Family Feud as Familial Strategy in Early Modern Burgundy

In the mid-sixteenth century Jean de VANDENESSE was an honored member of Philip II's court, one of the few non-Spaniards who held an appointment that involved close, personal service to the king. His son, Jacques, was beginning his long and successful accumulation of royal appointments, and his duaghters were marrying leaders of the chief court, the parlement, in their home province, the county of Burgundy. At the same time, Jean's uncles and cousins served Philip's archrival, the king of France, as lawyers and judicial officials at his parlement in the duchy of Burgundy. The VANDENESSE may be one of the more significant examples split allegiance in early modern Burgundy, but they were by no means alone. In the volatile political environment of the late fifteenth-century Burgundies disputes wracked even the most seemingly united family groups. The consequences of these divisions varied greatly and, at times, had the paradoxical effect of aiding family survival. This situation may have even been consciously exploited by Burgundy's urban oligarchs who controlled much of that region's political, economic, and social destiny.

Conditions in the duchy and county made Burgundy and potential powderkeg at this time. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Valois dukes of Burgundy had personally united disparate lordships into a powerful conglomeration called "Burgundy," a title derived from their ancestral seats of power, the duchy and county of Burgundy. Through advantageous marriages and pragmatic politics, these Burgundian dukes amassed territories stretching from the English channel to the Alps, almost reconstructing the Carolingian Middle Kingdom out of independent provinces and fiefs of France and the Holy Roman Empire. When linked to their extensive wealth, the dukes' carefully cultivated reputation bolstered their international prestige to the point where they could mediate as the "grand dukes of the West" between France and England in the Hundred Years' War. Despite these holdings Burgundian political stability and identity were more products of faith than fact. The dukes united these lands through a recently formed personal union, and the territories disintegrated when the last duke, Charles the Bold, fell in January 1477 on the battlefield at Nancy, leaving only an unwed, teenage daughter as heiress.(1)

At this time the duchy and county of Burgundy became frontier provinces.(2) King Louis XI of France claimed all ducal holdings, including the county, as an appanage of the French crown. Arguing from Salic law, Louis refused to acknowledge Charles' daughter, Marie, as heiress. He also supported his claim through similarities in language and culture; if Marie married outside of French dominions, her subjects would be unjustly forced to abandon their "natural" culture. His planned marriage between his son and Marie, who would bring these lands as dowry, was presented as the perfect solution.(3) Marie, however, had other ideas. After initial confusion and rebellions in her northern provinces, she married Archduke Maximilian I of Austria, son and heir of Emperor Frederick III, and Marie and Maximilian began reconquering Charles the Bold's territories. A series of revolts, occupations, and broken treaties appeared at an end when the Treaty of Senlis (1493) set an eastern border between France and the Empire roughly bisecting the duchy and county. France took the lion's share of the old ducal lands, but Swiss towns and the Empire also claimed sections. In this partition, the duchy returned to the French crown while the county retained its imperial ties. Some cities and regions managed to retain a nominal independence, although generally under French or imperial protection.

Given the importance of ducal pensions and offices to the Burgundian urban elite, political dislocations within their area of potential profit might be considered a disaster. The southern subjects of the Burgundian dukes, especially those from the duchy and county, had always enjoyed special prerogatives as residents of the dukes'original territories. Even when the ducal court settled in Brussels during the 1420s, the dukes still maintained their Dijon palace and made special efforts have their heirs born there. Throughout the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the duchy and county continued to supply most of the dukes' courtiers and administrators, even when Charles the Bold attempted to centralize his administration in the north. Burgundian jurists interacted frequently as officers in the Parlement, Grand Conseil, and the Chambres des comptes and formed powerful alliances.(4) Many leading families of the ducal court itself originated as Burgundian bourgeois.(5)

Despite their dependence on ducal patronage for part of their status and wealth, the attitude of Burgundy's urban leaders had never been purely subservient. Their independence was enhanced in the second half of the fifteenth century when the ducal court moved north. The leading citizens, administrators, and nobles of the duchy and county of Burgundy continued to support the ducal administrative machinery and its benefits but increasingly used it for their own purposes. One of these was regional peace, a point they repeatedly debated with the last two Valois dukes. The Burgundies had felt the effect of war for decades. Every lull in the Hundred Years' War meant special watches and preparations to shelter villagers fleeing the unemployed mercenaries of the Grandes Companies and Écorcheurs.(6) The dukes demanded citizen forces, foodstuffs, cartage, and cash towards maintaining their forces, levies for which ducal servants and urban nobles were liable. Given these circumstances, ducal rule was a mixed blessing, and loyalty to the old ruling house was understandably ambivalent in 1477.

