The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
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 And Philip’s well-meant endeavours to revive the sunken prosperity of Bruges were seen to be hopelessly out of date.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.
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