1550s the plan to realise it was confirmed again 57 . As
pointed out when the first plan to replace the Ghent abbey with a citadel during the reign of
Charles the Bold was discussed, the selection of the abbey may have been provoked by the
duke’s wish to take revenge for the serious disturbances the yearly procession of the local saint,
Saint Lievin, had provoked when the return of the two-day procession, which took place also
outside the city, had coincided with his ‘joyous entry’. The abbey fulfilled a crucial role in the
procession, one of the most fundamental expressions of the collective identity of the city,
represented by the both economically and politically important corporation of the weavers 58 .
Since the emperor wanted not only to impose a military stronghold on the city, but also to
annihilate, as he had done before in so many Spanish and German cities and in Utrecht, the
53 Saint Louis was canonised only six years before, since he was the grandfather of the reigning French king, the way
his statue was treated was therefore experienced as a personal attack on the monarch, see: W. SIMONS, “Dieu, li
premierz, plus anchiiens et souverains bougois de tous”. Sur la place de la religion dans les villes flamandes (XIIIe-
XVe siècle), in : E. CROUZET-PAVAN, E. LECUPPRE-DESJARDIN (éd.), Villes de Flandre et d’Italie (XIIIe-XVIe
siècle). Les enseignements d’une comparaison, Turnhout, 2008, (Studies in European Urban History, 1100-1800, nr.
12), p. 78-79.
54 P. MARTENS, Militaire architectuur en vestingbouw, p. 295 and L. DESCHAMPS-DE PAS, Translation à Saint-Omer
du portail de la cathédrale de Thérouanne, in : Bulletin historique trimestriel de la Société académique des
antiquaires de la Morinie, I, 1852-1856, p. 117-126.
55 I had the opportunity to contextualise the way Charles Vth punished his native city in an elaborate way in M.
BOONE, 'Le dict mal s'est espandu comme peste fatale'. Karel V en Gent, stedelijke identiteit en staatsgeweld, in:
Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, n.r. LIII, 2000, p. 29-61.
56 Though still little is known about the man himself, see: P. MARTENS, Militaire architectuur en vestingbouw, p. 60-
61.
57 P. MARTENS, Militaire architectuur en vestingbouw, p. 62-63.
58 I did elaborate this aspect in a specific article in a thematic issue of a journal, in which the cult, commemoration
and significance of the saint is treated from a multitude of possible approaches: M. BOONE, De Sint-
Lievensbedevaart. Bouwsteen van de stedelijke identiteit van Gent (late middeleeuwen en vroege 16 de eeuw), in:
Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, n.r. LXI, 2007, p. 105-122.

political influence of the craft guilds in urban politics and hence in the process of negotiating
taxes for the central government, one of the major manifestations of the guilds’ power and public
power, the procession of Saint Lieven was to be abolished. This was realised in the so-called
‘concessio carolina’ of April 30, 1540 in which he modified the political ordinance of the city
and intervened in the way public space was used to express communal identity 59 . The procession
of Saint Lieven, together with other public displays of urban solidarity and of the power of the
guilds (the procession of the weavers and the ‘auweet’, a yearly event put on by the guild-based
militias) fell victim to this imperial intervention 60 . In the ideological justification for the way he
should handle the Ghent revolt, which had started as a traditional conflict over the city’s
contribution to a general taxation, his councillors and in the first place the president of the State
Council Louis de Schore had used the classic reference to antiquity. Like Carthage, Ghent had
committed the crimen laesae majestatis and therefore had to be erased: 'et debvroit estre submise
a la chaine comme fust Cartaege par les Romains, sans jamais povoir porter nom de ville ou
estre reputee membre de Flandres' 61 . Again, the restraint already displayed by his burgundian
ancestors was recalled and the destruction was reduced to a spatially limited intervention: the
establishment of a citadel was realised, accompanied however by rather draconian measures
concerning the political and public role of the guilds: their presence both real (the numerous
guildhalls were confiscated) and temporary in the form of participation in pageants and
processions was annihilated 62 .
The last city, but in the context of 16 th century economic developments undoubtedly the most
important in the Low Countries, was Antwerp. There too, the Habsburg princes felt the need to
construct a citadel and to allow the city to modify its defences (under the threat as in Utrecht of
incursions from Guelders). As the building of the Antwerp defences and citadel in a remarkably
short lapse of time between 1567-1571 has been the subject of several major publications by
Hugo Soly, we do not have to go too much into the details here 63 . The story Soly tells is one of
far-reaching internal corruption and the collusion of the central government around Mary of
Hungary and one man, the entrepreneur Gilbert van Schoonbeke, whose capitalist undertakings
gave him an unquestioned monopoly on public undertakings in the city. No need in the case of
Antwerp to look for a suitable place where the new citadel had to be implanted: since the city
was going through a phase of growth and extension, plenty of new space was available in order
to implant the new defences, a whole new quarter (the ‘Nieuwstad’ or new town) and a citadel.