The relative peacefulness of the French conquest in 1477 further undermined existing loyalties. Initially the transfer was quite benign, with very few confiscations, and families who led the French faction gained additional benefits. After the risings throughout the Burgundies in June 1477, however, royal control became disciplinarian. By July two leading French officials entered Dijon, the administrative center of the duchy, and conducted an independent tribunal in the name of Louis XI. The result was an inquiry where members of the old ducal court suffered alongside vineyard workers and poor artisans. Royal pressure led to familial sanctions, placing "the women and all those who are absent from this city in the opposing party." Only those belonging to the "royal party" and taking an oath to that effect "thus and in the manner which the residents of this city have done [it]" could remain in Dijon.(7) In so doing, however, the royal commissioners breached the boundaries permitted by the Burgundian elites. Perceiving a threat to their status as Dijon’s lawgivers and arbiters, a town council delegation, including two prominent royalists, traveled to Louis XI in August in order to curb the court. Armed with royal letters prohibiting royal officers "to make any inventories of goods left by the residents nor to ordain any judicial procedure in the said city if not [done] by the mayor and aldermen," the confiscations were curtailed.(8)

In Dijon the June rising would remain vivid in local and royal memory long after the revolt itself was squelched. Known as the "mutemaque," the several days of urban rioting and the responses of Dijon's oligarchy to it illustrate the incorporation of familial concerns and assumptions into the urban framework.(9) In a sense, the urban fragmentation illustrated by the mutemaque echoed the strains within the families of some of its leading actors.

Tensions remained after Dijon's submission in January 1477, and they manifested themselves in two forms: dissatisfaction in the neighborhood of St. Nicolas, largely populated by vineyard workers, and with the demands of royal soldiers lodged in town. Foreshadowing the troubles of June, the entry of the city captain and Etienne Berbisey, mayor, into the St. Nicolas parish that January was unwelcome and their authority unrecognized. In order to assure quiet, the city guard was strengthened, with bourgeois walking "arm to arm" patrolling the city at night.(10)

Despite these precautions violence erupted on the night of June 26, two days after the reelection of Etienne Berbisey, a partisan of Louis XI, as mayor. While the order of events is unknown, various key episodes emerge. According to the testimony of "honorable homme" Jean Perruchot, guard of the keys to the St. Nicolas gate and sometime town councilor, armed men led by a herald on horseback summoned him to give them the keys to that gate. If Perruchot had refused, his house would have been destroyed. Once he relinquished the keys, they entered the tower. Ignoring the artillery stored there, the men seized a lance holding a royal pennant, which they tore apart. The pieces of this royal insignia were then presented to the herald.(11)

Another group of rioters, led by Chrétiennot Vyon, headed towards the Franciscan convent, where the town council was in session. On the way they encountered Jean Jouard, a past councilor of duke Philip the Good and architect of Burgundy's submission, for which action he was rewarded with the appointment of first president in the Burgundian Parlement. After a heated argument, Vyon killed Jouard, and a fellow rioter claimed as a trophy a piece of velour which Jouard had worn around his neck. The crowd also pillaged several houses including those of Jean Vurry and Arnoulet Macheco, both leading citizens and partisans of the new order.(12) The next day the governor of the county, which had declared against France and for Charles the Bold's heiress, Marie, entered Dijon with a troop of soldiers.(13)

Despite these events, the majority of Dijonnais remained calm, and the town council was able to warn the French provincial governor. Less than two days after the riot began the town council called a "beautiful, large, and notable assembly." There four "notables" were appointed in addition to the usual civic officials to govern each parish. Residents were to obey all authorities "under penalty of being so punished and corrected that they would be an example to all others." They were also warned

under pain of physical harm .. that no one be so bold as to take any action nor robberies nor pillages ... that each should busy himself at his own craft and work living calmly and peacefully with one another without noise, words nor debates ... and that those who have servants will make them useful without allowing them to go nor to be lazy through the city, under the above penalty.(14)

By the next day the town council could report the departure of imperial partisans and the imminent arrival of French forces. On June 30th, a general assembly of inhabitants renewed its pledge of loyalty to Louis XI.(15) The abortive rebellion had lasted less than four days.

