R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

Meanwhile, Maximilian had (towards the end of 1490) made the great cast, and married by proxy Anne, the heiress of Britanny. Shortly before this he had concluded a close alliance with Henry VII, mediated by Ferdinand of Aragon. (For Flanders this was all the more important, since in 1486 Bruges had sought to gain English support by granting free importation of English cloths and in 1488 had entreated the new King to aid her against the Emperor and concluded a new commercial treaty with this object.) Although this had been a fortunate year for Maximilian, he could not expect that his successes would be crowned by the tame submission of France to such a provocation. In November, 1491, Anne of Britanny surrendered Rennes, and in the following month she gave her hand to Charles VIII. But Margaret of Burgundy was still detained in France, and nothing had been said as to the restitution of her dowry. Yet in the Netherlands there was little sympathy with the insulted Regent; and early in 1492 the French Court provided him with a new difficulty in the shape of a pretender in Gelderland. Charles of Egmond had in 1487 been taken prisoner at Bethune and carried off to France. The Geldrian towns eagerly came forward to pay the ransom demanded by the French government; but without its support they had not sufficient resources to place Charles in the seat of his ancestors. His struggle against the Burgundian authority accordingly proved long and arduous. At first Maximilian showed himself willing to take the unusual course of referring the question of the government of Gelderland to the arbitration of the Empire; then a truce was concluded in 1497, with a view to a partition of the duchy; but soon afterwards war broke out again, Maximilian taking the field in person. In 1503 Philip, now King of Castile, consented to a compromise at Rosendal, which left Charles in possession of the Nymwegen and Roer-monde districts. But he played fast and loose with the treaty, and as the ally of France by 1514 at last succeeded in possessing himself of the entire duchy. His later struggles which only terminated with his death in 1538, and in the course of which he actually sought to make over his duchy to France, must be left unnoticed here.

The recovery of Artois, whose capital Arras was surprised by the Landsknechte after the fall of Sluys, would, together with his reconquest of Franche Comte, have encouraged Maximilian to attempt to secure the whole of his daughter’s dowry, notwithstanding the pacifications concluded by Charles VIH’s government with the Kings of England and Aragon (November, 1492-January, 1493). But the unwillingness of the Netherlands to continue the War, added to his other cares, induced him to accept Swiss mediation for the conclusion of a truce with France, followed in May, 1493, by the Peace of Senlis. The territorial question was settled as nearly as possible on the uti possidetis basis; so that Artois (and the Franche Comte) remained with the House of Burgundy, though Arras was ultimately to revert to France in exchange for certain towns now occupied by her. Margaret, all obligations between her and King Charles having been cancelled by the treaty, returned home joyously, calling out Vive Bowrgogne to the people who flocked round her at St Quentin, and receiving at Valenciennes a popular welcome. After narrowly escaping a design of the Landsknechte to seize her in pledge for outstanding pay, she took up her residence at Namur.

