Guy of Namur
Guy of Namur, Namur also Gui or Guy of Namur, (* 1275, † October 13, 1311 in Pavia, Italy ) was a military leader of the Flemish nobles in the Battle of the Spurs in 1302 in Kortrijk. From 1296 to 1310 he called himself Count of Zeeland.
Life
Guido was the second son of Guido from Dampierre, Count of Flanders, and his second wife Isabella of Luxembourg in the year 1275 to the world. As a posthumous account of primogeniture from the succession as Count of Flanders ruled out, he had to find another livelihood and therefore embarked on a military career.
In 1291 he became engaged to Marie de Mortagne, heiress of the same name castellany in northern France with a castle, which secured a strategically important position at the confluence of the Scheldt and the Scarpe. However, since the French king Philip IV was against this connection, the engagement was in 1295 finally released.
After his father no longer recognized the suzerainty of the French king over the county of Flanders since 1297, Guido fought Namur on the Flemish side against France. The allied with his father King Edward I beat him in 1298 in Ghent knighted.
In 1299 he inherited from his father parts of Zeeland, to which, however also raised the Count of Holland, including the son of the half-brother of Guido's father, Johan II of Avesnes, claim. The lands had Guido's half-sister Beatrix of the first marriage Guido de Dampierre with Mathilde de Bethunde as dowry on the occasion of her marriage to Florens V, Count of Holland obtained. Her father, however, was the condition to that possession reverts to the House of Dampierre, when the descendants should Beatrix ' extinct. Since this already with Beatrix ' son, John I. was the case, pulled Beatrix's father's possessions again and gave it to his son Guy of Namur. But John II of Avesnes, the successor of John I as Count of Holland, raised as an inheritance claim, although the Zeeland nobles not him, but Guido recognized as Count of Zeeland. The latter could this conflict with the Dutch Counts for the time being not more intensively, since his father and his older brother Robert of Béthune in 1300 fell in the struggle against the occupation of Flanders by French troops in captivity and Guido from then on top of the native population to fight was continuing against the French king.
The Flemish uprisings took in the Bruges Matins a first bloody climax and culminated on July 11, 1302 in the Battle of the Spurs in Kortrijk. As commander of the troops from the western Flanders he had in common with his nephew William of Jülich, the younger, and his allies Zeeland Jan von Renesse crucial role in ensuring that the French had suffered a crushing defeat in battle.
Following this success, Guido devoted Namur again the dispute with the Count of Holland to his property in Zeeland. He marched with soldiers in Zeeland and delivered several skirmishes with the Dutch troops that he could always win. Only the port city Zierikzee successfully resisted a siege. The confrontation led on 10 and 11 August 1304 Battle of Zierikzee in the Flemish and French troops and Dutch contingents faced each other at sea and on land and were subject to the Flemings eventually. Guy of Namur was captured by the French and was brought to Paris.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Athis -sur -Orge (now Athis -Mons ), which was signed in June 1305 between Philip IV and Robert de Béthune, but Guido was set free and later had to renounce his rights in Zeeland. He then worked as a commander in the army of his cousin, the Roman-German king and future emperor Henry VII Together with his younger brother Henry I of Lodi he took the imperial troops at the siege and capture of the Italian town of Brescia in 1311 part. In the same year married Guido also Margaret of Lorraine, the daughter of Theobald II, Duke of Lorraine, in Pavia before he died shortly afterwards of the plague with which he had been infected in the army camp.