Duke of Brabant

“ And more, tell thou this burgomaster his doings mislike me: this is to set up for a king, not a burgomaster. I'll have no kings in Holland but one. Bid him be more humble; or by St. Jude I'll hang him before his own door, as I hanged the burgomaster of what's the name, some town or other in Flanders it was; no, 'twas' somewhere in Brabant—no matter—I hanged him, I remember that much—for oppressing poor folk.”
The duke then beckoned his chancellor, a pursy old fellow that rode like a sack, and bade him write out a free pardon for Martin and one Gerard. ”

“ The French Prince was invested with the ducal mantle by Orange when he entered Antwerp as Duke of Brabant, and was, in reality, subject to the idol of the Netherlands. The French protectorate came to an end with the disgraceful scenes of the French Fury, when the Duke's followers attempted to seize the chief towns, crying at Antwerp, "Long live the Mass! Long live the Duke of Anjou! Kill! Kill!" ”

“ Not being strong enough to eject his rival, Adolph sold his rights to John of Brabant, and hostilities broke out in 1283. Harassed by desultory warfare and endless negotiations, and seeing no prospect of holding his own against the powerful duke of Brabant, Reinald made over his rights to Henry III. count of Luxemburg, who was a descendant of Waleran III. of Limburg. Henry III. was sustained by the archbishop of Cologne and other allies, as well as by Reinald of Gelderland. The duke of Brabant at once invaded the Rhineland and laid siege to the castle of Woeringen near Bonn. ”

“ Commerce was to be free, and only legal taxes were to be imposed. The Duke undertook to care for the safety of the roads, to protect his people from arrest in foreign countries, to keep peace between the Rhine and the Meuse, and to respect the treaties concluded with Flanders and Liège. No native of Brabant might prosecute a fellow-countryman before a foreign court. The Duke himself was to be subject to the laws of the duchy. ”

“ This led to a series of alienations of the temporal power over the commune to neighbouring princes whose armies were strong enough to keep the unruly burghers in restraint. The first of these was effected in the year 1300 between the prince-bishop, Jean Berthout, and Jean II, Duke of Brabant. In 1303 the news of the great victory gained over the nobility by the Flemish communes at Courtrai caused the citizens to revolt against their new master, the Duke, who besieged the city and finally reduced it by starvation. ”

“ BATTLING FOR A KINGDOM
OF more interest than Philip the Bold or John the Fearless is the beautiful Jacqueline of Bavaria, who was married to John’s nephew, John of Brabant. According to tradition, Jacqueline, heiress to the counties of Holland and Hainault, was the most charming and gifted woman of her day. John, Duke of Brabant, was in no respect her equal. He subjected her to endless indignities and persecutions, and she at last fled from Brussels to the court of Henry V of England, where she found protection. ”

“ Brabant, on the contrary, was the heart of the Netherlands. Should the Prince achieve a decisive triumph then and there, he would be master of the nation's fate. The Viceroy knew himself to be odious, and he reigned by terror. The Prince was the object of the people's idolatry, and they would rally round him if they dared. A victory gained by the liberator over the tyrant, would destroy the terrible talisman of invincibility by which Alva governed. The Duke had sufficiently demonstrated his audacity in the tremendous chastisement which he had inflicted upon the rebels under Louis. ”

“ From the occasion on which it was first proclaimed this charter has since been known in history as La Joyeuse Entrée. By this document the dukes of Brabant undertook to maintain the integrity of the duchy, and not to wage war, make treaties, or impose taxes without the consent of their subjects, as represented by the municipalities. All members of the duke’s council were to be native-born Brabanters. This charter became the model for other provinces and the bulwark of the liberties of the Netherlands. ”

“ Some years ago, the brave Duke of Brabant had died and left his two children in the charge of his nearest kinsman, Count Frederick of Telramund, who promised to love and guard them until they were old enough to rule the Dukedom for themselves. The boy, Gottfried, and his sister, Elsa, loved one another so dearly that they could not bear to be parted ”