59 The text of the concessio is edited: J. LAMEERE, H. SIMONT, Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-Bas (1537-1543),
dl. 4, Brussel, 1907, p. 170-181 and also in CH. STEUR, Mémoire sur les troubles de Gand de 1540, Brussel, 1834
(Mémoires couronnés par l'Académie Royale des sciences et belles-lettres de Bruxelles, tome X), p. 167-186.
60 On the auweet, exported from Ghent to Bruges in 1488 as a tool to foster the internal urban political cohesion in
the confrontation with Maximilian of Austria: J. HAEMERS, E. LECUPPRE-DESJARDIN, Conquérir et reconquérir
l’espace urbain. Le triomphe de la collectivité sur l’individu dans le cadre de la révolte brugeoise de 1488, in: C.
DELIGNE, C. BILLEN (eds.), Voisinages, coexistences, appropriations. Groupes sociaux et territoires urbains (Moyen
Âge-16 e siècle), Turnhout, 2007, (Studies in European Urban History, 10), p. 119-142.
61 Brussels, General archives of the realm, Audiëntie, 1627 3 , 'declaration des abuz commis par ceulx de Gand en l'an
XV c XXXIX', fΕ 9vΕ.
62 The confiscation of the guild houses deprived the guilds of a place to organize meetings, keep their archives and
their weapons, but indirectly they lost also tokens in the urban landscape put on display during entries and the like.
On the confiscation: J. DAMBRUYNE, Rijkdom, materiële cultuur en sociaal aanzien. De bezitspatronen en
investeringsstrategieën van de Gentse ambachten omstreeks 1540, in: C. LIS, H. SOLY (ed.), Werelden van verschil.
Ambachtsgilden in de Lage Landen, Brussel, 1997, p. 151-211 and more general: J. DAMBRUYNE, Guilds, social
mobility and status in sixteenth-century Ghent, in: International review of social history, 43, 1998, p. 31-78.
63 H. SOLY, De bouw van de Antwerpse citadel (1567-1571). Sociaal-economische aspecten, in: Belgisch tijdschrift
voor militaire geschiedenis, 21, 1976, p. en H. SOLY, Urbanisme en kapitalisme te Antwerpen in de 16 de eeuw. De
stedebouwkundige en industriële ondernemingen van Gilbert van Schoonbeke, s.l., Crédit communal de Belgique,
série historique Pro Civitate, n° 47, 1977, passim.

The constructions Van Schoonbeke initiated therefore were presented and experienced as being
part of a necessary and inevitable extension of the built surface within the city, with a clear
economic and commercial rationale behind them. The interesting aspects the Antwerp case
allows us to develop, however, are linked to some essential aspects we may suspect of having
been at work in the other cities too: the specific financing of the whole operation, and the way
this affected the social and economic, and, in cities where corporate participation in the city
government was available, also political order within the city. The more or less imposed
construction of extremely expensive undertakings such as citadels and new defences, using the
new techniques occasioned by ‘modernised’ warfare (the use of metal projectiles instead of stone
bullets fired by rather primitive artillery pieces as an example) did indeed have important effects
on the financial and fiscal organisation of the city, raising questions as to the way collective
means were used yes or no in order to sustain and enhance the common good. Some comparative
calculations made by Wilfrid Brulez indicate enormous differences: the construction of the
citadel in Ghent implied a cost of 267 guilders per meter, that of Antwerp some years later
represented an average cost of 534 guilders per meter 64 . It may be clear from such a difference
that not only mere economic parameters were responsible.
3. the city and the citadel: an inevitable phase in the development of the relation state – city
or an ‘accident de parcours’, the cuckoo revisited
In a number of cases highlighted in the preceding examples several elements seem to be present,
allowing us to cite again a very traditional statement formulated by Henri Pirenne in 1904. When
comparing the behaviour of medieval merchants and entrepreneurs in two cities, Dinant and
Douai, he stated: ‘des deux côtés les mêmes causes ont produit les mêmes effets’ 65 .
