Mary of Burgundy inherited the Burgundian Netherlands in 1477 at age nineteen following the death of her father Charles the Bold at the Battle of Nancy — a succession immediately contested by Louis XI of France, who seized Artois and Burgundy proper. To secure her position, Mary granted the Great Privilege that same year, restoring extensive rights to the Flemish towns that her father had spent decades dismantling. This copper issue belongs to that politically turbulent window between her accession and her death from a riding accident in 1482, after which the Low Countries passed to the Habsburgs through her son Philip.
Mary of Burgundy inherited the Burgundian Netherlands in 1477 at age nineteen following the death of her father Charles the Bold at the Battle of Nancy — a succession immediately contested by Louis XI of France, who seized Artois and Burgundy proper. To secure her position, Mary granted the Great Privilege that same year, restoring extensive rights to the Flemish towns that her father had spent decades dismantling. This copper issue belongs to that politically turbulent window between her accession and her death from a riding accident in 1482, after which the Low Countries passed to the Habsburgs through her son Philip.