"Hannibalized" he was, too, at Gransen, at Murten, and at Nancy. He
followed in the track of his prototype only to the base of the mountains.

As a conqueror, he was signally unsuccessful; as a politician, he could
out-wit none but himself; it was only as a tyrant within his own ground,
that he could sustain the character which he chose to enact. He lost the
crown, which he might have secured, because he thought the emperor's son
unworthy the heiress of Burgundy; and yet, after his father's death, her
marriage with that very Maximilian alone secured the possession of her
paternal inheritance. Unsuccessful in schemes of conquest, and in
political intrigue, as an oppressor of the Netherlands, he nearly carried
out his plans. Those provinces he regarded merely as a bank to draw
upon. His immediate intercourse with the country was confined to the
extortion of vast requests. These were granted with ever-increasing
reluctance, by the estates. The new taxes and excises, which the
sanguinary extravagance of the duke rendered necessary, could seldom be
collected in the various cities without tumults, sedition, and bloodshed.
Few princes were ever a greater curse to the people whom they were
allowed to hold as property. He nearly succeeded in establishing a
centralized despotism upon the ruins of the provincial institutions.
His sudden death alone deferred the catastrophe. His removal of the
supreme court of Holland from the Hague to Mechlin, and his maintenance
of a standing army, were the two great measures by which he prostrated
the Netherlands. The tribunal had been remodelled by his father; the
expanded authority which Philip had given to a bench of judges dependent
upon himself, was an infraction of the rights of Holland. The court,
however, still held its sessions in the country; and the sacred
privilege--de non evocando--the right of every Hollander to be tried in
his own land, was, at least, retained. Charles threw off the mask; he
proclaimed that this council--composed of his creatures, holding office