Thus perished the last prince of the powerful House of Burgundy.  Charles left to his only daughter, then eighteen years of age, the inheritance of his extensive dominions, and with them that of the hatred and jealousy which he had so largely excited.  External spoliation immediately commenced, and internal disunion quickly followed.  Louis XI. seized on Burgundy and a part of Artois, as fiefs devolving to the crown in default of male issue.  Several of the provinces refused to pay the new subsidies commanded in the name of Mary; Flanders alone showing a disposition to uphold the rights of the young princess.  The states were assembled at Ghent, and ambassadors sent to the king of France in the hopes of obtaining peace on reasonable terms.  Louis, true to his system of subtle perfidy, placed before one of those ambassadors, the burgomaster of Ghent, a letter from the inexperienced princess, which proved her intention to govern by the counsel of her father’s ancient ministers rather than by that of the deputies of the nation.  This was enough to decide the indignant Flemings to render themselves at once masters of the government and get rid of the ministers whom they hated.  Two Burgundian nobles, Hugonet and Imbercourt, were arrested, accused of treason, and beheaded under the very eyes of their agonized and outraged mistress, who threw herself before the frenzied multitude, vainly imploring mercy for these innocent men.  The people having thus completely gained the upper hand over the Burgundian influence, Mary was sovereign of the Netherlands but in name.

It would have now been easy for Louis XI. to have obtained for the dauphin, his son, the hand of this hitherto unfortunate but interesting princess; but he thought himself sufficiently strong and cunning to gain possession of her states without such an alliance.  Mary, however, thus in some measure disdained, if not actually rejected, by Louis, soon after married her first-intended husband, Maximilian of Austria, son of the emperor Frederick III.; a prince so absolutely destitute, in consequence of his father’s parsimony, that she was obliged to borrow money from the towns of Flanders to defray the expenses of his suite.  Nevertheless he seemed equally acceptable to his bride and to his new subjects.  They not only supplied all his wants, but enabled him to maintain the war against Louis XI., whom they defeated at the battle of Guinegate in Picardy, and forced to make peace on more favorable terms than they had hoped for.  But these wealthy provinces were not more zealous for the national defence than bent on the maintenance of their local privileges, which Maximilian little understood, and sympathized with less.  He was bred in the school of absolute despotism; and his duchess having met with a too early death by a fall from her horse in the year 1484, he could not even succeed in obtaining the nomination of guardian to his own children without passing through a year of civil war.  His power being almost nominal in