for a time he must leave Flanders to put down the rising of the Hook faction in Holland, who, led by Frans van Brederode, and in alliance with the anti-Burgundian party in Utrecht, had made themselves masters of Leyden.  Beaten in a bloody fight by the regent, Brederode nevertheless managed to seize Sluis and Rotterdam; and from these ports he and his daring companion-in-arms, Jan van Naaldwijk, carried on a guerrilla warfare for some years.  Brederode was killed in a fight at Brouwershaven (1490), but Sluis still held out and was not taken till two years later.

Meanwhile Maximilian had to undertake a campaign against the Flemings, who were again in arms at the instigation of the turbulent burghers of Ghent and Bruges.  Entering the province at the head of a large force he compelled the rebel towns to submit and obtained possession of the person of his son Philip (July, 1485).  Elected in the following year King of the Romans, Maximilian left the Netherlands to be crowned at Aachen (April, 1486).  A war with France called him back, in the course of which he suffered a severe defeat at Bethune.  At the beginning of 1488 Ghent and Bruges once more rebelled; and the Roman king, enticed to enter Bruges, was there seized and compelled to see his friends executed in the market-place beneath his prison window.  For seven months he was held a prisoner; nor was he released until he had sworn to surrender his powers, as regent, to a council of Flemings and to withdraw all his foreign troops from the Netherlands.  He was forced to give hostages as a pledge of his good faith, among them his general, Philip of Cleef, who presently joined his captors.

Maximilian, on arriving at the camp of the Emperor Frederick III, who had gathered together an army to release his imprisoned son, was persuaded to break an oath given under duress.  He advanced therefore at the head of his German mercenaries into Flanders, but was able to achieve little success against the Flemings, who found in Philip of Cleef an able commander.  Despairing of success, he now determined to retire into Germany, leaving Duke Albert of Saxe-Meissen, a capable and tried soldier of fortune, as general-in-chief of his forces and Stadholder of the Netherlands.  With the coming of Duke Albert order was at length to be restored, though not without a severe struggle.

Slowly but surely Duke Albert took town after town and reduced province after province into submission.  The Hook party in Holland and Zeeland, and their anti-Burgundian allies in Utrecht, and Robert de la Marck in Liege, in turn felt the force of his arm.  An insurrection of the peasants in West Friesland and Kennemerland—­the “Bread and Cheese Folk,” as they were called—­was easily put down.  Philip of Cleef with his Flemings was unable to make head against him; and, with the fall of Ghent and Sluis in the summer of 1492, the duke was able to announce to Maximilian that the Netherlands, except Gelderland,