FROM THE SUCCESSION OF PHILIP THE BOLD TO THE COUNTY OF FLANDERS,
TO THE DEATH OF PHILIP THE FAIR
A.D. 1384--1506
Thus the house of Burgundy, which soon after became so formidable
and celebrated, obtained this vast accession to its power. The
various changes which had taken place in the neighboring provinces
during the continuance of these civil wars had altered the state
of Flanders altogether. John d'Avesnes, count of Hainault, having
also succeeded in 1299 to the county of Holland, the two provinces,
though separated by Flanders and Brabant, remained from that
time under the government of the same chief, who soon became
more powerful than the bishops of Utrecht, or even than their
formidable rivals the Frisons.
During the wars which desolated these opposing territories, in
consequence of the perpetual conflicts for superiority, the power
of the various towns insensibly became at least as great as that
of the nobles to whom they were constantly opposed. The commercial
interests of Holland, also, were considerably advanced by the
influx of Flemish merchants forced to seek refuge there from the
convulsions which agitated their province. Every day confirmed
and increased the privileges of the people of Brabant; while at
Liege the inhabitants gradually began to gain the upper hand,
and to shake off the former subjection to their sovereign bishops.
Although Philip of Burgundy became count of Flanders, by the
death of his father-in-law, in the year 1384, it was not till
the following year that he concluded a peace with the people
of Ghent, and entered into quiet possession of the province.
In the same year the duchess of Brabant, the last descendant
of the duke of that province, died, leaving no nearer relative
than the duchess of Burgundy; so that Philip obtained in right
of his wife this new and important accession to his dominions.
But the consequent increase of the sovereign's power was not,
as is often the case, injurious to the liberties or happiness
of the people. Philip continued to govern in the interest of the
country, which he had the good sense to consider as identified
with his own. He augmented the privileges of the towns, and
negotiated for the return into Flanders of those merchants who
had emigrated to Germany and Holland during the continuance of
the civil wars. He thus by degrees accustomed his new subjects,
so proud of their rights, to submit to his authority; and his
peaceable reign was only disturbed by the fatal issue of the
expedition of his son, John the Fearless, count of Nevers, against
the Turks. This young prince, filled with ambition and temerity,
was offered the command of the force sent by Charles III. of France
to the assistance of Sigismund of Hungary in his war against
Bajazet. Followed by a numerous body of nobles, he entered on
the contest, and was defeated and taken prisoner by the Turks
at the battle of Nicopolis. His army was totally destroyed, and
himself only restored to liberty on the payment of an immense
ransom.
John the Fearless succeeded in 1404 to the inheritance of all
his father's dominions, with the exception of Brabant, of which
his younger brother, Anthony of Burgundy, became duke. John, whose
ambitious and ferocious character became every day more strongly
developed, now aspired to the government of France during the
insanity of his cousin Charles VI. He occupied himself little
with the affairs of the Netherlands, from which he only desired
to draw supplies of men. But the Flemings, taking no interest in
his personal views or private projects, and equally indifferent
to the rivalry of England and France, which now began so fearfully
to affect the latter kingdom, forced their ambitious count to
declare their province a neutral country; so that the English
merchants were admitted as usual to trade in all the ports of
Flanders, and the Flemings equally well received in England,
while the duke made open war against Great Britain in his quality
of a prince of France and sovereign of Burgundy. This is probably
the earliest well-established instance of such a distinction
between the prince and the people.
Anthony, duke of Brabant, the brother of Philip, was not so closely
restricted in his authority and wishes. He led all the nobles
of the province to take part in the quarrels of France; and he
suffered the penalty of his rashness in meeting his death in
the battle of Agincourt. But the duchy suffered nothing by this
event, for the militia of the country had not followed their
duke and his nobles to the war; and a national council was now
established, consisting of eleven persons, two of whom were
ecclesiastics, three barons, two knights, and four commoners.
This council, formed on principles so fairly popular, conducted
the public affairs with great wisdom during the minority of the
young duke. Each province seems thus to have governed itself
upon principles of republican independence. The sovereigns could
not at discretion, or by the want of it, play the bloody game
of war for their mere amusement; and the emperor putting in his
claim at this epoch to his ancient rights of sovereignty over
Brabant, as an imperial fief, the council and the people treated
the demand with derision.
The spirit of constitutional liberty and legal equality which
now animated the various provinces is strongly marked in the
history of the time by two striking and characteristic incidents.
