Jan van der Driessche/Jehan de la Driesche, Flemish official at the service of Louis XI.

In contemporary historiography there is a lot of interest for the role of the officers in the state formation process in the late Middle Ages. In Flanders, the late medieval officers were mostly recruited among the dominant classes in the cities. A university training allowed them to develop the capacities they needed for the princely service. But these intellectual skills were not enough. Networks of patronage were necessary for the advancement of their careers and these were essential in the functioning of the Burgundian and French states. The career of Jan Van den Driessche, first in the Burgundian state and later in the service of Louis XI, clearly took shape - and this in the positive and the negative sense - through his relations with the rival networks of the Croys and of the count of Saint-Pol in the Burgundian court.