Three elements seem to me to be very important: on the political level the way the whole
operation allowed for a fundamental shift in the relationship between city and state in the former
Low Countries to become visible; in the field of economics how the impact of the reshuffling of
urban space provoked by the establishment of a princely citadel reshaped economic and financial
behaviour; and finally, concerning a series of more religious and cultural aspects, how urban
identity was affected by the deliberate attack on the city’s spatial integrity. I’ll comment on these
elements in the reverse order.
In many of the stories concerning individual cities it is striking how the choice of the new citadel
to be imposed upon the urban space implied the destruction of important and often venerable
ecclesiastical institutions. Of course we should realise that these institutions were often situated
in a location which was highly interesting from a military point of view and allowed for keeping
the city’s centre under permanent threat. In Ghent, Utrecht and Liège the way the citadels were
implanted implied the destruction of an old abbey or major ecclesiastical institution and from a
legal and perhaps even practical point of view the expropriation of the property of one proprietor
may have been ‘easier’ to perform, than to erase a whole quarter of a town involving a great
number of individual proprietors, though there are enough examples to prove the contrary 66 . The
way in which the church was treated also allowed for a clear manifestation of power supremacy
64 W. BRULEZ, Het gewicht van de oorlog in de nieuwe tijden. Enkele aspecten, in: Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, 91,
1978, p. 394 who compares the financial impact of following war related phenomena: warfare itself, the fleet, the
construction of citadels, artillery and mobilisation.
65 As cited and put into context in W. PREVENIER, Pirenne, Jean Henri Otto Lucien Marie, in: Nationaal Biografisch
Woordenboek 19, Brussels, 2009, kol.760.
66 See for instance the construction of some great marketplaces (such as in Bologna already in the 13 th century): E.
CROUZET-PAVAN, “Pour le bien commun…” A propos des politiques urbaines dans l’Italie communale, in: E.
CROUZET-PAVAN (éd.), Pouvoir et édilité. Les grands chantiers dans l’Italie communale et seigneuriale, Rome,2003
(Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome, 302), p. 33-35 and E. CROUZET-PAVAN, Les villes vivantes. Italie XIIIe-
XVe siècle, Paris, 2009, p. 144-149.

on the part of the prince and the city against an institution that for centuries had questioned the
formers’ assumption to have a monopoly on fiscal and judicial matters over the territories they
were in charge of. Especially the clerical claim to fiscal exemptions created a series of very
concrete and almost visible tensions in the cities 67 . The power that was capable, however, of
modifying and changing dramatically the urban ecclesiastical geography clearly gained a kind of
moral and effective superiority. Big cities, imbued with an important symbolic meaning like
Ghent, Liège or Utrecht, also ranked high as nodal points in the urban networks of the Low
Countries 68 . To be able to impose a new ecclesiastical order on these central places of worship,
spiritual power and ecclesiastical wealth clearly enhanced the social capital of those involved.
The more so since it implied, in the sole case of a relatively well-documented case of a
destruction followed by a deliberate process of reconstruction, in the case of Liège, that the
‘new’ order was constructed around a religiously ordained urban space, involving as a token the
representation of the close tie between the prince who ordered the city to be destructed and the
patron saint of the same city, guarantor of its survival. In other cases the abolition of very old
ecclesiastical structures and collective behaviours, the imposed abolition of the Ghent procession
to honour Saint Lievin comes to mind, or the modification of Utrecht’s seal, all of them
intimately linked to the construction of urban collective identity, combined to strengthen the
prince’s ambition to control and master the city. Determining the city’s religious calendar was a
clear illustration of almost absolute power, since it touched upon the divine order. The
chronological coincidence between the first elaboration of a plan to modify the religious
geography and to redraw the map of the bishoprics in the Low Countries, from the reign of
Charles the Bold on, and the intervention in the local religious map may therefore not be a mere
accident.
The process of state formation can (and has been) read as a struggle for fiscal monopoly between
prince and city 69 . A profound modification of the city’s geography and the implantation of a
citadel (sometimes accompanied by new defences) imposed an enormous financial burden on the
city’s budget. Already in the Burgundian period, as an episode from Ghent’s financial history
demonstrates, both cities and dukes were aware of the important implications massive works on
the latter’s residences could have. In 1441 the urban elite and the duke, Philip the Good,
negotiated and finally agreed upon an arrangement allowing for the reinvestment by the duke in
the formula of orders for building materials and the payment of a labour force concerning the
important interventions in his principal residence in Ghent, an arrangement that stipulated a
yearly sum of 200 pound groten to be paid over a period of eight years 70 . Even if the concrete
impact of this ‘reinvestment’ on the urban economy remained limited, the fact that its existence
determined the relationship between city and prince for a certain period of time is relevant. In the
case of the construction of citadels much more important sums were involved. We have already
mentioned how at the very start of the burgundian period, the great building programmes in Sluis
and in Lille of Philip the Bold – the only duke whose finances have been studied in detail – put a
67 A subject which needs to be developed, see the status quaestionis by C. Billen and M. Boone, Taxer les
ecclésiastiques. Enjeux princiers et enjeux urbains dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux (XIIIe-XVIe siècle), Coloquio
« Iglesia y fiscalidad en la Edad Media (siglos XIII-XV) », Madrid, Casa de Velasquez,22-24 de mayo 2008, ed. M.
