Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/845

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822
BURHANPUR
  

and gave up to him the countships of Mâcon, Auxerre, Bar-sur-Seine and Ponthieu; and, reserving the right of redemption, the towns of the Somme (Roye, Montdidier, Péronne, &c.). Besides this Philip had acquired Brabant and Holland in 1433 as the inheritance of his mother. He gave an asylum to the dauphin Louis when exiled from Charles VII.’s court, but refused to assist him against his father, and henceforth rarely intervened in French affairs. He busied himself particularly with the administration of his state, founding the university of Dôle, having records made of Burgundian customs, and seeking to develop the commerce and industries of Flanders. A friend to letters and the arts, he was the protector of writers like Olivier de la Marche, and of sculptors of the school of Dijon. He also desired to revive ancient chivalry as he conceived it, and in 1429 founded the order of the Golden Fleece; while during the last years of his life he devoted himself to the preparation of a crusade against the Turks. Neither these plans, however, nor his liberality, prevented his leaving a well-filled treasury and enlarged dominions when he died in 1467.

Philip’s successor was his son by his third wife, Isabel of Portugal, Charles, surnamed the Bold, count of Charolois, born in 1433. To him his father had practically abandoned his authority during his last years. Charles had taken an active part in the so-called wars “for the public weal,” and in the coalitions of nobles against the king which were so frequent during the first years of Louis XI.’s reign. His struggle against the king is especially marked by the interview at Péronne in 1468, when the king had to confirm the duke in his possession of the towns of the Somme, and by a fruitless attempt which Charles the Bold made on Beauvais in 1472. Charles sought above all to realize a scheme already planned by his father. This was to annex territory which would reunite Burgundy with the northern group of her possessions (Flanders, Brabant, &c.), and to obtain the emperor’s recognition of the kingdom of “Belgian Gaul.” In 1469 he bought the landgraviate of Alsace and the countship of Ferrette from the archduke Sigismund of Austria, and in 1473 the aged duke Arnold ceded the duchy of Gelderland to him. In the same year he had an interview at Trier with the emperor Frederick III., when he offered to give his daughter and heiress, Mary of Burgundy, in marriage to the emperor’s son Maximilian in exchange for the concession of the royal title. But the emperor, uneasy at the ambition of the “grand-duke of the West,” did not pursue the negotiations.

Meanwhile the tyranny of the duke’s lieutenant Peter von Hagenbach, who was established at Ferrette as governor (grand bailli or Landvogt) of Upper Alsace, had brought about an insurrection. The Swiss supported the cause of their allies, the inhabitants of the free towns of Alsace, and Duke René II. of Lorraine also declared war against Charles. In 1474 the Swiss invaded Franche-Comté and achieved the victory of Hericourt. In 1475 Charles succeeded in conquering Lorraine, but an expedition against the Swiss ended in the defeat of Grandson (February 1476). In the same year the duke was again beaten at Morat, and the Burgundian nobles had to abandon to the victors a considerable amount of booty. Finally the duke of Lorraine returned to his dominions; Charles advanced against him, but on the 6th of January 1477 he was defeated and killed before Nancy.

By his wife, Isabella of Bourbon, he only left a daughter, Mary, and Louis XI. claimed possession of her inheritance as guardian to the young princess. He succeeded in getting himself acknowledged in the duchy and countship of Burgundy, which were occupied by French garrisons. But Mary, alarmed by this annexation, and by the insurrection at Ghent (secretly fomented by Louis), decided to marry the archduke Maximilian of Austria, to whom she had already been promised (August 1477), and hostilities soon broke out between the two princes. Mary died through a fall from her horse in March 1482, and in the same year the treaty of Arras confirmed Louis XI. in possession of the duchy. Franche-Comté and Artois were to form the dowry of the little Margaret of Burgundy, daughter of Mary and Maximilian, who was promised in marriage to the dauphin. As to the lands proceeding from the succession of Charles the Bold, which had returned to the Empire (Brabant, Hainaut, Limburg, Namur, Gelderland, &c.), they constituted the “Circle of Burgundy” from 1512 onward.

