The greatest part of Flanders was attached, as has been seen, to the king of France, and not to Lorraine; but the dependence was little more than nominal.  In 1071 the king of France attempted to exercise his authority over the country, by naming to the government the same Countess Richilde who had received Hainault and Namur for her dower, and who was left a widow, with sons still in their minority.  The people assembled in the principal towns, and protested against this intervention of the French monarch.  But we must remark that it was only the population of the low lands (whose sturdy ancestors had ever resisted foreign domination) that now took part in this opposition.  The vassals which the counts of Flanders possessed in the Gallic provinces (the high grounds), and in general all the nobility, pronounced strongly for submission to France; for the principles of political freedom had not yet been fixed in the minds of the inhabitants of those parts of the country.  But the lowlanders joined together under Robert, surnamed the Frison, brother of the deceased count; and they so completely defeated the French, the nobles and their unworthy associates of the high ground, that they despoiled the usurping Countess Richilde of even her hereditary possessions.  In this war perished the celebrated Norman, William Fitz-Osborn, who had flown to the succor of the defeated countess, of whom he was enamored.

Robert the Frison, not satisfied with having beaten the king of France and the bishop of Liege, reinstated in 1076 the grandson of Thierry of Holland in the possessions which had been forced from him by the duke of Lower Lorraine, in the name of the emperor and the bishop of Utrecht; so that it was this valiant chieftain, who, above all others, is entitled to the praise of having successfully opposed the system of foreign domination on all the principal points of the country.  Four years later, Othon of Nassau was the first to unite in one county the various cantons of Guelders.  Finally, in 1086, Henry of Louvain, the direct descendant of Lambert, joined to his title that of count of Brabant; and from this period the country was partitioned pretty nearly as it was destined to remain for several centuries.

In the midst of this gradual organization of the various counties, history for some time loses sight of those Frisons, the maritime people of the north, who took little part in the civil wars of two centuries.  But still there was no portion of Europe which at that time offered a finer picture of social improvement than these damp and unhealthy coasts.  The name of Frisons extended from the Weser to the westward of the Zuyder Zee, but not quite to the Rhine; and it became usual to consider no longer as Frisons the subjects of the counts of Holland, whom we may now begin to distinguish as Hollanders or Dutch.  The Frison race alone refused to recognize the sovereign counts.  They boasted of being self-governed; owning no allegiance but to the emperor, and regarding