At the death of Philip the Bold, his widow deposited on his tomb
her purse, and the keys which she carried at her girdle in token
of marriage; and by this humiliating ceremony she renounced her
rights to a succession overloaded with her husband's debts. In
the same year (1404) the widow of Albert, count of Holland and
Hainault, finding herself in similar circumstances, required of
the bailiff of Holland and the judges of his court permission to
make a like renunciation. The claim was granted; and, to fulfil
the requisite ceremony, she walked at the head of the funeral
procession, carrying in her hand a blade of straw, which she
placed on the coffin. We thus find that in such cases the reigning
families were held liable to follow the common usages of the
country. From such instances there required but little progress
in the principle of equality to reach the republican contempt for
rank which made the citizens of Bruges in the following century
arrest their count for his private debts.
The spirit of independence had reached the same point at Liege.
The families of the counts of Holland and Hainault, which were at
this time distinguished by the name of Bavaria, because they were
only descended from the ancient counts of Netherland extraction in
the female line, had sufficient influence to obtain the nomination
to the bishopric for a prince who was at the period in his infancy.
John of Bavaria--for so he was called, and to his name was afterward
added the epithet of "the Pitiless"--on reaching his majority,
did not think it necessary to cause himself to be consecrated a
priest, but governed as a lay sovereign. The indignant citizens
of Liege expelled him, and chose another bishop. But the Houses
of Burgundy and Bavaria, closely allied by intermarriages, made
common cause in his quarrel; and John, duke of Burgundy, and
William IV., count of Holland and Hainault, brother of the bishop,
replaced by force this cruel and unworthy prelate.
This union of the government over all the provinces in two families
so closely connected rendered the preponderance of the rulers
too strong for that balance hitherto kept steady by the popular
force. The former could on each new quarrel join together, and
employ against any particular town their whole united resources;
whereas the latter could only act by isolated efforts for the
maintenance of their separate rights. Such was the cause of a
considerable decline in public liberty during the fifteenth century.
It is true that John the Fearless gave almost his whole attention
to his French political intrigues, and to the fierce quarrels
which he maintained with the House of Orleans. But his nephew,
John, duke of Brabant, having married, in 1416, his cousin
Jacqueline, daughter and heiress of William IV., count of Holland
and Hainault, this branch of the House of Burgundy seemed to get
the start of the elder in its progressive influence over the
provinces of the Netherlands. The dukes of Guelders, who had
changed their title of counts for one of superior rank, acquired
no accession of power proportioned to their new dignity. The
bishops of Utrecht became by degrees weaker; private dissensions
enfeebled Friesland; Luxemburg was a poor, unimportant dukedom;
but Holland, Hainault, and Brabant formed the very heart of the
Netherlands; while the elder branch of the same family, under
whom they were united, possessed Flanders, Artois, and the two
Burgundies. To complete the prosperity and power of this latter
branch, it was soon destined to inherit the entire dominions
of the other.
A fact the consequences of which were so important for the entire
of Europe merits considerable attention; but it is most difficult
to explain at once concisely and clearly the series of accidents,
manoeuvres, tricks, and crimes by which it was accomplished. It
must first be remarked that this John of Brabant, become the
husband of his cousin Jacqueline, countess of Holland and Hainault,
possessed neither the moral nor physical qualities suited to
mate with the most lovely, intrepid, and talented woman of her
times; nor the vigor and firmness required for the maintenance
of an increased, and for those days a considerable, dominion.
Jacqueline thoroughly despised her insignificant husband; first
in secret, and subsequently by those open avowals forced from
her by his revolting combination of weakness, cowardice, and
tyranny. He tamely allowed the province of Holland to be invaded
by the same ungrateful bishop of Liege, John the Pitiless, whom
his wife's father and his own uncle had re-established in his
justly forfeited authority. But John of Brabant revenged himself
for his wife's contempt by a series of domestic persecutions so
odious that the states of Brabant interfered for her protection.
Finding it, however, impossible to remain in a perpetual contest
with a husband whom she hated and despised, she fled from Brussels,
where he held his ducal court, and took refuge in England, under
the protection of Henry V., at that time in the plenitude of
his fame and power.
England at this epoch enjoyed the proudest station in European
affairs. John the Fearless, after having caused the murder of
his rival, the duke of Orleans, was himself assassinated on the
bridge of Montereau by the followers of the dauphin of France, and
in his presence. Philip, duke of Burgundy, the son and successor
of John, had formed a close alliance with Henry V., to revenge
his father's murder; and soon after the death of the king he
married his sister, and thus united himself still more nearly to
the celebrated John, duke of Bedford, brother of Henry, and regent
of France, in the name of his infant nephew, Henry VI. But besides
the share on which he reckoned in the spoils of France, Philip
also looked with a covetous eye on the inheritance of Jacqueline,
his cousin. As soon as he had learned that this princess, so
well received in England, was taking measures for having her
marriage annulled, to enable her to espouse the duke of Gloucester,
also the brother of Henry V., and subsequently known by the
appellation of "the good duke Humphrey," he was tormented by a
double anxiety. He, in the first place, dreaded that Jacqueline
might have children by her projected marriage with Gloucester (a
circumstance neither likely nor even possible, in the opinion of
some historians, to result from her union with John of Brabant:
Hume, vol. iii., p. 133), and thus deprive him of his right of
succession to her states; and in the next, he was jealous of
the possible domination of England in the Netherlands as well
as in France. He therefore soon became self-absolved from all
his vows of revenge in the cause of his murdered father, and
labored solely for the object of his personal aggrandizement.
