Emperor Maximilian I.,[27] married Mary of Burgundy in 1477, which “gave a lift” to his race that enabled it to increase in importance at a very rapid rate.  Mary was in possession of most of the immense dominions of her father, which he had intended to convert into a kingdom, had he lived to complete his purpose.  His success would have had great effect on the after history of Europe, for he would have reigned over the finest of countries, and his dominions would have extended from the North Sea to Provence,—­and over Provence so powerful a sovereign would have had no difficulty in extending his power,—­which done, his dominions would have been touched by the Mediterranean.  Louis XI. of France got hold of some of Mary’s inheritance; but the greater part thereof she conveyed to Maximilian.  She died young, leaving a son and a daughter.  The son was Philip the Fair, who in 1496 married Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, king of Aragon, and queen of Castille, and heiress of the Spanish monarchy, which had come to great glory through the conquest of Granada, and to wonderful influence through the discovery of the New World,—­events that took place in the same year, and but a short time before the marriage of the Austrian archduke and the Peninsular princess.  This marriage, useful and brilliant as it was to the house of Austria, turned out bitterly bad to the parties to it,—­and it is not an isolated case in that respect.  Philip the Fair was a very handsome fellow, as became his designation, or rather whence his designation came; but on the principle that “handsome is that handsome does,” he was one of the ugliest of men.  He was guilty of gallantry, the weakness of kings, and of many of the sovereign people too.  When living in Spain he had many amorous adventures; and his wife, who had brought him so great a fortune that she thought she had an especial claim on his fidelity, became exceedingly jealous, and, being a dague en jarretiere lady, as became one who was born to reign over Andalucia, killed her faithless husband,—­not by stabbing him, but by giving him poison.  This was in 1506, when husband and wife were but twenty-eight and twenty-four years old, and had been but ten years married.  There were two sons and four daughters born of this marriage, all of whom made important marriages.  The eldest son was the man whom Mr. Stirling calls “the greatest monarch of the memorable sixteenth century,”—­Charles V., Emperor of Germany, and the Spanish Charles I. He founded the Spanish branch of the house of Austria, the elder branch.[28] He married Isabella of Portugal, and their son was Philip II., who added Portugal to the possessions of the Austrian family, and one of whose wives was Mary Tudor, queen of England, the Bloody Mary of fire-and-fagot memory; and Philip gladly would have placed Mary’s sister Elizabeth in his half-vacant bed.  The marriage of Philip and Mary was barren, and poor Mary’s belief that a “blessed baby” was coming