History Research, ISSN 2159-550X June 2013, Vol. 3, No.

6, 441-452

D
Netherlands, 1507-1567
William Monter
Northwestern University, Chicago, USA

DA VID

PUBLISHING

An Experiment in Female Government: The Habsburg

Any major research library contains dozens of historical works about the Dutch Revolt of 1568 and the ensuing eighty years war that permanently divided the Habsburg Netherlands. However, to the best of my knowledge, none of them pays serious attention to the remarkable fact that this region had been governed by three women on behalf of various distant male relatives for all but seven of the sixty years preceding the revolt. This account stresses two things: First, these women generally governed a densely populated and relatively rich collection of provinces with great success; second, that an implacably bitter civil war broke out shortly after a distant king compelled its third female Governor-General to resign. It also stresses the connections between the three women and suggests that Philip II had overlooked a better-prepared female candidate when he appointed his half-sister in 1559. Keywords: female government, regency, Habsburg Neherlands, Dutch Revolt

In December 1620, the Spanish Council of State agreed that Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, who for over twenty years had exercised joint sovereignty over the loyal provinces of the Netherlands with her now terminally-ill husband, must be asked to stay on as Governor-General for the rest of her lifenot only because of her personal popularity but also because these provinces are used to being governed by women1. These officials were invoking a regional tradition that was unique among the major states of early modern Europe. Before Isabel Clara Eugenia was named co-sovereign of this region in 1598, three generations of female gouvernantesall related as aunt and niece, and all chosen specifically for their ability to govern effectively without a male partnerhad administered the Habsburg Netherlands on behalf of their male relatives for more than fifty of the sixty years after 1507: Margaret of Savoy (1507-1514 and 1518-1530); Mary of Hungary (1531-1555); and Margaret of Parma (1559-1567). How did this happen? Any major hereditary state sometimes required regents (a term used here as a convenient shorthand for the local Netherlands title of Governors-General) to govern on behalf of sovereigns who were unable to exercise authority in person, usually because they were children or physically absent. To a vastly greater extent than any other important state in western Europe, the Habsburg Netherlands required such substitute rulers from its very beginning in 1482 until the French Revolution. For 20 of the first 32 years, its sovereigns were underage; after

William Monter, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Northwestern University. Quoted in Luc Duerloo, Dynasty and Piety: Archduke Albert (1598-1621) and Habsburg Political Culture in an Age of Religious Wars (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), 504. Professor Duerloo also informs me that the Austrian Habsburgs used similar phrases more than a century later, when the next woman, an unmarried sister of the Kaiser, was appointed to this post in 1725.