Sanchez, D. Menjot (in preparation).
68 See in general (but with sufficient attention to religious aspects too): the different contributions in Le réseau urbain
en Belgique dans une perspective historique (1350-1850). Une approche statistique et dynamique. Actes du 15e
colloque international. Spa, 4-6 sept. 1990, Crédit Communal, coll. Histoire, série in-8°, n° 86, 1992.
69 A recent state of the art for the southern Low Countiries: M. BOONE, Systèmes fiscaux dans les principautés à forte
urbanisation des Pays-Bas méridionaux (Flandre, Brabant, Hainaut, Pays de Liège) au bas moyen âge (XIV e -XVI e
siècle), in : SIMONETTA CAVACIOCCHI (éd.), La fiscalità nell’economia europea secc. XIII-XVIII. Fiscal systems in
the European economy from the 13th to the 18th centuries, Atti della 39a Settimana di Studi, Fondazioni istituto
internazionale di storia economica “F. Datini » Prato, Firenze University Press, 2008, p. 657-683.
70 M. BOONE, Geld en macht. De Gentse stadsfinanciën en de Bourgondische staatsvorming (1384-1453), Gent,
1990 (Verhandelingen der maatschappij voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde te Gent, XV), p. 78-79

heavy burden on the prince’s income and provoked a longstanding financial relationship between
the duke and the Italian banking company of the Rapondi (originating from Lucca) 71 . In the
cases of the citadels of Utrecht, Antwerp and Ghent we know that the financial burden of their
construction was to a large extent devolved upon the cities’ finances, provoking a sudden and
drastic surge of indirect taxes, still the most important source of income for a city, and even an
increase of the city’s debt through the well-known technique of the sale of rents, which over a
longer period provoked another heightening of indirect fiscality 72 . There is a remarkable parallel
to be recalled: just as the massive sale of annuities, sold in order to allow the cities to pay their
due to the prince, and the handling of the collective debt contributed to the creation of a certain
‘civic responsibility’, the construction of citadels offered a chance to the prince and his
representatives to seduce a part of the urban elites to prefer the immediate profit deriving from
collaboration with the princely constructions above over urban interests 73 . There is no question
that the big work sites opened the occasion of the construction, often in a relatively short lapse of
time, of important public buildings and the preparation of the grounds on which it took place,
offered important opportunities for contractors and entrepreneurs active in the building
industries. The case of Antwerp shows how this led to widespread collusion between local
politicians and entrepreneurs, but however small the number of possible decision makers and of
those who realised the bigger profits remained, in the context of an important participation of
guild-based labour forces in the city government (which was for instance the case in both Ghent
and Utrecht), the opening of the big building sites must have had a wide-spread impact on
political allegiances. The citadels therefore constituted not only an open attack on the visual and
symbolic unity of the city, they also jeopardized its political coherence.
In addition to the religious and cultural meaning and the economic and financial impact, some
concluding remarks on the general political importance of this relatively short period of citadel
building in the bigger cities of the Low Countries are in order. Of course, from the more general
point of view of military strategy and of the geo-strategic models developed in this period of
fundamental change in military techniques and tactics, the citadels in the bigger cities are but a
part of a general movement to establish a new line of defence on a ‘national’ scale, destined to
contain the threat posed by an antagonistic ‘national’ power, that of the French monarchy. But
even within that perspective, brilliantly developed in the recent study of Pieter Martens, even the
label of the new ‘Italian’ mode of constructing urban defences has to be questioned 74 . Of course,
the comments of Machiavelli I quoted at the beginning and the importance of several Italian
engineers involved in the projects of Charles V are indisputable. What stands out, however,
concerning the Low Countries is the mix of indigenous traditions, well embedded in the
burgundian period, and some new techniques experienced in the context of the solving of a
71 See for details, A. VAN NIEUWENHUYSEN, Les finances du duc de Bourgogne Philippe le Hardi (1384-1404).
Economie et politique, Brussels, ed. ULB, 1984, p. 436-441, 448-449 and as an interesting comparison : J.
