The First Governess of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria

by Eleanor E. Tremayne

When some months afterwards, in August 1498, Maximilian had made a separate peace with France, much to Ferdinand's indignation, he determined to bring Margaret home at any cost. Why, asked Fuensalida of Maximilian, was he sending so important and unexpected an embassy to Spain? 'I am sending for my daughter,' replied the King of the Romans. 'If your Majesty means to bring her home at once,' exclaimed the ambassador, 'you ought to have sent notice to my King and Queen, and not bring away so great a princess as she is thus suddenly. In any case she could not come until December.' 'I cannot wait so long as that,' replied Maximilian. 'But,' objected the ambassador, 'she cannot come before. It will take until September for your ambassadors to reach Spain, and all October will be spent in getting ships ready, and then another month for the Princess to join them, and perhaps even two months; and then the season of the year will be unfit for any one to go to sea, and the King and Queen will not like to expose the Princess to such danger. Besides,' continued he, always ready to appeal to Maximilian's parsimony, 'if your Majesty had given due notice to my King and Queen you might have saved a great deal of money, for they would have fitted out a fleet in which the Princess might have come with all honour and safety; and even now, if your Majesty will wait until March, I will do my best to arrange it in this way, and you will not have to spend half so much money.'

But Maximilian knew the value of his daughter in his hands, and replied roughly that he would not wait. He would have her safe home, he said, before he began war again. 'If I send a single carrack from Genoa, and the King and Queen give her a convoy of four barks, she will come safe enough.' In vain the ambassador urged that corsairs and Frenchmen could not be trusted, and that it was a slight for such a princess to be sent home in so unceremonious a fashion. Maximilian was obstinate; he would have his daughter Margaret home at once, no matter at what risk. To add to his eagerness news came from Margaret herself, brought by special messengers of her household, who had much to say of the changed demeanour of the Spaniards, now that Maximilian had made a separate peace. Fuensalida did his best by underhand means, frightening the German ambassadors of the sea-voyage from Genoa to Spain and back in the winter, and of the dreadful corsairs who infested the Mediterranean, until they at last, really alarmed, begged Maximilian in Fuensalida's presence to let them have a very big carrack for their greater safety. Better send them by way of Flanders, interposed the artful Fuensalida, knowing the long delay which such a voyage would entail; but Maximilian angrily told him that he would do nothing of the sort.

So effectually had the Spaniard frightened the landsmen ambassadors of the sea that they themselves threw every possible obstacle in their master's way, and told Fuensalida that, even though King Maximilian ordered them to go and fetch the Princess Margaret before Christmas, they would not do so. Come what might, they said, they would not put to sea before Easter. They were not allowed, however, to delay quite so long as that, for Maximilian was determined to have his daughter out of the hands of Ferdinand, who he feared was making terms for himself by offering her in marriage to the new King of France, Louis XII. In writing to Margaret in September, her father, referring to his and her own desire that she should return to Flanders or Germany, says that 'no importunity nor pressure of any sort will move him from his resolve to bring her back at once,' and he urges her to insist upon her departure without loss of time.

Fortunately now, especially for the timid German ambassadors, the road overland through France was open, and Margaret travelled in comfort and safety to her home in Flanders early in 1499, to see Spain no more. Thither, too, went soon afterwards the Spanish ambassador Fuensalida, accredited especially to the Archduke Philip and his Spanish wife Joanna, whose conduct was already profoundly grieving Ferdinand and Isabella; and from Flanders the ambassador was to proceed to England and pin Henry VII. down irrevocably to the marriage of his son Arthur with Katharine. Already Ferdinand more than suspected that Maximilian was playing him false, and forming a league against him by negotiating Margaret's marriage with Arthur, Prince of Wales, already betrothed more than once to the Spanish princess. Fuensalida's mission was a delicate one; for Margaret's Flemish household had come back from Spain full of complaints, and the Court of Flanders was sharply divided by the partisans of Spain and Burgundy respectively, of the Archduchess Joanna and her dissolute husband, Philip. Margaret was to be conciliated as much as possible, and kept in the Spanish interest. 'You will visit our daughter the Princess Margaret,' wrote Ferdinand and Isabella to their envoy, 'and say that we beseech her to let us know how she is after her long journey; for we desire her health and welfare as that of our own daughter. For the love we bear her we will do everything in our power most willingly to aid and forward her settlement.' The envoy was also urged to counteract the efforts of those who wished to make bad blood between Flanders and Spain, and especially to enlist Margaret in favour of poor Joanna, her sister-in-law.

Fuensalida followed hard on the heels of Henry VII. from St. Omer and Calais to London, endeavouring by every means to discover how much truth there was in the assertion that an arrangement had been concluded to throw over Katharine of Aragon and marry the Prince of Wales to Margaret as a result of the mysterious foregathering of the King of England with the Archduke Philip. The story of Fuensalida's successful though turbulent mission to England is told elsewhere;[1] but on his return to Flanders he found Margaret in the deepest anxiety with regard to her own affairs. Neither she nor Maximilian desired to forward by her marriage in England the anti-Spanish combination of England, France, and Flanders which Philip was planning; her dowry from Spain was, as was natural with Ferdinand for a pay-master, in arrear; and the coming voyage to Spain of Philip and Joanna at the urgent summons of Ferdinand and Isabella, who hoped to win over the Archduke, if possible, from his alliance with their enemies, was a subject of the deepest concern to Margaret.

