Thus, at last, the Low Countries reaped some advantage from the constant expenses which they had to sustain owing to incessant European wars. They were no longer able to pursue an independent policy, and, if the States preserved a certain liberty, it was mainly because they could be induced to vote war-taxes, these being, so to speak, the ransom which the so-called "free" Netherlands paid to their ruler. During Charles's youth, almost all the revenues of the State had been drawn from the prince's domain, but towards the end of his reign the levies extorted from the people became more and more heavy and frequent. The annual budget rose from one million pounds in 1541 to two and a half millions in 1542 and six and a half millions in 1555. To these annual contributions we must add the numerous loans raised by the Government on the security of the provinces. The interest on these loans weighed heavily on the budget. It was L141,300 in 1552, L424,765 in 1555, and rose to L1,357,287 in 1556. As a matter of fact, the States General could grant taxes but not control expenditure, so that most of the money raised in the Netherlands was spent on foreign expeditions from which the country could reap no benefit. Up to 1552, when gold from Mexico and Peru arrived in Spain, the Low Countries remained the main source of the income of the emperor. With the annexation of Tournaisis, Friesland, Utrecht, Gelder and Zutphen and the protectorate over the prince-bishopric of Liege, which, under Erard de la Marck (1506-38), had finally accepted Hapsburgian control, the unification of the Low Countries was completed. It still remained to give the country its definite status. Thanks to the treaties of Madrid and Cambrai, all connection with France had been severed, but the Reichstag endeavoured, on several occasions, to revive the nominal rights of the Empire on the Low Countries and to compel the provinces to pay the imperial tax. The emperor, foreseeing that his son might not succeed him in Germany, was not at all keen to encourage such claims. On the contrary, he exempted, by his own free will, the Low Countries from the imperial tax, and he endeavoured to make it a sovereign country attached to Spain, which should remain, with it, the heritage of the Hapsburg family. We are far from the time when he entertained the suggestion of creating a separate kingdom in the Low Countries, under the inspiration of his Burgundian advisers, and though this suggestion recurred in 1539 and 1544, connected with the project of the marriage of the emperor's daughter with the French prince, the sincerity of the emperor's proposals, at that time, may certainly be questioned. [_TRANSACTION OF AUGSBURG_]