The Treaty of Rastatt at the close of the War of the Spanish Succession gave Brabant and the other provinces of the Spanish Netherlands to the Emperor Charles VI., a descendant, in the direct line, of Duke Philip the Handsome, and the domination of the Austrian Hapsburgs continued, save for an interval of four years, till the end of the century. On the whole, the change was for the better. After the long years of excitement the nation needed repose, and under their new rulers the Belgian Estates, as they were now called, vegetated in obscure tranquillity. The opening years of Charles's reign were not, however, without trouble. He was ill represented by his first governor, the Marquis de Prié, who seems to have made no attempt to win the people's confidence. An Italian by birth, and a man of utterly unsympathetic character, avaricious, violent, cold, his impolitic and vexatious fiscal measures irritated the whole country, and the craftsmen of Brussels resisted them. As time went on the agitation increased, and at last the mob got out of hand, broke into the Chancellery where the Estates of Brabant were sitting, and wrecked the houses of several of the Regent's partisans; and when order was once more restored, De Prié, like a second Alva, thought only of vengeance. [Illustration: LA PORTE DE HAL, BRUSSELS.] Having treacherously obtained possession of the persons of five of his principal opponents, four of them were condemned to exile, and the fifth to death. This man was François Anneessens, Dean of the Nation of Saint Nicholas, and by trade a turner of chairs; he was seventy-three years of age, a good man and a good citizen, known and esteemed by the whole town. It was said that he had fomented sedition, but in reality he died for defending the traditional rights of his order. His head was struck off in the Grand' Place on the fifth of February 1719. He was the last of the old Brussels guildsmen to give his life for liberty. The time-honoured civic institutions of Belgium were not destined to survive much longer; they were soon to be swept away by the backwash of the French Revolution--to bring their years to an end, as it were a tale that is told. VI.--Genealogical Table of the Dukes of Brabant from Philip III. to Francis