Factionalism and State Power in the Flemish Revolt (1482-1492) (SECTION III REQIONAL Topics) (Report‪)‬

"It was a damned plague that caused great sadness in Bniges, because the citizens were divided into two factions. Brothers were separated. Even husbands and wives quarrelled about the factions" (1) The factional struggle between Monetans and Philippins held Flanders firmly in its grip during the Flemish Revolt. This was the battle for the regency during the minority of the count of Flanders, Philip the Fair, between 1482 and 1492. The faction of the Monetans supported the regency of Philip's father Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, while the faction of the Philippins defended the existence of a regency council that would govern the county in Philip the Fairs name. (2) As the quotation above states, this factional struggle not only separated social entities, such as families and married couples, it also spread a "plague" of violence in the city of Bruges. Several historians (including Jacques Heers and Wim Blockmans) have already shown that factional struggle made medieval and Renaissance politics more violent. (3) They argue that there was no central control mechanism that could stop one faction from using brute force against the other because state power was weak. In a more recent article William Beik states that factional splits were endemic during periods of weakness of the central state because of the nature of the social system. According to Beik, an aristocratic society required effective sharing of resources through taxation, venality, and clientage. When the system of financial and economic redistribution faltered because of the inadequacy of central authority in times of political weakness, "it produced instead popular unrest, jurisdictional blockage, and factional conflicts." (4) This article, however argues, that weak state power did not cause factional struggle, because it assesses periods of weakness of central power only as an opportunity to grab power that a political alternative to central authority could seize upon. While weakness of the central government does explain why the state could not pacify factional violence in the city, it does not clarify the origins of the conflict. Without the existence of powerful political challengers to the regime factional conflict would not have taken place in periods of weak state power, and therefore, I would argue, we must consider additional social factors in order to understand factional struggle. Challenging factions are powerful when they have at their disposal important economic resources, an alternative political program, and a cohesive social body. These aspects cannot be ignored when studying factional conflicts.