The mutemaque is significant here because of the conflicting roles which members of the same family network played. Three central figures were Etienne Berbisey the elder, Jean Perruchot, and Chrétiennot Vyon: Berbisey as mayor, Perruchot as a town councilor and keeper of a city gate's keys, and Vyon as the recognized leader of the riot. Vyon, however, had other links to important figures. Etienne Berbisey's father had acted as Chrétiennot's guardian when Chrétiennot's father, Girard, died in 1446. Belonging to a family which had successfully combined ducal service and trade, Chrétiennot followed the family tradition when he came of age, becoming a prosperous merchant. He also married Catherine Perruchot, daughter of Jean Perruchot; not only did he thus become Perruchot's son-in-law but he was also Etienne Berbisey's brother-in-law.(16) Dijon's mutemaque itself provides a clear example that marriage did not necessarily lead to alliance, although a family united through marriage could be assigned collective responsibility for transgressions. Like the Burgundian frontier itself, the family could define its members, but it did not confine them.

Chrétiennot's long-standing social and familial difficulties further challenged the viability of his relationships. Although Chrétiennot had been a member of the town council for several years, professional failure and violence marred his public life. Commentators have speculated that hatred towards Berbisey might even have motivated Vyon, hatred stemming from envy of Berbisey's success and resentment over legal cases in which Berbisey, as town judge, decided against Vyon.(17) In the 1460s Chrétiennot business had collapsed, and he had been arrested and cited for the rape of the mistress of the St. Philibert baths and for violence against his brother, Robert, and Jean Mercier, another bourgeois. In both of these cases Berbisey was one of the judges who condemned him. Also during that decade Vyon was charged with robbery and assault in the home of an important ducal official; during arrest, he even attacked the city's sergeants. Although the town council was prepared to release him, Berbisey forcefully opposed their decision, and Berbisey's opinion carried.(18) As the decade continued Berbisey's affairs prospered, while Dijon's ecclesiastical leader, the bishop of Langres, excommunicated Vyon for debt after he lost yet another legal case, this time against his father-in-law, Jean Perruchot.

Despite his kinship with Vyon, Berbisey suffered no penalties after Vyon's execution in 1477. In fact, he, his immediate family, and many of their allies continued to prosper. Berbisey remained mayor until 1484, when he was replaced by a son-in-law, and he served as one of the "four first aldermen" until his death in 1495.(19) His son, Thomas, held the select appointment of royal secretary, awarded to him by Louis XI because of Etienne Berbisey's services. A son-in-law, Henri Chambellan, would become mayor, and Etienne's younger brother, also named Etienne, received appointments as a legal advisor to Dijon's council and culminated his career with an appointment to the Burgundian parlement. It appears, then, that the Berbisey were absolved of any guilt by association with Vyon; Louis XI was not a king who would reward anyone he mistrusted even slightly.

While Berbisey avoided stigma because of his kinship with Vyon, other members of Vyon's immediate family suffered despite any past problems they had with him. Although Chrétiennot and his brother, Robert, had serious altercations?during one Chrétiennot threw a knife at Robert?royal authorities from outside of Dijon continued to suspect Robert's stability and loyalty. Five years after the mutemaque the governor of Burgundy and the bishop-duke of Langres vetoed Robert's appointment as city captain.(20) In 1488, nine years later, Robert and his brother, Guy, a canon in the prestigous Chapelle-aux-Ducs, had to obtain a safeguard for all their goods and lands against claims by the royal Chambre des comptes that they were traitors. The town council, however, was willing to nominate Robert for various appointments, and he pursued an active civic career into the sixteenth century, even becoming a squire. This case points to a sense of familial responsibility which differed between the urban elites and the royal court. The town's leading citizens were more likely to associate guilt with a particular household rather than a bloodline. While Robert might have briefly been suspect, the well-established distinctions between him and his brother gave him the necessary distance to regain quickly the confidence of Dijon's other oligarchs. For Louis XI and his ministers, however, all Vyon were the same.

