Nor did the new Sovereign turn a deaf ear to their reclamations. The whole land was seething with misery and discontent bred of a hundred years’ oppression, and her ministers were wise enough and patriotic enough to see that only one policy was possible—a policy of general appeasement. On February 11, 1476, she signed a charter, by which was established a representative council for the government of all her states, and note the concluding clause, which is not a little significant—the Duchess declares that if any of the enactments herein contained be at any time violated, either wholly or in part, her subjects and vassals shall be thereby absolved from their allegiance until such time as they have obtained redress.
Nor was this all; to each of the cities and towns of Flanders a special charter of liberties was granted. Bruges, by the mouth of Louis of Gruthuise, had demanded the revocation of the edict by which Philippe l’Asseuré, thirty years before, had taken away her independence, and by the 7th of April the Lord of Gruthuise was able to ascend the balcony over the great door of the Hôtel de Ville and declare, amid the cheers of the assembled multitude, that Marie had granted their request. Next day the list of the privileges of the town was solemnly read in the market-place, as well as a new and more liberal charter than any hitherto granted, which gave back to the city of Bruges all her communal liberties and commercial monopolies, as well as her lordship over the Franc and over the town of Sluys.
If the communes of Flanders had been at one with themselves, and if their burghers had been agreed together, the timely concessions of their new Sovereign would perhaps have enabled the Flemish people to withstand the machinations of the feeble tyrant whom we shall presently see compassing their destruction. But the feuds which had so long hampered them in their conflicts with former rulers had not one whit abated; the little men still envied the big men, the petty towns the bonnes villes, the Franc Bruges, Bruges Ghent, and, added to this, there was a fresh source of disunion, a burning thirst for vengeance which could only be slaked by blood. The men who, under Philippe and Charles, had bartered liberty for pelf must pay on the scaffold the penalty of their offences, aye and if need be (for according to the law of Flanders no citizen could be put to death unless he had previously acknowledged the justice of the sentence which doomed him), if need be torture must wring from them the avowal of their guilt. The pleading of the greatest lady in the land was powerless to save them. Pale with anguish, alone and on foot, attired in deep mourning and with no headgear but a simple veil, Marie had made her way to the Hooghuis and from a window there had addressed the vast throng of angry guildsmen assembled in the Marché au Vendredi. ‘O men of Ghent,’ she had besought them, ‘remember that I forgave you, and for my sake forgive your enemies.’ But the burghers refused to listen. It was the first duty of a Sovereign to administer justice with an even hand, and it should never be said that in Flanders there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Whereupon, says Philippe de Commines, ‘retourna cette pauvre demoiselle, bien dolente et descomfortée.’
In other towns besides Ghent the burghers were as firmly resolved to have their pound of flesh, and in exacting it they incurred the enmity of men no less cruel than themselves, as later on they learned to their cost.
At Bruges the burning question for the moment was the question of the Franc. Would the bond after all be dishonoured, and would the Franchosts submit? And when, on the 5th of April, Marie was receiving the homage of the burghers in the Church of St. Donatian, the mob burst into the cathedral with cries of ‘What of the Franc?’ In vain the Duchess once more proclaimed the overlordship of the city, in vain Louis of Gruthuise assured them that their apprehensions were unfounded; the guildsmen refused to disarm, nor was it until the 13th of April, when the men of the Franc sent in their submission, that peace was once more restored.
Three days afterwards, on April 16, 1477, ambassadors arrived at Bruges from the Emperor Frederick III. to demand for his son Maximilian the hand of the girl Duchess. Louis of Gruthuise and Philip of Hornes received them solemnly with lighted torches and led them to the Princenhof. ‘I understand,’ was Marie’s reply, ‘that my father approved this match, and as for me I desire no other.’ The proposed marriage was no less pleasing to the Flemish people, for though Maximilian was so short of funds that Flanders was obliged to defray his travelling expenses, ‘he brought to the communes menaced by France the august support of imperial blood and the contested traditions of the suzerainty of the Germanic Cæsars.’[37]