History of Holland | Page 7

been
meanwhile forming a strong league (League of Constance, March 1474)
of various states threatened by Charles' ambitious projects. Duke
Sigismund of Austria, Baden, Basel, Elsass, and the Swiss Cantons
united under the leadership of France to resist them. Charles led an
army of 60,000 men to aid the Archbishop of Cologne against his
subjects, but spent eleven months in a fruitless attempt to take a small
fortified town, Neuss, in which a considerable portion of his army
perished. He was compelled to raise large sums of money from his
unwilling subjects in the Netherlands to repair his losses, and in 1475
he attacked Duke Réné of Lorraine, captured Nancy and conquered the
duchy, which had hitherto separated his Netherland from his French
possessions. It was the first step in the accomplishment of his scheme
for the restoration of the Lotharingian kingdom. In Elsass, however, the
populace had risen in insurrection against the tyranny of the
Burgundian governor, Peter van Hagenbach, and had tried and executed
him. Finding that the Swiss had aided the rebels, Charles now, without
waiting to consolidate his conquest of Lorraine, determined to lead his
army into Switzerland. At the head of a splendidly equipped force he
encountered the Confederates near Granson (March 2, 1476) and was
utterly routed, his own seal and order of the Golden Fleece, with vast
booty, falling into the hands of the victors. A few months later, having

recruited and reorganised his beaten army, he again led them against
the Swiss. The encounter took place (June 21, 1476) at Morat and once
more the chivalry of Burgundy suffered complete defeat. Charles fled
from the field, half insane with rage and disappointment, when the
news that Duke Réné had reconquered Lorraine roused him from his
torpor. He hastily gathered together a fresh army and laid siege to
Nancy. But in siege operations he had no skill, and in the depth of
winter (January 5, 1477) he was attacked by the Swiss and Lorrainers
outside the walls of the town. A panic seized the Burgundians; Charles
in person in vain strove to stem their flight, and he perished by an
unknown hand. His body was found later, stripped naked, lying frozen
in a pool.
Charles left an only child, Mary, not yet twenty years of age. Mary
found herself in a most difficult and trying situation. Louis XI, the
hereditary enemy of her house, at once took possession of the duchy of
Burgundy, which by failure of heirs-male had reverted to its liege-lord.
The sovereignty of the county of Burgundy (Franche-Comté), being an
imperial fief descending in the female line, she retained; but, before her
authority had been established, Louis had succeeded in persuading the
states of the county to place themselves under a French protectorate.
French armies overran Artois, Hainault and Picardy, and were
threatening Flanders, where there was in every city a party of French
sympathisers. Gelderland welcomed the exiled duke, Adolf, as their
sovereign. Everywhere throughout the provinces the despotic rule of
Duke Charles and his heavy exactions had aroused seething discontent.
Mary was virtually a prisoner in the hands of her Flemish subjects; and,
before they consented to support her cause, there was a universal
demand for a redress of grievances. But Mary showed herself possessed
of courage and statesmanship beyond her years, and she had at this
critical moment in her step-mother, Margaret of York, an experienced
and capable adviser at her side. A meeting of the States-General was at
once summoned to Ghent. It met on February 3, 1477, Mary's 20th
birthday. Representatives came from Flanders, Brabant, Artois and
Namur, in the southern, and from Holland and Zeeland in the northern
Netherlands. Mary saw there was no course open to her but to accede to
their demands. Only eight days after the Assembly met, the charter of

Netherland liberties, called The Great Privilege, was agreed to and
signed. By this Act all previous ordinances conflicting with ancient
privileges were abolished. The newly-established Court of Appeal at
Mechlin was replaced by a Great Council of twenty-four members
chosen by the sovereign from the various states, which should advise
and assist in the administration of government. Mary undertook not to
marry or to declare war without the assent of the States-General. The
States-General and the Provincial States were to meet as often as they
wished, without the summons of the sovereign. All officials were to be
native-born; no Netherlander was to be tried by foreign judges; there
were to be no forced loans, no alterations in the coinage. All edicts or
ordinances infringing provincial rights were to be ipso facto null and
void. By placing her seal to this document Mary virtually abdicated the
absolute sovereign power which had been exercised by her
predecessors, and undid at a stroke the results