Other bourgeois rioters apparently avoided incriminating their family if at all possible. One of these was Louis Joly, whose father had been a ducal councilor and lawyer for the Dijon bailliage. After the riot collapsed, Joly was one of the many who fled to Auxonne, the base of those loyal to Marie, but after the French conquest of that town two years later he tried to return to Dijon. Perhaps unwilling to implicate his family, he hid in a vineyard worker's house just outside the city walls. Despite his precautions, his family found him, but their comings and goings also alerted the city procureur to his presence. When arrested, Joly presented a pitiful figure: "They [Joly and a companion] were scraggly and had bad gray robes all torn apart and each with a bad spear without having any other club."(21) Surprisingly, the record remains silent about any penalties his family suffered, although the Joly name disappears from the records in Burgundy.

The man who played the most ambivalent role in the riot was another near relation of Etienne Berbisey. Like Berkeley, he would become a noble and mayor of Dijon, serving for ten years beginning in 1493: master dyer Jean Aigneau. A young man in 1477 he was married to Perrenet Berbisey, Berbisey's daughter. Aigneau was active in town government from at least 1473, when he was threatened as a member of the night guard by a group of butchers. Testimonies of rioters label him a promoter of sedition and claim that he was to be one of the movement's two captains and their choice as mayor of Dijon. Yet on the first day he stayed home and was present at the town meetings acting against the rioters. In August, though, he was in Auxonne, and Dijon's town council closely supervised his actions. Despite these activities and suspicions, Aigneau resumed his place on the town council later that year. His property remained untouched, and he reached the pinnacle of Dijon society less than a dozen years later. One cannot help but suspect Berbisey's role. Prior to this event there were no documented cases of conflict between Aigneau and Berbisey, whereas Vyon's violence and antipathy were on record. One testimony mentioned Berbisey entering Aigneau's house the night before the riot, although that could have been because of celebrations attaching to Berbisey's election as mayor on June 24-25.(22) Perhaps Berbisey only had the influence to protect one family member? Maybe he saw Aigneau's actions as the impulses of misguided youth, whereas Vyon was a contemporary and should have known better? Whatever the case, Aigneau only held public office again after Louis XI died. Was this Aigneau's choice or another example of Louis XI's mistrust of all those implicated, even remotely? Unfortunately, the record remains silent.

While in many ways the mutemaque was a classic urban revolt, in this case it highlights the conflicting demands and definitions of the Burgundian urban elite families in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.(23) Although many of the leading rioters were closely related to others who upheld the French crown, the penalties a family suffered varied. One of the reasons for these differences was the degree of relationship. For all that marital networks were designed to form alliances, blood was considered the strongest tie, and principles of collective liability reflected these gradations. The families of Dijon's mutemaque were also riddled with conflict. Within each family there were professional, financial, and personal tensions which could impact on urban society and politics. In this sense, the relationship of a family towards a political frontier, and any other boundary for that matter, must consider the ways in which this potential disunity attempted to mold itself into a unity able to face other forces.

One family which may have exploited disagreements so that it could continue was the VANDENESSE, the family mentioned at the beginning of this paper. Although their origins are difficult to trace, it appears that the VANDENESSE were Flemish and moved south because of appointments at the ducal court. Certainly the move was successfuly; by the fifteenth century they were well ensconced at that court as lawyers and commodity brokers, activities which underlay the fortunes of most of Dijon's oligarchs. The patriarch of what would become the two main branches of the VANDENESSE, Guillaume, served as a legal council as early as the 1440s, advising the newly established parlement in the county of Burgundy. He also was a lawyer in Dijon's Chambre des comptes and a regular member of that city's town council; he placed his sons in lucrative and prestigous offices, secular and ecclesiastical, and arranged advantageous marriages for his daughters. These activities attest to his status and influence in ducal Dijon.(24)