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1518, they were almost continually absent2. No other major European state required regencies for more than two decades at a time during the early modern centuries, but the Habsburg Netherlands was the exact reverse: its sovereigns were rarely resident. During the six decades after 1507 when this region usually had female Governors-General, its longest interlude of personal government by a resident adult sovereign lasted from Charles Vs abdication in 1555 until Philip IIs departure for Spain in 1559and during most of this period Philip was commuting occasionally to England, his wifes kingdom3. Although the history of regencies has yet to be explored systematically, it seems clear that the cumulative record of its female gouvernantes had accustomed the sixteenth-century Habsburg Netherlands to being governed by women. The majority of Europes regents were men; in the Low Countries, the widowed husband of a female sovereign had governed them for their son from 1482-1494. In the later Middle Ages, two kinds of womeneither widowed mothers of underaged kings or wives of absent monarchshad frequently filled such interim voids in sovereign authority, occasonally for very long periods 4 . What happened in the early 16th-century Habsburg Netherlands, however, seems a unique example of the political promotion of women to govern a major state. In 1507, when a childless widowed aunt became guardian and surrogate ruler for this regions underaged prince, no precedent existed anywhere in Europeespecially when the princes mother was alive. But politically, Juana la loca was the polar opposite of Margaret of Savoy. In the summer of 1506, explaining to Castilian deputies why she had no intention of fulfilling her responsibilities as proprietary monarch. Juana had assured them that the Flemings do not permit women to govern5. Yet she would live long enough to see her husbands sister and one of her own daughters govern the flamencos for over forty years. In fact, between 1507 and 1567 there was no interval greater than four years when the Low Countries were not being governed by a woman. None was its official sovereign, although there was no bar against female inheritance in the provinces comprising the Habsburg Netherlands. In early modern Europe there were significant differences between de facto female government and de jure female sovereignty. In the Low Countries, the Burgundian succession crisis in 1477 offers a vivid example of what happened with a female sovereign, and much later the reign of the Archdukes (1598-1621) provides a very similar example. Both times, their husbands virtually monopolized official state business. While female sovereigns followed the pattern of a politically-dominant male partner in the Low Countries, its non-hereditary female regents present a totally different picture. For the only time in
Between 1599 and 1621, the Habsburg Netherlands did have resident official sovereigns, the Archdukes, Albert of Austria and Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia of Spain; but experts disagree about how much autonomy they actually possessed. Belgian historians like Duerloo (n. 1 above) tend to be maximalists, while Hispanists like Geoffrey Parker tend to be minimalists. 3 When Charles V resided at Brussels from early 1553 until his abdication (his longest period of residence as sovereign prince since his departure for Spain in 1517), his sister Mary of Hungary retained the title of Governor-General, managing day-to-day administration and frequently exercising decisive influence on Charles himself: see M. J. Rodrguez-Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II and Habsburg Authority, 1551-1559 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 48-50. 4 The longest female regency occurred when the childless wife of a fifteenth-century Aragonese monarch governed his original kingdom for over twenty consecutive years after he moved to Naples: Theresa Earenfight, The Kings Other Body: Maria of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia: Univerisity of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). There was one notable exception to the wife-or-mother rule for female regents in 1483 when Louis XI of France named his oldest and married daughter, Anne, as regent for a brother twelve years younger. 5 Bethany Aram, La reina Juana: nuevos datos, neuvas interpretacines, in Maria Vitoria Lpez-Cordn and Gloria Franco (eds.), La Reina Isabel y las reinas de Espaa: realidad, modeles e imagen historiogrfica (Madrid, 2005), 101-103, updates the account of the 1506 Castilian Cortes by Jean-Marie Cauchis, Philippe le Beau. Le dernier duc de Bougogne (Turnhout, 2003), 198-99, 212.
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European history, three successive generations of locally-born Habsburg princesses followed their aunts as Governors-General. None of them governed with a male partner, and all served indefinitely. During the first half of the sixteenth century, a time when women very rarely governed other major European states, and then only for brief periods, the Habsburg Netherlands became a testing ground for womens capacities as substitute rulers. Overall, they appear to have administered this densely populated and comparatively wealthy region with notable success and left favorable memories. Although the first woman was dismissed in 1515, she was reappointed three years later and eventually died in office. Both the second and third woman eventually resigned; but both would later be asked to serve a second time, though neither actually did so. Another woman (also a niece of her most recent female predecessor, but utterly unfamiliar with the region) became the beneficiary of this record; she was named its co-sovereign in 1598 and, as we have seen, became its fourth female Governor-General after her husbands death. She would remain associated with the government of the Low Countries for 35 years. Since I have explored elsewhere how Europes 16th-century female regents sponsored novel cultural promotions of women as rulers, this essay will concentrate on questions that my recent book ignored or underemphasized (Monter, 2012)6 . First, how did this unique tradition begin? After her older brothers unexpected death in 1506, how did Margaret of Savoy persuade her remarkably egotistical. Father, Emperor Maximilian I, to make her his grandsons guardian and soon give her progressively greater political authority? After being dismissed in 1515, how did she regain her political authority a few years later? What does the strikingly different governmental style of her niece and successor tell us about the possibilities open to female rulers in an age usually described as highly patriarchal? For both women, a few especially valuable lengthy political assessmentsa retrospective justification, a letter of resignation, a public eulogyprovide insights into how women could exercise delegated authority with long-term success during the heyday of the Renaissance and the Reformation in northern Europe. Different questions arise with the regions third female Governor-General, Margaret of Parma. She is generally considered a political failure and was undoubtedly handicapped by inadequate authority; experts like Helmut Koenigsberger insist that she possessed less autonomy than her predecessors (Koenigsberger, 2001)7. If so, then why, shortly before Philip II forced her resignation in 1567, did she commission a medalthe first by any female ruler in Europecelebrating her government? And why did he attempt to reappoint her eleven years later? More importantly, was it simple coincidence that following half a century of generally stable government by three female Governors-General, their seven male successors after 1567 provoked and sustained an interminable and incredibly bloody civil war that would permanently transform the political geography of the Low Countries?

Breaking a Glass Ceiling

The political career of Margaret of Austria, dowager duchess of Savoy and the first female gouvernante of the Habsburg Low Countries, offers two novelties. She was Europes first female regent who was neither the wife, mother, or sister of the official sovereign; and she became the first regent in European history, male or
6 Completely overlooks the novelty of the phenomenon and largely ignores the kinship continuity between the Netherlands regents. 7 Entitles his chapter on her governorship Rule from Madrid.

