at his pleasure--should have supreme jurisdiction over all the charters
of the provinces; that it was to follow his person, and derive all
authority from his will. The usual seat of the court he transferred to
Mechlin. It will be seen, in the sequel, that the attempt, under Philip
the Second, to enforce its supreme authority was a collateral cause of
the great revolution of the Netherlands.

Charles, like his father, administered the country by stadholders. From
the condition of flourishing self-ruled little republics, which they had,
for a moment, almost attained, they became departments of an ill-
assorted, ill-conditioned, ill-governed realm, which was neither
commonwealth nor empire, neither kingdom nor duchy; and which had no
homogeneousness of population, no affection between ruler and people,
small sympathies of lineage or of language.

His triumphs were but few, his fall ignominious. His father's treasure
was squandered, the curse of a standing army fixed upon his people, the
trade and manufactures of the country paralyzed by his extortions, and he
accomplished nothing. He lost his life in the forty-fourth year of his
age (1477), leaving all the provinces, duchies, and lordships, which
formed the miscellaneous realm of Burgundy, to his only child, the Lady
Mary. Thus already the countries which Philip had wrested from the
feeble hand of Jacqueline, had fallen to another female. Philip's own
granddaughter, as young, fair, and unprotected as Jacqueline, was now
sole mistress of those broad domains.



VIII.