Philip the Good
Philip the Good was Duke of Burgundy for forty-eight years, assembled the Low Countries into a single inheritance by purchase, marriage and the exhaustion of his relatives, sold Joan of Arc to the English, changed sides to France when it paid, and kept the most splendid court in Europe on the proceeds. He became duke in September 1419 at twenty-three, on the bridge at Montereau where the dauphin's men had just killed his father, John the Fearless, and the murder settled his politics for sixteen years. He allied with Henry V of England, accepted the treaty of Troyes that disinherited the dauphin, and let his captains fight the French war while he attended to the Netherlands. There he took Namur by purchase in 1421, Hainaut, Holland and Zeeland from his cousin Jacqueline by 1433 after backing her enemies and then her, Brabant and Limburg by inheritance in 1430, and Luxembourg by 1443, so that the territories that had never had one ruler since the Carolingians now had him. In 1430 his vassal John of Luxembourg took Joan of Arc at Compiègne and Philip sold her to the English for ten thousand francs. At Arras in 1435 he made his peace with Charles VII on terms that exempted him from homage for his lifetime and gave him the Somme towns. The English cause in France collapsed without him. He founded the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430 at his wedding to Isabella of Portugal, employed Jan van Eyck as painter and spy, kept a library of nine hundred manuscripts, and at the Feast of the Pheasant in 1454 had his court swear a crusade against the Turks that none of them went on. The towns paid for it and revolted; Bruges submitted in 1438, Ghent was beaten at Gavere in 1453 and fined. His last years were a quarrel with his heir Charles, who took the government from him in 1465, and he died at Bruges in June 1467. The state he built lasted ten years past him and its pieces are Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
- Lived: 1396 CE – 1467 CE
- Nationality: Burgundian
- Roles: duke, monarch
