_The Peace of_ 1383
The flight of Coutherele and the failure of his subsequent efforts left
the reactionary party a free hand, and by 1375 they had so consolidated
their position that they were able to compel Winceslaus to cancel the
charter of 1361 and grant in its place a new charter, which gave back to
the old ruling class its former monopoly of political power. The result
may be surmised: mismanagement and corruption were the order of the day;
no accounts were published, and justice had to be bought; any
manifestation of discontent was put down with cruel vigour, and even the
right of sanctuary was not always respected. Once, after some abortive
rising, when a score of trembling wretches, who had taken refuge in the
cloister of Notre Dame, were dragged forth by order of the magistrates
and put to death, the Bishop of Liége interfered and imposed a heavy
fine; and no doubt the patricians laughed in their sleeves when
presently the account was settled, for it was not they, but the people,
who bore the brunt of the imposts.
Though taxation had never before been so high, the treasury was empty;
loan had been added to loan, and private individuals travelling abroad
were on all sides being arrested for public debts. Thus export trade had
become impossible, and as for industry, there was nothing doing, for
sooner than submit to the exactions of their taskmasters, a third of the
working population had emigrated.
At last, when Louvain was on the verge of ruin, the patricians
themselves began to suspect that there was something wrong with their
methods of government, and, at their wits' end what to do, presently
consulted Winceslaus, who, wise man, suggested a great conference of all
the cities of Brabant to consider the situation. This was early in the
year 1378. The patricians agreed, and in due course a conference was
summoned. Towards the close of March the deputies met in the Town Hall
of Louvain; the Duke himself presided, and almost every town in the
duchy was represented.
It is not certain whether the craftsmen of Louvain took any part in the
proceedings, but they were able to make their influence felt. Whilst the
conference was sitting they sent in a petition to Winceslaus, humbly
requesting, among other things, that a statement should be published of
the town accounts from the time of Coutherele's administration to date;
that such patricians as had been awarded annuities by way of indemnity
for losses incurred during Coutherele's term of office should cease to
receive them as soon as the sum justly due to them had been repaid, and
that those who had already received more than their due should be
compelled to refund the surplus; and, most important of all, that the
town seal should be confided to the joint care of the patrician clans,
the guild and the trade companies, so that henceforth no new loan could
be negotiated without the unanimous consent of the burghers.
It is significant of the trend of public opinion that the deputies made
these requests their own, and further, named a committee of eight
patricians and eight plebeians to study the question of the town debt
and the financial situation generally. By Pentecost they had sent in
their report, and Duchess Jeanne--Winceslaus being absent in
Luxembourg--at once laid it before the conference, which was now
sitting in St. Gertrude's Abbey. It embodied many wise and prudent
suggestions, some of which sound strangely modern, but they touched too
nearly the rights of property to be acceptable to most of the
patricians. It would have been surprising, indeed, if many of them had
welcomed an income tax and death duties, or a tax on Church lands, or an
all round reduction of official salaries, and these proposals, and
others of a like kind, aroused such a storm of opposition that Jeanne
suggested that perhaps it might be as well to leave it to the Duke and
his council to solve the financial problem, but to this, naturally
enough, everyone objected, and when presently Winceslaus himself
returned he could only reiterate his wife's proposal, promising that he
would take no step without first consulting his _bonnes villes_ and his
brother-in-law of Flanders--Louis of Maele, whose tenderness to his own
patricians was notorious throughout the Low Countries; but he might just
as well have held his breath, the patricians refused to hearken and
things came to a standstill. Whereat the people grew restive.
Difficulties, they alleged, were being purposely raised to stave off
reform, they themselves would settle the matter in their own fashion;
and on the 22nd of July the mob was out, battering at the doors of the
Town Hall, and clamouring to Burgomaster Van Nethen to bring forth the
great seal and the town charters. To do so, he said, was impossible, he
had not got the keys, and, even if he had, it were contrary to law to
unlock the rolls coffer save in the presence of the whole council.
Needless to say, the rioters were not convinced, and at nightfall a host
of them, with arms and banners, headed by the weaver, Wouter Vander
Leyden, filed into the Grand' Place, took possession of the Hôtel de
Ville, arrested the aldermen they found there, and, without much
difficulty, made themselves masters of the town.