Given the VANDENESSE's involvement with the ducal court, or at least their dependence on it, one might expect that Guillaume's sons and daughters would be quite worried when Louis XI took control of Dijon. Certainly Philippe de VANDENESSE, Guillaume's son and patriarch of the clan at that time, attended all of the town council meetings where they assessed potential responses. Like Etienne Berbisey, however, Philippe opted for discretion over valor and welcomed French rule. He and his relations profitted from this choice. Philippe's brothers retained their clerical appointments and served as liaisons with the town council.(25) Philippe himself remained a council member until his death in 1493, even becoming the mayor's lieutenant. As chief judge of Dijon, Philippe was frequently chosen to defend the city's rights, a role that was only given to someone with impeccable credentials. He apparently took these responsibilities seriously and faced excommunication for his prosecution of a cleric.(26)

His nephew, Bénigne, who would succeed him as the family's leader, also enjoyed similar prestige and made similar sacrifices. Like his uncle, he was a regular member of Dijon's town council. He served conscientiously during the siege of Dijon by imperial troops and was still being repaid for his services years later. Bénigne also was someone Dijon's leaders consistently turned to for supplies of grain in case of famine or royal requisition, and the sums involved were quite large. In one case he purchased 2,000 l. worth of grain on the city's behalf. While this action attests to substantial wealth, it also implies that he had widespread mercantile connections and/or extensive and productive lands. By the 1520s the city was quite indebted to him, and he was assigned large rents on city properties as compensation.(27)

This?believe it or not?brief summary of VANDENESSE success might suggest that they wholeheartedly supported French control of the duchy. That impression would be false. At the same time as Philippe served on Dijon's town council, Jean de VANDENESSE, Philippe's stepbrother and the youngest of ten children, was establishing himself as an aide to Maximilian and to Philip the Fair in the county. Jean's eldest son, also named Jean, was born in the county and would become a knight and imperial councilor; his second son gained a bishopric and also was appointed as an imperial councilor. His grandchildren would marry into prestigous Comtois families. For a youngest son, this success was phenomenal and was made possibel by the unusual political and social environment of the duchy and county of Burgundy at this time. Despite the bitter rivalry between the French kings and the emperors, urban oligarchs in the two Burgundies interacted on a variety of levels. People in the imperial county profitted from properties in the French duchy; Jean himself drew money from lands and rents in Dijon until at least 1514.(28) The similarity of laws and administrative structures allowed individuals from one province to move easily to another, and a century-old tradition of trade and ducal service provided a regional network that would only be unraveled decades later. Whatever Jean's reason for moving to the county?personal loyalty to the old ducal house, unhappiness with his step-brothers and sisters, the opportunities that the Franco-imperial rivalry provided?he was able to exploit all of these circumstances. And he probably was helped.

Although no surviving documentation states this explicitly, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. First, when Jean moved to the county, he not only was able to move right inot the upper-ranks of Comtois bourgeois society, but he was able to marry the eldest daughter of a prestigous family.(29) That sort of marriage would not be available to dispossessed younger sons, men without futures. Secondly, the legal training, bishoprics, and offices he provided for his sons all cost money and required connections to obtain, things that an abandoned refugee would have in short supply, if at all. Thirdly, the other branch of the family kept tenuous connections with the Comtois VANDENESSE. Several neices married into bourgeois families from the town into which Jean originally fled, and Jean and his sons continued to draw income from holdings in the duchy.(30) None of these connections were close enough to threaten the VANDENESSE patriarchs in Dijon; certainly ample legal precedent existed for annual payments, even to servants of an enemy ruler. On the other hand, there was equal precedent for denying Jean and his heirs all profits because of their new allegiance. Jean was never abandoned.

In the duchy and county of Burgundy during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries competing loyalties tested family solidarity, and events such as Dijon's mutemaque exposed cracks in what was supposed to be the solid masonry of family allegiance. Some figures fled the region entirely; others moved into the province of the ruler they supported and were compensated. Certain individuals just disappeared. This environment, however, provided opportunities for those saavy and lucky enought to maneuver successfully in it. In the case of the VANDENESSE, it allowed a younger son to found his own lineage and reap exceptional rewards. It also give all the VANDENESSE an insurance policy, family to flee to on the French and imperial side.

