On This Day
1477 – Battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold is killed and Burgundy becomes part of France.
The Battle of Nancy was the final and decisive battle of the Burgundian Wars, fought outside the walls of Nancy on 5 January 1477 by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, against René II, Duke of Lorraine, and the Swiss Confederacy.
René’s forces won the battle, and Charles’ mutilated body was found three days later.
Background
Charles was besieging the city of Nancy, capital of Lorraine, following its recapture by the forces of René II in 1476. Despite the harsh winter conditions, Charles was determined to bring the siege to an end at all costs as he was well aware that sooner or later René would arrive with a relieving army when the weather improved.
By late December René had gathered some 10-12,000 men from Lorraine and the Lower Union (of the Rhine). A Swiss army of 8,000[2]-10,000 men arrived to help out. René began his advance on Nancy early in January 1477, moving cautiously through the snow-covered landscape until they reached Nancy early on the morning of 5 January. Charles finally learned that René’s army was indeed close by and drew up the bulk of his army in a strong defensive position south of Nancy on a heavily wooded slope behind a stream at the narrowest part of the valley down which he knew the Swiss would have to advance. The exact numbers available to Charles are hard to judge, but contemporary observers put the numbers between 2,000 and 8,000,[1] for even his household troops were by this stage well below strength, while most of the Ordonnance companies were at best only 50% of their theoretical strength.
Charles, as usual, deployed his troops to a precise battle plan despite the short notice he received of the approach of René’s forces. The infantry companies and dismounted gendarme formed up in a large square formation with some 30 field guns in front at the top of the slope, while on either flank were mounted knights and coutilliers.
If Charles suffered from a lack of scouting, which had cost him so dearly at Morat (Murten) six months earlier, the same could not be said for the Allied army. Despite the driving snow cutting visibility to a few yards, the Allied scouts soon recognized that a frontal assault on the Burgundian position would be disastrous. The largely Swiss vanguard of 7,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry were instructed to attack from the right, while the principal thrust would come from the 8,000 infantry and 1,300 cavalry of the center, which was dispatched on a difficult circuitous march round the left flank, over thickly wooded snow-covered slopes out of view of the waiting Burgundians. The small rearguard of 800 handgunners acted as reserve.
Born On This Day
1882 – Dorothy Levitt, English racing driver and journalist (d. 1922)
Dorothy Elizabeth Levitt, (born Elizabeth Levi; 5 January 1882, died 17 May 1922) was the first British woman racing driver, holder of the world’s first water speed record, the women’s world land speed record holder, and an author. She was a pioneer of female independence and female motoring, and taught Queen Alexandra and the Royal Princesses how to drive. In 1905 she established the record for the longest drive achieved by a lady driver by driving a De Dion-Bouton from London to Liverpool and back over two days, receiving the soubriquets in the press of the Fastest Girl on Earth, and the Champion Lady Motorist of the World.
Levitt’s book The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for all Women who Motor or Who Want to Motor, recommended that women should “carry a little hand-mirror in a convenient place when driving” so they may “hold the mirror aloft from time to time in order to see behind while driving in traffic”, thus inventing the rear view mirror before it was introduced by manufacturers in 1914. She also advised women travelling alone to carry a handgun; her recommendation was an automatic Colt, as in her opinion its relative lack of recoil made it particularly suitable for women.
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Word of the day
- bildungsroman March 28, 2023Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 28, 2023 is: bildungsroman • \BIL-doonks-roh-mahn\ • noun A bildungsroman is a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character. // She was thrilled to discover that the next book on the syllabus was a bildungsroman by her favorite author. See the entry > Examples: […]Merriam-Webster
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- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for March 28 March 28, 2023Picture of the day Wanha Satama in Katajanokka, Helsinki.
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