The victory was all the more easily won from the fact that a large
number of patricians--all who had the welfare of the city at heart, were
in reality not opposed to the rioters, perhaps even secretly leagued
with them. These men were under the leadership of Alderman Jan De
Swertere, a patrician of note who loved the people, his enemies said,
because he hated Alderman Vanden Calstere, the chief of the
ultra-reactionists. It was the time when the famous 'White Hoods' of
Ghent were disporting themselves in Flanders, and the revolutionists of
Louvain, patricians and plebeians alike, adopted their headgear. Wouter
Vander Leyden and Hendrick Portman were chosen captains of the city,
there was an exodus of reactionists, and a deputation was sent to
Winceslaus, now at Brussels, begging him to come at once and legalise
what had been done. It was not, however, until nearly two months had
been consumed in negotiation, and until he had received from the men of
Louvain more than 6000 _peters_, that he at last consented to give them
a new and acceptable charter.
The constitution with which the city was now endowed, so far as
concerned the composition of the magistracy, was identical with
Coutherele's constitution--the College of Aldermen and the Council of
Jurors were still to contain respectively four and eleven patricians,
and three and ten plebeians; but the method of appointing these officers
was considerably modified: henceforth the aldermen were to be named by
the Sovereign from a triple list presented to him jointly by the
patrician and non-patrician members of the Merchants' Guild; the
non-patrician members alone were to name the patrician jurors; and the
plebeian jurors were to be chosen by the trade companies, now grouped
together in ten corporations called nations, each nation electing a
juror. Further, there were to be two burgomasters--the first chosen by
the plebeians from among the patricians, the second by the patricians
from among the plebeians--and four treasurers, all plebeians:--two
craftsmen and two members of the Merchants' Guild. They were to have the
entire management of the finances of the town, hold office for one year,
and give an account of their stewardship to the College of Aldermen, the
Council of Jurors and the Merchants' Guild, assembled in solemn council,
every quarter-day. Satisfaction was also given to the people in the
matter of the government of the guild: henceforth there were to be eight
deans--four plebeians named by the patricians, and four patricians
chosen by the nations; and, for the rest, all minor offices were to be
equally divided among the two classes of the _bourgeoisie_.
Such, in its main outlines, was the constitution with which Louvain was
endowed by the Great Charter--the Peace, as it was called--of 1378, and
which, with some slight modification, continued to be the constitution
of the city until the close of the eighteen hundreds. Never before had
the people enjoyed so large a share in the government. The patricians,
indeed, still retained a considerable place in the magistracy, but their
voice was almost stifled in the matter of elections, though, mark this,
what they had lost was not given to the proletariat, but to the middle
class, as represented by the non-patrician members of the guild--rising
merchants and manufacturers, men, for the most part, of moderate means
and moderate opinions, in touch on the one side with the working-class,
from which most frequently they had sprung, and on the other with the
aristocracy, which already included some of their kinsmen, and within
whose charmed circle it was not beyond the dreams of several of them,
if trade went well, to one day find admittance.
Nobody supposed that Vanden Calstere and his friends would be grateful
to Duke Winceslaus for the 'Peace' of 1378, but it was probably matter
of surprise to everyone that their resentment took the form it did: they
remained without the city walls, not in their own strongholds, but at
Aerschot, Vilvorde, Hal, in one or other of the little towns hard by
Louvain, and, sallying forth from these places with what ruffians they
could hire, lay in wait for stray burghers, and with such of them as
fell into their clutches it went hardly--sometimes they held them to
ransom, and sometimes they cut their throats. At last things came to
this pass:--no foreign trader would come within measurable distance of
the city, and no burgher who valued his life would venture beyond the
ramparts, but it was not till Wouter Vander Leyden had been murdered
that the people lost patience. This man, who was now burgomaster, had
been charged by the magistrates to make complaint to Duke Winceslaus of
the conduct of the reactionists, and as he was journeying to Brussels to
execute the commission, or, as some say, as he was returning home at
night, he was surprised in a lonely spot by Vanden Calstere himself and
Willem Wilre, his henchman, and literally hacked to pieces.
