and was compelled to appease the wrath of the
victor by a contribution of four hundred thousand gold florins. All the
municipal functionaries, and two thousand of the principal citizens,
went, stripped to their shirts, barefooted, and with heads uncovered, a
mile out of the town to meet the duke, and on their knees supplicated
for pardon. On this occasion they were deprived of several valuable
privileges, all irreparable loss for their future commerce. In the year
1482 they engaged in a war, with no better success, against Maximilian
of Austria, with a view to, deprive him of the guardianship of his son,
which, in contravention of his charter, he had unjustly assumed. In
1487 the town of Bruges placed the archduke himself in confinement, and
put some of his most eminent ministers to death. To avenge his son the
Emperor Frederic III. entered their territory with an army, and,
blockading for ten years the harbor of Sluys, put a stop to their entire
trade. On this occasion Amsterdam and Antwerp, whose jealousy had long
been roused by the flourishing condition of the Flemish towns, lent him
the most important assistance. The Italians began to bring their own
silk-stuffs to Antwerp for sale, and the Flemish cloth-workers likewise,
who had settled in England, sent their goods thither; and thus the town
of Bruges lost two important branches of trade. The Hanseatic League
had long been offended at their overweening pride; and it now left them
and removed its factory to Antwerp. In the year 1516 all the foreign
merchants left the town except only a few Spaniards; but its prosperity
faded as slowly as it had bloomed.

Antwerp received, in the sixteenth century, the trade which the
luxuriousness of the Flemish towns had banished; and under the
government of Charles V. Antwerp was the most stirring and splendid
city in the Christian world. A stream like the Scheldt, whose broad
mouth, in the immediate vicinity, shared with the North Sea the ebb and
flow of the tide, and could carry vessels of the largest tonnage under
the walls of Antwerp, made it the natural resort for all vessels which
visited that coast. Its free fairs attracted men of business from all
countries.

[Two such fairs lasted forty days, and all the goods sold there
were duty free.]

The industry of the nation had, in the beginning of this century,
reached its greatest height. The culture of grain, flax, the breeding
of cattle, the chase, and fisheries, enri