In the period between the two Arteveldes, the Joyous Entry became the bulwark of the liberties of Brabant and afterward of the whole country. Duke John III of Brabant summoned to Louvain, in 1354, representatives of all the cities of Brabant and Limburg, and, announcing the marriage of his daughter Johanna and Wenzel of Luxembourg, asked that they might be confirmed as rulers of the duchy after his death. The delegates were shrewd traders. They granted his request only in consideration of a corresponding grant on his part of a liberal charter to Brabant. The Joyous Entry became the title of the charter because it was not proclaimed until Johanna and Wenzel made their entrance into Brussels with great pomp and ceremony and took a solemn oath to carry out its provisions. Down to Leopold II every succeeding ruler was obliged to swear conformity to this famous document.
Of more interest than Philip the Bold or John the Fearless is the beautiful Jacqueline of Bavaria, who was married to John's nephew, John of Brabant. According to tradition, Jacqueline, heiress to the counties of Holland and Hainault, was the most charming and gifted woman of her day. John, Duke of Brabant, was in no respect her equal. He subjected her to endless indignities and persecutions, and she at last fled from Brussels to the court of Henry V of England, where she found protection.
The assassination of John the Fearless by followers of the dauphin of France gave Burgundy and Flanders to his son Philip the Good. It was Philip's ambition to consolidate all the Belgic provinces under the rule of Burgundy, and thus to create a strong border state between France and Germany, and he was not too scrupulous as to the means he used in attaining his end. He wrested from the unfortunate Jacqueline first her county of Hainault, then the provinces of Holland and Zealand in the northern Netherlands. He also succeeded to the duchy of Brabant, and gained by purchase the duchy of Luxembourg. Having induced the Emperor to renounce his rights as overlord, Philip was now the head of an independent state nearly as large as the modern countries of Holland and Belgium.
It was Philip the Good who summoned the Grand Council to administer the laws for all his Belgic territory. He often called together the States-General, composed of the nobles. From this was developed in time a parliament, in which sat representatives of the nobles, the gentry and the communes, these last being called the Third Estate. But with this progress toward consolidation, there was always one powerful disintegrating force at work--the lack of any bond of union between the towns. The jealousies of these little rival states kept them involved in continual petty warfare, and even restrained them from offering assistance to one another in the face of a common danger. A story drawn from the old chroniclers will furnish a picture of the times.