anonymous, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
To be a medieval ruler, recognition is generally reserved for those of martial ability or accomplishment.
If we look at the English as an example, Who cares for the religious or intellectual patronage of Henry III or Henry VI in light of their military failings? Richard I is renowed as the warrior king who stood toe-to-toe with Saladin even while he depleted the royal treasury and left little material behind from his father's vast reserves. Poor King John was stuck with the bill.
Military renown is enough to overlook quite a many sins. But those without such conquests to their name have a much harder time edging their names up the rankings of prominence in the ledgers of history.
Philip II, the Bold, is one such exception. These are some notes from my recent reading of Richard Vaughan's Philip the Bold: Formation of the Burgundian State (1962).
Who was Philip the Bold (1342-1404)? Son of King John II of France, Philip is one of the most noteworthy political actors of the medieval period to operate like a king though he never bore such a title.
Let us first consider the epithet.
"The Bold" would indicate a man of strategic daring and fortitude. Perhaps some tactical stalwartness earned him this epithet, like "Stonewall" which emerged from First Bull Run.
However, Philip inherited this distinction through what is more sheer luck than anything.
Born during the onslaught of English invasion during The Hundred Years War, Philip joined his father the French king at the age of 14 in the famous Battle of Poitiers.
What makes this battle more decisive than English victories at Crecy or Agincourt is that the English not only crush the French in this engagement but they also capture not only King John II but his son Philip as well.
Philip spent several years as a royal captive (which was more like a vacation than anything) in English palatial estates.
Eventually a hefty ransom was assembled to pay for the king and his son's return alongside the concessions of the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360.
It is through virtue of Philip's participation in this unusual political episode that his father deemed him worthy of the title "The Bold" and in addition granted him the Duchy of Burgundy in 1363.
Already at twenty-one, Philip the Bold was endowed with the primary title which would mark his rule. Never as a king, for the crown of France would pass to his brother Charles V, but as a ruling Duke both in his own realm and in French royal affairs.
Philip II had divided yet simultaneously overlapping interests.
On the one hand he was a subject of France, and he would wield great influence in the French royal court as the crown passed from his father to his brother and then to his nephew, all in his lifetime. On the other, he ruled with near complete autonomy his own set of lands that were not entirely subject to the French crown.
Philip II's Duchy of Burgundy would only grow through his vigorous efforts, not through conquest, but through ruthless politicking and diplomacy.
Conquest was not Philip the Bold's forte. The only major military venture he oversaw that actually occurred, the Crusade of Nicopolis, was an embarrassing failure.
An assembled naval invasion of England that he sponsored, planned, and organized failed to be carried out, due to what seems to have been a combination of bad weather and royal cold feet. Nonetheless, such an expedition was considered a remarkable achievement for the force of arms that it mobilized.
This was not the ingredient of Philip II's success. Rather he inverted Clausewitz's famous cliche through carrying out politics as war by other means.