_The House of Long Col_
Foremost among the landowners, who at this time were laying the
foundations of dynasties, was Régnier au Long Col, the great ancestor of
the Counts of Hainault and of the Counts of Brussels and Louvain, the
man to whom all the sovereigns of Brabant, from Lambert Longbeard to
Francis II., traced their descent:[2] the son of one Count Giselbert,
who, in the middle of the eight hundreds, had made his fortune by
carrying off a daughter of the Emperor Lothaire, he was the owner of
vast estates in Hainault, in Hesbaye, in Ardennes, and lay-abbot to boot
of three great monastic domains. Of the vassals and serfs who dwelt on
his lands some, then, were Teutons and some were Celts, and he himself,
who spoke the language of each race, was perhaps unable to say to which
stock he belonged, and herein lay his strength: he was a man whose
nationality was merged in the great feudal chief.
[2] The reigning sovereign of Belgium, King Leopold II., is a descendant
of Régnier au Long Col. (_See_ Genealogical Table VI.)
Such a one could alone command the confidence of the mixed race which
inhabited Lotharingia, and when presently the Emperor Arnulph set up a
German king in the person of his illegitimate son, Zwentibold (895), and
Régnier unfurled the standard of revolt, the discontented feudal lords
to a man rallied round him.
A stranger in a strange land, without the means to purchase the goodwill
and support of the native chiefs, since their fathers had already
received in bribes the whole of the royal domains, from the first the
new sovereign had to fight for his throne, and from the first the issue
of the conflict was a foregone conclusion. Zwentibold fell in an obscure
skirmish on August 13, 900, and Régnier became virtual ruler of
Lotharingia, and though he had no legal sanction for the authority which
he exercised, before his death he had so consolidated his power that
when that event took place (915) his son Giselbert stepped quietly into
his shoes, and presently the reigning Emperor Henry I. acknowledged him
Duke and gave him the hand of his daughter Gerberge, and with it, by way
of dowry, large estates, including among other tenements, the castles of
Brussels and Louvain. If Henry believed that he had thereby definitely
bound his redoubtable vassal to the imperial house, he little knew with
whom he had to deal. A contemporary chronicler has left us his portrait,
and it is not a flattering one. 'Giselbert,' he tells us, 'was small of
stature but strongly built, always in movement, and with eyes so keen
and so shifty that no man knew their colour. Eaten up with ambition,
audacious, crafty, false, he cared not what means he took to compass his
ends.' The goal that he was striving for was, in all probability, a
royal crown: the darling wish of his heart was to re-establish the
kingdom of Lotharingia. His whole life had hitherto been one long course
of treachery and intrigue, and though after his marriage he kept faith
with Henry, when that prince died he soon showed that he was still the
same Giselbert as of yore; in spite of an oath of allegiance, and in
spite of his imperial wife, he proved himself as false to Otho the
Great, the son of his benefactor, as he had been in former days to
Rodolphe of Burgundy and to Charles the Simple of France.
Of this last act of treason the outcome was death. Surprised by the
imperial forces at Andernach, on the Rhine, and hemmed in on all sides,
he made his horse plunge into the water, hoping to reach the further
bank and so make his escape, but the current was too strong for him, and
horse and rider were swept away. Thus died Duke Giselbert (939), and at
his death the star of his house for a while waned. His only son, an
infant whom Otho placed under ward, died shortly afterwards, and though
his nephew, Régnier III. of Hainault, seized his widow's dower, he was
not strong enough to grasp the reins of government, and presently the
Emperor Otho conferred the duchy on Conrad the Red, a native of
Franconia, who, like his predecessor, was allied by marriage to the
imperial house (944). Conrad was an energetic and capable man, but rude,
passionate, vindictive, and, as the issue showed, untrustworthy. At
first, however, all went well: the new duke rigidly enforced order, any
attempt at rebellion he crushed with an iron hand, and for some ten
years the land had peace; and then, having taken it into his head that
Otho had treated him badly, he himself turned rebel. Whereat Régnier of
Hainault, and the rest who had experienced Conrad's lash, taking heart,
banded together against him and drove him from their midst (953). If
Régnier believed that the Emperor would recompense his services by
restoring him to the throne of his ancestors, he was doomed to signal
disappointment. Otho was in no way deceived by the specious loyalty of
his Lotharingian vassals. He knew very well that, in helping him to
crush Conrad, they had in reality made him the instrument of their
vengeance against one whom they hated, not on account of his recent
rebellion, but because of his zeal for law and order and his former
loyal service, and he refused to reward these lawless men by setting
over them a chief as lawless as themselves, and one too, who, by reason
of his popularity, would have all the more power to work mischief; nor
would he confer the duchy on another German vassal, for such would be
not unlikely to follow the example of Conrad. Henceforth he would govern
Lotharingia by means of the Church.
