MARGARET OF

See also:

• AUSTRIA
• AUSTRIA, LOWER (Ger. Niederosterreich or Osterreich unter der Enns, " Austria below the river Enns ")
• AUSTRIA, UPPER (Ger. Oberosterreich or Osterreich ob der Enns, " Austria above the river Enns ")

AUSTRIA (1522-1586)  , duchess of Parma and regent of the Netherlands from 1559 to 1567, was a natural daughter of Charles V . Her mother, Margaret van Ghent, was a Fleming . She was brought up by her aunts Margaret of Austria and Maria of Hungary, who were successively regents of the Netherlands from 1507 to 1530 and from 1530 to 1555 . In 1533 she was married to Alexander de' Medici, duke of Florence, who was assassinated in 1537, after which she became the wife of Ottavio Farnese, duke of Parma, in 1542 . The union proved an unhappy one . Like her aunts, who had trained her, she was a woman of masculine abilities, and Philip II., when he left the Netherlands in 1559 for Spain, acted wisely in appointing her regent . In ordinary times she would probably have proved as successful a ruler as her two predecessors in that post, but her task was very different from theirs . She had to face the rising storm of discontent against the Inquisition and Spanish despotism, and Philip left her but nominal authority . He was determined to pursue his own arbitrary course, and the issue was the revolt of the Netherlands . In 1567 Margaret resigned her post into the hands of the duke of Alva and retired to Italy . She had the satisfaction of seeing her son Alexander Farnese appointed to the office she had laid down, and to watch his successful career as governor-general of the Netherlands . She died at Ortona in 1586 .

See L . P .

Gachard, Correspondance de Marguerite d'Autriche avec Phillippe II . 1554–1568 (Brussels, 1867–1887) ; R . Fruin, Het voorspel van den tachtig jarigen vorlog (Amsterdam, 1856) ; E . Rachfahl, Margaretha von Parma, Statthalterin der Niederlande, 1559-1567 (Munich, 1895) ; also bibliography in Cambridge Modern History, iii . 795-809 (1904) .