On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Siege of Dijon, and the re-hanging, after restoration, of a tapestry that illustrates the Siege at the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Dijon, Alain Marchandisse and Jonathan Dumont, historians from the University of Liège, have contributed to and directed the book 1513. L'année terrible. Le Siège de Dijon (1513. The dreadful year. The siege of Dijon). This work is ambitious in the variety of images it contains, and also because of the quality of the scientific analysis. This fine work offers the reader a multivalent deciphering of an event that was a forerunner of future European conflicts.

The traditional heritage of Dijon is based on a number of historical testimonies that continually revive the memory of the Siege of the town in 1513. There are street names that commemorate illustrious persons, and archaeological remains, found during building repair work, may be connected to the miraculous virgin who was supposed to have been the salvation of Dijon, up to the time of the tapestry, which portrays a crucial moment in the history of France. All these remains of the past testify to it, even if they are often perceptible only as part of the background. The reopening of certain older rooms of the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Dijon that contained historical treasures, taking place at the same time as the 500th anniversary of the Siege, provided an opportune moment to re-examine this event and to display for the Dijonnais a fragment of their heritage.

The Siege of Dijon was of course a large-scale military undertaking, but it also had the distinction of being described by many people, and of being studied in many different respects, as an economic, political, social, and even religious event, and as the subject of artistic representations. It is the object of a classic historical analysis thanks to the availability of numerous archives; it has also been approached through study of archaeological traces, paintings, maps of the old city, sculptures, etc. The possibility of a multidisciplinary approach led Laurent Vissière of the Paris – Sorbonne University  to produce a book that (1) tells the story of the Siege as a history from all conceivable viewpoints, one that appeals to all historians, from the amateur to the expert. He wanted to get a group of experts together for this purpose, and so he called on Alain Marchandisse, a specialist in Burgundian history, and on Jonathan Dumont, a specialist in the Italian Wars. Both are researchers working for Transitions, the department specializing in research of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modernity at the University of Liège. He wanted them to illuminate the historical background of the event. Their specialties justify their participation in this project, which is intended to focus on a particular military event from the perspective of many different disciplines at once, not just as an isolated factual occurrence. “The Siege of Dijon lent itself to an attempt to show what can be done with a military event when one has decided not to confine it to the history of classic battles, and to show that it can be part of an approach that is more contemporary, that places the event within a larger context,” said Alain Marchandisse.

(1) Vissière, Laurent; Marchandisse, Alain; Dumont, Jonathan (Eds.) 1513. L’année terrible. Le siège de Dijon ; Faton, Dijon, 2013.