The history of the Burgundian Netherlands is marked by powerful conflicts, with the Dukes of Burgundy from the House of Valois at the center as the driving force. They succeeded in extricating the Netherlands as a dominion conglomerate from both the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire. Their opponents included not only the kings but also the major cities of Flanders, competing French princes, relatives from Holland, and individual noble families from the Dutch principalities. From the takeover of the Flemish inheritance by Duke Philip the Bold in 1384 to the so-called Ladies' Peace of Cambrai in 1529, the author narrates the tumultuous history of this complex of territories, presenting for the first time in German-language research the era of Maximilian I and Philip the Handsome as an integral part of its formation.