During the wars which desolated these opposing territories, in consequence of the perpetual conflicts for superiority, the power of the various towns insensibly became at least as great as that of the nobles to whom they were constantly opposed.  The commercial interests of Holland, also, were considerably advanced by the influx of Flemish merchants forced to seek refuge there from the convulsions which agitated their province.  Every day confirmed and increased the privileges of the people of Brabant; while at Liege the inhabitants gradually began to gain the upper hand, and to shake off the former subjection to their sovereign bishops.

Although Philip of Burgundy became count of Flanders, by the death of his father-in-law, in the year 1384, it was not till the following year that he concluded a peace with the people of Ghent, and entered into quiet possession of the province.  In the same year the duchess of Brabant, the last descendant of the duke of that province, died, leaving no nearer relative than the duchess of Burgundy; so that Philip obtained in right of his wife this new and important accession to his dominions.  But the consequent increase of the sovereign’s power was not, as is often the case, injurious to the liberties or happiness of the people.  Philip continued to govern in the interest of the country, which he had the good sense to consider as identified with his own.  He augmented the privileges of the towns, and negotiated for the return into Flanders of those merchants who had emigrated to Germany and Holland during the continuance of the civil wars.  He thus by degrees accustomed his new subjects, so proud of their rights, to submit to his authority; and his peaceable reign was only disturbed by the fatal issue of the expedition of his son, John the Fearless, count of Nevers, against the Turks.  This young prince, filled with ambition and temerity, was offered the command of the force sent by Charles iii. of France to the assistance of Sigismund of Hungary in his war against Bajazet.  Followed by a numerous body of nobles, he entered on the contest, and was defeated and taken prisoner by the Turks at the battle of Nicopolis.  His army was totally destroyed, and himself only restored to liberty on the payment of an immense ransom.

John the Fearless succeeded in 1404 to the inheritance of all his father’s dominions, with the exception of Brabant, of which his younger brother, Anthony of Burgundy, became duke.  John, whose ambitious and ferocious character became every day more strongly developed, now aspired to the government of France during the insanity of his cousin Charles VI.  He occupied himself little with the affairs of the Netherlands, from which he only desired to draw supplies of men.  But the Flemings, taking no interest in his personal views or private projects, and equally indifferent to the rivalry of England and France, which now began so fearfully to affect the latter kingdom, forced their ambitious count to declare their province a neutral country; so that the English merchants were admitted as usual to trade in all the ports of Flanders, and the Flemings equally well received in England, while the duke made open war against Great Britain in his quality of a prince of France and sovereign of Burgundy.  This is probably the earliest well-established instance of such a distinction between the prince and the people.