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female, to be reappointed to the same position by a different prince. Although invariably overlooked by her biographers 8 , Margarets path to governing the remnants of her mothers Burgundian inheritancea responsibility she had sought ever since learning about her brothers Spanish inheritance in 1504seems truly remarkable. After their rulers unexpected death in Spain, the Estates-General of the Low Countries met in October 1506, opened his will, and found that it never mentioned a possible regency for his young son. Some deputies from Flanders and Artois wanted to avoid another regency by Maximilian and timidly suggested Philips widow. No one seems to have mentioned the late princes only sibling, his 26-year-old childless and widowed sister9. Immediately upon learning of her brothers death, Margaret traveled north from her Savoyard dowry lands in Bresse to the nearest Burgundian possession, the neighboring Free County of Burgundy, where she spent all of November 1506. At months end, the head of her privy council, the Piedmontese lawyer Mercurino Gattinara, presided over a meeting of the provincial Estates, which Margaret of Burgundy (the archbishops chapter calls her Domina Margarita Burgundie) attended in person. The assembly proceeded to elect her as its sovereign princean event probably without parallel in European history. Pending formal approval from her father the Emperor, she took possession of a poor province which had suffered so much for her motheroffering an unexpectedly matrilineal version of Burgundian history since 1477 that exactly reversed her sister-in-laws remarks to the Castilian Cortes a few months earlier. In this version, Margaret, the only surviving child of a sovereign Burgundian duchess, became her true heir. An all-male representative assembly apparently endorsed it, but Margarets father emphatically rejected it. When Franche-Comts emissaries finally reached him in Germany, Maximilian ignored their resolution and haughtily informed them that he would appoint some commissioners to ratify his possession in his grandsons name10. Published sources remain tantalizingly thin for the next several months. When Margaret and Gattinara met the peripatetic Emperor in Alsace and Swabia in January and February 1507 (Bruchet & Lancien, 1934)11, they persuaded Maximilian (then obsessed by scheming to make himself Pope) to name Margaret as his legal representative (procureur gnral, especial et irrvocable) on behalf of his ward and grandson. Accompanied by several high-ranking dignitaries named by her father, she reached Brabant in March 1507 and promptly staged a series of official joyous entries with her young nephew. But guardianship of an heir is not the same thing as regency, and Margarets autonomy remained constricted; even after Gattinara had wrung further concessions from her father in October 1508, she still referred to the regency council as Maximilians12. Only after Margaret took a prominent role in arranging the League of Cambrai at the end of 1508 was her
Our best-documented account of her early period comes from a French archivist, Max Bruchet, Marguerite dAutriche, Duchesse de Savoie (Lille, 1927); but like all her subsequent biographers, he omits this key episode. 9 Robert Wellens, Les Etats gnraux et la succession de Philippe le Beau dans les Pays-Bas, in Anciens Pays et Assembles dEtas, 56 (1972), 123-159; Cauchis, Philippe le Beau, 209. Both Henry VII of England and Louis XII of France expected Guillaume de Cro-Chievrs to be named guardian of the young prince. In a sense they were correct, since eight years later Chivres became the principal adviser to young prince Charles. 10 The best account of this little-known event remains Edouard Clerc, Histoire des tats gnraux et des liberts publiques en Franche-Comt, 2 vols. (Lons-le-Saunier, 1876-1881) I, 237-238, esp. 237 n. 6. (my italics). In 1509 Margaret also acquired sovereignty of another fragment of her mothers Burgundian inheritance, the small county of Charolais, an enclave in France: see Hubert Elie, Le Charolais dans lhistoire europenne (Lyon, 1956), 44-72. 11 Locates her at Ensisheim in Alsace in early January 1507, then at Ulm and Rottenburg in Swabia on February 7. Ten days later she went hunting with her father at Urach and left soon afterwards for the Low Countries, reaching Maestricht by March 26. 12 On the limitations to her autonomy, see J.-M. Cauchis, Marguerite dAutriche, gouvernante et diplomate, in Agosto Paravicini Baglioni et al. (eds.), Litinrance des seigneurs (XIVe-XVIe sicle) (Lausanne, 2003), 356-58. On her joyous entries, see Jean Lemaire de Belges, Chronique de 1507, ed. A. Schoysman (Brussels, 2001).
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political autonomy increased. Three months later, Maximilian rewarded her handsomely, not only increasing her authority in the Low Countries but also naming her as personal ruler of both Franche-Comt and the county of Charolais in central France. Gattinara arranged Margarets proclaimation as souveraine in both places in April 1509, and various official sources confirm that Margaret remained the sovereign prince of my poor county of Burgundy until her death in 1530. It also seems worth noting that she continued to describe herself as Margaret of Austria and of Burgundy, widowed Duchess of Savoy on a manuscript she wrote herself sometime after 151013. However, without informing her, Maximilian abruptly terminated her service as Governor-General at the end of 1514 by proclaiming his grandson of age (Charles was not yet fifteen, younger than Maximilians son Philip had been when his father had declared him of age in 1494). By summer 1515, Margaret presented a dignified defense of her administration to her nephew and his council. Her justification, an exceptional document that repays careful attention, went a long way towards restoring her political legitimacy14. Sire, it began, I have evidently learned, despite much patience, that people are trying through various means and