R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

Slight indeed had been the importance of that problem on the horizon of Maximilian’s speculations. The great matrimonial plan, which he seems to have devised in part as early as 1491, was fully carried out within six years. In August, 1496, the infanta Juana was wedded at Antwerp to Duke Philip, and on Palm Sunday of the following year his sister Margaret, after intrepidly encountering many dangers on the way, gave her hand at Burgos to the infante Don John. Soon however a tragic succession of deaths-those of Don John, his posthumous child, Juana’s elder sister Queen Isabel of Portugal, and her son Don Miguel, left Juana heiress-apparent of the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon (1500). In the same year her eldest son Charles was born at Ghent; and the city, with no foreknowledge of what she was afterwards to suffer at his hands, was loud in her rejoicings. But vast as was the prospect now opened before Philip, he was, so far as the conduct of Netherlands affairs was concerned, brought little nearer to the schemes of Maximilian’s foreign policy. An interview between father and son arranged by Ravenstein and others in May, 1496, seems indeed for a time to have made Philip swerve from his policy of friendliness towards France, and soon afterwards he dismissed from his council Francis van Busleyden, Provost of Liege, supposed to be an active adversary of the Austrian influence. But already in 1497 he helped to thwart the exertions of Maximilian in Gelderland, and, on the accession of Louis XII in 1498, crossed the endeavours of his father, who had actually invaded Burgundy, by opening negotiations with the new French King. In the Treaty of Brussels Philip promised homage for Artois and Flanders (performed in 1499), and personally renounced all claims on the duchy of Burgundy, in return for the restoration of the Picard towns reserved at Senlis; while Maximilian, after taking Franche Comte, gradually became inclined to treat in his turn for peace with France.

Thus it was that during the first years of the new century father and son came to cooperate in the scheme for a marriage between Philip’s son Charles (Duke of Luxemburg) and Claude, the elder daughter of Louis XII, which was to transfer both Britanny and Burgundy to Philip as the dowry of his future daughter-in-law. The purposes of this extraordinary design being purely dynastic, except that Maximilian seems honestly to have counted on its success for French aid against the Turks, it could not find much favour in the Netherlands, where in February, 1505, the States-General at Malines showed little willingness to grant a large bede demanded for the Turkish War by the Roman King in the absence of his son. Involved in a network of manoeuvres, besides being obliged to nurse his Spanish expectations, Philip was in these years constantly away from the Low Countries-in 1501 with his consort in Spain, where their succession was assured in Castile and, should King Ferdinand die without a male heir, in Aragon, and negotiating on his way out and home with King Louis in France; in 1503 in the Empire. It was on their second voyage to Spain that King Philip and his Queen -once more on kindly terms with one another-were obliged by a fearful storm (January, 1506) to land at Southampton, and placed for a time in the power of Henry VII. The goodwill of that prince-highly important to Philip by reason of his desire to arrive at a permanent understanding with Ferdinand of Aragon-had, together with his personal liberty, to be purchased by a commercial treaty. Philip had a heart for the Flemings, and for Bruges in particular; and in the negotiations which followed her interests were eagerly pressed; but so also were the divergent interests of Antwerp. The so-called Mains Intercursus was inevitably to the advantage of English trade, which it freed from oppressive tolls on the way to Antwerp or Bruges, Middelburg or Mons, while it left the sale and use of English cloth absolutely free except to a certain extent in Flanders. The unpopularity of the compact there was no secret to Philip, and notwithstanding the representations of de Chievres he had not yet ratified it, when the news arrived of his death at Burgos (September £5, 1506). Evil rumours accompanied the tidings; for the young King’s light and profuse ways were odious to the Castilians, agreeing better with the preferences of the Low Countries, and the traditional habits of the Burgundian House. Philip the Fail-had something of his mother’s docility in council and of his father’s high spirit in the field, and was not wholly without the popular fibre which commended each of them to the respective lands of their birth; but, so far as can be judged from his short career, he gave no proof of the profound conscientiousness and high aspirings that make it difficult to deny the epithet of great to his eldest son, notwithstanding all his failures.

Five months after Philip’s death the unhappy Juana gave birth to a third daughter, and then sank into hopeless insanity. Maximilian showed himself from the first perfectly prepared to enter on a second course of regency, this time on behalf of his elder grandson, now a boy of six years of age. Personally he was as unpopular as ever in the Netherlands, where it was perceived that neither his authority in the Empire nor his influence in European affairs corresponded to his still expanding ambition; and where a strong feeling survived in favour of maintaining friendly relations with France. It was therefore a judicious as well as a necessary step on his part, when, after accepting the offer made to him by the States-General on the motion of the States of Holland and Brabant (October, 1506), he empowered his daughter Margaret to receive in his stead the oaths due to him as Guardian of his grandchildren and Regent; and on her being proclaimed as such by the States-General at Leuven (April, 1507), he appointed her his sole governor-general in the Netherlands.

The office which Margaret had originally been intended by her father to hold only temporarily she filled with honour and credit during eight eventful years (1507-15). After her troubled experiences in France she had in 1501 bravely gone forth to serve the imperial interest by becoming the bride of Duke Philibert (called the Fair) of Savoy, and, once more a widow, had escaped the doom of being united to Henry VII of England. She was now, though saddened by her sufferings, prepared to devote her remarkable talents and even higher gifts of character to the service of her House. Her correspondence with her father, occasionally grotesque in form, since neither had really mastered the language of the other, proves her candour and courage, her moderation more especially in the earlier years of her government, and her spirit of self-sacrifice throughout its course. She began by promptly declaring the so-called Mcdus Intercursits invalid, thus putting pressure on Henry VII, who had no mind for the stoppage of commercial relations, besides being desirous of influencing the political action of Margaret’s government and at this moment himself posing as a candidate for her hand. A commercial treaty, drafted on the lines of the Intercursus of 1496, but with the English cloth-trade clauses left out, was at once returned with her signature; and on these terms trade was carried on between the two countries during the remainder of Henry VII’s reign.

Maximilian might therefore look forward hopefully to the explanation of his relations with England which he invited Margaret to lay before the States-General early in 1508, when notifying to them the proposed marriage between Charles and Mary Tudor. Not long before this he had enquired of her whether the Netherlands were to be regarded as included in his present war with France. Margaret knew how even the Gelderland trouble was insufficient to counteract the desire of the States for peace with France, and therefore persuaded her father by concluding a truce with Charles of Egmond, which left Gelderland provisionally in his hands, to conciliate his French ally, whose cooperation he needed for his project of vengeance upon Venice. The ill-omened League of Cambray, concluded in December, 1508, was as a matter of fact in a large measure Margaret’s work. Soon Maximilian was wrapped up in its progress; but in the ensuing four years he by no means left his daughter to carry on her government without his supervision. Not only was he extremely sensitive of any supposed want of deference by her to his supreme authority, but he was constantly intervening in the matter of appointments in Church and State-from the bishopric of Cambray to the aldermanship of le Franc. And through all goes the call for money, culminating in July, 1510, with a demand for an annual pension of 50,000 crowns for which Margaret was obliged to tell him the time had not yet come. Her task of mediating between the States and the requirements of Maximilian’s complicated Italian policy was a very arduous one.