Hardly had the news reached Louvain than the craftsmen flew to arms, the
city gates were shut, and all patricians suspected of being hostile to
the new _régime_ were arrested and imprisoned in an upper chamber of the
Town Hall. This seems to have been done by order of the magistrates,
perhaps by way of precaution, for the people were at the end of their
patience. Presently they got out of hand; a rush was made for the Town
Hall, the doors were forced and the prisoners thrown out of window, one
by one as their names were called by the mob outside. Sixteen or
seventeen persons perished in this manner (December 15, 1378)--innocent
or guilty who shall say: they had not been placed on trial. Amongst them
Jan Platvoet, a patrician of fourscore years whose only crime seems to
have been that he was a kinsman of one of the murderers; and an archer
of the guard, name unknown, who had formerly been his servant. This man,
when the doors were forced, made his former master crawl under a bench
placed against the wall, and had then seated himself on it, and perhaps
old Jan might have escaped if it had not been for the sharp eyes of a
weaver's inquisitive 'kint,' who said he saw something shining between
the archer's legs. It was the gold-embroidered ends of poor Platvoet's
necktie. They dragged him forth, and, in spite of his prayers, cast him
headlong into the market; but the traitor who would have saved a
patrician's life was pitched out of window first. Hitherto the craftsmen
of Louvain had contented themselves with banishing or imprisoning their
enemies; it was the first time in the course of their long struggle that
they had stained their souls with blood.
For weeks after the murder of the patricians the rioters remained in the
streets, and for months after order had been re-established men lived in
a fever of anticipation, each side looking for some fresh outrage which
would be sure to result in yet crueller acts of reprisal. But though
Winceslaus knew all this, and seems to have been early appealed to, it
was not till the close of May that he made any serious effort to restore
public confidence by punishing the delinquents. Then he published an
edict in which he enjoined twelve of the principal rioters to make a
pilgrimage to Cyprus, sentenced to exile nine patricians who had been
mixed up in the murder of Vander Leyden, and imposed on the city a fine
of 4000 _peters_.
But things were in too parlous a plight to be righted by proclamation:
the White Hoods, indeed, for the moment were quiet, but the reactionists
refused to submit, and forthwith proceeded to harry the country estates
of the rallied patricians, whom, rightly or wrongly, they suspected of
having instigated the murder of their relatives. Of course De Swetere
and his folk retaliated in like fashion, and in all that they attempted
and in all that they did, of course they were aided and abetted by their
very good friends, the plebeians: homestead after homestead was razed to
the ground, castle after castle fired, and soon the whole country round
Louvain became the scene of guerilla warfare.
Meanwhile Vanden Calstere, or some of his friends, had again taken to
the road. Burgomaster Oorbeke, returning from Brussels, was arrested and
held to ransom; so, too, several jurors; and worse still was the fate of
a notable private citizen--Myn Here Van Grave, a merchant of vast
wealth: they cut off his hands and his feet, and sent him home in a
waggon, bidding him tell his fellow-burghers that any one of them whom
they chanced to take would be treated in like fashion.
Again and again the _bonnes villes_ tendered their good offices. Again
and again the Duke did his utmost to arrange matters. Negotiations were
often begun, but, for some reason or other, they always fell through. It
was not till the beginning of the year 1383, after Winceslaus had been
compelled to lay siege to Louvain, that the Bishop of Liége was at last
able to reconcile the belligerents.
Of course, as in all such cases, the settlement was a compromise; but
though it banished nineteen craftsmen for a year and a day, opened the
gates of the city to Vanden Calstere and his friends, and guaranteed
them complete immunity for all their past offences, it was not these
men, but their opponents, who in reality had the best of the bargain:
the constitution of 1378 remained intact; the people surrendered no jot
or tittle of their political rights and privileges.
Peace then was at last established; the terms of agreement were on each
side loyally adhered to, and the reconciliation endured. Mutual
confidence had taken the place of universal suspicion, and the craftsmen
nourished no rancour against those who had formerly been their bitterest
foes: when presently, in the month of June, the time arrived for the
annual renewal of the magistracy, Henry Pynnock, Godfrey Utten Liemingen
and Goswin Vanden Calstere were elected aldermen, and that, in spite of
the fact that they had all of them been reactionists; nor, it is
pleasant to note, did they belie the people's trust.