“ The count kept his state in Brussels, and began to make many new regulations to the great displeasure of those who governed the duke of Brabant, who was at that time absent from Brussels. His ministers, however, brought him back with a large force of men at arms; but the inhabitants would not open their gates to him until he had promised his brother the count de St Pol, that he would maintain peace with them. He was scarcely entered when those who managed him would not permit his brother, or the principal nobles, to approach him but with difficulty and with suspicion. ”

“ The rebellion in Brabant
Increases to a height—the traitor's madness
By stern, but prudent, vigor must be met.
The duke, to quell the wild enthusiasm,
Invested with the sovereign's power, will lead
An army into Flanders. Oh, how full
Of glory is such office! and how suited
To open wide the temple of renown
To me, your son! To my hand, then, O king,
Intrust the army; in thy Flemish lands
I am well loved, and I will freely gage
My life for their fidelity and truth.
KING.
Thou speakest like a dreamer. This high office
Demands a man—and not a stripling's arm. ”

“ I could not point to lord so powerful to aid him in this business as would be the Duke of Brabant, who is his cousin-german, the Duke of Gueldres, who hath his sister to wife, and Sire de Fauquemont. They are those who would have most men-at-arms in the least time, and they are right good soldiers ”

“ To death like to be troden by our owne,
My Lord of Brabant, what is to be done?
See how the French before the English runne.
A bitter exclamation of the Duke of Brabant against the French.
Why, let them runne and neuer turne the head,
Quoth the braue Duke, vntill their hatefull breath
Forsake their Bodies, and so farre haue fled,
That France be not disparadg’d by their death:
Who trusts to Cowards ne’r is better sped,
Be he accurst, with such that holdeth faith,
Slaughter consume the Recreants as they flye,
Branded with shame, so basely may they dye. ”

“ If so wise a statesman and so skilful a warrior had failed to hold down France, no other Englishman was likely to achieve the task.
10. The Defection of Burgundy. 1435.—After Bedford's death the Duke of Burgundy renounced his alliance with the English and entered into a league with Charles VII. In 1430, by the death of the Duke of Brabant, he inherited Brabant, and in 1436 he inherited from the faithless Jacqueline Hainault, Holland, Zealand, and Friesland (see p. 308) . ”

“ Brabant was thought to have given birth to a new Homer. His praises resounded in verse and song, and the young girls of Brussels crowned him with laurel.
The government of the Duke of Alva, and the succeeding years of revolution, were a period of desolation for Flanders. The Guilds of Rhetoric were dispersed; town after town was depopulated; Ghent, the loved city of Charles V., lost six thousand families; Leyden, Amsterdam, Haerlem, Gouda, afforded refuge to the emigrants. The golden age of literary activity is about to dawn in the Dutch republic. ”

“ Shortly after, the count de St Pol marched away from before Braine, on his return with the army to Brabant; but as the duke of Glocester was with his lady in Soignies, the Brabanters were afraid of being attacked, and therefore all the nobles and gentlemen marched in the same array as if they were about to engage in battle. The commonalty were likewise well drawn up; and they had not advanced far, when the scouts, whom they had left in their rear to bring them information, gave notice that the English had taken the field. ”

“ When the duke of Burgundy found that they had discovered his purposes, and were preparing to resist them, he disbanded his men at arms. At the same time, he caused it to be proclaimed through the [Pg 205] principal towns in Flanders, Brabant, and his other dependances, that no one, under pain of being capitally punished, should carry provision or stores of any kind to Antwerp, nor give to the inhabitants any counsel or aid whatever. ”

“ The duke, having heard their harangue, assembled his council, and then determined to collect men at arms from all his dependancies in Brabant, Flanders, Artois, Hainault and other parts. Clerks were instantly [Pg 124] employed to write letters to the different lords, knights and esquires, who had usually served him in his wars, to assemble as many men at arms and archers as they could raise, and be ready to march with him at the beginning of the month of May, whither he might be pleased to lead them. ”

“ He began by sending the faithful Olivier de la Marche to lodge complaints with the French government against the communes, and succeeded in provoking so much distrust in Flanders that, though a French as well as a Flemish army took the field in 1484, no decisive blow was struck. The Flemings however flooded Brabant, where the Archduke's appeal for support of the dynasty was very coolly received, and Count de Romont, the commander of the Flemish levies, proclaimed himself lieutenant-general of Duke Philip against his father. ”