To break his connection with Bedford; to treat secretly with
the dauphin, his father's assassin, or at least the witness and
warrant for his assassination; and to shuffle from party to party
as occasion required, were movements of no difficulty to Philip,
surnamed "the Good." He openly espoused the cause of his infamous
relative, John of Brabant; sent a powerful army into Hainault,
which Gloucester vainly strove to defend in right of his affianced
wife; and next seized on Holland and Zealand, where he met with
a long but ineffectual resistance on the part of the courageous
woman he so mercilessly oppressed. Jacqueline, deprived of the
assistance of her stanch but ruined friends,[1] and abandoned
by Gloucester (who, on the refusal of Pope Martin V. to sanction
her divorce, had married another woman, and but feebly aided
the efforts of the former to maintain her rights), was now left
a widow by the death of John of Brabant. But Philip, without a
shadow of justice, pursued his designs against her dominions,
and finally despoiled her of her last possessions, and even of
the title of countess, which she forfeited by her marriage with
Vrank Van Borselen, a gentleman of Zealand, contrary to a compact
to which Philip's tyranny had forced her to consent. After a career
the most checkered and romantic which is recorded in history, the
beautiful and hitherto unfortunate Jacqueline found repose and
happiness in the tranquillity of private life, and her death
in 1436, at the age of thirty-six, removed all restraint from
Philip's thirst for aggrandizement, in the indulgence of which
he drowned his remorse. As if fortune had conspired for the rapid
consolidation of his greatness, the death of Philip, count of
St. Pol, who had succeeded his brother John in the dukedom of
Brabant, gave him the sovereignty of that extensive province;
and his dominions soon extended to the very limits of Picardy,
by the Peace of Arras, concluded with the dauphin, now become
Charles VII., and by his finally contracting a strict alliance
with France.
[Footnote 1: We must not omit to notice the existence of two
factions, which, for near two centuries, divided and agitated
the whole population of Holland and Zealand. One bore the title
of _Hoeks_ (fishing-hooks); the other was called _Kaabel-jauws_
(cod-fish). The origin of these burlesque denominations was a
dispute between two parties at a feast, as to whether the cod-fish
took the hook or the hook the cod-fish? This apparently frivolous
dispute was made the pretext for a serious quarrel; and the partisans
of the nobles and those of the towns ranged themselves at either
side, and assumed different badges of distinction. The _Hoeks_,
partisans of the towns, wore red caps; the _Kaabeljauws_ wore
gray ones. In Jacqueline's quarrel with Philip of Burgundy, she
was supported by the former; and it was not till the year 1492
that the extinction of that popular and turbulent faction struck
a final blow to the dissensions of both.]
Philip of Burgundy, thus become sovereign of dominions at once so
extensive and compact, had the precaution and address to obtain
from the emperor a formal renunciation of his existing, though
almost nominal, rights as lord paramount. He next purchased the
title of the duchess of Luxemburg to that duchy; and thus the
states of the House of Burgundy gained an extent about equal to
that of the existing kingdom of the Netherlands. For although on
the north and east they did not include Friesland, the bishopric
of Utrecht, Guelders, or the province of Liege, still on the south
and west they comprised French Flanders, the Boulonnais, Artois,
and a part of Picardy, besides Burgundy. But it has been already
seen how limited an authority was possessed by the rulers of the
maritime provinces. Flanders in particular, the most populous
and wealthy, strictly preserved its republican institutions.
Ghent and Bruges were the two great towns of the province, and
each maintained its individual authority over its respective
territory, with great indifference to the will or the wishes of
the sovereign duke. Philip, however, had the policy to divide
most effectually these rival towns. After having fallen into
the hands of the people of Bruges, whom he made a vain attempt
to surprise, and who massacred numbers of his followers before
his eyes, he forced them to submission by the assistance of the
citizens of Ghent, who sanctioned the banishment of the chief
men of the vanquished town. But some years later Ghent was in
its turn oppressed and punished for having resisted the payment
of some new tax. It found no support from the rest of Flanders.
Nevertheless this powerful city singly maintained the war for
the space of two years; but the intrepid burghers finally yielded
to the veterans of the duke, formed to victory in the French
wars. The principal privileges of Ghent were on this occasion
revoked and annulled.
