This is not entirely surprising as Maximilian had married Charles the Bold’s daughter and, when his father-in-law was killed at the Battle of Nancy, the Duchy of Burgundy had become part of Maximilian’s Empire. Charles besieged Neuss with a mercenary army that included a contingent of English archers ( who mutinied when their pay failed to materialise) and the young Martin Schwartz.Īt Neuss Schwartz was on the losing side but a decade later he’d turned his coat and was fighting for the new Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian of Hapsburg. Schwartz first comes to notice at the Siege of Neuss where Charles the Bold Duke of Burgundy was vying with the Frederick III Holy Roman Emperor for control of the Rhine. Like many ambitious young men in the late Middle Ages, Schwartz was determined to win wealth and fame with his sword and the constant wars fought by the crowned heads of Europe offered plenty of opportunity. His father was a shoemaker but his son was destined for something greater than the cobbler’s last. So how did this German soldier-of-fortune come to perish in a doomed rebellion against the House of Tudor? Schwartz was born sometime around 1450 in the German city of Augsburg. On the 16th of June 1487 Henry VII defeated a Yorkist army at the Battle of Stoke Field (near Newark) and among the dead was Martin Schwartz, one of the most celebrated mercenary captains of his day. WILLOWS & ROSES – THE LIFE & DEATH OF MARTIN SCHWARTZ
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