History Of The Netherlands

After being rebuffed in his royal ambitions at Trier in 1473, Charles the Bold became embroiled in a series of power struggles with neighbouring imperial lands during the final years of his life. In Upper Alsace, which the Duke of Austria, Sigismund, had mortgaged to him, Charles installed a man named Peter von Hagenbach as his bailiff, whose tyrannical tendencies united a coalition of Swiss and Alsatian towns which teamed up with Sigismund, forming an anti-Burgundian alliance called the League of Constance. This coalition set about rejecting and ejecting the Burgundians from Upper Alsace. Basically, conditions conspired to continuously concern Charles and the League of Constance would contemptuously constrain his constant compulsions for control over consecutively connected constituencies. He also declared himself protector of Cologne, which was in revolt against its prince-bishop, and set about laying siege to the rebellious town of Neuss. All of this so worried important sectors of the imperial nobility th