promises to the municipal party.  In the mean time he is governor and guardian of his wife and her provinces.  His children are to inherit the Netherlands and all that therein is.  What can be more consistent than laws of descent, regulated by right divine?  At the beginning of the century, good Philip dispossesses Jacqueline, because females can not inherit.  At its close, his granddaughter succeeds to the property, and transmits it to her children.  Pope and emperor maintain both positions with equal logic.  The policy and promptness of Maximilian are as effective as the force and fraud of Philip.  The Lady Mary falls from her horse and dies.  Her son, Philip, four years of age, is recognized as successor.  Thus the house of Burgundy is followed by that of Austria, the fifth and last family which governed Holland, previously to the erection of the republic.  Maximilian is recognized by the provinces as governor and guardian, during the minority of his children.  Flanders alone refuses.  The burghers, ever prompt in action, take personal possession of the child Philip, and carry on the government in his name.  A commission of citizens and nobles thus maintain their authority against Maximilian for several years.  In 1488, the archduke, now King of the Romans, with a small force of cavalry, attempts to take the city of Bruges, but the result is a mortifying one to the Roman king.  The citizens of Bruges take him.  Maximilian, with several councillors, is kept a prisoner in a house on the market-place.  The magistrates are all changed, the affairs of government conducted in the name of the young Philip alone.  Meantime, the estates of the other Netherlands assemble at Ghent; anxious, unfortunately, not for the national liberty, but for that of the Roman king.  Already Holland, torn again by civil feuds, and blinded by the artifices of Maximilian, has deserted, for a season, the great cause to which Flanders has remained so true.  At last, a treaty is made between the archduke and the Flemings.  Maximilian is to be regent of the other provinces; Philip, under guardianship of a council, is to govern Flanders.  Moreover, a congress of all the provinces is to be summoned annually, to provide for the general welfare.  Maximilian signs and swears to the treaty on the 16th May, 1488.  He swears, also, to dismiss all foreign troops within four days.  Giving hostages for his fidelity, he is set at liberty.  What are oaths and hostages when prerogative, and the people are contending?  Emperor Frederic sends to his son an army under the Duke of Saxony.  The oaths are broken, the hostages left to their fate.  The struggle lasts a year, but, at the end of it, the Flemings are subdued.  What could a single province effect, when its sister states, even liberty-loving Holland, had basely abandoned the common cause?  A new treaty is made, (Oct.1489).  Maximilian obtains uncontrolled guardianship of his son, absolute dominion over Flanders and the other provinces.  The insolent burghers are severely punished for remembering that they had been freemen.  The magistrates of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, in black garments, ungirdled, bare-headed, and kneeling, are compelled to implore the despot’s forgiveness, and to pay three hundred thousand crowns of gold as its price.  After this, for a brief season, order reigns in Flanders.