CHAPTER XXII
The Final Catastrophe

UPON the death of Marie of Burgundy the storm for a moment lulled. Philip of Hornes had fled the country; the Estates-General had assembled at Bruges to provide for the administration of the realm during the minority of the legal heir to all Marie’s domains, her son Philip, now an infant of three years of age; and Maximilian, who knew very well that, in accordance with the marriage treaty of 1479, his authority over the Netherlands should now come to an end, and who hoped, nevertheless, to prevail on the communes to appoint him Regent of Flanders and guardian of his infant son, was showing himself as conciliatory as possible. He consented to the perpetual banishment of his favourite Philip of Hornes, suffered the burghers to open negotiations with Louis XI., with a view to the instant termination of the war with France, and did not hesitate to confirm a treaty of peace, which they concluded at Arras on December 23, 1482, and that, notwithstanding that the King of France was thereby acknowledged suzerain of Flanders, and that as such Louis XI. had confirmed and renewed all the rights and privileges granted by Marie at the commencement of her reign.

Meanwhile little Philip had sworn to respect the liberties of Flanders, and the deputies of the Estates-General had quietly appointed a council of regency to act in his name, viz., Adolphe of Clèves,[38] Lord of Ravestein, a kinsman of Maximilian’s, erst his competitor for Marie’s hand, and the most popular man in Flanders; Philip of Beveren;[38a] Adrien of Rasseghem; and Louis of Bruges, Lord of Oostcamp and Lord of Gruthuise, knight of the Golden Fleece, peer of Flanders, France and England—Edward IV. had created him Earl of Winchester in gratitude for the kindness which he had shown him in the days of his exile at Bruges—and, what he prized most of all, a burgher of his native town. The patron and friend of Caxton and of Colard Mansion, he was a marvellous lover of books, and had gathered together in the fascinating palace which he built for himself on the banks of the Roya—not his least glory, and which still bears witness to his love of the beautiful, and to the distinction and refinement of his taste—so rich a collection of choice manuscripts that the Gruthuise Library was said to equal, if not to surpass, the world-renowned library of the Dukes of Burgundy. In a word, he was a worthy scion of the house of Erembald, a patriot true to the core, the richest and the mightiest and the most beloved of the burgher-nobles of Bruges.

As for Maximilian, he was as meek as a lamb. A rebellion had broken out in Holland, and perhaps he was unusually short of cash. Certain it is that on the eve of his departure for that country, on June 5, 1483, he confirmed at Hoogstraeten, for an annual pension of twenty-four thousand écus, the authority of the council of regency appointed by the Estates-General. Before the end of the year, however, the conjunction of events had changed the Duke’s dispositions. The man he most feared, the royal burgher of Ghent, that most incomprehensible of devotees, who stopped before no crime, and never undertook any matter of moment without first commending it to God, King Louis XI. of France, had at length set out on that inevitable journey which all his life long he had looked forward to with apprehension and dismay.

For years past the old man had been ailing. Some said that he was a leper; he had certainly had a paralytic stroke in the spring of 1480, and the sands of his life were fast running out when the Flemish ambassadors waited on him at the Château du Plessis, at the beginning of the year 1483, to obtain his ratification of the Treaty of Arras. It was evening when they reached the palace. They found the old King huddled up in the corner of a room purposely ill-lighted so as to hide the disfigurement which disease had wrought in his countenance, and so weak that he was unable to rise to receive them. His right hand was completely paralysed, and when they brought the Book of the Gospels, on which he was to swear to observe peace, he just managed to raise his arm sufficiently to touch it with his elbow.