“ Ever since 1283, when the Countess Ermengard of Limburg died without heirs, the dukes had cast covetous eyes on Limburg. Many pretenders, including several princes from the left bank of the Rhine, had sprung up. Duke John I of Brabant decided to strike the final blow [60] against the coalition formed against him by the lords of Fauquemont, the Count of Luxemburg, Renaud of Gueldre, and the mighty Archbishop of Cologne. The coming battle would decide to whom should belong the supremacy between the Rhine and the Meuse. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV TO THE INDEPENDENCE OF BELGIUM AND THE DEATH OF PHILIP II. A.D. 1592—1599 The duke of Parma had chosen the count of Mansfield for his successor, and the nomination was approved by the king. He entered on his government under most disheartening circumstances. The rapid conquests of Prince Maurice in Brabant and Flanders were scarcely less mortifying than the total disorganization into which those two provinces had fallen. ”

“ Thence they went to the market-place, which was between the church and the Hôtel de Ville. The Duke took his stand on a platform with the representatives of the people of Brabant, and the Chancellor announced that he [Pg 185] was about to swear his Joyeuse Entrée. The Act of Inauguration was read, first in Flemish and then in French, and the Duke repeated it word for word, and took an oath to the barons, nobles, towns, and franchises of the Duchy, that he would be their good and loyal seigneur, and that he would not treat them otherwise than justly, and in accordance with all their rights. ”

“ Two years later he was again despatched to the continent to invest with the order of the Garter Charles Ludovic, count palatine of the Rhine and duke of Bavaria, who was then with the army in Brabant. ”

“ So the Roberts and Guys, the Johns and Baldwins, become sovereigns in Hainault, Brabant, Flanders and other little districts, affecting supernatural sanction for the authority which their good swords have won and are ever ready to maintain. Thus organized, the force of iron asserts and exerts itself. Duke, count, seignor and vassal, knight and squire, master and man swarm and struggle amain. A wild, chaotic, sanguinary scene. Here, bishop and baron contend, centuries long, murdering human creatures by ten thousands for an acre or two of swampy pasture ”

“ The power of the Grande Monarque no longer made Europe tremble. The immense advantage which he had gained in the outset of the contest, by the declaration of the governor of Flanders for the cause of the Bourbons, and the consequent transference of the Flemish fortresses into his hands, had been lost. It was more than lost—it had been won to the enemy. Brussels, Antwerp, Menin, Ath, Ostend, Ghent, Dendermonde, Louvain, now acknowledged the Archduke Charles for their sovereign; the states of Brabant had sent in their adhesion to the Grand Alliance. ”

“ What a difference between the modest procession of those suitors in Brussels, who prayed for a more humane treatment as a favor, and the dreaded majesty of a free state, which treated with kings as equals, and in less than a century disposed of the throne of its former tyrant. The unseen hand of fate gave to the discharged arrow a higher flight, and quite a different direction from that which it first received from the bowstring. In the womb of happy Brabant that liberty had its birth which, torn from its mother in its earliest infancy, was to gladden the so despised Holland. ”

“ Prince William was in the ascendant. But the Catholic nobles conspired against him, and induced the Archduke Matthias, brother of the German Emperor Rodolph, to accept the place of governor of the Netherlands in lieu of Don John. He came, but Orange was made the Ruwaard of Brabant, with full military power. It was the highest office which could be bestowed on him. The 'Union of Brussels' followed and was a confederation of all the Netherlands. But the battle of Gemblours was fought in February, 1578, and the patriots were defeated. ”

“ Whereupon the Provinces for the third time throw off their Obedience, call the Prince of Orange to Brussels, where he is made Protector of Brabant, by the States of that Province, and preparations are made on both sides for the War: While Spain is busie to form new Armies, and draw them together in Namur and Luxemburg, the only Provinces obedient to that Crown: And all the rest agree to elect a Governour of their own, and send to Matthias the Emperor's Brother, to offer him the Charge. ”