During these transactions the province of Holland, which enjoyed
a degree of liberty almost equal to Flanders, had declared war
against the Hanseatic towns on its own proper authority. Supported
by Zealand, which formed a distinct country, but was strictly united
to it by a common interest, Holland equipped a fleet against the
pirates which infested their coasts and assailed their commerce,
and soon forced them to submission. Philip in the meantime contrived
to manage the conflicting elements of his power with great subtlety.
Notwithstanding his ambitious and despotic character, he conducted
himself so cautiously that his people by common consent confirmed
his title of "the Good," which was somewhat inappropriately given
to him at the very epoch when he appeared to deserve it least. Age
and exhaustion may be adduced among the causes of the toleration
which signalized his latter years; and if he was the usurper of
some parts of his dominions, he cannot be pronounced a tyrant
over any.
Philip had an only son, born and reared in the midst of that
ostentatious greatness which he looked on as his own by divine
right; whereas his father remembered that it had chiefly become
his by fortuitous acquirement, and much of it by means not likely
to look well in the sight of Heaven. This son was Charles, count of
Charolois, afterward celebrated under the name of Charles the Rash.
He gave, even in the lifetime of his father, a striking specimen
of despotism to the people of Holland. Appointed stadtholder of
that province in 1457, he appropriated to himself several important
successions; forced the inhabitants to labor in the formation of
dikes for the security of the property thus acquired; and, in a
word, conducted himself as an absolute master. Soon afterward he
broke out into open opposition to his father, who had complained of
this undutiful and impetuous son to the states of the provinces,
venting his grief in lamentations instead of punishing his people's
wrongs. But his private rage burst forth one day in a manner as
furious as his public expressions were tame. He went so far as
to draw his sword on Charles and pursue him through his palace;
and a disgusting yet instructive spectacle it was, to see this
father and son in mutual and disgraceful discord, like two birds
of prey quarrelling in the same eyry; the old count outrageous
to find he was no longer undisputed sovereign, and the young
one in feeling that he had not yet become so. But Philip was
declining daily. Yet even when dying he preserved his natural
haughtiness and energy; and being provoked by the insubordination
of the people of Liege, he had himself carried to the scene of
their punishment. The refractory town of Dinant, on the Meuse,
was utterly destroyed by the two counts, and six hundred of the
citizens drowned in the river, and in cold blood. The following
year Philip expired, leaving to Charles his long-wished-for
inheritance.
The reign of Philip had produced a revolution in Belgian manners;
for his example and the great increase of wealth had introduced
habits of luxury hitherto quite unknown. He had also brought into
fashion romantic notions of military honor, love, and chivalry;
which, while they certainly softened the character of the nobility,
contained nevertheless a certain mixture of frivolity and
extravagance. The celebrated order of the Golden Fleece, which
was introduced by Philip, was less an institution based on grounds
of rational magnificence than a puerile emblem of his passion
for Isabella of Portugal, his third wife. The verses of a
contemporary poet induced him to make a vow for the conquest
of Constantinople from the Turks. He certainly never attempted
to execute this senseless crusade; but he did not omit so fair
an opportunity for levying new taxes on his people. And it is
undoubted that the splendor of his court and the immorality of
his example were no slight sources of corruption to the countries
which he governed.
In this respect, at least, a totally different kind of government
was looked for on the part of his son and successor, who was by
nature and habit a mere soldier. Charles began his career by
seizing on all the money and jewels left by his father; he next
dismissed the crowd of useless functionaries who had fed upon,
under the pretence of managing, the treasures of the state. But
this salutary and sweeping reform was only effected to enable the
sovereign to pursue uncontrolled the most fatal of all passions,
that of war. Nothing can better paint the true character of this
haughty and impetuous prince than his crest (a branch of holly),
and his motto, "Who touches it, pricks himself." Charles had
conceived a furious and not ill-founded hatred for his base yet
formidable neighbor and rival, Louis XI. of France. The latter
had succeeded in obtaining from Philip the restitution of some
towns in Picardy; cause sufficient to excite the resentment of
his inflammable successor, who, during his father's lifetime,
took open part with some of the vassals of France in a temporary
struggle against the throne. Louis, who had been worsted in a
combat where both he and Charles bore a part, was not behindhand
in his hatred. But inasmuch as one was haughty, audacious, and
intemperate, the other was cunning, cool, and treacherous. Charles
was the proudest, most daring, and most unmanageable prince that
ever made the sword the type and the guarantee of greatness;
Louis the most subtle, dissimulating, and treacherous king that
ever wove in his closet a tissue of hollow diplomacy and bad
faith in government. The struggle between these sovereigns was
unequal only in respect to this difference of character; for
France, subdivided as it still was, and exhausted by the wars
with England, was not comparable, either as regarded men, money,
or the other resources of the state, to the compact and prosperous
dominions of Burgundy.
