Charles the Bold, Last Duke of Burgundy, 1433-1477

Ruth PutnamProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
704K words
Chapters
71

Tags

English Originals World HistoryHistorical Figures Historical ReappraisalRise and FallMilitary CommandersPower GameTurbulent Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Charles the Bold, Last Duke of Burgundy, 1433-1477 by Ruth PutnamAuthor: Putnam, Ruth, 1856-1931,Language: English, Class: DC: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: France, Andorra, Monaco, Release Date: Dec 28, 2004

Editor's review

This book is Ruth Putnam's biography of Charles the Bold, focusing on the life and political-military activities of the last Duke of Burgundy from 1433 to 1477. As a public-domain biography of a historical figure, its value lies in presenting, through continuous narrative, one facet of the fifteenth-century Burgundian court and the Western European political landscape, helping readers understand Burgundy's special position between France and the Holy Roman Empire and the tension between Charles the Bold's expansionist ambition and his final end. The prose belongs to an earlier style of English historical writing: solid narration with ample background, suited to readers who already have a basic framework of late medieval Western European history as thematic reading. Read it with a map and a chronology to clarify the relationships among Burgundy, the French crown, and neighboring lords, lest you drown in names and territories. It does not offer a panorama of the latest scholarly debates, but it serves as a traditional narrative sample for entering the subject.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and chronology first to build a timeline before entering the main text
  2. Keep a fifteenth-century Western European map at hand and mark changes in Burgundian territory as you read
  3. Make brief cards for key figures, noting identity and stance to reduce confusion
  4. After each chapter, summarize the political-military developments in a few sentences to check comprehension

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71

FAQ

Who was Charles the Bold, and what is this book about? Charles the Bold was the last duke of the fifteenth-century Duchy of Burgundy. The book covers his life from 1433 to 1477, narrating his political and military activities, court relations, and conflicts with the French crown and neighboring lords. It is a historical biography.
Can I read it without a background in medieval history? You can try, but it is advisable to first learn the general background of the later Hundred Years' War and the Duchy of Burgundy; otherwise the dense names, territories, and marriage alliances can easily cause confusion. Reading with maps and a chronology will go much more smoothly.
Is this an academic monograph or a popular biography? It is a historical biography in an earlier writing style, with continuous narrative and ample background, but it is not a contemporary academic monograph and does not reflect the latest research. It is suitable as a thematic introduction or a sample of traditional narrative.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Ruth Putnam Author · American · 1856–1931

Ruth Putnam (1856–1931) was an American writer and historian, born in Yonkers, New York, and a graduate of Cornell University in 1878. She was skilled at using primary sources in Dutch, French, and German to study European history, and her subjects were mostly political and military leaders from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period. Three of her works are included here: Charles the Bold, Last Duke of Burgundy, 1433–1477; Willem de Zwijger, Prins van Oranje; and The Count of the Saxon Shore or The Villa in Vectis. These works show her tendency to combine rigorous historical scholarship with readable narrative, and her ability to portray character and circumstance within specific historical settings. She was also active in the women's suffrage movement, and her scholarship and public engagement together reflect the social concerns of American women intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.