Isabelle de Bourbon

Isabella of Bourbon was born in 1436 as the second daughter of Charles I, the fifth Duke of Bourbon, and Agnes of Burgundy. Through her parents, she belonged to prominent French and Burgundian noble families. Her mother was a daughter of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Bavaria. Isabella was therefore part of an extensive dynastic network that shaped the political history of France and Burgundy in the fifteenth century. Her childhood and youth coincided with a particularly turbulent era. France was engaged in the Hundred Years’ War, while the Burgundians and Armagnacs fought for influence over the French king, who was considered incapable of governing. The conflict intensified after the murder of Louis of Orléans. When Henry V of England attacked France, Burgundy did not support the Armagnacs despite a temporary agreement between the factions. Following the French defeat at Agincourt, the Duke of Burgundy quickly occupied Paris and declared himself regent for the king. The French heir, Charles, was forced to flee south. Isabella’s family was also drawn into these struggles. Her grandfather, John I, Duke of Bourbon, had fought at the Battle of Agincourt. In 1419, her father Charles was among those accompanying John the Fearless to a meeting with the French heir at Montereau. No peace agreement was reached there; instead, the Burgundian duke was assassinated. When the heir was later disinherited and his sister Catherine was declared heir to the French kingdom, Charles openly sided with the heir and distanced himself from his future brother-in-law, Philip the Good, the new Duke of Burgundy. By the time Isabella was born, however, political relations between her father and Philip the Good had improved again. Philip had abandoned his alliance with the English and signed the Treaty of Arras in September 1435, bringing an end to the conflict between the Burgundians and Armagnacs. This rapprochement formed the political background to Isabella’s later marriage. In 1454, Isabella was betrothed to her cousin Charles, Count of Charolais. Her mother and Charles’s father were siblings, so the marriage required a papal dispensation from Pope Nicholas V. On 30 October 1454, Isabella married the Count of Charolais in Lille. Charles was the son and heir of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and of the Portuguese princess Isabella. He was already a widower: his first marriage, to Catherine of France, had been contracted in 1439 and lasted until her death in 1446; the marriage was childless. Isabella and Charles were said to have loved each other deeply. Through this marriage, Isabella became Countess of Charolais and was brought especially close to the Burgundian ruling house. Her own political importance remained limited during her short life. In 1459, she took on a notable role as godmother to Joachim, the son of the French heir and his second wife, Charlotte of Savoy. After the heir ascended the French throne as Louis XI, he left his wife behind in Burgundy. The young queen consequently depended on Isabella’s support. Isabella died of tuberculosis in Antwerp on 25 September 1465. She was buried in Saint Michael’s Abbey. Her marriage to Charles produced only one child: Mary, born on 13 February 1457. Mary was Isabella’s only daughter and became her sole heir. She married Archduke Maximilian of Austria, and this connection with the House of Habsburg had far-reaching dynastic consequences for the centuries that followed. Although Isabella lived only briefly and exercised little direct political influence, she acquired symbolic importance after her death. She became associated with the wealth and magnificence of the Dukes of Burgundy, which was later passed on through her daughter Mary. In 1476, a splendid tomb was erected for Isabella in the church of the Antwerp abbey. It was decorated with 24 bronze figures of nobles and women standing in niches, known as “weepers”; above them stood a bronze representation of Isabella. During the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566, radical Protestants destroyed numerous religious images in Catholic churches and monasteries. Isabella’s tomb was also stripped of its decorations, and the bronze weepers disappeared. Ten of the figures were later rediscovered in Amsterdam. After Isabella’s death, Charles married for a third time in 1467, to Margaret of York. This marriage remained childless.