Charles showed some symptoms of good sense and greatness of mind,
soon after his accession to power, that gave a false coloring to
his disposition, and encouraged illusory hopes as to his future
career. Scarcely was he proclaimed count of Flanders at Ghent,
when the populace, surrounding his hotel, absolutely insisted
on and extorted his consent to the restitution of their ancient
privileges. Furious as Charles was at this bold proof of
insubordination, he did not revenge it; and he treated with equal
indulgence the city of Mechlin, which had expelled its governor
and razed the citadel. The people of Liege, having revolted against
their bishop, Louis of Bourbon, who was closely connected with
the House of Burgundy, were defeated by the duke in 1467, but
he treated them with clemency; and immediately after this event,
in February, 1468, he concluded with Edward IV. of England an
alliance, offensive and defensive, against France.
The real motive of this alliance was rivalry and hatred against
Louis. The ostensible pretext was this monarch's having made war
against the duke of Brittany, Charles's old ally in the short
contest in which he, while yet but count, had measured his strength
with his rival after he became king. The present union between
England and Burgundy was too powerful not to alarm Louis; he
demanded an explanatory conference with Charles, and the town
of Peronne in Picardy was fixed on for their meeting. Louis,
willing to imitate the boldness of his rival, who had formerly
come to meet him in the very midst of his army, now came to the
rendezvous almost alone. But he was severely mortified and near
paying a greater penalty than fright for this hazardous conduct.
The duke, having received intelligence of a new revolt at Liege
excited by some of the agents of France, instantly made Louis
prisoner, in defiance of every law of honor or fair dealing. The
excess of his rage and hatred might have carried him to a more
disgraceful extremity, had not Louis, by force of bribery, gained
over some of his most influential counsellors, who succeeded in
appeasing his rage. He contented himself with humiliating, when
he was disposed to punish. He forced his captive to accompany him
to Liege, and witness the ruin of this unfortunate town, which
he delivered over to plunder; and having given this lesson to
Louis, he set him at liberty.
From this period there was a marked and material change in the
conduct of Charles. He had been previously moved by sentiments
of chivalry and notions of greatness. But sullied by his act of
public treachery and violence toward the monarch who had, at
least in seeming, manifested unlimited confidence in his honor,
a secret sense of shame embittered his feelings and soured his
temper. He became so insupportable to those around him that he
was abandoned by several of his best officers, and even by his
natural brother, Baldwin of Burgundy, who passed over to the side
of Louis. Charles was at this time embarrassed by the expense
of entertaining and maintaining Edward IV. and numerous English
exiles, who were forced to take refuge in the Netherlands by
the successes of the earl of Warwick, who had replaced Henry
VI. on the throne. Charles at the same time held out to several
princes in Europe hopes of bestowing on them in marriage his
only daughter and heiress Mary, while he privately assured his
friends, if his courtiers and ministers may be so called, "that
he never meant to have a son-in-law until he was disposed to
make himself a monk." In a word, he was no longer guided by any
principle but that of fierce and brutal selfishness.
In this mood he soon became tired of the service of his nobles
and of the national militia, who only maintained toward him a
forced and modified obedience founded on the usages and rights
of their several provinces; and he took into his pay all sorts
of adventurers and vagabonds who were willing to submit to him as
their absolute master. When the taxes necessary for the support
and pay of these bands of mercenaries caused the people to murmur,
Charles laughed at their complaints, and severely punished some
of the most refractory. He then entered France at the head of
his army, to assist the duke of Brittany; but at the moment when
nothing seemed to oppose the most extensive views of his ambition
he lost by his hot-brained caprice every advantage within his
easy reach: he chose to sit down before Beauvais; and thus made
of this town, which lay in his road, a complete stumbling-block
on his path of conquest.
The time he lost before its walls caused the defeat and ruin
of his unsupported, or as might be said his abandoned, ally,
who made the best terms he could with Louis; and thus Charles's
presumption and obstinacy paralyzed all the efforts of his courage
and power. But he soon afterward acquired the duchy of Guelders
from the old Duke Arnoul, who had been temporarily despoiled of
it by his son Adolphus. It was almost a hereditary consequence in
this family that the children should revolt and rebel against their
parents. Adolphus had the effrontery to found his justification
on the argument that his father having reigned forty-four years,
he was fully entitled to his share--a fine practical authority
for greedy and expectant heirs. The old father replied to this
reasoning by offering to meet his son in single combat. Charles
cut short the affair by making Adolphus prisoner and seizing
on the disputed territory; for which he, however, paid Arnoul
the sum of two hundred and twenty thousand florins.
