Disability & War in the Middle Ages
Urban militia, dynastic armies, and soldiers’ care in the Burgundian Low Countries (15th-16th centuries)
Infos
T
raditional military history has long been preoccupied with estimated casualties, often speculating about death tolls and injured soldiers in past military engagements on the basis of more or less biased narrative accounts. The fate of disabled soldiers beyond the battlefield has however barely retained attention before the development, in Early Modern Europe, of specialised institutions devoted to take care of these men and accommodate them. This is maybe unsurprising as their development indeed led to corresponding coherent archival series kept by these institutions. Assuredly, the most renown example is Louis XIV’s creation of the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris in 1670. Nevertheless, although this care was only institutionalized in the 16th century, several late medieval urban and princely authorities had already been encouraged, if not impelled, to take an interest in the fate of the men who had served them in war and returned (permanently) disabled.
Burgundian-Habsburg princely account books and financial accounts of a few representative towns regularly sending off their militia in the armed conflicts of the 15th and 16th centuries (Bruges, Mons, Mechelen, Lille), allow to observe how different, sometimes competing, authorities in a highly urbanized area were taking care of “their” soldiers, or indeed sometimes failed to do so, before the emergence of specialized dynastic institutions in the Early Modern period. Through the analysis of these financial accounts, complemented by memoirs of few soldiers (Haynin, La Marche), this paper hence examines the changing relation of towns and princes to “their” disabled soldiers, as well as changing expectations of the latter towards these authorities. The growing care for disabled soldiers and their families, first by the towns, then by the dynasty, reflects both changing power relations between prince and cities and the changing status of the soldier in the 15th and 16th century Burgundian-Habsburg Low Countries.
Une conference de Michael DEPRETER (Oxford University, UK) – Urban militia, dynastic armies, and soldiers’ care in the Burgundian Low Countries (15th-16th centuries).
Organisation
Christophe MASSON (F.R.S.-FNRS/ULiège).
Ninon DUBOURG (F.R.S.-FNRS/ULiège).
Inscriptions
christophe.masson@uliege.be
ninon.dubourg@uliege.be
