The battle of Grandson

reaming of the creation of a kingdom to rival France and the Holy Roman Empire, set between the North Sea and the Mediterranean, Charles the Bold was a despot eager to secure a promising future for Burgundy built on political reform and military conquest. 




The son of Philip the Good and Isabella of Portugal, he had a noted interest in statecraft and in warfare, and he witnessed firsthand his father’s efforts to strengthen and consolidate his rule over his heterogeneous and ethnically diverse domains, which stretched from Picardy and Holland in the north to the shores of Lake Geneva in the south. Burgundy was the richest region in Europe outside of Italy, and Charles harnessed the wealth of his dominions to create an effective internal administration and employ costly foreign mercenaries from England and Italy. Charles utilized his newly accumulated powers in his campaign against Louis XI of France in the late 1460s and to put down the Revolt of Liège in 1468. With peace restored to his dominions, Charles redirected his power southwards against the Swiss Confederacy.

The Swiss Confederacy was an anomaly in medieval Europe. Emerging in the 14th century, the Swiss Confederacy was an amalgamation of rural and urban cantons that held the status of ‘imperial immediacy’ by decree of the Holy Roman Emperor. The Swiss Confederacy grew rapidly between 1307 and 1470, defeating the armies of Habsburg Austria and expanding outwards from the Alps to the Rhine River and the Jura Mountains. By the mid-1460s, the Swiss Confederacy included the cantons of Schwyz, Unterwalden, Uri, Glarus, Zug, Zürich, Luzern, and Bern. Though small in geographic size, the Swiss Confederacy held an invaluable export to the rising nation states of late-medieval Europe: mercenaries. Already feared and admired across Europe, the Swiss mercenaries  were renowned for their martial valor, in addition to their expertise with the spear, the long pike, and the halberd. The Swiss cantons contracted out their mercenaries to foreign powers while simultaneously maintaining their own local militias, thereby ensuring a policy of defensive neutrality.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DEATH MARCHES

Image
DEATH MARCHES In January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. As Allied forces approached Nazi camps, the SS organized death marches of concentration camp inmates, in part to keep large numbers of concentration camp prisoners from falling into Allied hands.  Near the end of the war, when Germany's military force was collapsing, the Allied armies closed in on the Nazi concentration camps. The Soviets approached from the east, and the British, French, and Americans from the west. The Germans began frantically to move the prisoners out of the camps near the front and take them to be used as forced laborers in camps inside Germany. Prisoners were first taken by train and then by foot on "death marches," as they became known. Prisoners were forced to march long distances in bitter cold, with little or no food, water, or rest. Those who could not keep up were shot. The largest death marches took place in the winter of 1944-1945, when the Soviet army b...
Read more

This is an unbelievable story of a girl who survived acid

Image
This is an unbelievable story of a girl who survived acid She was supposed to die a child, today she inspires thousands of people around the world. This is the story of Anmol Rodriguez, a 26-year-old Indian woman. When she was only 2 months old, her father wanted to get rid of his wife and daughter, so he sprayed them with hydrochloric acid. The mother died from her injuries, the daughter Anmol survived, although her entire body was burned and she spent the next 5 years in hospital. She later found a guardian and a shelter in an adoption centre in Mumbai, where she was safe and accepted. But in school, students were mean and didn't hesitate to make fun of her. However, she decided to believe in herself. Not in what people said. And then she found out... about Social Media ! She started posting her photos and received thousand’s of responses from people who found her story inspiring. Today, Anmol is the founder of Acid Attack Survivor Sahas Foundation, which supports the victims of ...
Read more

The 10 Grusome Steps of the William Wallace Death

Image
The 10 Grusome Steps of the William Wallace Death When you think of the William Wallace death, the first thing that may come to your mind is the movie Braveheart, followed shortly by an image of Mel Gibson covered in blue paint and crying “Freeeeeeeeeeeeeedom!” Braveheart is an amazing film and is one of the best medieval movies of all time, however, it unfortunately not an accurate depiction of the life or death of William Wallace. One of the unfortunate inaccuracies was that Wallace’s death was in fact a lot more gruesome than was depicted on screen. Wallace may have lived by the sword, but his death was not by the sword. When was William Wallace’s Death On 23 August 1305, William Wallace’s death took place. Found guilty of treason, Wallace was taken to the Tower of London, where his clothes were removed and he was tied to a hurdle and dragged through the streets by horses. At the end of this, he was hung, drawn, and quartered. If this was not bad enough, Wallace’s bowels ...
Read more

Another young woman's body found in Madrasa...

Image
Graphic Content Warning ⚠️ Once again... Another young woman's body found in Madrasa... there will be no halt to such crimes until justice is served properly. Amidst uproar after the mur**der of a child near the Taj Mahal, fear of rape followed by murder, the body of a girl found in a semi-nude state, mur** dered with stones, the accused fled - DCP informed that Tajganj police reached the crime scene. DCP Suraj Rai formed teams to uncover the truth behind the gruesome incident at the mosque. The forensic team and dog squad are investigating the scene. Hindu leader Govind Parashar expressed anger over the girl's murder, demanding the mosque be sealed and bulldozed by the government. Strict action must be taken against the perpetrators of the girl's murder, or else the Rashtriya Hindu Parishad will seal mosques across India - Govind Parashar (National President). Reported by Sudarshan News Channel ,Agra
Read more

A 26-year-old Australian woman, Annie Knight, has reportedly lost her corporate job after her work discovered her secret Only Fans account.