We know that the title of duke of Burgundy was revived in 1682 for a short time by Louis XIV. in favour of his grandson Louis, the pupil of Fénelon. But from the 16th to the 18th century Burgundy constituted a military government bounded on the north by Champagne, on the south by Lyonnais, on the east by Franche-Comté, on the west by Bourbonnais and Nivernais. It comprised Dijonnais, Autunois, Auxois, and the pays de la montagne or Country of the Mountain (Châtillon-sur-Seine), with the “counties” of Chalonnais, Mâconnais, Auxerrois and Bar-sur-Seine, and, so far as administration went, the annexes of Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the country of Gex. Burgundy was a pays d’états. The estates, whose privileges the dukes at first, and later Louis XI., had to swear to maintain, had their assembly at Dijon, usually under the presidency of the governor of the province, the bishop of Autun as representing the clergy, and the mayor of Dijon representing the third estate. In the judiciary point of view the greater part of Burgundy depended on the parlement of Dijon; but Auxerrois and Mâconnais were amenable to the parlement of Paris.

See also U. Plancher, Histoire générale et particulière de Bourgogne (Dijon, 1739–1781, 4 vols. 8vo); Courtépée, Description générale et particulière du duché de Bourgogne (Dijon, 1774–1785, 7 vols. 8vo); O. Jahn. Geschichte der Burgundionen (Halle, 1874, 2 vols. 8vo); E. Petit de Vausse, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la race capétienne (Paris, 1885–1905, 9 vols. 8vo); B. de Barante, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois (Paris, 1833–1836, 13 vols. 8vo); the marquis Léon E. S. J. de Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne: Études sur les lettres, les arts et l’industrie pendant le XVᵉ siècle (Paris, 1849–1851, 3 vols. 8vo).  (R. Po.) 


BURHANPUR, a town of British India in the Nimar district of the Central Provinces, situated on the north bank of the river Tapti, 310 m. N.E. of Bombay, and 2 m. from the Great Indian Peninsula railway station of Lalbagh. It was founded in A.D. 1400 by a Mahommedan prince of the Farukhi dynasty of Khandesh, whose successors held it for 200 years, when the Farukhi kingdom was annexed to the empire of Akbar. It formed the chief seat of the government of the Deccan provinces of the Mogul empire till Shah Jahan removed the capital to Aurangabad in 1635. Burhanpur was plundered in 1685 by the Mahrattas, and repeated battles were fought in its neighbourhood in the struggle between that race and the Mussulmans for the supremacy of India. In 1739 the Mahommedans finally yielded to the demand of the Mahrattas for a fourth of the revenue, and in 1760 the Nizam of the Deccan ceded Burhanpur to the peshwa, who in 1778 transferred it to Sindhia. In the Mahratta War the army under General Wellesley, afterwards the duke of Wellington, took Burhanpur (1803), but the treaty of the same year restored it to Sindhia. It remained a portion of Sindhia’s dominions till 1860–1861, when, in consequence of certain territorial arrangements, the town and surrounding estates were ceded to the British government. Under the Moguls the city covered an area of about 5 sq. m., and was about 101/2 m. in circumference. In the Ain-í-Akbari it is described as a “large city, with many gardens, inhabited by all nations, and abounding with handicraftsmen.” Sir Thomas Roe, who visited it in 1614, found that the houses in the town were “only mud cottages, except the prince’s house, the chan’s and some few others.” In 1865–1866 the city contained 8000 houses, with a population of 34,137, which had decreased to 33,343 in 1901. Burhanpur is celebrated for its muslins, flowered silks, and brocades, which, according to Tavernier, who visited it in 1668, were exported in great quantities to Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Russia and Poland. The gold and silver wires used in the manufacture of these fabrics are drawn with considerable care and skill; and in order to secure the purity of the metals employed for their composition, the wire-drawing under the native rule was done under government inspection. The town of Burhanpur and its manufactures were long on the decline, but during recent times have made a slight recovery. The buildings of interest