The Modern Burgundian Superstate

 "The blind passion with which a man supported his party and his lord and, at the same time, pursued his own interests was, in part, an expression of an unmistakable, stone-hard sense of right that medieval man thought proper. It demonstrated an unshakable certainty that every deed justified ultimate retribution. The sense of justice was still three quarters heathen and dominated by a need for vengeance." The Autumn of the Middle Ages, p. 20

For his classic work on the 15th century, Huizinga chose as his starting point a date five hundred years before he published it in 1919.

The event is the 1419 assassination of John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy. It was a pivotal development in the long brutal civil war between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs for control of France, which itself was set against the backdrop of the Hundred Year's War and other European conflicts, including the Fall of Constantinople.

One learns quickly that for Huizinga, the nation that typified the late Middle Ages in Europe was Burgundy, a nation that no longer exists in the formal sense. In the middle of the 15th century, Burgundy was arguably the strongest nation on the continent.  Within a century it has ceased to exist but in remnants that became parts of other nations. 

Or did it? One looks at the western front of the war that Huizinga and Europe suffered through and one sees the scar of ancient Burgundy. Emerging out of those conflicts, one can see the unified Europe of today as Burgundian creation, not only in its geographical location (the organs of the EU are on former Burgundian lands), and its formal creation and evolution, but in its spirit (this last part I am learning from reading the book). The very essence of European internationalism and patchwork secular allegiances can be argued to be Burgundian influenced (including the Swiss model, as Switzerland itself to some degree emerged out of a successful Burgundian secessionist movement). 

In this view, we have partially re-created the world of six hundred years ago, with Burgundy having absorbed the rest of the West in a Burgundian Superstate.  The modern word state in reference to a political entity was retrofitted in order to apply to Burgundy during that era, as no other word for its national polity sufficed. 

The most significant modern parallel that I can identify so far from that era of Burgundian history is the decline of Christian institutions and the rise of secular power politics based on personalities, with its corresponding absolutism and urban factionalism.  

Burgundy was a sophisticated place, the most advanced and prosperous part of the continent.

John the Fearless (French: Jean sans Peur ; Dutch: Jan zonder Vrees; 28 May 1371 – 10 September 1419) was a scion of the French royal family who ruled the Burgundian State from 1404 until his death in 1419.