Philip (Margrave Hachberg-Sauzenberg)

Philip was the son of Margrave Rudolph IV and Margarita of Vienne ( French Marguerite de Vienne ), and from 1476/1478 was married to Maria of Savoy (d. 1509) - the daughter of Amadeus IX and Yolanda of France .

At the age of 12, he was sent to Dijon to the court of his godfather, Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good . Having inherited a number of allotments in Burgundy from his mother, the young Margrave Philip was at the same time a vassal of the Duke of Burgundy, and soon took an active part in the Burgundian wars : in 1474 he participated in the siege of Neuss and on November 30, 1475 was among the close associates of Karl Smeloy after the successful assault on Nancy . And later on he continued to fight on the side of Karl the Bold: in the battles at Hranson , at Murten , at Nancy . Captured during the battle of Nancy, Philip was able to gain freedom only in September 1477 after paying a huge ransom of 150 thousand guilders.

After the liberation, Philip Hachberg-Sauzenbergsky, in the hope of preserving his possessions in Burgundy, joined the French king , and in 1484 participated in the coronation of Charles VIII in Reims . Already in 1489, he was appointed chamberlain and member of the royal council ( French Conseil du Roi ), and in 1491/1492 he briefly held the position of great chamberlain ( French Grand chambellan de France ). On behalf of Charles VIII, he repeatedly acted as a mediator in relations with the Swiss Union , and as the marshal of the French Burgundy Philippe de Hochberg , as he began to be called in France, he had considerable political weight.

Due to the proximity to the French court, Philippe Hachberg after the conclusion of the Treaty of Sanlis (1493) lost, however, his possessions in Franche-Comte , transferred to Philip the Beautiful . Probably, as compensation, the French king appointed him the governor and great seneschal of Provence ( French Grand sénéchal de Provence ) and France. In 1500, Louis XII wrote him Fr. Lettre de naturalité , which according to modern concepts was tantamount to the adoption of French citizenship .

In the Swabian War that broke out in 1499, in which France supported the Swiss Union in its struggle against the Habsburgs , Philippe Hachberg, as Marshal of Burgundy, was subject to command of the French artillery units. Among other things, he sent to Soloturn a transport of 24 large coulins and 8 bombers, along with ammunition and French personnel; however, he arrived at his destination only on July 26, 1499, that is, after the decisive battle of Dornach . Interestingly, the armed Margrave detachment Hachberg-Sauzenberg fought at the same time on the side of the Swabian Union along with the Habsburgs.

In July 1503, while staying in Montpellier, Philip became seriously ill, and asked to be transported to Cères , where he made a will on July 31, and died on September 9 of the same year. His body was buried in the collegiate church of Neuchatel; his heart, enclosed in a lead vessel, is in the parish church of Rötteln.

Anticipating the suppression of the male line of the Hachberg-Sauzenberg Margraves, Philip resumed negotiations already begun by his father on concluding an agreement on the merger with the main line of the Baden House . An agreement with Christophe of Baden , known as the Rötteln Deal, was reached on August 31, 1490 and involved a marriage between one of Christoph I’s sons and John, the heir daughter of Philip of Hachberg. The marriage, however, was not concluded because of the political pressure of the French king, who feared - after the just-concluded Burgundian wars - the emergence of a new large state on its eastern border.

After the death of her father, John Hachberg took the title of Countess of Neuenburg / Neuchâtel ( fr. Jehanne, comtesse souveraine de Neuchâtel ), and in 1504 she married Louis of Orleans , which allowed the latter Iure uxoris , by right of wife, to call herself the "Marquis of Röttel" . marquis de Rothelin ). On this basis, he, on behalf of John and with the support of the French king, as well as a number of Swiss cantons, tried to challenge the agreement on the entry of Hachberg-Sauzenberg into the Baden margrarat . After the death of Joanna in 1543, her son Francois ( fr. François d'Orléans-Longueville , 1513-1548), who received the title of peer of France from the king, continued to refer to himself as the Rottellian marquise and transferred this title to his son from an illegitimate union with Francoise Blosset, also Francois (d. 1600), nicknamed the “Röttel bastard” ( fr. Le Bâtard de Rothelin ), who founded the side (illegitimate) line of Orleans-Rötlin.

In 1581, after the Baden-Durlach Margraves paid a compensation of 225,000 guilders, Maria de Bourbon, on behalf of Longville, refused territorial claims for the ownership of Rötteln; the title of Marques / Counts of Rötteln Orleans-Rötlin continued to be used until the final suppression of the line in 1818.

• Bovet A .: Philippe de Hochberg, maréchal de Bourgogne, gouverneur et grand sénéchal de Provence (1454-1503). Diss. Ecole nationale des chartes Paris. Ms., 1918.
• Huber, August: Über Basels Anteil am Röteler Erbfolgestreit im Jahre 1503 // Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 4 (1905).
• Schülin, Fritz: Binzen, Beiträge zur Orts-, Landschafts- und Siedlungsgeschichte. Schopfheim 1967. (Family tree of the House Hachberg-Sauzenberg on S. 525-526)
• Seith, Karl: Die Stellung des Markgräflerlandes im Krieg des Reiches gegen die Schweizer (Schwabenkrieg) i. J. 1499 // Das Markgräflerland Heft 1/1962. S. 1-13.
• Vortisch, Christian Martin: Über Philipp von Hochberg-Sausenberg 1454-1503 // Das Markgräflerland. Heft 3/1971. S 126-129.
• Wörner, Hans Jakob: Das Markgräflerland - Bemerkungen zu seinem geschichtlichen Werdegang // Das Markgräflerland, Heft 2/1994. Schopfheim 1994.

• Henry, Philippe: Philipp von Hochberg in the Swiss Historical Dictionary