CHAP. LXV.
THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, WITH A LARGE ARMY, ESCORTS HIS BASTARD SON INTO HOLLAND, AND PUTS HIM IN PEACEABLE POSSESSION OF THE BISHOPRICK OF UTRECHT.—HE BESIEGES DEVENTER[229], AND FORCES ITS INHABITANTS TO OBEY THE NEW BISHOP, WHICH THEY HAD BEFORE REFUSED.
When duke Philip saw that he could not prevail by love and entreaties to make his son be accepted for bishop by the chapter of Utrecht, he sent to Picardy and Hainault for a body of troops, and he was soon joined by full thirteen thousand combatants. The chapter now changed their tone, and admitted his son as their bishop, under certain conditions, namely, that the brother of the lord de Brederode, who had been elected, should receive for his life an annual pension, from the bishoprick of Utrecht, of four thousand francs, from the bishoprick of Therouenne two thousand francs,—and, for the expenses he had been put to, fifty thousand lyons once paid. He was also to be made first counsellor to the duke in the affairs of Holland, with a salary of a thousand florins of the Rhine. In consideration of this arrangement, he resigned the bishoprick, which was commonly said to be worth yearly fifty thousand mailles of the Rhine.
When this had been settled, duke Philip entered Utrecht, with his company on the 5th of August, and was most honourably received. On the morrow, his son entered in arms, grandly accompanied; and on the Sunday following, he said mass in the cathedral.
Soon after, the duke left Utrecht, with his whole army, to besiege a considerable town in the diocese, called Deventer, because it had refused to acknowledge the new bishop. Those of the town sallied out against him; and a smart skirmish ensued, in which many were killed on both sides. In the end, they were repulsed and driven back into the town; and on the fourth day, a strong bulwark they had erected in front of the gate was so much battered with cannon that those within, foreseeing it must be taken, set in on fire, and burnt it during the night. The siege, however, lasted until the end of September, when the townsmen sent offers to the duke to obey the bishop, as the other towns within his diocese had done.
While this treaty was carrying on, the duke of Gueldres, who had married the niece of duke Philip, by whom he had a fair son about sixteen years of age, after having promised his aid to the duke of Burgundy, quitted his country, and abandoned his places,—but nevertheless made an hasty alliance with the Frizelanders, when they assembled a great army with the intent of overthrowing duke Philip.
The duke of Burgundy would have remained in perfect ignorance of this treachery, had not his niece been told of the wicked designs of her husband against her uncle; and instantly quitting the place she was in with her son, attended by her servants, she hastened to the duke, then besieging Deventer, and told him of the plots against him. This caused the duke to lose no time in closing with the offers of those in Deventer, so that the treaty was immediately concluded, and hostages were given for its performance. The duke raised the siege the 27th day of September, and returned to Utrecht, and thence to the Hague, where he disbanded his army, leaving his son David in peaceable possession of the bishoprick of Utrecht.
He was under great obligations to his niece for the information she had given him; for if he had remained two days longer at the siege, he would have been attacked by the duke of Gueldres and the Frizelanders before he knew any thing of their intentions, and it would probably have been unfortunate to him by reason of his being totally unprepared to receive them.
The duke of Gueldres was much reproached for this conduct, considering that he had married the duke of Burgundy's niece, and that the good duke had sent their daughter to marry the king of Scotland, at his own expense, and had done many and very great kindnesses to the duke of Gueldres.