Image
A 26-year-old Australian woman, Annie Knight, has reportedly lost her corporate job after her work discovered her secret Only Fans account. According to DailyMail, she shared her experience on SBS’ Insight on Tuesday, saying she was shocked she was dismissed from a corporate role. Knight, who claims to be in the top 0.4 per cent of creators on OnlyFans, said she did have apprehensions when she first ventured into the platform but didn’t think she would lose her job. “Yes, that was definitely my number one concern when I first started my account. And the last thing I wanted to do was to get fired if someone found my OnlyFans,” she shared. Unfortunately for Knight, these fears materialised a few years down the line. “I had just started a new job. I was on day five, and I actually went home sick that day, and I received an email saying termination of contract,” she explained. The email contained screenshots from her OnlyFans account, along with three reasons for her dismissal. The reasons...
Read more

The Rape of Tamar

Image
The Rape of Tamar The story of the rape of Tamar, daughter of King David, by Amnon, her half-brother (2 Samuel 13) is  told in the wake of the king's sins of adultery and murder . When Tamar attends Amnon, who feigns illness, he seizes her and rapes her, and then banishes her from the room. Classical formal features—solid forms, careful balance, and harmonious colors—temper the violence of this scene, which probably represents the biblical Old Testament character Tamar about to be raped by her half-brother Amnon. A freeze‑frame effect is achieved through staid yet dramatic gestures that Le Sueur derived from classical sculpture. They align perfectly with how fellow painter Charles Le Brun would soon theorize the best methods of representing historical narrative. Shortly after this work was painted, in 1648, both artists became founding members of the French Royal Academy, which sought to elevate the perception of painters’ intellectual abilities and social position.
Read more

Hasanlu lovers

Image
Hasanlu lovers The  Hasanlu Lovers  are a pair of human remains found at the Teppe Hasanlu archaeological site, located in the Naqadeh in the West Azerbaijan Province of Iran. Around 800 BCE, the city of Hasanlu, located in north-western Iran, was destroyed by an unknown invader. Inhabitants were slain and left where they fell. In 1973, the lovers were discovered by a team of archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania led by Robert H. Dyson. The two  human skeletons  were found together in a bin during  excavations , seemingly embracing at the time of death, with no other objects except a  stone slab  under the head of one skeleton. They died together around 800 BCE, during the last destruction of the Hasanlu. Approximately 246 skeletons were found at the site altogether. How the lovers died and ended up in the bin is still under speculation but both skeletons lack evidence...
Read more

The teenage girls who flirted with Nazis before luring them into woods and shooting them

Image
The teenage girls who flirted with Nazis before luring them into woods and shooting them Red lipstick and shiny eye shadow were unlikely but important weapons deployed by members of the Dutch resistance when taking on Nazi soldiers. Freddie and Truus Oversteegen, two sisters, and their best friend Hannie Schaft would put on their best clothes and fastidiously apply their make-up before going into bars to seek out unsuspecting targets. The young girls, who were active in the Dutch resistance during the Second World War, would then strike up conversations with Nazi soldiers or Dutch collaborators. They would giggle and bat their eyelashes as they cajoled them into disclosing classified information. Then they would lure them into the woods on the pretext of a “romantic walk” – and shoot them dead. Freddie and Truus survived the war but Hannie, who is far more famous than the Oversteegen sisters, was caught and executed by the Nazis just three weeks before the war came t...
Read more

The Japanese WWII Soldier Who Refused to Surrender for 27 Years

Image
The Japanese WWII Soldier Who Refused to Surrender for 27 Years Unable to bear the shame of being captured as a prisoner of war, Shoichi Yokoi hid in the jungles of Guam until January 1972 When Japanese sergeant Shoichi Yokoi returned to his home country after almost three decades in hiding, his initial reaction was one of contrition: “It is with much embarrassment that I return.” Then 56, Yokoi had spent the past 27 years eking out a meager existence in the jungles of Guam, where he’d fled to evade capture following American forces’ seizure of the island in August 1944. According to historian Robert Rogers, Yokoi was one of around 5,000 Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender to the Allies after the Battle of Guam, preferring life on the lam to the shame of being detained as a prisoner of war. Though the Allies captured or killed the majority of these holdouts within a few months, some 130 remai...
Read more

Meet the woman who slept with 10,000 men

Image
Meet the woman who slept with 10,000 men This was one of NZH Lifestyle's top stories for 2017. Warning: Explicit and distressing content Gwyneth Montenegro says she has slept with more than 10,000 men. She first stepped into a brothel at age 21, lured by the prospect of earning up to $1000 for an hour's work. While she doesn't regret her 12 years as a sex worker, Montenegro, 39, says she is glad to be out. Now, she is trained in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), an approach to personal development and psychotherapy made popular by American motivational speaker Tony Robbins. She teaches women how to "understand" men and get the most out of their relationships. Here she answers questions about the reality of sex work and what men really want. How did you first get in to sex work? "I never wanted to get into the sex industry in the first place. I was 18, I went out to a nightclub and my drink was spiked and I got taken away and gang-raped by 6-8 men - ...
Read more