having resisted the payment
of some new tax. It found no support from the rest of Flanders.
Nevertheless this powerful city singly maintained the war for
the space of two years; but the intrepid burghers finally yielded
to the veterans of the duke, formed to victory in the French
wars. The principal privileges of Ghent were on this occasion
revoked and annulled.

During these transactions the province of Holland, which enjoyed
a degree of liberty almost equal to Flanders, had declared war
against the Hanseatic towns on its own proper authority. Supported
by Zealand, which formed a distinct country, but was strictly united
to it by a common interest, Holland equipped a fleet against the
pirates which infested their coasts and assailed their commerce,
and soon forced them to submission. Philip in the meantime contrived
to manage the conflicting elements of his power with great subtlety.
Notwithstanding his ambitious and despotic character, he conducted
himself so cautiously that his people by common consent confirmed
his title of "the Good," which was somewhat inappropriately given
to him at the very epoch when he appeared to deserve it least. Age
and exhaustion may be adduced among the causes of the toleration
which signalized his latter years; and if he was the usurper of
some parts of his dominions, he cannot be pronounced a tyrant
over any.

Philip had an only son, born and reared in the midst of that
ostentatious greatness which he looked on as his own by divine
right; whereas his father remembered that it had chiefly become
his by fortuitous acquirement, and much of it by means not likely
to look well in the sight of Heaven. This son was Charles, count of
Charolois, afterward celebrated under the name of Charles the Rash.
He gave, even in the lifetime of his father, a striking specimen
of despotism to the people of Holland. Appointed stadtholder of
that province in 1457, he appropriated to himself several important
successions; forced the inhabitants to labor in the formation of
dikes for the security of the property thus acquired; and, in a
word, conducted himself as an absolute master. Soon afterward he
broke out into open opposition to his father, who had complained of
this undutiful and impetuous son to the states of the provinces,
venting his grief in lamentations instead of punishing his people's
wrongs. But his private rage burst forth one day in a manner as
furious as his public expressions were tame. He