The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire [B0160]

2022 Apollo 'flex-cover' edition in excellent condition. A thrilling narrative of the brutal dazzlingly rich wildly ambitious duchy-- Simon Sebag Montefiore. A history book that reads like a thriller--Le Soir. At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a compulsively readable narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury and madness. It is about the decline of knightly ideals and the awakening of individualism and of cities, the struggle for dominance in the heart of northern Europe, bloody military campaigns and fatally bad marriages. It is also a remarkable cultural history, of great art and architecture and music emerging despite the violence and the chaos of the tension between rival dynasties.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "A surprisingly detailed romp. Who knew that a kind of minor tribe from an island in the Baltic sea had such lasting influence to Western European history. Bart van Loo has an engaging style of relating history. His ramblings give enormous detail and depth to the time and people covered. Going into this book, i thought the Burgundians were winemakers, now i understand their role as a people who helped to create the Low Countries. Good fun".