exhortations to make you suspicious of me, your humble aunt, and withdraw me from your trust and confidence, which seems a very ill reward for the services I have done for you. A bit later, she continued that she would give a full and complete discharge of all my responsibilties and manner of government during your minority; after hearing and digesting it, Sire, you will see that I have evidently conducted myself well and loyally in this government, acording to the exigencies of situations that have happened to me during your minority and scorning any private profit, as someone serving from the heart and not in order to enrich myself from your propertya point on which she particularly prided herself. She continued, I also desire, Sire, that these matters be better understood through the gentlemen present here, because assertions could be contradicted if they are not truthful. I beg that whoever hears anything that is not true, if they wish to say so in your presence, I will answer, because I much prefer that people talk to my face and not behind my back. Margaret began with a disingenuously passive account of her appointment that blithely overlooked her remarkable capers in Franche-Comt. To give a concise account of the doings [demen] of [my] government, Sire, fairly soon after the very sorrowful trespass of your father, my good lord and brother, whom God absolve, by his command the Emperor my lord and father summoned me to him, by whom it was ordered that I must come to these parts for the government and administration of your person and your lands, because he would be absent from them. And because of my desire to be of service to you as the person towards whom, next to my lord and father, I have the most duty and nearest blood kinship, I willingly accepted these responsibilities, leaving aside my private affairs, somewhat perplexed by this sudden departure from my dowry lands. Offering detailed examinations of various political and financial episodes of her administration that had been criticized, Margret insisted that If you have been told and inferred, Sire, that you are in debt because of my government, it is no wonder, and should not be imputed to me.. It has neither been because of my fault nor for my particular profit. I have put in a great deal of my own money and, thanks be to God, you can see that nothing has been sold or alienated from your domain; on the contrary, a few things have been recovered. She also insisted on the difficulties of being responsible for administration without having ultimate financial
Madame Marguerite d'Austeriche et de Bourgonne/ Duchesse de Savoie veuve, reproduced in Marguerite Debae, ed., La librairie de Marguerite dAutriche: catalogue de lexposition (Brussels: Bibliothque Royale, 1987), 164. 14 The following four paragraphs are excerpted translations from L. Ph. C. Van den Bergh, ed., Corrrespondence de Marguerite dAutriche avec ses amis, sur les affaires des Pays-Bas de 1506-1528, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1845-1847), II, 117-27 [#226].
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authority: Moreover, it was not really possible for me to control your finances, because the gentlemen who have handled your financial affairs will acknowledge that the Emperor named them and supervised them. As everyone in her audience knew, Maximilian was notorious for his fiscal irresponsibility. Her closing justification returned to money matters. Thus, Sire, you may conclude that in no way have I been responsible for those things for which I am blamed and accused, nor is there any reason to withhold my pension for so long when every other lord collects his promptly. If mine is larger, I also happen to be your only aunt and I have no child or heir other than you; I know no one whom your honor touches more than me. But if it pleases you to believe hastily what you have been told about me and treat me as you are beginning to do, I would rather occupy myself with my minor affairs and retire gracefully. The back of her petition notes that Madame was considered fully discharged of everything, with other great and good words and promises. Margaret promised her nephew that when it pleases you to make use of me and hold me in the esteem which the situation merits, I will serve you well and loyally, risking my person and my property as I have done heretofore, but a lengthy interval separated her discharge from her reinstatement. In early 1517, after meeting his grandon Charles in person before he departed for Spain, Maximilian advised him to name Margaret to a regency council. However, she only regained her full official authority as regent after managing another major political coup by successfully bribing German electors to vote for Charles as Emperor in 151915. In addition to the ongoing Habsburg-Valois wars, Margarets second regency faced a major challenge from the Protestant Reformation, which affected the Low Countries both early and deeply. In 1523, she closely supervised Europes first public executions of Lutherans (two Augustinian monks from Antwerp) in the regions capital, Brussels. She concluded her final eleven years in power by conducting another set of crucial diplomatic negotiations with her familys greatest political enemy; these produced the so-called Ladies Peace of 1529 with France, which lasted seven years to become the longest truce during these wars. Because she served two long terms as Governor-General of the Habsburg Netherlands, Margaret of Savoy composed two final reports to the same ruling prince, in 1515 and 1530. Both boasted favorable summaries of her political record, but her second and briefer effort was triumphant rather than justificatory. One day before her death, she boasted to Charles V that she left his possessions in the Low Countries not only unspoiled but greatly increased since his departure, after a government for which I hope to receive Gods reward, your contentment, and the gratitude of posterity (Brandi, 1939). Of course, he also inherited her two counties, Franche-Comt and Charolais.

