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- BIOGRAPHY
Baudouin was born in 1219, the son of Bouchard d'Avesnes and Margarethe, countess of Flanders and Hainault. His parents' marriage had not been recognised by the Church on the ground that his father had been a church deacon. His mother, remarried to Guillaume de Dampierre, had sought to maintain the illegitimate status of Baudouin and his elder brother Jan I, to favour the children by her second marriage. However in 1242 the brothers' legitimacy was recognised by Emperor Friedrich II after the intervention of St. Louis IX, king of France and the papal legate. Baudouin obtained Beaumont as an appanage in 1246, and Pope Innocent IV confirmed his legitimacy on 17 April 1250.
Baudouin married Félicité de Coucy, daughter of Thomas II de Coucy, seigneur de Vervins, and Mahaut de Réthel, dame de Trire-le-Badoul. Their son Jean succeeded to Beaumont and married and had progeny; their daughter Beatrice would marry Heinrich III, Graf von Luxembourg, and be the mother of the future Emperor Heinrich VII.
While Baudouin was in conflict with his mother and his half-brothers, it was claimed that he and his brother Jan I were responsible for the death of Guillaume de Dampierre, count of Flanders, the eldest of their half-brothers, at a joust at Trazégnies on 6 June 1251, murdered by knights claimed to have been financed by the Avesnes brothers.
Under the Treaty of Péronne of 1256, Louis IX, returning from the Seventh Crusade, ordered his brother Charles I Etienne to abide by his arbitration of 1246 granting Hainault to Jan I d'Avesnes. On 22 November 1257 Guy de Dampierre, his brother Guillaume's successor as count of Flanders, finally relinquished his claim on Hainault. Following Jan's death the following month, his son Jan II succeeded him in Hainault, and Baudouin was finally reconciled with his mother, who even sent him on a diplomatic mission to Namur in 1263.
In 1287 Baudouin sold Dunkerque and Warneton to his half-brother Guy de Dampierre.
Baudouin is the author of the _Chronique Universelle,_ a work of genealogical history. He founded a chapel at the church of the Cordeliers in Valenciennes, and declared a market holiday there on the feast day of St. Matthew (24 February).
Baudouin died at Quesnoy near Valenciennes on 10 April 1295, and was buried in the church of the Cordeliers in Valenciennes.
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