The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain

The spheres of English and Burgundian influence in the Netherlands were respectively enlarged, when Duke William IX of Juliers and Gelders, himself the grandson of an English princess, opposed the efforts of Joan of Brabant, the friend of Burgundy, and defied the power of France. His reign, which lasted till 1402, marked an important advance in the prosperity of the chief Geldrian towns, Nymwegen, Roermonde, Zutphen, and Arnhem, where the rise of a considerable cloth industry connects itself with his firm attachment to the English alliance. Under his brother and successor, who remained childless like himself, the diet of the duchy resolved that no Duke should henceforth be acknowledged in Gelderland unless approved by the majority of the knightly Order (many of whose members down to the close of the fifteenth century were virtually independent), and by the smaller towns, with the unanimous assent of the above-mentioned chief towns of the “four quarters”; while any partition of the duchy, or alienation of any section of it, was made conditional on the sanction of the diet. Thus in 1423, on the death of Duke Rainald IV, the towns raised to the ducal dignity his sister’s grandson Arnold of Egmond, who was still a boy in years. Although the Emperor Sigismund had invested the Duke of Berg with the duchy of Gelders, Arnold retained the confidence of the Estates by enlarging their privileges, and enjoyed the support of Duke Philip of Burgundy, to whose niece, the daughter of Duke Adolf of Cleves, he was betrothed, and afterwards united in marriage. Subsequently, however, Duke Arnold fell out with his ally as to the succession to the see of Utrecht; whereupon Philip joined with the four chief towns of Gelderland in the successful attempt of Arnold’s son Adolf to substitute his own for his father’s authority. But when in 1467 Charles the Bold became Duke of Burgundy, who could not bring himself to befriend a friend of the towns, Adolf after rejecting a compromise was thrown into prison, and his incapable father, against the will of the towns and the law of the land, pledged his duchy to Charles for 300,000 Rhenish florins (1471). On Arnold’s death two years later, Charles took possession of the duchy. Nymwegen, whose stout resistance he had overcome by force, was subjected to a heavy fine; and only such of the towns as had voluntarily submitted to the Burgundian regime were confirmed in certain of their privileges. During the rest of the reign of Charles the Bold Arnold’s son Charles and his sister were kept at the Burgundian Court, and Gelderland was ruled with an iron hand; but the Burgundian system of administration was probably to the advantage of the Geldrian population at large, though it had to furnish troops for his wars. As will be seen, a long and troublous interval of rebellion and war was to ensue, before in 1543, William of Juliers, whom Charles of Egmond had named his successor, resigned his claims to Gelders and Zutphen, and the entire Netherlands were united in the hands of the Emperor Charles V.

      The extension by the Dukes of Burgundy of their territorial dominion over the Netherlands necessitated the establishment by them of a strong monarchical authority. A number of States, of which each had a history and institutions of its own, while the most important of them abounded in large and populous towns, were brought under the control of one and the same dynasty. The physical and economic conditions of these several provinces varied greatly; while in the country at large two very dissimilar races continued to dwell side by side, and to employ two forms of speech differing from one another as well as from the language spoken at the ducal Court. But the Dukes of Burgundy from the first were intent upon something more than securing to themselves a strong control over all their Netherlands dominions. They had come into the Low Countries as strangers; they had no traditional sympathy with the memories, no inborn respect for the rights and liberties, of any section or class of their subjects; and the last two of these Dukes in particular were deliberately resolved on setting up a centralised system of rule in the face of all claims, legal, historical, or other. Herein they followed both the traditions of the royal line from which they sprang, and the political instinct which apprised them, that, unless their strength was at least equal to that of their overlords, the struggle against these could only end in the absorption of their own dominions in a united France.

