Charles the Bold wanted to be Alexander and died at Nancy
As a boy Charles of Burgundy read chronicles and dreamed of conquest like Alexander the Great, pleased that both of them had fathers named Philip. As duke he tried to forge an independent kingdom from the North Sea to Savoy. It ended on 5 January 1477, when he was killed in battle at Nancy.
He was born in Dijon on 10 November 1433, the only child of Philip the Good and Isabella of Portugal to survive infancy. He took Saint George as his patron and kept a sword said to be the saint's in his treasury. At six he was married to ten-year-old Catherine of France under the Treaty of Arras, which ended the Armagnac–Burgundian civil war; she died in 1446. His second wife, Isabella of Bourbon, gave birth to his only child, Mary, in 1457.
Father and son fell out badly. Philip kept Charles out of power for a decade and favoured the Croÿ family, whom Charles distrusted. In 1457 a quarrel over appointing a chamberlain grew so heated that his mother sent Charles away for his safety, and Philip got lost in the forest of Soignies looking for him. Neither man attended Mary's baptism, to avoid each other. Short of money, Charles dismissed his staff in 1463, and according to the court chronicler they offered to keep serving and even to lend him their own money. In 1464 the States General made him lieutenant-general, and he promptly seized the Croÿ estates.
His great rival was Louis XI of France. Oddly, Louis had spent years as a guest at Philip's court while he was still dauphin. In 1465 Charles led a coalition of French lords against him in the War of the Public Weal. As duke from 1467, Charles acquired Guelders and Upper Alsace, sought the title King of the Romans, married Margaret of York for an English alliance, and betrothed Mary to Maximilian of Austria.
His court was famous for chivalric ceremony, illuminated manuscripts and music, and he repeatedly declined calls from the papacy and Venice to lead a crusade against the Ottomans. The Burgundian Wars undid him. After a failed siege of Neuss, the Swiss beat him at Grandson and Morat, and he fell fighting René II of Lorraine at Nancy. His death set off the War of the Burgundian Succession and helped bring down the Burgundian state.
Source: Charles the Bold