After this acquisition Charles conceived and had much at heart
the design of becoming king, the first time that the Netherlands
were considered sufficiently important and consolidated to entitle
their possessor to that title. To lead to this object he offered
to the emperor of Germany the hand of his daughter Mary for his
son Maximilian. The emperor acceded to this proposition, and
repaired to the city of Treves to meet Charles and countenance
his coronation. But the insolence and selfishness of the latter
put an end to the project. He humiliated the emperor, who was of
a niggardly and mean-spirited disposition, by appearing with a
train so numerous and sumptuous as totally to eclipse the imperial
retinue; and deeply offended him by wishing to postpone the marriage,
from his jealousy of creating for himself a rival in a son-in-law
who might embitter his old age as he had done that of his own
father. The mortified emperor quitted the place in high dudgeon,
and the projected kingdom was doomed to a delay of some centuries.
Charles, urged on by the double motive of thirst for aggrandizement
and vexation at his late failure, attempted, under pretext of
some internal dissensions, to gain possession of Cologne and
its territory, which belonged to the empire; and at the same
time planned the invasion of France, in concert with his
brother-in-law Edward IV., who had recovered possession of England.
But the town of Nuys, in the archbishopric of Cologne, occupied
him a full year before its walls. The emperor, who came to its
succor, actually besieged the besiegers in their camp; and the
dispute was terminated by leaving it to the arbitration of the
pope's legate, and placing the contested town in his keeping.
This half triumph gained by Charles saved Louis wholly from
destruction. Edward, who had landed in France with a numerous
force, seeing no appearance of his Burgundian allies, made peace
with Louis; and Charles, who arrived in all haste, but not till
after the treaty was signed, upbraided and abused the English
king, and turned a warm friend into an inveterate enemy.
Louis, whose crooked policy had so far succeeded on all occasions,
now seemed to favor Charles's plans of aggrandizement, and to
recognize his pretended right to Lorraine, which legitimately
belonged to the empire, and the invasion of which by Charles would
be sure to set him at variance with the whole of Germany. The
infatuated duke, blind to the ruin to which he was thus hurrying,
abandoned to Louis, in return for this insidious support, the
constable of St. Pol; a nobleman who had long maintained his
independence in Picardy, where he had large possessions, and
who was fitted to be a valuable friend or formidable enemy to
either. Charles now marched against, and soon overcame, Lorraine.
Thence he turned his army against the Swiss, who were allies
to the conquered province, but who sent the most submissive
dissuasions to the invader. They begged for peace, assuring Charles
that their romantic but sterile mountains were not altogether
worth the bridles of his splendidly equipped cavalry. But the
more they humbled themselves, the higher was his haughtiness
raised. It appeared that he had at this period conceived the
project of uniting in one common conquest the ancient dominions
of Lothaire I., who had possessed the whole of the countries
traversed by the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po; and he even spoke
of passing the Alps, like Hannibal, for the invasion of Italy.
Switzerland was, by moral analogy as well as physical fact, the
rock against which these extravagant projects were shattered.
The army of Charles, which engaged the hardy mountaineers in
the gorges of the Alps near the town of Granson, were literally
crushed to atoms by the stones and fragments of granite detached
from the heights and hurled down upon their heads. Charles, after
this defeat, returned to the charge six weeks later, having rallied
his army and drawn reinforcements from Burgundy. But Louis had
despatched a body of cavalry to the Swiss--a force in which they
were before deficient; and thus augmented, their army amounted
to thirty-four thousand men. They took up a position, skilfully
chosen, on the borders of the Lake of Morat, where they were
attacked by Charles at the head of sixty thousand soldiers of
all ranks. The result was the total defeat of the latter, with
the loss of ten thousand killed, whose bones, gathered into an
immense heap, and bleaching in the winds, remained for above
three centuries; a terrible monument of rashness and injustice
on the one hand, and of patriotism and valor on the other.
Charles was now plunged into a state of profound melancholy;
but he soon burst from this gloomy mood into one of renewed
fierceness and fatal desperation. Nine months after the battle
of Morat he re-entered Lorraine, at the head of an army, not
composed of his faithful militia of the Netherlands, but of those
mercenaries in whom it was madness to place trust. The reinforcements
meant to be despatched to him by those provinces were kept back
by the artifices of the count of Campo Basso, an Italian who
commanded his cavalry, and who only gained his confidence basely
to betray it. Rene, duke of Lorraine, at the head of the confederate
forces, offered battle to Charles under the walls of Nancy; and
the night before the combat Campo Basso went over to the enemy
with the troops under his command. Still Charles had the way
open for retreat. Fresh troops from Burgundy and Flanders were
on their march to join him; but he would not be dissuaded from
his resolution to fight, and he resolved to try his fortune once
more with his dispirited and shattered army. On this occasion the
fate of Charles was decided, and the fortune of Louis triumphant.
