e, with the
tacit support of the wealthier burghers, to substitute for the officers
elected by the gilds his own commissioners. [Sidenote: Revolt of Ghent]
But this usurpation, together with a variety of economic ills for which
the commoners were inclined, quite wrongly, to blame the government,
caused general discontent and in one case open rebellion. The gilds of
Ghent, a proud and ancient city, suffering from the encroachments of
capitalism and from the decline of the Flemish cloth industry, had long
asserted among their rights that of each gild to refuse to pay one of the
taxes, any one it chose, levied by the government. [Sidenote: 1539] The
attempt {237} of the government to suppress this privilege caused a
rising which took the characteristically modern form of a general strike.
The regent of the Netherlands, Mary, yielded at first to the demands of
the gilds, as she had no means of coercion convenient. Charles was in
Spain at the time, but hurried northward, being granted free passage
through France by the king who felt he had an interest in aiding his
fellow monarch to put down rebellious subjects. Early in 1540 Charles
entered Ghent at the head of a sufficient army. He soon meted out a
sanguinary punishment to the "brawlers" as the strikers were called,
humbled the city government, deprived it of all local privileges,
suppressed all independent corporations, asserted the royal prerogative
of nominating aldermen, and erected a fortress to overawe the burghers.
Thus the only overt attempt to resist the authority of Charles V, apart
from one or two insignificant Anabaptist riots, was crushed.

In matters of foreign policy the people of the Netherlands naturally
wished to be guided in reference to their own interests and not to the
larger interests of the emperor's other domains. Wielding immense
wealth--during the middle decades of the sixteenth century Antwerp was
both the first port and the first money-market of Europe--and cherishing
the sentiment that Charles was a native of their land, they for some time
sweetly flattered themselves that their interests were the center around
which gravitated the desires and needs of the Empire and of Spain.
Indeed, the balance of these two great states, and the regency of
Margaret of Austria, [Sidenote: Margaret of Austria, Regent, 1522-31] a
Hapsburg determined to give the Netherlands their due, for a time allowed
them at least the semblance of getting their wishes.