BELGIUM.
History, xvii
themselves independent of their powerful neighbours. Flanders,
which attained to great prosperity by means of its manufactures
and commercial enterprise, carried on a long-continued struggle
against France, the result of which, chiefly through the strenuous
exertions of the cities of Ghent and Bruges, was the establishment
of its complete independence. On the extinction of the male line
of the Counts of Flanders in 1385, Flanders became annexed
to Burgundy by the marriage of Philip the Bold with a daughter
of the Flemish princely race, and by the beginning of the 15th
cent, most of the other states were also united , by means of later
marriages and other contracts, inheritance, etc., under the suprem¬
acy of the Dukes of Burgundy. This change of dynasty was most
favourable to the growth of art in the Netherlands. The splendour-
loving Philip the Bold (d. 1404) employed artists of every kind,
particularly goldsmiths, while the name of his grandson Philip the
Good (1419-1467), to whom Jan van Eyck was court-painter, is
inseparably connected with the first bloom of Flemish painting.
In 1477 the Netherlands came into the possession of the House
of Hapsburg by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy, the daughter
of Charles the Bold, the last Duke of Burgundy, with Maximilian,
afterwards Emperor of Germany. The children of this marriage
were Philip the Handsome (A. 1506), Duke of Burgundy and King
of Castile (in right of his wife, Johanna the Mad), and Margaret of
Austria, regent of the Netherlands from 1506 to her death in 1530.
Philip's son, Charles V., who was born at Ghent in 1500, and sub¬
sequently became Emperor of Germany and King of Spain, succeeded
also to the Netherlandish provinces, which on his abdication in 1555
came under the sway of his son Philip II. Thenceforward the Ne¬
therlands were subject to Spanish Supremacy. Philip appointed his
half-sister, Margaret of Parma, regent of theNetherlands(1559-67),
and selected Granvella, Bishop of Arras, as her counsellor and as¬
sistant. Religious agitations, the excessive increase of the number of
the bishops (1559), the burdensome presence of the Spanish troops,
and other grievances led to numerous tumults, to suppress which
the king dispatched the Duke of Alva to the Netherlands with an
army of 20,000 men. The extreme cruelty with which Alva fulfilled
his task resulted in the famous revolt of the United Netherlands
in 1568. Success was achieved by the northern provinces only,
which now constitute the Kingdom of Holland, whilst the south¬
ern districts, the present Kingdom of Belgium , after protracted
and fierce struggles, still continued to groan under the oppressive
yoke of the Spaniards. At length, under the regime of Alexander
Farnese, Duke of Parma (1578-96), the third governor after Alva,
Belgium also succeeded in recovering the civic liberties in behalf
of which the war had originally broken out.
In 1598 the 'Spanish Netherlands' were ceded by Philip II. as
a flef to his daughter Clara Isabella Eugenia on the occasion of her
Baedeker's Belgium and Holland. 8th Edit. b
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