“Ci-git Margot la genre demoiselle,
  Qui eut deux maris, et si mourut pucelle.”

  “Here gentle Margot quietly is laid,
  Who had two husbands, and yet died a maid.”

She was received with the greatest joy by the people of the Netherlands; and she governed them as peaceably as circumstances allowed.  Supported by England, she firmly maintained her authority against the threats of France; and she carried on in person all the negotiations between Louis XII., Maximilian, the pope Julius II., and Ferdinand of Aragon, for the famous League of Venice.  These negotiations took place in 1508, at Cambray; where Margaret, if we are to credit an expression to that effect in one of her letters, was more than once on the point of having serious differences with the cardinal of Amboise, minister of Louis XII.  But, besides her attention to the interests of her father on this important occasion, she also succeeded in repressing the rising pretensions of Charles of Egmont; and, assisted by the interference of the king of France, she obliged him to give up some places in Holland which he illegally held.

From this period the alliance between England and Spain raised the commerce and manufactures of the southern provinces of the Netherlands to a high degree of prosperity, while the northern parts of the country were still kept down by their various dissensions.  Holland was at war with the Hanseatic towns.  The Frisons continued to struggle for freedom against the heirs of Albert of Saxony.  Utrecht was at variance with its bishop, and finally recognized Charles of Egmont as its protector.  The consequence of all these causes was that the south took the start in a course of prosperity, which was, however, soon to become common to the whole nation.

A new rupture with France, in 1513, united Maximilian, Margaret, and Henry VIII. of England, in one common cause.  An English and Belgian army, in which Maximilian figured as a spectator (taking care to be paid by England), marched for the destruction of Therouenne, and defeated and dispersed the French at the battle of Spurs.  But Louis XII. soon persuaded Henry to make a separate peace; and the unconquerable duke of Guelders made Margaret and the emperor pay the penalty of their success against France.  He pursued his victories in Friesland, and forced the country to recognize him as stadtholder of Groningen, its chief town; while the duke of Saxony at length renounced to another his unjust claim on a territory which engulfed both his armies and his treasure.

About the same epoch (1515), young Charles, son of Philip the Fair, having just attained his fifteenth year, was inaugurated duke of Brabant and count of Flanders and Holland, having purchased the presumed right of Saxony to the sovereignty of Friesland.  In the following year he was recognized as prince of Castile, in right of his mother, who associated him with herself in the royal power—­a step