True, the Church had ceased to be the power which she had been in
Charlemagne's day. Her authority was no longer enhanced by the glamour
of wealth and the glamour of learning and the glamour of political
prestige. Her spiritual life had waned. She had lost much of her
pristine fervour, something of her child-like faith. Her sanctuaries had
been ruined; she had been robbed of her treasure; a considerable portion
of her landed property had been appropriated by laymen, and it needed
all her tact and all her vigilance to safeguard the rest, a task the
more difficult from the fact that many bishops owed their appointment to
harpies eager to despoil them. But for all that she was still a power to
be reckoned with--an ally whose friendship was not to be despised. If
only she could be freed from the feudal incubus which was strangling
her, she might yet do yeoman service for the Crown.
This then was the task which Otho set himself to perform, and the method
which he adopted to accomplish it was a bold and an effectual one: he
rendered it henceforth impossible for his vassals to interfere with
episcopal elections by naming the bishops himself, and at the same time
he took good care to appoint none but worthy, capable and reliable men,
entirely devoted to his interests. But this was not all; if the bishops
were to hold their own in their perennial conflict with the barons,
their hands would have to be strengthened; and henceforth it became
Otho's policy, and the policy too of his successors, as opportunity
offered, to gradually enlarge their boundaries, to endow them with fresh
sources of revenue, to increase their temporal authority, and to shower
on them all sorts of civil and political rights.
Nor was the result disproportionate to the Emperor's expectations--the
bishops of Lotharingia became their most faithful and devoted servants.
'If the Emperor were to pluck out my right eye,' cried Bishop Wazon of
Liége (1042-1048) in an outburst of enthusiastic loyalty, 'I would still
use the left in his honour and service.'[3] That was the spirit which
animated all of them, and for a hundred and fifty years they were able
to keep the wolf at bay.
[3] _Anselme_, _Gesta episcop. Leod., Mon. Germ. Hist. Script._, t. vii.
p. 225.
The man on whose head Otho now placed the ducal crown was his brother
Bruno, a clerk in holy orders, on whom he also conferred the
metropolitan See of Cologne, which included among its suffragans
Utrecht, Liége and Cambrai, thus making him supreme alike in Church and
State (953). The success of Otho's policy in Lotharingia was in great
measure, if not entirely, due to the energy, the perseverance, the
courage, and, above all, to the consummate tact and the marvellous
administrative capacity of this great man. His work was essentially a
constructive one, out of chaos he brought order, and his success as an
organiser and administrator was only equalled by his success as an
educator. 'His schools at Cologne,' says M. Pirenne, 'were frequented
not only by clerks who aspired to ecclesiastical dignities, but also by
young nobles--for many of the feudal lords confided their sons to his
care--and all of them returned reconciled to the Empire and entirely
subjugated by the charm of the Archbishop-Duke.'[4] In the twelve years
during which he governed Lotharingia--he died in 965--he succeeded not
only in pacifying that rebellious province, but, if we may trust his
biographer, in working a marvellous change in the lives and morals of
its inhabitants: 'he found them,' says Ruotger, 'rugged and fierce, and
he left them gentle and tame'; and though the conversion of the vast
majority was sufficiently short-lived--when the benign influence of
Bruno was withdrawn they soon relapsed into their old blood-thirsty and
lawless ways--the grandeur of his work is sufficiently appreciable when
we compare such ruffians as Régnier au Long Col, for instance, or his
slippery son Giselbert, with one who came immediately under Bruno's
influence, whose character, indeed, he formed--his friend and disciple
Ansfried, Count of Louvain, who, after having been for long years a
faithful and devoted servant of the Emperor, at last took orders, became
Bishop of Utrecht, and died in the odour of sanctity; or to men like
Godfrey of Verdun, the most perfect type of those nobles whom Bruno had
reconciled to the imperial cause, a man who had no more sympathy for
feudal aspirations than had Bruno himself, and whose staunch loyalty may
be gauged from the message he sent to his wife when he was a captive in
a French prison, and which has been preserved for us in the Memoirs of
Gerbert--who afterwards became Pope Sylvester II. (997-1003)--whom he
charged to deliver it:--'Remain staunch in your fidelity to the ever
august Empress and her son. Make no truce with the French; hold your
forts firm against their king, and let not the hope of restoring your
husband and your son to liberty diminish the energy of your
resistance.'[5]
[4] _Histoire de Belgique_, vol. i. ch. iii. p. 57 (Brussels, 1902).
[5] _Lettres de Gerbert_, ed. J. Havet, No. 50, p. 47 (Paris, 1889).
I.--Genealogical Table of the House of Long-Col
$Régnier au Long-Col.$, _d._ 915
|
+-----------+-+------+
| | |
Louis d'Outremer, = Gerberge = Gislebert, Régnier II. |
King of France | (daughter | Duke of | |
| of Henry | Lotharingia, | a daughter = Bérenger,
| the | _d._ 939 | Count of
| Fowler) | | Namur
| a son |
+--------------+--+ _d._ in infancy |
| | |
Lothaire, Charles, Duke of Régnier III. _d._ 958
King of Lower Lotharingia, | (in exile in
France, _d._ 992 | Bohemia)
_d._ 987 | | |
| | |
+--------+-------+ +---------+----------+
| | | |
Otho, Duke of Gerberge = Lambert Longbeard, Régnier IV., Count
Lower Lotharingia, first hereditary of Hainault,
_d._ 1012 Count of Louvain, _d._ 1013
_d._ 1015
_Facing page_ 19.
