The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
a considerable time in the open country. Ghent was able to some extent to fall back upon its resources as a staple of corn; and at Bruges, where the banking business of Europe was in the hands of foreign merchants, a busy traffic continued to be carried on. In the struggle pertinaciously maintained by the latter city, from the close of the thirteenth century onwards, against the transference of her foreign trade to Antwerp, interest in the end prevailed over habit. The English Merchant Adventurers, who had set up a house at Antwerp early in the fifteenth century, by the middle of it had transferred themselves thither in a body. While the great transmarine trade was thus drawn away from Flanders proper to Brabant, and the depopulation of the former, which assumed alarming proportions under Charles the Bold, had begun already in the last years of his predecessor, the prosperity of the Northern Netherlands continued to increase. Navigation, with the great fishing and other industries, flourished; and little troubled by the remote wars of Charles the Bold, the Hollanders and their neighbours took consolation for his exactions in the cheapness of comforts which they came to reckon among the necessaries of life. In the struggles of the Dukes with the communes the nobles ranged themselves readily on the side of the former down to the close of Philip’s reign-notably in Flanders, where Courtray had never been forgotten. Only very gradually under him, though more abruptly under his successor, the modern notion of the sovereign throned in majestic isolation superseded the feudal conception of the prince among his peers. To a large extent the change was doubtless due to the influence of the most splendid of contemporary Western courts. The pictures of its magnificence and luxury drawn by Jacques du Clercq and the elaborate episodes of feast and tournament, with which Olivier de la Marche loves to intersperse his narrative, bear out the assertion of Commines, that in the prodigality of enticements it surpassed any other Court known to his experience. In the Court guide composed by Olivier during the siege of Neuss where Charles displayed in the midst of war the stately ceremonial in which his pride delighted, he details the official system, and the elaborate etiquette which became the model of many generations. But the completeness of the external machinery furnished no safeguard against the venality and corruption inseparable from despotic rule, or against a dissoluteness of manners usually fostered by formal restraint. The lasciviousness, that pervaded the Court of Charles VII of France and made that of Edward IV a seminary of pleasant vice, readily found its way into the surroundings of Philip the Good, who had a large family of bastards, and mistresses by the score. The extravagant delights in which the nobles might share when not engaged in warlike service impoverished many and ruined some; and Charles the Bold’s relations with his nobility were strained to the utmost by the military burdens which he imposed on them. Numerous defections followed, and suspicions of treason on the unfortunate field of Morat; only a handful of his nobles fought by his side at Nancy, and hardly any held out by his daughter in her hour of distress.
Of the relations between the Dukes and the clergy it must suffice to say that they were largely determined by considerations of interest, and drawn closer by the unpopularity of both prince and priesthood in the towns. Duke Philip contrived to place his illegitimate brother John in the see of Cambray, while two of his own bastards held the great ecclesiastical principality of Liege. Notwithstanding the Church’s acquisitions of landed property, which here as elsewhere legislation sought to stay, the secular arm occasionally appealed to the spiritual for its aid against civic recalcitrance, and now and then supported the clergy when at issue with the towns. Yet such was the perversity of Charles the Bold, which left no section of his subjects ,to lament his downfall, that he, who at the beginning of his reign had protected the churches of Liege from sharing in the general doom of the city, was at its close generally hated by the Netherlands clergy, for having overtaxed them as he had their flocks. The principles and policy of the Burgundian dynasty found their most skilful agents in the highly-trained lawyers who, after studying in France, at Louvain, or in the University founded by Philip in Franche Comte, held high judicial office in the Netherlands. The ground had been in some measure prepared for them, at all events in Flanders, though it was precisely here that the judicial innovations of this period met with the most stubborn resistance. The so-called Audiences of the Count, based to some extent on the ancient usage of conveying “quiet truths” to him, led the way to the establishment of the Count’s Council, which in 1385 Philip the Bold transformed into the Chamber of the Duke’s Council in Flanders, subdividing it into a judicial and a financial Chamber. The latter remained at Lille, whence Philip the Good extended its operations to Namur, Hainault, and the towns on the Somme, while the two financial chambers of Holland and Zeeland, and of Brabant, were united by him at Brussels in 1463. The judicial Chamber on the other hand, which came to be generally known as the Council of Flanders, was, after many shiftings of place, finally brought back to Ghent in 1452; the Council of the Counts of Holland, and that of the Dukes of Brabant, having been alike reformed on the acknowledgment of Philip’s sovereignty. In each case the substance of the reform lay in the introduction, by the side of the great lords and officials previously composing the Council, of trained lawyers, devoted to the maintenance of the ducal authority, and inclined to stimulate its self-consciousness. In order, however, to make this authority really supreme, and to avoid the possibility of any appeal to the Parliament of Paris, Philip in 1446, without putting an end to the Privy Council which ordinarily attended him, established a Grand Council, attached to his own person and entrusted with supreme judicial as well as political and financial functions. The centralising process was carried to its final stage by Charles the Bold’s settlement of 1473, which maintained the Grand Council as a Council of State for the whole of his dominions, but transferred its financial functions to a Chamber finally fixed at Malines, absorbing into this the Brussels Chamber of Accounts. Charles also established a central judicial Court at Malines, which he sought to surround with all possible external dignity, frequently presiding in person at his sittings. But it remained unpopular, by reason of its slow Roman procedure, and the use of the French language to which it adhered; nor did it survive his fall.
As a matter of course, both Philip and Charles had from time to time to summon the “States” of the several lands; for there was no other way of obtaining the extraordinary aids (beden) required more especially for their wars. In the meetings of these “States” the attendance of the nobles gradually slackened, and (notably in Holland) only the larger towns were regularly represented. For the rest, no town or “State” was bound except by its own vote. It was again noinnovation when, in 1428, Philip caused his settlement with Jacqueline to be confirmed by a meeting of representatives of all the lands whose allegiance she had formerly claimed. And it was only a step further when, after two previous meetings in 1463-4 he in 1465 formally called upon all the States of the Low Countries assembled at Brussels to recognise his son as his successor and Lieutenant general, and at the same time obtained from them a supply enabling him to carry on effective war against Louis XI. Charles the Bold thrice assembled these States-General; but they do not appear to have regularly comprised representatives of the whole of his Netherlands dominions. Thus this all-important institution never passed beyond an initial stage under either of the last two Burgundian Dukes; though Philip had faithful servants who advised him to trust those trusted by his subjects. Indeed, an outline of the constitutional system to which the occasional convocation of the States-General pointed has actually been preserved, dating from an early period of his reign.
After Philip had, like his father before him, found the communal militia of the Flemish towns untrustworthy in foreign war, he had for his military needs fallen back on the feudal services upon which the first two Burgundian Dukes had placed a precarious dependence; but the forces which he employed for the overthrow of the liberties of Ghent, and which his heir led forth against Louis XI on behalf of the League of the Common Good, already comprised a considerable element of mercenary soldiers-Picards and English in particular. The bandes (Pordonnance of Charles the Bold, a modified imitation of the new French model, were partly recruited among the nobility, partly made up of Italian heavy infantry and the indispensable English archers; and a select body-guard was formed on a similar basis. In 1471 he raised a permanent force of 10,000 men. The towns had to equip contingents at their own expense, but under officers named by the Duke. He improved his artillery, and paid attention to the fighting qualities of his navy. Though Charles was both an unskilful and an unfortunate commander, he was the creator of the standing army which proved so formidable under the rule of his descendants; much of his military expenditure was unavoidable, since the superiority of regular troops over feudal levies was already proved; and he deserves credit for his