To sketch the special history of even the leading Netherland provinces, during the five centuries which we have thus rapidly sought to characterize, is foreign to our purpose.  By holding the clue of Holland’s history, the general maze of dynastic transformations throughout the country may, however, be swiftly threaded.  From the time of the first Dirk to the close of the thirteenth century there were nearly four hundred years of unbroken male descent, a long line of Dirks and Florences.  This iron-handed, hot-headed, adventurous race, placed as sovereign upon its little sandy hook, making ferocious exertions to swell into larger consequence, conquering a mile or two of morass or barren furze, after harder blows and bloodier encounters than might have established an empire under more favorable circumstances, at last dies out.  The courtship falls to the house of Avennes, Counts of Hainault.  Holland, together with Zeland, which it had annexed, is thus joined to the province of Hainault.  At the end of another half century the Hainault line expires.  William the Fourth died childless in 1355.  His death is the signal for the outbreak of an almost interminable series of civil commotions.  Those two great, parties, known by the uncouth names of Hook and Kabbeljaw, come into existence, dividing noble against noble, city against city, father against son, for some hundred and fifty years, without foundation upon any abstract or intelligible principle.  It may be observed, however, that, in the sequel, and as a general rule, the Kabbeljaw, or cod-fish party, represented the city or municipal faction, while the Hooks (fish-hooks), that were to catch and control them, were the nobles; iron and audacity against brute number and weight.

Duke William of Bavaria, sister’s son—­of William the Fourth, gets himself established in 1354.  He is succeeded by his brother Albert; Albert by his son William.  William, who had married Margaret of Burgundy, daughter of Philip the Bold, dies in 1417.  The goodly heritage of these three Netherland provinces descends to his daughter Jacqueline, a damsel of seventeen.  Little need to trace the career of the fair and ill-starred Jacqueline.  Few chapters of historical romance have drawn more frequent tears.  The favorite heroine of ballad and drama, to Netherlanders she is endued with the palpable form and perpetual existence of the Iphigenias, Mary Stuarts, Joans of Arc, or other consecrated individualities.  Exhausted and broken-hearted, after thirteen years of conflict with her own kinsmen, consoled for the cowardice and brutality of three husbands by the gentle and knightly spirit of the fourth, dispossessed of her father’s broad domains, degraded from the rank of sovereign to be lady forester of her own provinces by her cousin, the bad Duke of Burgundy, Philip surnamed “the Good,” she dies at last, and the good cousin takes undisputed dominion of the land. (1437.)

The five centuries of isolation are at end.  The many obscure streams of Netherland history are merged in one broad current.  Burgundy has absorbed all the provinces which, once more, are forced to recognize a single master.  A century and a few years more succeed, during which this house and its heirs are undisputed sovereigns of the soil.