Mary of Burgundy
Mary of Burgundy was nineteen when her father was killed at Nancy, inherited the richest lands in Europe with the king of France already marching into them, signed away her father's powers to keep her towns, married the emperor's son to keep the rest, and died five years later falling from a horse; the marriage is why the Habsburgs had the Netherlands and why France and the Habsburgs fought for two hundred years. She was born at Brussels in 1457, the only child of Charles the Bold, and had been offered in marriage to half the princes of Europe as her father's diplomacy required. On 5 January 1477 he died, and Louis XI, her godfather, seized the duchy of Burgundy and Picardy within weeks and told the estates of the Netherlands that a girl could not hold what a man had lost. The estates met at Ghent in February and made her sign the Great Privilege, which undid her father's centralising, restored the provinces' courts and their right to refuse war and taxes, and was the constitution the Dutch would cite against Philip II a century later. Ghent then beheaded two of her councillors in front of her while she pleaded from a window. She chose Maximilian of Habsburg, whom her father had already negotiated for, and married him at Ghent in August 1477. He was eighteen, spoke no French, and had no money. He fought Louis for her at Guinegate in 1479 and won. She bore Philip in 1478 and Margaret in 1480. In March 1482, hawking near Bruges, her horse fell and rolled on her, and she died three weeks later at twenty-five, having made the estates accept Maximilian as regent for the boy, which they did badly. The peace of Arras that year gave Louis the duchy for good and Franche-Comté and Artois as Margaret's dowry, which Louis's successor gave back. Her tomb in Bruges is the last great Burgundian bronze; the Netherlands were Habsburg from then until 1795.
- Lived: 1457 CE – 1482 CE
- Nationality: Burgundian
- Roles: duchess, monarch