      While, for reasons to be given below, the endeavour of the Dukes of Burgundy to advance and consolidate their princely power in the Netherlands met with goodwill and cooperation on the part of the nobility and clergy, its chief adversaries were the great communes of Flanders, and in a less degree those of Brabant. This conflict was in itself inevitable; for the political and social development of the chief Flemish towns only typified on a large scale what had taken or was taking place in other Provinces. The terrible blow inflicted at Roosebeke with the aid of France upon the communes, and upon Ghent in particular, was not absolutely mortal; and although their prosperity in the fifteenth century never again reached the height to which it had previously attained, yet their importance in the whole body politic was still paramount. As early as the thirteenth century Bruges, practically a port by means of its control of Sluys, had become a world’s fair, and Ghent in Eastern and Ypres in Western Flanders had grown with amazing rapidity into great industrial centres of population surrounded by many other flourishing towns of which the names are now in part forgotten. With their activity and wealth had grown a sense of power and an impatience of external control for which in the Middle Ages no complete parallel could have been found on the hither side of the Alps. The civic governments which in this earlier period asserted their authority against that of the Counts were purely oligarchic; and it was only gradually that the artisans, since the organisation of the trades as guilds had been elaborated and was for a long time controlled by the patriciates, came to essay a trial of strength with them. The determining factor is to be sought in the irresistible ascendency of the trade of the weavers and of the minor trades connected with it, when the cloth industry of Flanders was at its height. When the patricians in their turn had thrown themselves upon the support of the French Crown (leliaerts), the massacres known as the mette (matines) of Bruges began the great democratic revolution which triumphed in the utter overthrow of the chivalry of France on the field of Courtray (1302). The honours of that day belonged to the trades of Bruges, assisted by those of Ypres and Ghent in defiance of the prohibitions issued by their patrician authorities. And during the entire epoch of the political ascendency of the communes, their self-government was striving to establish itself on broad popular foundations. The elder Artevelde was the Pericles of Ghent, whose extraordinary self-confidence was mainly due to the hope of an effective political alliance with England, based on free commercial intercourse with her, as the chief provider of the raw material of Flemish industry. After his death evil times began for Ghent, which had become the chief of “the three members of Flanders” (de dry leden), and had charged itself with the executive on behalf of the towns and other districts of the country at large. The visitations of Heaven seemed to descend upon the land in the form of tempests and inundations and the Black Death. The Anglo-Flemish alliance was a thing of the past. Bruges, whose jealousy of Ghent was ineradicable, was inclined to support the manoeuvres of the territorial prince; and in many of the communes a reaction set in towards oligarchical government. But Ghent stood firm, and when the banners of her crafts had been unfurled for the critical struggle, and the Whitehoods once more streamed forth from her gates, Bruges, Ypres, Courtray, and all the other Flemish towns once more fell into line for the final struggle. With their overthrow at Hoosebeke (1382) the political greatness of the communes came to an end; but the resistance of Ghent was only slowly extinguished.

      Yet to Philip the Good, as to his father (notwithstanding the part which he played at Paris) and to his grandfather before him, and his son after him, the Flemish communes were, as Commines says of Ghent in especial, a thorn in the flesh. Not that he was unaware of the fact that his European position depended upon the prosperity of the Flemish towns even more than upon that of the Dutch, who always regarded the ally of the Kabeljaauws as their friend, or upon that of Brussels, his favourite place of residence. He sought to arrest the decay of Ypres, and his commercial policy towards England was dictated by the interests of Flanders. But he was resolute in asserting his political supremacy at any cost; and the first occasion, on which he showed himself conscious of the fact that the destruction of his subjects was his own loss, was when he had crushed the last resistance of the Ghenters at Gavre (1453). Until the Peace of Arras he mainly (though not entirely, as Ypres learnt to its cost) confined himself to sowing discord between the towns; but afterwards, when the communal militia had deserted him at the siege of Calais, the conflict first broke out between him and Bruges (14-36). Patched up by the grant of two new charters, it burst forth again in the insurrection known as the Terrible Whit-Wednesday (1438); and after meeting the Duke’s forces in the open field, the city, which was suffering from the devastations of