The cities of Flanders and Brabant turned again to France, in a frantic effort to regain their lost liberties, while Maximilian, who had been crowned King of Rome, and was of course next in succession to the Empire, fought again and again to restore his supremacy, and regain his infant son, the future Philip the Fair, who had been sent to France to be educated and to get him out of the hands of his father. In the end he defeated the ring-leading cities, Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, and was acknowledged regent. In 1493 Frederick died and Maximilian succeeded him as Emperor, proclaiming Philip as Count of Flanders, marrying him out of hand to Joanna, Infanta of Castile, and betrothing his sister to Don John, heir to the crown of Spain. The sudden rise of a great new power in the Iberian Peninsula had overturned all the old alignments; the driving of the Moors from Spain and the union of Aragon and Castile in Ferdinand and Isabella had revealed a new force that might be used against France, and more dependable than England, and the new Emperor was not slow to recognise his opportunity. His sister never married Don John, who died before the projected wedding, and was followed by his sister, the Queen of Portugal, so suddenly the Count of Flanders and his countess became heirs to the throne of Spain. They gained little advantage from this, although after the death of Queen Isabella in 1505 they went to Spain, and were proclaimed as king and queen, but their glory was short-lived, for in the following year Philip met a sudden and untimely end, his queen went mad through grief, and the Emperor became the dominating influence in Spain as well as in Flanders through the guardianship of his five-year-old grandson, the future Charles V. During his minority his aunt, Margaret of Austria, had acted as regent, and with a wisdom and a benevolence her male predecessors had never shown, so that when in 1515 Charles became actual ruler of Flanders, he found himself in possession of a calm and contented community. Carefully educated by his admirable aunt, Charles, the heir to seventeen kingdoms, could speak the language of each, and he had, moreover, the enormous advantage of being tutored by the great Erasmus of Rotterdam. Hardly had he become King of Spain through the death of Ferdinand, when his grandfather died, and he became Emperor as well. Practically all Europe, and America also, were his, and after his war with France which ended at Pavia with the capture of Francis I (when all was “lost save honour”), he was the temporal Lord of the World, except England alone, while the spiritual power of the Papacy was his only rival on the Continent, and the Pope himself was his old tutor, Adrian, Archbishop of Toledo.