Along the Baltic shore the growth of the German element was checked, and almost destroyed. After its crushing defeat at Tannenberg, the German Order not only lost its power, but its liberal and intelligent character. It began to impose heavy taxes on the cities, and to rule with greater harshness the population under its sway. The result was a combined revolt of the cities and the country nobility, who compelled the Order to grant them a constitution, guaranteeing the rights for which they contended. They purchased Frederick III.'s consent to this measure for 54,000 gold florins. Soon afterwards, however, the Order paid the Emperor 80,000 gold florins to withdraw his consent. Then the cities and nobles, exasperated at this treachery, rose again, and called the Poles to their help. The Order appealed to the Empire, but received no assistance: it was defeated and its territory overrun; West-Prussia was annexed to Poland, which held it for three centuries afterwards, and East-Prussia, detached completely from the Empire, was left as a little German island, surrounded by Slavonic races. The responsibility for this serious loss to Germany, as well as for the internal anarchy and barbarity which prevailed, rests directly upon the Electors, who selected Frederick III. precisely because they knew his character, and who never attempted to depose him during his long and miserable reign of fifty-three years. [Sidenote: 1467. THE GROWTH OF BURGUNDY.] Germany was also seriously threatened on the west, not by France, but by the sudden growth of a new power which was equally dangerous to France. This was the Duchy of Burgundy, which in the course of a hundred years had grown to the dimensions of a kingdom, and was now strong enough to throw off the dependency of the territories it embraced, to France on the one side, and to the German Empire on the other. The foundation of its growth was laid in 1363, when king John of France made his fourth son, called Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and the latter, by marrying the Countess Margaret of Flanders, extended his territory to the mouth of the Rhine. He died in 1404, and was succeeded by his grandson, Philip the Good, who extended the sway of Burgundy, by purchase, inheritance, or force of arms, over all Belgium and Holland, so that it then reached from the Rhine to the North Sea. His court was one of the most splendid in Europe, and during his reign of sixty-three years Flanders became the rival of Italy in wealth, architecture and the fine arts.