Niece, Protge, and Successor

For 24 of the next 29 years, the Habsburg Netherlands experienced its second female Governor-General, Mary of Hungary. Like the aunt at whose court she spent her childhood, she was a childless widow and was also appointed in her mid-20th. Mary of Hungary would serve continuously for a longer period than any other Governor-General of the Low Countries until the mid-18th century, and she left behind a strongly favorable impression. Upon learning, nearly half a century after her resignation, that they would again have a female ruler, the loyal provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands expressed their nostalgia for the good old days of Marys government (Lateitia Gorter-van Royen, 1995), and her example probably influencd the opinion of the Spanish Council of State in 1620 that this region was accustomed to be governed by women.
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Cauchis, Marguerite dAutriche (above, n. 12), 368-369.

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But there was no such thing as a female style of rule. Each of the first two women became an extremely effective gouvernante of a heterogenous collection of provinces whose social and political cohesion rested to a considerable degree on a long-established and enormously influential aristocratic old-boy network, the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece, from which their sex excluded them; but their governmental styles were radically different. The sharp contrast was noticeable to contemporaries, and by the end of the sixteenth century it had become something of a commonplace that the first woman had governed the Low Countries with sweetness (douceur) and the other with rigor (de Brantme, 1991). If Margaret of Savoy seems a classical instance of an iron fist in a velvet glove, her niece forgot the glove. Mary of Hungary left more extensive physical traces on the regions landscape than either her predecessor or her female successorin fact, more than almost any other regent in European history, male or female. Regency governments rarely create new towns; but Mary of Hingary founded two of them, primarily for military purposes, and both small towns still exist in southern Belgium. In 1546 came a fortified frontier village, planned by Italian engineers, that she named for herselfMariembourg. When the French overran it in 1554 (and re-named it Henribourg for their own king), she hastily created another fortified village about ten miles north, naming it Philippeville for her nephew, who was then living in England as the sovereigns husband. If Margaret of Savoy built a new official residence for herself in Mechelen, Mary of Hingary outdid her by building a magnificent new palace at Binche and a nearby hunting lodge, also named for herselfMariemont. However, the French invasion of 1554 also destroyed her new palace so thoroughly that it is now a site for Walloon archeologists. In trying to assess Mary of Hungarys political legacy, historians confront two eloquent official summaries that were composed for diametrically opposite purposes. The first is a lengthy letter of reisgnation that she presented to her brother in 1555 (de Jongh, 1958). Exactly as her aunt had done forty years earlier when justifying her administration of the same office, Mary complained bitterly about the difficulties of raising sufficient money to keep an army in the field in order to fight wars that she could neither begin nor halt. Beyond the burdens of any Governor-General, Mary added some observations about the additional limitations imposed by her sex; a woman, she remarked, is never as respected and feared as a man, no matter what office she holds. In a tone verging on irony after a quarter-century in office, she began, Even if I possessed all the aptitudes necessary to govern well (and I am far from doing so), experience has taught me that a woman is not suited to this purpose, neither in peacetime nor even less in time of war. One must note that Marya skilful horsewoman who rode in masculine style and personally managed a hunting staff of 23 men and 76 dogsexercised more direct supervision over Habsburg armies than any other woman, either of her time or much later, and offered plenty of military advice (much of it sound) while complaining that as a woman, I was compelled to leave the conduct of the war to others. Deeply uneasy about a younger generation who were becoming increasingly prominent, Mary told her brother that I would not wish to rule over such people, even if I were a man and sufficiently capable. Her wish was granted. Her resignation became effective simultaneously with Charles Vs famous abdication at Brussels in 1555a detail that explains why she is the only woman depicted in the numerous representations of this event, standing prominently at her brothers left hand. Three years later, Mary of Hungary died in Spain. Her state funeral at Brussels included the most eloquent official panegyric ever offered to a female ruler in Renaissance Europe, including Elizabeth I of England, and