Notes

1. The most complete survey of the Valois dukes' activities during the 100 Years War remains Richard Vaughan's five-volume series: Philip the Bold: The Formation of the Burgundian State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962); John the Fearless: The Growth of Burgundian Power (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1966); Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London: Longman, 1970); Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy (London: Longman, 1973); Valois Burgundy (Hamden, CN: Archon Books, 1975).

2. I have recently examined the significance of the frontier in early modern Burgundy: Interior Frontiers: Urban Reaction and Re-creation in Early Modern Burgundy (forthcoming).

3. Paul Saenger, "Burgundy and the Inalienability of Appanages in the Reign of Louis XI," French Historical Studies 10:1 (Spring 1977): 1-26; Joseph Garnier, ed. ed. Correspondance de la mairie de Dijon, 3 vols. (Dijon: J.-E. Rabutot, 1868-70). A formidable problem existed if Louis XI based his entire argument on Salic Law; a direct male descendent of Philip the Bold lived in 1477: Jean, count of Nevers. The implications are explained in depth in Courtépée, Description générale et particulière du duché de Bourgogne, 2 vols. (Paris: Guénégaud, 1967): 219ff.

4. Marie-Thérèse Caron, La noblesse dans le duché de Bourgogne, 1315-1477, (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1987); Henri Dubois, "Marchands dijonnais aux foires de Chalon-sur-Saône à la fin du moyen âge. Essai de prosopographie," Publications du centre européen d'études burgondo-medianes 27 (1987): 63-80; Pierre Geoffroy, "Commerce et marchands à Dijon au XVe siècle," Annales de Bourgogne 25 (1953): 161-181.

5. See Jean Bartier, "L'ascension d'un marchand bourguignon au XVe siècle: Odot Molain," Annales de Bourgogne 15 (1953): 185-206 and Légistes et gens de finances au XVe siècle. Les conseillers des ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et Charles le Téméraire, (Brussels: J. Duculot, 1955); Lucien Febvre, Philippe II et la Franche-Comté (Paris: Ferne, 1912): chpts. 3, 6 and 8.

6. Pierre Gresser, La Franche-Comté au temps de la guerre de cent ans (Besançon: Cêtre, 1989).

7. Archives départmentales de la Côte d'Or (hereafter as ADC), B1782; Archives municipales de Dijon (hereafter as AMD), B165, fol. 4v: "les femmes et tous ceux qui se sont absentez d'icelle ville en party contre" & "ainsi et par la maniere que ont fait les habitants de ceste ville."

8. Garnier, Correspondance, I: 213, 6 July 1477: "faire aulcuns inventaires de biens delaissee par les habitants ny ordonnee aulcun exploit de justice faict en ladict ville sinon par les maire et echevins." Etienne du Cret, clerk of the Dijon Parlement, was so charged in 1485. He fled to Dole where he became mayor: Jules d'Arbaumont, Armorial de la chambre des comptes de Dijon, Dijon: Lamarche, 1881): 322 & Archives municipales de Dole (hereafter as AMDole), 78 nos. 1 & 2.

9. Justified as an anti-French rebellion, its political roots and significance have been explained in great detail and with great insight by André Leguai.:"Dijon et Louis XI, 1461-1483," Annales de Bourgogne 17 (1945).

10. ADC, BII, 360/13, 23 Jan. 1477; AMD, B164, 6 March 1477; AMD, B164, Jan. 1477; Garnier, Correspondance, I: lxxxiii.

11. ADC, BII, 360/13, 4, 12 and 29 Aug. 1477; ADC, BII, 360/13, 5 July 1477. Jouard's death was even reported in a Bisontin chronicle: Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon (hereafter as BMB), ms. 1029, 204.

12. ADC, BII, 360/13, 18 Aug. 1477. Leguai speculates that the suddenly enhanced fortune enjoyed by the leaders of the royal cause, such as the Jouard, Vurry and Macheco, exacerbated hatreds towards the rich and injured the French faction in Dijon. (Leguai, Louis XI, 156) While the theory has some appeal, it ignores the ability of other leading bourgeois who also profited from French control, such as Etienne Berbisey, to avoid popular odium and guard his skin and properties during the mutemaque.