The rash and ill-fated duke lost both the battle and his life.
His body, mutilated with wounds, was found the next day, and
buried with great pomp in the town of Nancy, by the orders of
the generous victor, the duke of Lorraine.
Thus perished the last prince of the powerful House of Burgundy.
Charles left to his only daughter, then eighteen years of age,
the inheritance of his extensive dominions, and with them that of
the hatred and jealousy which he had so largely excited. External
spoliation immediately commenced, and internal disunion quickly
followed. Louis XI. seized on Burgundy and a part of Artois, as
fiefs devolving to the crown in default of male issue. Several
of the provinces refused to pay the new subsidies commanded in
the name of Mary; Flanders alone showing a disposition to uphold
the rights of the young princess. The states were assembled at
Ghent, and ambassadors sent to the king of France in the hopes
of obtaining peace on reasonable terms. Louis, true to his system
of subtle perfidy, placed before one of those ambassadors, the
burgomaster of Ghent, a letter from the inexperienced princess,
which proved her intention to govern by the counsel of her father's
ancient ministers rather than by that of the deputies of the
nation. This was enough to decide the indignant Flemings to render
themselves at once masters of the government and get rid of the
ministers whom they hated. Two Burgundian nobles, Hugonet and
Imbercourt, were arrested, accused of treason, and beheaded under
the very eyes of their agonized and outraged mistress, who threw
herself before the frenzied multitude, vainly imploring mercy
for these innocent men. The people having thus completely gained
the upper hand over the Burgundian influence, Mary was sovereign
of the Netherlands but in name.
It would have now been easy for Louis XI. to have obtained for
the dauphin, his son, the hand of this hitherto unfortunate but
interesting princess; but he thought himself sufficiently strong
and cunning to gain possession of her states without such an
alliance. Mary, however, thus in some measure disdained, if not
actually rejected, by Louis, soon after married her first-intended
husband, Maximilian of Austria, son of the emperor Frederick
III.; a prince so absolutely destitute, in consequence of his
father's parsimony, that she was obliged to borrow money from
the towns of Flanders to defray the expenses of his suite.
Nevertheless he seemed equally acceptable to his bride and to his
new subjects. They not only supplied all his wants, but enabled
him to maintain the war against Louis XI., whom they defeated at
the battle of Guinegate in Picardy, and forced to make peace on
more favorable terms than they had hoped for. But these wealthy
provinces were not more zealous for the national defence than bent
on the maintenance of their local privileges, which Maximilian
little understood, and sympathized with less. He was bred in the
school of absolute despotism; and his duchess having met with
a too early death by a fall from her horse in the year 1484, he
could not even succeed in obtaining the nomination of guardian to
his own children without passing through a year of civil war. His
power being almost nominal in the northern provinces, he vainly
attempted to suppress the violence of the factions of Hoeks and
Kaabeljauws. In Flanders his authority was openly resisted. The
turbulent towns of that country, and particularly Bruges, taking
umbrage at a government half German, half Burgundian, and altogether
hateful to the people, rose up against Maximilian, seized on
his person, imprisoned him in a house which still exists, and
put to death his most faithful followers. But the fury of Ghent
and other places becoming still more outrageous, Maximilian asked
as a favor from his rebel subjects of Bruges to be guarded while
a prisoner by them alone. He was then king of the Romans, and
all Europe became interested in his fate. The pope addressed
a brief to the town of Bruges, demanding his deliverance. But
the burghers were as inflexible as factious; and they at length
released him, but not until they had concluded with him and the
assembled states a treaty which most amply secured the enjoyment
of their privileges and the pardon of their rebellion.
But these kind of compacts were never observed by the princes of
those days beyond the actual period of their capacity to violate
them. The emperor having entered the Netherlands at the head of
forty thousand men, Maximilian, so supported, soon showed his
contempt for the obligations he had sworn to, and had recourse
to force for the extension of his authority. The valor of the
Flemings and the military talents of their leader, Philip of
Cleves, thwarted all his projects, and a new compromise was entered
into. Flanders paid a large subsidy, and held fast her rights.
The German troops were sent into Holland, and employed for the
extinction of the Hoeks; who, as they formed by far the weaker
faction, were now soon destroyed. That province, which had been so
long distracted by its intestine feuds, and which had consequently
played but an insignificant part in the transactions of the
Netherlands, now resumed its place; and acquired thenceforth new
honor, till it at length came to figure in all the importance
of historical distinction.
