Battle of Westkapelle
| date | 4th July 1253 |
|---|---|
| place | Westkapelle / Netherlands |
| output | Victory of the imperial troops |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
|
|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 100 knights | 32 knights |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
unknown |
The Battle of Westkapelle , also known as the Battle of Walcheren or Battle of Zeeland , was a military clash in the medieval Netherlands . It took place on July 4, 1253 near Westkapelle on the island of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland and was the military climax of the Flemish War of Succession .
background
Since 1244, the sons of Countess Margaret the Black of Flanders from their two marriages fought over the succession in the territorial conglomerate of the Counts of Flanders. In addition to the actual county of Flanders (Crown Flanders ) belonging to the feudal association of the Kingdom of France, this included the Margraviate of Namur, part of the Holy Roman Empire , and the county of Hainaut ( Imperial Flanders ). The older brothers from the Avesnes family faced their younger half-brothers from the Dampierre family, who were preferred by their mother . In 1246, the French King Louis IX. (Saint Louis) temporarily resolved the conflict by awarding the Avesnes the Hainaut, over which he could not control purely under feudal law, and the Dampierre Flanders by means of an arbitration award (“Dit de Paris”).
However, the conflict continued to smolder and broke out in the absence of King Louis IX. on the sixth crusade (1248–1254) when Count Wilhelm II of Flanders (Dampierre) had a fatal accident at a tournament in 1251 and the Avesnes were suspected of murder. For their part, the Avesnes won over the German (counter) King Wilhelm of Holland , who, as the liege lord of Hainaut and as Count of Holland himself, was directly affected by the events in neighboring Flanders and was also related by marriage to them.
The battle
Countess Margarete finally spurred her Dampierre sons, above all Count Guido von Flanders , to attack Holland directly in order to eliminate the German king and thus the Avesnes. The destination should be the Zeeland landscape, which was of commercial importance due to the Rhine-Maas delta . There, the brother of the German king, Florens the Vogt , opposed the Flemings . While a large number of northern French knights and princes joined the Flanders side, the other side could rely on the support of the Lower Rhine princes, the party members of the House of Holland in the German battles for the throne. On the Flemish side, the Counts of Bar and Vaudémont were two great Lorraine people who were actually vassals of the Holy Roman Empire. The military conflict of 1254 thus took on the character of a Franco-German exchange of blows, as it had last occurred in the battle of Bouvines forty years earlier.
Known battle participants were:
| Flanders | Imperial troops | |
|---|---|---|
 Count Guido of Flanders  Count Theobald II of Bar Count Guido II of St. Pol Count Heinrich I of Vaudémont Count Arnold III. by Guînes.svg){kind=small} Graf Wilhelm III. by Joigny Jean de Dampierre, Lord of Dampierre and Saint-Dizier Renaud de Bar  Robert de Wavrin, Seneschal of Flanders Simon II. de Clermont Érard de Valéry_Conn%C3%A9table_de_France.svg){kind=small} .png){kind=small}
|
 Florens the Vogt Duke Heinrich III. of Brabant Duke Walram V of Limburg Count Otto II of Geldern Count Dietrich Nust of Kleve Count Adolf IV of Berg Count Heinrich V of Luxembourg Archbishop Conrad of Cologne Bishop Heinrich von Lüttich
|
No detailed battle reports are available about the battle of Westkapelle, and from the existing ones it can be inferred that it was decided relatively quickly. When the Franco-Flemish army landed on the coast of Walcheren near Westkapelle, the army of the knights from the Lower Rhine was waiting for them, who gave them no time to prepare for battle and attacked immediately. The Flemings had to fight on foot on the beach and, despite their numerical superiority, were at a disadvantage. Both Baldwin of Avesnes and Matthew Paris reported a large number of dead among the common footmen, while the knights surrendered one by one into captivity. Count Guido von Flanders was injured in his knee in the fight, which gave him a lifelong handicap. The Count of Guînes lasted the longest in the fight and first surrendered to King Wilhelm personally, who was also staying on Walcheren, but only arrived on the battlefield when the fight had already been decided. Almost all Franco-Flemish knights and princes were captured and had to pay ransom for their release.
consequences
The defeat at Westkapelle put the Dampierre house on the political defensive. King Wilhelm declared Countess Margarete lost on July 11, 1253 in Frankfurt des Namur and Hainaut and demanded an exorbitant ransom for her two captured Dampierre sons. But Margarete did not think of giving up and tried to win the French king brother Karl von Anjou as an ally, who since the death of his mother in 1252 had practically unlimited influence in France. Margarete sold him her inheritance rights to Hainaut despite the protest of the Avesnes. Their situation improved further after the Archbishop of Cologne broke with King Wilhelm in August 1253 and now sided with his opponents. After Charles of Anjou had conquered Mons in the spring of 1254 and started the siege of Valenciennes , the weakened King William, through the mediation of the papal legate Pietro Capocci , agreed an armistice with Margaret on July 26, 1254 in Quesnay, whereby the Avesnes lost their most important ally.
When the military scale began to lean in favor of the Dampierre despite the defeat of Westkapelle, King Ludwig IX returned in the summer of 1254. coming back from the holy land to his kingdom. He immediately disciplined Karl von Anjou and stopped any further violence between the conflicting parties. After King Wilhelm fell in the spring of 1256 fighting rebellious Frisians , Louis IX fell. on September 24, 1256 in Péronne another arbitration award ("Dit de Péronne"), which was largely a confirmation of what was made in 1246. Hainaut was to be left to the Avesnes, while the Dampierre were able to keep Flanders and Namur. Countess Margarete was obliged to buy back her rights from Karl von Anjou as well as to raise the ransom for her sons. The border of the county of Flanders, and with it the Franco-German border, was set on the right bank of the Scheldt , which prevented its further expansion to the north. The Flemish succession dispute came to an end.
literature
- Jacques Le Goff , Ludwig the Holy (Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2000), pp. 218–222
swell
- Matthäus Paris , Chronica Majora , ed. by Henry Richards Luard in: Rolls Series 57 (1882), Vol. 5, pp. 437-438
- Matthäus Paris, Chronica Majora , ed. by Henry Richards Luard in: Rolls Series 57 (1882), Vol. 6 Addimenta, pp. 252-255
- Baldwin von Avesnes , Chronicon Hanoniense , ed. by Johannes Heller in: Monumenta Germaniae Historica SS 25 (1880), p. 461
- Balduin von Avesnes ?: Extraits de la Chronique attribuée a Baudoin d'Avesnes , in: Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France 21 (1840), p. 174
- Annales Parchenses , ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz in: Monumenta Germaniae Historica SS 16 (1859), p. 607
- Guillaume de Nangis , Gesta Sancti Ludovici , ed. by M. Daunou in: Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France 20 (1840), pp. 390-393
- The rhyming chronicle of Melis Stoke (late 13th century)
Remarks
- ↑ In his Chronica Majora (Vol. 5, p. 437), Matthäus Paris wrote that Otto II von Geldern was one of the prisoners, but later counted him (Vol. 6, p. 253) in the army of the Lower Rhine coalition. The latter is likely to have been the most likely.