Burgundian Netherlands

Territory of the Holy Roman Empire

As Burgundian Netherlands refers to the territory of the present Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, and part of northern France at the time of the Burgundian and the beginning of Habsburg rule.

House of Valois - Burgundy ( to 1477 )

In the 14th century, the house of the Burgundian Valois, the Dutch provinces began by marriage and contracts under his scepter to unite: first in 1384 by the marriage with the heiress of the Count of Flanders this large county plus Artois and Mechelen, 1427 Namur, 1428 Holland, Friesland, Zeeland and Hainaut, 1430 Brabant and Limburg, Luxembourg 1443. In the possession of the eleven provinces Philip sought the Good (1419-1467) the same to give a uniform constitution. 1437 he convened the first States-General, an assembly of deputies of the county (states); same, gradually becoming more common, most recently called almost every year and usually sitting in Brussels and Mechelen, approved the Beden throughout the Netherlands and distributed the money to the individual provinces. The southern provinces, above all Brabant, had the upper hand. In Brussels, the Dukes kept their brilliant court; Brabant they governed themselves, the remaining provinces governor. But they led as ruler of the Netherlands still no special title, and the same were still so little fused into a unitary state that each province regarded the other as foreign and no officials tolerate from the same. After the tumultuous reign of Charles the Bold (1467-1477), the funds and Zutphen acquired, the Netherlands fell by the marriage of his heiress Mary with Maximilian of Austria to the House of Habsburg.

House of Habsburg 1477-1522

This change of dynasty used the provinces to increase their rights. Mary had to help her through major concessions buy, for example, by the privilege Maius to the States of Holland, and after her death ( 1482 ) broke against the government of Maximilian guardianship for his son Philip the Fair unrest: In Holland, the party rose the Hoeks again, the citizens of Bruges took 1488 Maximilian even caught and pressed him to renounce the guardianship in favor of the States of Flanders from. Meanwhile Maximilian succeeded to maintain with the help of Duke Albrecht of Saxony, who was appointed hereditary governor of Friesland in 1491 to become the rebellion Mr. and Artois, the French King Louis XI. had tried to collect as ceased fief. 1493 took over Philip himself the government of the Netherlands; under him Gelderland crack under Duke Karl los ( 1499 ) again.

After Philip's early death ( 1506) his sister Margaret led the government for the six -year-old Charles, the future Emperor Charles V, and remained after it was in 1515 coming of age and ruler, regent in the Netherlands until her death (1530), whereupon Charles 's sister, the Dowager Queen Mary of Hungary, followed her into the governorship.

In the division of the Habsburg dominions the Netherlands came to the Spanish line. This division dates in Erbteilungsvertrag of Brussels in 1522, which made decompose the House of Habsburg in the Austrian and Spanish line, and the Kingdom of Spain took over the jurisdiction, even if the administration was quite divided, because the area so was the Holy Roman Empire, the foreign rule do not like to saw and Austrian Habsburgs took over the governor's office.