Between Régnier of Hainault, that half-tamed leader of rebels, and the
gentle scholar and polished gentleman, Saint Bruno of Cologne--men whose
dispositions were so different and whose interests and ideals were so
diametrically opposed, the one the incarnation of feudal chaos and
feudal license, and the other the representative of imperial liberty
and imperial law, each of them endowed with unflagging perseverance, and
an indomitable will--no treaty of peace would have been possible, even
if Régnier had not believed that the Emperor had ungratefully bestowed
on Bruno the inheritance which was lawfully his, and from the first they
were at daggers drawn.
As was natural, the man who had been rejected did all in his power to
thwart his successful rival and to frustrate his projects of reform. For
three years the conflict continued and then Bruno was able to pluck the
thorn from his side. Fortune delivered his tormentor into his hands and
he forthwith banished him to Bohemia and detained him there until he
went the way of all flesh. But the house of Long Col was not
extinguished by the death of its chief--the old count had two sons,
Régnier and Lambert, who, when their father was captured and his estates
confiscated, found an asylum in France at the Court of King Lothaire.
The French monarchs, as direct heirs of Charlemagne, had always regarded
Lotharingia as their own inheritance, and Lothaire himself and his
brother Charles were the sons of Duke Giselbert's widow Gerberge by her
second husband, Louis d'Outremer.
Thus ties of kindred and a common grievance disposed the French king to
befriend the children of Régnier of Hainault, and at his Court they
remained for fifteen years nourishing their enmity against Bruno and the
Emperor, and praying for an opportunity of vengeance. At last the day of
reckoning came. The strong and gentle hand of Bruno had been removed by
death in 965, and Otho the Great was gathered to his fathers in 973.
Taking advantage of the confusion incident on this last event Charles of
France now claimed his mother's dowry, and Régnier and Lambert their
father's estates, and presently they invaded Lotharingia to make good
their demands at the sword's point.
Welcomed by the feudal chiefs and backed by the power of France, so
formidable were the invaders that Otho II. deemed it prudent to treat
with them and at last restored their paternal heritage to Régnier and
Lambert and conferred the duchy on Charles. Two considerations made him
the more ready to grant this last concession. Charles on his father's
side was a descendant of Charlemagne and as such was likely to be a
_persona grata_ to the nobles, many of whom had Carolingian blood in
their veins, and through his mother he was the grandson of Henry the
Fowler, thus first cousin to Otho himself, and hence there was reason to
believe that he would prove a loyal vassal.
Otho's hopes, however, were only partly realised. He had no reason to
suspect Charles's good faith, but the feudal chiefs, with Régnier and
Lambert at their head, so far from acknowledging the new duke, did all
in their power to second the desperate efforts which Lothaire was making
to annex Lotharingia, efforts which in despite of his allies were doomed
to disappointment. True he at one time succeeded in reaching the
imperial palace at Aachen, and there 'had the satisfaction of eating a
dinner which had been prepared for Otho himself,' but he was forced to
beat a hasty retreat, and his death, which took place shortly
afterwards, followed as it was by the death of his only son, left the
Emperor master of the situation (987), and Duke Charles heir to a crown
which he was never able to wear. Hugh Capet, who for years past had been
drawing nearer and nearer to the French throne, had himself proclaimed
king at Noyon, and though Charles fought valiantly for his heritage, and
there seemed every likelihood that his efforts would meet with success,
he failed, almost in the hour of triumph: treacherously delivered into
the hands of the usurper by the Bishop of Laon, he was cast into prison
at Orléans where he shortly afterwards died (992).
This unfortunate prince is the first ruler whose name is intimately
associated with Brussels. Tradition says that he was born there, and he
certainly made it his chief place of abode. His palace was situated on a
little island between two branches of the Senne, somewhere about the
site now occupied by the Place Saint Géry, and that little island
contained the whole of the settlement called Brussels, for in those days
Brussels was not a town, it was little more than a castle and a cluster
of huts:--the dwellings of such of the ducal servants and court
officials as were not lodged in the castle itself and of those who
catered for the ducal household and maybe also the homesteads of a few
farmers whom a sense of greater security had induced to settle there.
Charles was succeeded in the Duchy of Lotharingia by his only son Otho,
and when he died childless twenty years afterwards (1012), Lambert Long
Col, who had married Charles's eldest daughter Gerberge, claimed his
heritage as next-of-kin. He did not obtain the dukedom--that dignity
fell to Godfrey of Ardennes, the son of Bruno's pupil, Godfrey the
Captive--but he managed to make good his claim to a very considerable
portion of his father-in-law's maternal heritage--the rich dowry which
Henry the Fowler had bestowed on his daughter, the elder Gerberge, on
her marriage with Duke Giselbert, and which later the Emperor Otho II.
had granted to Duke Charles, her son by her second marriage. The castles
of Louvain and Vilvorde and Brussels, and all the adjoining territory,
fell to Lambert's share, and this vast and rich domain, called until the
close of the century sometimes the county of Brussels, more often the
county of Louvain, was the nucleus of the Duchy of Brabant.