The situation of the Netherlands was now extremely precarious
and difficult to manage, during the unstable sway of a government
so weak as Maximilian's. But he having succeeded his father on the
imperial throne in 1493, and his son Philip having been proclaimed
the following year duke and count of the various provinces at
the age of sixteen, a more pleasing prospect was offered to the
people. Philip, young, handsome, and descended by his mother
from the ancient sovereigns of the country, was joyfully hailed
by all the towns. He did not belie the hopes so enthusiastically
expressed. He had the good sense to renounce all pretensions to
Friesland, the fertile source of many preceding quarrels and
sacrifices. He re-established the ancient commercial relations with
England, to which country Maximilian had given mortal-offence by
sustaining the imposture of Perkin Warbeck. Philip also consulted
the states-general on his projects of a double alliance between
himself and his sister with the son and daughter of Ferdinand,
king of Aragon, and Isabella, queen of Castile; and from this wise
precaution the project soon became one of national partiality instead
of private or personal interest. In this manner complete harmony
was established between the young prince and the inhabitants of
the Netherlands. All the ills produced by civil war disappeared
with immense rapidity in Flanders and Brabant, as soon as peace
was thus consolidated. Even Holland, though it had particularly
felt the scourge of these dissensions, and suffered severely
from repeated inundations, began to recover. Yet for all this,
Philip can be scarcely called a good prince: his merits were
negative rather than real. But that sufficed for the nation;
which found in the nullity of its sovereign no obstacle to the
resumption of that prosperous career which had been checked by
the despotism of the House of Burgundy, and the attempts of
Maximilian to continue the same system.
The reign of Philip, unfortunately a short one was rendered
remarkable by two intestine quarrels; one in Friesland, the other
in Guelders. The Frisons, who had been so isolated from the more
important affairs of Europe that they were in a manner lost sight
of by history for several centuries, had nevertheless their full
share of domestic disputes; too long, too multifarious, and too
minute, to allow us to give more than this brief notice of their
existence. But finally, about the period of Philip's accession,
eastern Friesland had chosen for its count a gentleman of the
country surnamed Edzart, who fixed the headquarters of his military
government at Embden. The sight of such an elevation in an individual
whose pretensions he thought far inferior to his own induced Albert
of Saxony, who had well served Maximilian against the refractory
Flemings, to demand as his reward the title of stadtholder or
hereditary governor of Friesland. But it was far easier for the
emperor to accede to this request than for his favorite to put
the grant into effect. The Frisons, true to their old character,
held firm to their privileges, and fought for their maintenance
with heroic courage. Albert, furious at this resistance, had the
horrid barbarity to cause to be impaled the chief burghers of the
town of Leuwaarden, which he had taken by assault. But he himself
died in the year 1500, without succeeding in his projects of an
ambition unjust in its principle and atrocious in its practice.
The war of Guelders was of a totally different nature. In this
case it was not a question of popular resistance to a tyrannical
nomination, but of patriotic fidelity to the reigning family.
Adolphus, the duke who had dethroned his father, had died in
Flanders, leaving a son who had been brought up almost a captive
as long as Maximilian governed the states of his inheritance.
This young man, called Charles of Egmont, and who is honored in
the history of his country under the title of the Achilles of
Guelders, fell into the hands of the French during the combat
in which he made his first essay in arms. The town of Guelders
unanimously joined to pay his ransom; and as soon as he was at
liberty they one and all proclaimed him duke. The emperor Philip
and the Germanic diet in vain protested against this measure,
and declared Charles a usurper. The spirit of justice and of
liberty spoke more loudly than the thunders of their ban; and the
people resolved to support to the last this scion of an ancient
race, glorious in much of its conduct, though often criminal in
many of its members. Charles of Egmont found faithful friends
in his devoted subjects; and he maintained his rights, sometimes
with, sometimes without, the assistance of France--making up for
his want of numbers by energy and enterprise. We cannot follow this
warlike prince in the long series of adventures which consolidated
his power; nor stop to depict his daring adherents on land, who
caused the whole of Holland to tremble at their deeds; nor his
pirates--the chief of whom, Long Peter, called himself king of
the Zuyder Zee. But amid all the consequent troubles of such a
struggle, it is marvellous to find Charles of Egmont upholding
his country in a state of high prosperity, and leaving it at his
death almost as rich as Holland itself.
The incapacity of Philip the Fair doubtless contributed to cause
him the loss of this portion of his dominions. This prince, after
his first acts of moderation and good sense, was remarkable only
as being the father of Charles V. The remainder of his life was
worn out in undignified pleasures; and he died almost suddenly,
in the year 1506, at Burgos in Castile, whither he had repaired
to pay a visit to his brother-in-law, the king of Spain.