Holland - Thomas Colley Grattan
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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.