CHAPELOT, Les residences des ducs de Bourgogne capétiens et valois au XIVe siècle au Bois de Vincennes: nature,
localization, functions, in: W. PARAVICINI, B. SCHNERB (ed.), Paris, capitale des ducs de Bourgogne, Ostfildern,
2007 (Beihefte der Francia, 64), p. 39-81
72 For Antwerp, see the studies by Soly (note 63), for Utrecht: P. MARTENS, Militaire architectuur en vestingbouw, p.
85-137, for Ghent: M.C. LALEMAN, Le Castrum Novum de Gand (Belgique), in : G. BLIECK, PH. CONTAMINE, N.
FAUCHERE, J. MESQUI (éd.), Le château et la ville. Conjonction, opposition, juxtapositiion (XIe-XVIIIe siècle), Paris,
2002 (Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, 125), p. 335-353.
73 See the remarks concerning urban interests, annuity sales and state-formation in: M. BOONE, K. DAVIDS, P.
JANSSENS, Urban public debts from the 14th to the 18th Century. A new approach, in: M. BOONE, K. DAVIDS, P.
JANSSENS (eds.), Urban Public Debts. Urban government and the Market for Annuities in Western Europe (14 th -18 th
centuries), Turnhout, Brepols publishers, 2003, (Studies in European Urban History, 1100-1800, 3), p. 3-11.
74 As a matter of fact Martens himself questions the use of this image and deconstructs it by analyzing how the
terminology is almost completely absent from contemporary sources and seems to have been launched into historical
literature by the studies of Geoffrey Parker: P. MARTENS, Militaire architectuur en vestingbouw, p. 24 on the
misreading of ‘trace italienne’ (sic).

similar problem, namely how to impose a political power (a signoria) upon a city? And how to
press it upon an urban population who has lived in a fundamentally different context? The
remodelling of urban space is therefore necessary and inevitable, fuelled by a mix of religiously
inspired spatial modifications. Chronologically this development started with the autocratic reign
of Charles the Bold, the first duke of Burgundy strong enough to cherish the dream he could
definitively deal with urban counter power, and it lasted until the final confrontation in the
second half of the 16 th century between urban and regional powers and the central power in
Madrid and Brussels. In the way the citadels were perceived and treated in the military phase of
the Revolt of the Low Countries, fundamental aspects came to the foreground. Peter Arnade
recently brought these elements together in his study of the political culture of the Dutch revolt 75 .
The estates of Friesland put it very clearly in 1577 when referring to their efforts to dismantle the
duke of Alba’s citadel in Groningen: ‘we are destroyers of citadels, but builders of free cities’. In
the same year, following close upon the pacification of Ghent in 1576, the Vredenburg in Utrecht
the citadels in Antwerp and in Ghent were taken as targets of popular uprisings, their partial
destructions linked and embedded within another civic project: the construction of new city
walls. In performing this a link was made with the political culture that the imposition of the
citadel also had sought to dismantle: in Ghent a rotational system was imposed on
neighbourhoods in order to get the job done, enabling the mobilization of around 450 citizens
work at any given time, thus refounding the solidarity based on neighbourhood structures,
another fundamental element of urban political culture that the repression of Charles V in 1540
had sought to eradicate. Especially in the case of Antwerp, the assault on the citadel (‘a jubilant
cleansing ritual’ in Arnade’s words) took a symbolic turn since the citadel was Alba’s favourite
public works project, and since it offered an occasion to expel the bad dreams the city’s sack by
the Spanish army of Flanders had left. Both in Antwerp (with the ballad the complaint of
‘madonna citadel’ transformed into Madonna Castilla’) and in Utrecht with the legend of Catrijn
van Leemput, heroic citizen-warrior involved in the taking of the Vredenburg which entered into
political mythology, the reconquista of the citadels marked the regaining of urban identity.
For a last and concluding remark I want to return to Machiavelli whom I quoted at the start of
this paper, this time in a general comment on ‘How cities or principalities should be
administered after being conquered’ (chapter V of ‘the prince’): ‘Whoever becomes the
master of a city accustomed to freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be
destroyed himself ; because, when there is a rebellion, such a city justifies itself by
calling on the name of liberty and its ancient institutions, never forgotten despite the
passing of time and the benefits received from the new ruler’ 76 .
75 In what follows I heavily rely on this most inspiring view: P. ARNADE, Beggars, iconoclasts and civic patriots. The
political culture of the Dutch Revolt, Ithaca, (Cornell univ. press), 2008, p. 263-272.
76 See the translation cited in note 2, p. 48.