Battle of Guinegatte (1479)

This print attributed to **Wolf Traut**, produced in the early **sixteenth century**, depicts the **Battle of Guinegatte** or **Thérouanne** of **1479**. It illustrates the clash in which **Maximilian of Habsburg** won an important success against forces opposed to him by **Louis XI**, at the very moment when the Burgundian succession was becoming a lasting European conflict. The work is not an immediate contemporary record of the battle, yet it belongs to the commemorative world of the early Habsburg decades and helps give this victory a dynastic significance. In the context of **Louis XI’s** reign, it shows that the French successes of **1477** and **1479** did not produce a definitive settlement, because a new first-rank adversary was then establishing himself on the north-eastern frontier.