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was soon printed by the famous press of Plantin16. This public praise should be taken with the same proverbial grain of salt as her private letter of resignation three years earlier, but is nonetheless impressive. As for public affairs and government, began its central and engthiest section, Mary gave very clear proof of a rare felicity of mind, facility of apprehension and dexterity of advice, showing energy and vivacity in all things. It went on to describe her style of ruling in some detail, revealing that Mary of Hungary was what Americans today call a policy wonk. In a short time after her appointmant, she learned and understood all the special features even better than those who had been managing such business. This was one of the most admirable things about her: that among so many public matters, whether finance, appointments, wages, ributes, customs, legal or judicial privileges, offices, treaties, and infinite other matters, there were no points or articles which she did not know and recall, as if she understood the complete anatomy of the state (Rpublique). If scholars ever get around to digesting the enormous and still mostly unpublished paper trail she left behind her, they may well concur. But Mary of Hungary was not an easy person to work with. It seems significant that she, unlike her aunt, never excelled at diplomacy. A quarter-century ago, Mia Rodriguez-Salgado offered a vivid portrait of her increasing dominance over her employer Charles V during the 1550s: Mary found it difficult to tolerate interference or resistance either from the area she governed or from her brother and nephew whom she was bound to serve17. Rodriguz-Salgado concluded her preliminary sketch of Mary by remarking She was without a doubt a most difficult person to handle. When she withdrew to Spain, which had been governed since 1554 by another female regent, her widowed niece Juana of Portugal, the two women soon clashed, with Juana threatening to resign because, she told her broher, the character of the Queen of Hungary is such that she will not be content with offering advice, but will wish to command, and the authority given to me to govern cannot suffer such a change18. Meanwhile Philip II wanted to return to Spain and was convinced that only his formidable aunt could govern the Netherlands satisfactorily in his absence. In a recent massive biography, Geoffrey Parker describes Philip IIs futile efforts to draw her out of her Spanish retirement in 1558 (Parker, 2010). Instead, Mary gave Philip some characteristically blunt and rather condescending advice, based, as she emphasized, on 25 years of experience in governing the Habsburg Netherlands. In what became in effect her political testament, she warned her nephew that it would be impossible to impose any major changes on the Netherlands from Spain and predicted with tragic precision that trying to do so in absentia would produce riots, mutinies, and rebellions; whoever knows the humors of the natives of these lands, she assured him, would hold this for very certain. She added that Your Higness should not think that those lands up there can be governed like those down here, without mixing severity whenever necessary with sweetness19. Philip II almost succeeded in blackmailing Mary of Hungary by having his father command her to return, but this project collapsed when both his father and his aunt died in autumn 1558.

Picking the Wrong Woman?

When Philip II finally left the Netherlands in 1559, he could not use his deputy, Duke Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy, as regent because this prince had to reclaim his own duchy, finally restored to him at the recent treaty
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Monter, Rise of Female Kings, 103. Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire (above, n. 3), 5. 18 Monter, Rise of Female Kings, 102. 19 Marys long letter (in Spanish), including a copy sent to her brother, printed by L. P. Gachard, Retraite et mort de Charles V au monastre de Yuste. Lettres indites, 3 vols. (Brussels, 1854-56), I, 342-352; quote from Parker, Felipe II, 159.