When Fuensalida first saw Margaret on his return to Brussels from England, in August 1500, she welcomed him eagerly in the belief that he brought some special message to her from Spain. He told her that his mission was simply one of affection towards her, and she made no attempt to hide her disappointment. The cause of her anxiety was soon apparent. Fuensalida reported in the same letter that the bastard of Savoy had been to see her secretly, and that she and her father, Maximilian, had looked with favour upon the proposal of the Duke of Savoy to marry her. Such a marriage was, of course, a blow, as it was intended to be, against her brother Philip's anti-Spanish projects, because not only did it leave Katharine of Aragon's marriage with the Prince of Wales undisturbed, but it secured Savoy to the imperial and Aragonese interests against France, which was of the highest importance as touching the French designs upon Italy. Her marriage in Savoy, moreover, was opposed strongly by Philip for another reason, namely, that he would, in case it was effected, be obliged to hand to his sister the domains belonging to Burgundy which had been bequeathed to her by her mother; and in order to frustrate it Philip brought forward the recently widowed King of Portugal as a fit husband for Margaret, which would have secured her residence in a distant country, and his continued occupation of her Burgundian inheritance.

Successive deaths had now made Philip and Joanna heirs of Spain, as well as of Burgundy, Flanders, and the Empire; the Archduke was already betrothing his infant son, Charles, the future King of Castile, to a French princess, and his open negotiations for the formation of a league against Ferdinand to assert Joanna's right to assume the crown of Castile on the death of her mother Isabella, who was in failing health, had fairly frightened Ferdinand, who knew not whom to trust; for Castilians generally disliked him, and were ready to acclaim Joanna and her foreign husband on the first opportunity—Joanna herself was unstable, violently jealous of her husband, and with strange notions as regarded religion. She would not go to Spain alone, and Philip was determined not to go except on his own terms, and at his own time, and Margaret, living in close contact with the inharmonious pair, struggled bravely to reconcile the clashing interests that surrounded her.

There was a talk of leaving her regent of Flanders in the absence of her brother in Spain, and against this Ferdinand's agents were instructed to work secretly; although Margaret lost no opportunity of professing to the ambassador her attachment to Spanish interests. From several remarks in Fuensalida's letters to Ferdinand it is, however, evident that her desire was less to rule Flanders than to enjoy the care of the infants whom her brother and sister-in-law were to leave behind. But even this natural desire was opposed by the Spaniards; apparently because the Princess was looked upon as being too ready to follow her brother's lead. Writing in March 1501 of Philip's dissolute life and his disaffection towards Spain, Fuensalida says: 'I am loath to say how much Madam Margaret's good-nature encourages this, for she simply follows her brother's fancies in all things.'

But the departure of Margaret from Flanders in August 1501 for her marriage with the Duke of Savoy put an end for a time to her pretensions to take charge of her brother's children; and when she returned as a young widow early in 1505, the issue between Ferdinand and his undutiful son-in-law was joined, for Isabella the Catholic was dead, and Philip in right of his wife was arrogantly claiming, not only the crown of Castile, but the entire control of its policy against the wish of the great Queen just dead, whose last hours were embittered by the dread that her beloved, her sacred, Castile, would be ruled by a foreigner of doubtful orthodoxy. Philip was abetted in his revolt against Ferdinand by the Castilian officers attached to him who were jealous of Aragon, Don Juan Manuel, the principal Spanish diplomatist of his time, being their leader and Philip's prime adviser. As soon as Margaret arrived in her brother's Court both factions tried to gain her. 'My lady,' Don Juan Manuel is represented to have said to her on one occasion (June 1505), 'I shall be able to serve you quite as effectively as Antonio de Fonseca when I am in Castile and Treasurer-General'; and at this time, when Philip and his friends were anticipating the rich booty they would gain in Castile, whither they were bound to take possession of mad Joanna's inheritance, Margaret was beset with offers of reward if she would throw in her influence against King Ferdinand.

It is abundantly clear that she grieved at the unhappy state of affairs. Ferdinand and his wife had been good to her in Spain, and easy-going as she may have been, she must have seen her brother's unworthiness and his bad treatment of Joanna; and yet it was neither prudent nor natural that she should oppose Philip violently. Fuensalida saw her in Bois le Duc in June 1505, whilst she was on her way to Bourg, and discussed matters with her. 'She told me that she had talked to her brother, and had asked him whether he would allow her to mediate between him and your Highness (Ferdinand), and he had answered, "No, you are still marriageable, and so is he, and I will not have any such third person interposing between us." She told me that her father and brother have made her swear that she will not entertain any marriage without their consent. She really believes that those who are around her brother have turned his head, and will not let him make terms with your Highness.... She bids me tell your Highness that she will continue to be as obedient a daughter to you as she was when she was with you in Spain; and that she is going to her own home now for no other reason than that she cannot bear to see in silence the things that are going on, whereas if she spoke of them or protested against them, evil would come of it. She prefers, therefore, to go away, so that she may not witness them personally; for she sees quite plainly that the destruction of her brother's and her father's house will ensue. She prays your Highness to make use of her services in any way you please, and she will do for you all that a good daughter may. "Why not speak to Queen Joanna?" I said. "Because they will not let me," she answered. I am told that Don Juan Manuel said to her (Margaret), what is the use of your going to speak to a stone? You might just as well speak to a stone as to the Queen.'