13. ADC, M77, fol. 201.

14. AMD, B165, 28 June 1477: "belle grande et notable assemblee," "sur peine den estre pugniez et corrigiez tellement que ce sera exemple a tous autres," and "sur peine de la hart ... que aucuns ne soient si hardiz de faire aucune voye de fait ne aucunes roberyes ou pilleries ... ains que chascun se employe en son mestier et ouvraige en vivant doulcement et paisiblement les ungs avec les aultres sans avoir noises paroles ne debat .. et que ceulx qui ont varletz et serveteurs les facent besoingnier et ouvrer sans les souffrir aler ne estre oiseux parmy la ville a la peine que dessus."

15. AMD, B165, 29 and 30 June.

16. Other important Dijon bourgeois had relatives implicated in the mutemaque, although the information remaining for these cases is much sketchier. One of these was Colinet Roland, adopted son of Arnoulet Macheco. Their relationship helped neither Macheco or Roland; besides the destruction of Macheco's house, Roland was one of those hanged on July 7th. See ADC, BII, 360/13, July 1477 and Aug. 1478; AMD, M77, fols. 224v. No record has surfaced explaining Roland's motivations. Macheco had already suffered once for his changing loyalties. In March 1477 he was taken prisoner while passing by Auxonne, the seat of the nobles who had rallied to Mary's cause. Prompted by Macheco's family and friends, Dijon's town council protested and eventually had Macheco freed: Garnier, Correspondance, I: 193-95, 24 March 1477. The Berbisey family retained its prominent throughout the Old Regime, becoming barons by the eighteenth century: ADC, E81.

17. AMD, B162, échevin (alderman) in 1466; A. Voisin, "La 'mutemaque' du juin 1477. Notes sur l'opinion à Dijon au lendemain de la réunion," Annales de Bourgogne 7 (1935): 347; Leguai, Louis XI.

18. AMD, B162, fols. 4r-4v.

19. Pierre Gras, Histoire de Dijon, (Toulouse: Privat, 1981): 89; AMD, B21, 6 Aug. 1496 and mid-Oct - Dec. 1491 (these records reflect only a few of the hundreds of payments he received for legal services); AMD, C32bis, 13 Oct. 1489. For many examples of Berbisey the elder's continued influence, see AMD, B164-167.

20. AMD, B165, 20 Dec. 1482.

21. ADC, BII, 360/14, 17 Nov. 1480: "Ils estoient descires et avoient de meschantes robes de drap gris toutes descirees et chacun une meschante javeline sans avoir autres bastons."

22. AMD, B163, 16 April 1473; ADC, BII, 360/13, 2 Jan. 1478 and 18 Aug. 1477; AMD, B165. Aigneau's special treatment becomes even more obvious when seen in light of a letter which Dijon's town council sent to Louis XI telling him that they had imprisoned or banished all those associated with the revolt: Garnier, Correspondance, I: 214-16, 13 July 1477.

23. Rather than revolutionizing the system, the ringleaders wished to replace the town leaders, return to "good, old times," and, perhaps, alter several civic policies. However, in Dijon during this process members of their own families were to be dispossessed. André Leguai, "Troubles et révoltes sous le regne de Louis XI: les résistances des particularismes," Revue Historique 249 (1973): 312-13 for the Dijon case specifically; André Leguai, "Les révoltes rurales dans le royaume de France du milieu de XIVe siècle à la fin du XVe siècle," Moyen Age (1982), offers a typology of unrest in France at this time organized around specific examples.

24. Bartier, Légistes, 243 & 416.

25. AMD, H56, 1514; AMD, B165 & 166.

26. ADC, G1144, 1493; AMD, B166, Wed., 27 March 1493; AMD, E25, 1481-82; AMD, E26, 9 April 1530.

27. AMD, K151, 8 Aug. 1516; G258, 12 Aug. 1513 & 22 Nov. 1524.

28. AMD, K232 4, fol. 82.

29. Archives départmentales du Jura (hereafter as ADJ), G456, 1525. Jean married his daughter well to Claude de Boutechoux of a long-established Gray family, rival of the Granvelle unfortunately, who would eventually become president of the county's parlement. Jean II was born in Gray. Through the Boutechoux connection the VANDENESSE would have relations in the Marenches clan through several marriages.

30. Archives départementales du Doubs (hereafter as ADD), B233, 1528 & 1532.

 

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