In 1494, the year after that of his father’s death, Maximilian returned to the Netherlands. His immediate purpose was to superintend the transfer of their government to Philip, now fifteen years of age, and also to settle affairs in Gelderland; but the Eastern Question was now uppermost in his mind, as was shown by his solemn assumption at Antwerp of the insignia of the crusading Order of St George, and by his appeal to all Christian potentates to follow his example (October- November). Flanders was tranquil; Crevecreur lay dead; Ravenstein was among those who paid their respects to the young Duke on his solemn entry into the great mercantile city. The presence there of another visitor- the pretended Richard Duke of York-which gave rise to an unseemly Jracas, reflected little credit on the discretion of the House of Burgundy. He was the protege of the Duchess Dowager, and Maximilian was quite ready to risk a quarrel with England on the chance of the dethronement of the faithless Tudor. Henry VII replied by removing the staple for English wool, tin, and other products to Calais, stopping all intercourse between his subjects and the Netherlands, and expelling all Flemings from England. The Burgundian government retorted (April, 1494, and January, 1495) by prohibiting the importation of English cloth; and for two years there was a complete cessation of commercial dealings between the two countries. Finally, Duke Philip was prevailed upon to promise not to admit any enemy of England into his dominions; and in February, 1496, the Magnus Intercursus proclaimed on both , sides freedom of trade, i.e. the right of trading without special license or pass, and that of fishery. Though there was nothing novel in this famous treaty, it offered a solid foundation for the establishment of satisfactory mercantile relations; but time could hardly fail to be on the side of the English, to the sale of whose cloth the Netherlands were now open-with the important exception however of Flanders, where restrictions were still maintained. Even here it soon became difficult to confine this sale to the staples of Antwerp and Bruges-or from 1501 to Bruges alone- to limit it to large pieces, and to prevent the wearing of it by natives. And Philip’s well-meant endeavours to revive the sunken prosperity of Bruges were seen to be hopelessly out of date. After in 1502 the Magnus Intercursus had been solemnly renewed, Henry VII, angered by the refusal of the Netherlands government to assist him in laying hands on the fugitive Earl of Suffolk (Edmund de la Pole), brought about a fresh stoppage of trade between the two countries, which lasted till 1506.

It was not only in commercial matters that Duke Philip and his advisers showed a disposition to emancipate themselves from his father’s control. Maximilian had placed at the head of the Privy Council, composed of fourteen members, Count Engelbert of Nassau, the faithful servant of three generations of the House of Burgundy, but the leading voice in it was that of William de Croy, Seigneur de Chievres. He and those who thought with him resented as strongly as the Flemish and Brabancon towns the continuance in the land of the German soldiery, to whose chief commander Albert of Saxony the ducal treasury had pledged Haarlem and several other important places pending the payment of a heavy debt. The influence of de Chievres and the great nobles in general was accordingly in favour of maintaining peace with France, although in the Gelders difficulty above all she showed so little regard for Netherlands interests; and Philip on the whole inclined to follow these pacific counsels.

In May, 1494, Maximilian had at Kempten intervened in a dispute between Groningen and the rural districts of West-Friesland encroached upon by the city. His decision had been in favour of Groningen; and though he was anxious to keep the peace, further encroachments on her part induced the Schieringers of the Westergao in their straits to invite the redoubtable Albert of Saxony to assume authority as governor. The end came three years later when Albert was once more offered the governorship by the terrified towns of Sneek and Franeker, and his lieutenants subjugated the land by a series of manoeuvres, crafty and cruel like those of a campaign against savages, and ending with a battle of artillery against pikes, and the capture of Leeuwarden (June-July, 1498). Maximilian now bestowed the whole of Friesland, including Groningen, upon Albert with the title of hereditary governor (potestat), reserving to himself the right of redeeming West-Friesland on the payment of 100,000 florins. The greater part of his own debt to Albert, which amounted to more than treble this sum, had been taken over by Philip; but an ugly suspicion remains as to Maximilian’s motives in the transaction. After Albert, who had been detained by the Gelders War, had himself arrived in Friesland, the rough insolence of one of his sons drove the country into rising once more against his yoke; and he was laying siege to Groningen, which this time had joined hands with its former adversaries, when death overtook him at Emden (September, 1500). Edzard of East-Friesland, to whom Groningen and the Omme-lande now did homage, summoned Charles of Egmond to his aid and was supported by a native rising under a peasant known as the Great Pier, who afterwards rejoiced in the title of “Admiral of the Zuiderzee.” At last, in 1515, Duke George of Saxony agreed to dismiss the “Black Band” of soldiery, formerly in Egmond’s service, which had carried fire and sword through the land, and to accept the redemption of the country on payment of the sum agreed upon between his father and the Roman King. Charles, who in this very year assumed the government of the Netherlands, at last solved the Frisian problem by the reduction of the country, followed by the submission of Groningen to the imperial authority.