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of Cateau-Cambrsis. The next Governor-General of the Netherlands would be another woman. As Philip II sought someone to assume a responsibility that he privately called a black government, both available candidatesthe widowed Duchess Christina or Lorraine and Ducheess Margaret of Parmawere his female kin. Their biographies show remarkable similarities. They were the same age (37); they had been raised together at female courts in the Low Countries, first by their great-aunt Margaret of Savoy and then by their aunt Mary of Hungary, before each of them was sent to Italy at age fourteen for dynastically-advantageous marriages. By 1559, each woman had a teenage son from a second marriage. Before reaching a decision, Philip II first held lengthy talks at Brussels with the more politically experienced candidate, his cousin Christina of Denmark. As a dowager duchess, she had governed Lorraine for her young son with considerable skill between 1545 and 1552; moreover, she had just played an important role as the official mediator at the major treaty of Cateau-Cambrsis, making a key suggestion that helped to finally end the Habsburg-Valois wars to her familys advantage. She was highly popular with local aristocrats in the Low Countries and obviously expected to be chosen. However, she terminally alienated Philip II, who privately claimed to find her noisy racket (barahunda) insufferable20. Instead, he selected his politically inexperienced half-sister, Margaret of Parma, and expelled Christina from the Low Countries so her presence would not undermine his new Governor-General. Margaret, who possessed less autonomy than either of her female predecessors and governed the Habsburg Netherlands for a much shorter period, is generally considered a poltical failure21. There are good reasons for this judgement; Margaret of Parma is the only regent in European history, male or female, to have her resignation accepted twice by the same monarch within fifteen years. However, this dubious distinction shows that the second Margaret of Austria was also among the very few regents who, like her great-aunt and namesake, were appointed twice to govern the same region. Margaret of Parma also differed from her female Habsburg predecessors and successors in two ways that complicate assessments of her political record. First, although her father Charles V had quickly acknowledged her, she was Europes only female regent of illegitimate birth. More importantly, Madama Margaret had a husband (the Duke of Parma, Ottavio Farnese) and when she was appointed, their son was living at her employers court. Throughout her eight years as gouvernante, Madama maintained a regular correspondence with Ottavio; he remained in Italy, rarely visiting the Netherlands except to attend their sons wedding to a Portuguese princess at Brussels in 1565. If historians conventionally dismiss her regency as a failureand she certainly mishandled some crucial negotiations during the regions dramatic political crisis of summer 1566we must also understand why Margaret commissioned a medal celebrating her political triumphs shortly before Philip II forced her to resign in 1567. The explanation is that after being forced into humiliating compromises throughout much of 1566, Margaret had regained control of the situation early in 1567 by defeating the military forces opposing her government. In March, a small army of her bodyguards destroyed the disorganized forces of some rebel nobles outside the walls of Antwerp and significantly, took no prisoners. A month later, Orange fled Antwerp, enabling Margaret to begin building a royal fortress in the regions greatest city, and the chief of the Beggars, Brederode, fled to Germany. Viglius, a veteran administrator, insisted that before [Alvas] arrival in these
Julia Cartwright, Christine of Denmark, Duchess of Milan and Lorraine, 1522-1590 (London, 1913), describes her intense disappointment at not becoming Governor-General. Quote from Parker, Felipe II, 324. 21 Fullest biography by Jane de Iongh, Madama: Margaretha van Oostenrijk hertogin van Parma en Piancenza, 1522-1586 (Amsterdam, 1967); most recent by Georges-Henri Dumont, Marguerite de Parme, btarde de Charles-Quint (1522-1586) (Brussels, 1999). Parker, Felipe II, 1181 n. 44, notes Christinas expulsion.
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parts, everything was pacified [assez quiet] through the prudence of the duchess and her councillors, so that there was no town or village of which she was not master and where Catholic worship had not been restored, and she had begun to turn her hand to punishing those who had been the authors of the said novelties and troubles (Wauters, 1858). In these circumstances, Margaret commissioned her celebratory medalfrom the same engraver who had recently made the badge of the Beggars opposing her and who would soon supervise a massive equestrian statue for her male Spanish successor (Smolderen, 1996)22. With order already restored, Alvas Spanish legions and legal staff served little purpose apart from committing atrocities that soon provoked their enemies into increasingly desperate expedients. For example, after her troops reconquered the rebellious city of Valenciennes, Margarets reprisals were minimal; on 31 May 1567, both ministers were hanged and three captains decapitated (Lottin, 2007). Under Alva, at least 120 people were executed here within two years. It did not take very long before such policies provoked a civil war that would last eighty years.

How Well Did Delegated Female Government Work in This State at This Time?
A short if provocative answer would be overall, it worked better than male government, but not quite well enough. Modern scholarship avoids gendering the political history of a region described in 1620 as accustomed to be governed by women, and rarely acknowledges the collective achievements of its female regents. However, emphasizing its peculiar tradition of long-serving female Governors-General can enrich our understanding of this regions 16th-century political transition from a unitary Burgundian state towards its modern political division into three nations (two kingdoms, the Netherlands and Belgium, and a Grand Duchy, Luxemburg). For example, the first woman, Margaret of Savoy, can be understood as its last Burgundian ruler. At the very beginning of her sudden rise to political prominence, this is exactly how she successfully presented herself to the Estates of Franche-Comt in November 1506. A later portrait that now hangs near the magnificent tomb she commissioned for herself in her new church/monastery complex at Bourg en Bresse (ceded by Savoy to France in 1601), identifies her more flamboyantly as Margaret Augusta, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess and Countess of Burgundy. Her long career as gouvernante also explains why the best recent introduction to Burgundian history by Blokmans and Prevenier concludes with her death in 1530 (Blokmans & Prevenier, 1998). Because official descent is paternal rather than maternal, and because women so rarely ran princely courts, it becomes very easy to overlook the political possibilities arising at a female court. If Margarets two female successors were Habsburgs, they were brought up at a Burgundian court. During her first term as gouvernante, Margaret raised the niece who became her immediate successor; and during her second term she began raising the great-niece who became its third female gouvernante (her successor completed the task at her court)at the same time they were raising another of Margarets great-nieces who became her unsuccessful rival in 1559. Perhaps more importantly, one could also argue that the regions tradition of female government retarded, but could not prevent, its political implosion after the mid-1560s. Its history might have looked very different if Philip II, finally free from the formidable presence of his aunt Mary of Hungary, had either listened to her
22

Various examples in the Low Countries, Italy, and England, but not in Spain. On Albas statue, see Peter Arnade, Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots: The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt (Cornell University Press, 2008), 208 and n. 149.

