Anthony, duke of Brabant, the brother of Philip, was
not so closely restricted in his authority and wishes.
He led all the nobles of the province to take part
in the quarrels of France; and he suffered the penalty
of his rashness in meeting his death in the battle
of Agincourt. But the duchy suffered nothing by
this event, for the militia of the country had not
followed their duke and his nobles to the war; and
a national council was now established, consisting
of eleven persons, two of whom were ecclesiastics,
three barons, two knights, and four commoners.
This council, formed on principles so fairly popular,
conducted the public affairs with great wisdom during
the minority of the young duke. Each province
seems thus to have governed itself upon principles
of republican independence. The sovereigns could
not at discretion, or by the want of it, play the bloody
game of war for their mere amusement; and the emperor
putting in his claim at this epoch to his ancient
rights of sovereignty over Brabant, as an imperial
fief, the council and the people treated the demand
with derision.
The spirit of constitutional liberty and legal equality
which now animated the various provinces is strongly
marked in the history of the time by two striking
and characteristic incidents. At the death of
Philip the Bold, his widow deposited on his tomb her
purse, and the keys which she carried at her girdle
in token of marriage; and by this humiliating ceremony
she renounced her rights to a succession overloaded
with her husband’s debts. In the same year
(1404) the widow of Albert, count of Holland and Hainault,
finding herself in similar circumstances, required
of the bailiff of Holland and the judges of his court
permission to make a like renunciation. The claim
was granted; and, to fulfil the requisite ceremony,
she walked at the head of the funeral procession,
carrying in her hand a blade of straw, which she placed
on the coffin. We thus find that in such cases
the reigning families were held liable to follow the
common usages of the country. From such instances
there required but little progress in the principle
of equality to reach the republican contempt for rank
which made the citizens of Bruges in the following
century arrest their count for his private debts.
The spirit of independence had reached the same point
at Liege. The families of the counts of Holland
and Hainault, which were at this time distinguished
by the name of Bavaria, because they were only descended
from the ancient counts of Netherland extraction in
the female line, had sufficient influence to obtain
the nomination to the bishopric for a prince who was
at the period in his infancy. John of Bavaria—for
so he was called, and to his name was afterward added
the epithet of “the Pitiless”—on
reaching his majority, did not think it necessary
to cause himself to be consecrated a priest, but governed
as a lay sovereign. The indignant citizens of
Liege expelled him, and chose another bishop.
But the Houses of Burgundy and Bavaria, closely allied
by intermarriages, made common cause in his quarrel;
and John, duke of Burgundy, and William IV., count
of Holland and Hainault, brother of the bishop, replaced
by force this cruel and unworthy prelate.
