Under his
rule, the town continued to increase in wealth and population. But
the general tendency of later medieval Europe toward centralized
despotisms as against urban republics was too strong in the end for
free Ghent. In 1381, Philip was appointed dictator by the democratic
party, in the war against the Count, son of his father's opponent,
whom he repelled with great slaughter in a battle near Bruges.
He then made himself Regent of Flanders. But Count Louis obtained
the aid of Charles VI. of France, and defeated and killed Philip van
Artevelde at the disastrous battle of Roosebeke in 1382. That was
practically the end of local freedom in Flanders. Tho the cities
continued to revolt against their sovereigns from time to time, they
were obliged to submit for the most part to their Count and to the
Burgundian princes who inherited from him by marriage.
The subsequent history of Ghent is that of the capital of the
Burgundian Dukes, and of the House of Austria. Here the German king,
Maximilian, afterward Emperor, married Mary of Burgundy, the heiress
of the Netherlands; and here Charles V.
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