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political testament" of 1558 or found the opinions of her prize pupil, Christina of Lorraine, less insufferable in 1559. An important reason why government of this region by various female relatives of its Habsburg sovereigns worked as well as it did was because all three women had generally governed in close cooperation with the local male aristocratic political elite. However, their seven male successors after 1567, including Margarets famous son, Alexander Farnese, became polarizing instruments of a distant and alien master. Unsurprisingly, it was during this lengthy interruption in female government that the formal political division of the former Burgundian Netherlands began in 1579, with the Union of Utrecht in the rebellious northern provinces and the Union of Arras in the southern loyalist provinces. An unusually poignant detail suggests that a simulacrum of female government proved insufficient to prevent this schism, because these formal subdivisions occurred during a little noticed and half-hearted attempt to reinstate Madama Margaret of Parma. In 1578, after using three male Governors-General in seven years, Philip IIprodded by Cardinal Granvelle and over the objections of his Spanish advisersreappointed her to govern this region jointly with her son Alexander Farnese, making her responsible for civil admnistration and him for military affairs23. At the advanced age of 57, accompanied by her seven-year-old granddaughter, Margaret traveled north with an official appointment to govern the Low Countries. However, the arrangement ended in complete failure after a bitter conflict with her son, who had salvaged Spanish authority in the Walloon provinces and now believed he deserved undivided authority to govern them. As Madama told her husband, Alexander was not the first son who in his thirties no longer listens to advice from his mother or his father. In May 1581, his mother requested Philip II (now in Lisbon) for permission to return home. The king finally gave Alexander sole governmental authority on the final day of 1581, but forbade his sister from leaving. She finally departed in September 1583, accompanied by the same old friends who had greeted her return, once again with no reward from her brother24. Margaret herself observed to Philip II in 1580 that the government of this country is not suitable for a woman at this time25. By the time Philip IIs oldest daughter (and thus Margaret of Parmas niece) arrived to take up her responsibilities as the regions co-sovereign nineteen years later, the division between rebellious and loyal provinces had become unbridgeable: The Burgundian lands of Margaret of Savoy had shrunk to the Spanish Netherlands of the Archdukes.

References
Blokmans, W., & Prevenier, W. (1998). The Promised Lands: the Low Countries under Burgundian rule, 1369-1530. Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brandi, K. (1939). The Emperor Charles V. (C. V. Wedgwood, Trans.). London, p. 230. Bruchet, M., & Lancien, E. (1934). LItinraire de Marguerite dAutriche (p. 20). Lille. Lateitia Gorter-van Royen (1995). Maria van Honrije, regents der Nederlanden. Hilversum, p. 9. Louvain-la-Neuv, pp. 287-292 Lottin, A. (2007). La rvolte des Gueux en Flandre, Artois et Hainaut (pp. 117-121). Lilliers. Monter, W. (2012). The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800 (pp. 94-104, 115-118). New Haven: Yale University
23 Margarets misgivings in October 1577 about accepting her borthers invitation are summarized in Joseph Lefvre (ed.), Correspondence de Philippe II sur les affaires des Pays-Bas, 2e. partie, 4 vols. (Brussels, 1940-60), I, 94-97 (#169). In July 1578, Philip IIs council expressed their fruitless opposition to her reappointment: ibid., 329 (#549). 24 The best summary of Margarets failed return is Lon Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnse, prince de Parme, gouverneur gnral des Pays-Bas (1545-1592), 5 vols. (Brussels, 1933-37), II, 322-46 (quote from 332). 25 Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnse (above, n. 29) II, 335: my italics.

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Press. Koenigsberger, H. G. (2001). Monarchies, states generals and parliaments: the Netherlands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cambridge University Press. Pierre de Brantme (1991), Receuil des Dames (p. 510). In E. Vaucheret (Ed.). Paris.. de Jongh, J. (1958). Mary of Hungary, Second Regent of the Netherlands (pp. 263-266). London. Parker, G. (2010). Felipe II: La biografia definitiva. Barcelona: Planeta, pp. 157-161. Wauters, A. (Ed.). (1858). Mmoires de Viglius et Hopperus sur le commencement des troubles des Pays-Bas (p. 197). Brssels. Smolderen, L. (1996), Jacques Jonghelinck: Sculpteur, mdailleur et graveur de sceaux (1530-1606)