AV Florin d'or de Bourgogne ND Antwerpen Mint mm (hand) 23mm. 3.39g. obv. St. Andrew standing holding cross of martyrdom rev. Coat-of-Arms/ Cross Karel de Stoute 1467-77 Low Countries/ Brabant Charles the Bold was the son of Philip Le Bon (the Good) even though he turned over Jeanne D-Arc to the English who roasted her on the stake His brother was Anthony the Bastard. He ended up fighting a lot of Battles/ however he had bad luck vs the Swiss Army. On 1477 he laid seige to Nancy, a combined force of Swiss/ Lorrainers intervened and destroyed his army. He ended up with his head split in two by a Swiss soldier with a halberd/ plus had a couple of lances in his loin
A beauty of a coin @panzerman congrats on the acquisition. In three battles against the Swiss Charles lost first his treasury (Grandson) then his army (Morat) and then his life (Nancy).
Beautiful coin! I love hammered gold. Only if I could afford some... Believe it or not, I was just there today. Ouch...
Hopefully for his sake, he got his head split open first/ before getting two lances in the groin/ way quicker more painless death.
His body was found several days after the battle. It was frozen and had been ravaged by wild animals to such and extint that his personal physician could only identify it based on olds war wounds.
The Swiss were the Medieval version of the SS Panzer Korps, brave, disciplined/ highly trained warrior elite. They gave the Austrians a hard time to. The Hussites/ Ottoman Janiseries also were formidible during the late medieval times. These guys certainly didn't wave a "white flag".
So they committed lots of war crimes and crimes against humanity and were ground up by the Russians on the Eastern front?
If one goes to site/ Top ten warrior formations in history of warfare/ the Waffen SS are number 8. We are talking here just the 1 million that fought on the both Eastern/ Western Fronts. Most were non German from Finland/ Latvia/ Estonia....ie Foreign Volunteers. The elite Panzer units like LAH/ Wiking/ Nordland/ Das Reich had records that were unsurpassed vs the Soviets. One also should remember, Zuhkovs method for clearing minefields was using penalty battalions to walk over them. War crimes were commited by both sides, but most soldiers were decent men. Soviets wartime propaganda has now been refuted since the USSR fell. At the Battle of Prokhorovka in July 43. It was stated by Stalin, that here the panzers were decimated. Well, not exactly. Paul Hausser's SS Panzer Army had 248 tanks, only 15 Tigers. The Russian Guards had 850 tanks, when the smoke cleared, Soviet looses were 650+ tanks, German 48 (only one Tiger) Franz Staudegger in a Tiger knocked out 25 T-34s in twenty minutes. And yes, the Swiss probably also did some nasty stuff on the Battlefield. When men are swinging swords/ halberds/ war axes....it gets bloody awfull. John
Guess he got a god old fashion butt wipping. Most interesting. Didn't know that the swiss had it in them.
The Swiss have proven themselves to be superb soldiers throughout history. Swiss mercenaries are legendary. Sorry Cheech! My geekery is showing
Congrats, mate, magnificent St. Andrew!!! and yeah, right, GOoD warriors-mercenaries... almost always Cool fashion, btw...
Interesting coin and write-up @panzerman . The cross on the obverse looks like cut marks at first glance to me. A second look shows it is a 3d cross.