THE PLAIN OF WEST FLANDERS--YPRES
To the west of Bruges the wide plain of Flanders extends to the
French frontier. Church spires and windmills are the most prominent
objects in the landscape; but though the flatness of the scenery is
monotonous, there is something pleasing to the eye in the endless
succession of well-cultivated fields, interrupted at intervals by
patches of rough bushland, canals, or slow-moving streams winding
between rows of pollards, country houses embowered in woods and
pleasure-grounds, cottages with fruitful gardens, orchards, small
villages, and compact little towns, in most of which the diligent
antiquary will find something of interest--a modest belfry, perhaps,
with a romance of its own; a parish church, whose foundations were
laid long ago in ground dedicated, in the distant past, to the
worship of Thor or Woden; or the remains, it may be, of a mediæval
castle, from which some worthy knight, whose name is forgotten
except in local traditions, rode away to the Crusades.
This part of West Flanders, which lies wedged in between the coast,
with its populous bathing stations, and the better-known district
immediately to the south of it, where Ghent, Tournai, Courtrai,
and other important centres draw many travellers every year, is
seldom visited by strangers, who are almost as much stared at in
some of the villages as they would be in the streets of Pekin. It
is, however, very accessible. The roads are certainly far from
good, and anything in the shape of a walking tour is out of the
question, for the strongest pedestrian would have all his pleasure
spoilt by the hard-going of the long, straight causeway. The ideal
way to see the Netherlands and study the life of the people is
to travel on the canals; but these are not so numerous here as
in other parts of the country, and, besides, it is not very easy
to arrange for a passage on the barges. But, in addition to the
main lines of the State Railway, there are the 'Chemins-de-fer
Vicinaux,' or light district railways, which run through all parts
of Belgium. The fares on these are very low, and there are so many
stoppages that the traveller can see a great many places in the
course of a single day. There are cycle tracks, too, alongside
most of the roads, the cost of keeping them in order being paid
out of the yearly tax paid by the owners of bicycles.[*]
[Footnote *: Bicycles entering Belgium pay an _ad valorem_ duty
of 12 per cent.]
[Illustration: THE FLEMISH PLAIN]
This is the most purely Flemish part of Flanders. One very seldom
notices that Spanish type of face which is so common elsewhere--at
Antwerp, for instance. Here the race is almost unmixed, and the
peasants speak nothing but Flemish to each other. Many of them
do not understand a word of French, though in Belgium French is,
as everyone knows, the language of public life and of literature.
The newspapers published in Flemish are small, and do not contain
much beyond local news. The result is that the country people in
West Flanders know very little of what is going on in the world
beyond their own parishes. The standard of education is low, being
to a great extent in the hands of the clergy, who have hitherto
succeeded in defeating all proposals for making it universal and
compulsory.
But, steeped as most of them are in ignorance and superstition,
the agricultural labourers of West Flanders are, to all appearance,
quite contented with their lot. Living is cheap, and their wants
are few. Coffee, black bread, potatoes, and salted pork, are the
chief articles of diet, and in some households even the pork is a
treat for special occasions. They seldom taste butter, using lard
instead; and the 'margarine' which is sold in the towns does not
find its way into the cottages of the outlying country districts.
Sugar has for many years been much dearer than in England, and the
price is steadily rising, but with this exception the food of the
people is cheap. Tea enters Belgium duty free, but the peasants
never use it. Many villagers smoke coarse tobacco grown in their own
gardens, and a 10-centimes cigar is the height of luxury. Tobacco
being a State monopoly in France, the high price in that country
makes smuggling common, and there is a good deal of contraband
trading carried on in a quiet way on the frontiers of West Flanders.
The average wage paid for field labour is from 1 franc 50 centimes
to 2 francs a day for married men--that is to say, from about 1s.
3d. to 1s. 8d. of English money. Bachelors generally receive 1
franc (10d.) a day and their food. The working hours are long,
often from five in the morning till eight in the evening in summer,
and in winter from sunrise till sunset, with one break at twelve
o'clock for dinner, consisting of bread with pork and black coffee,
and another about four in the afternoon, when what remains of the
mid-day meal is consumed.
The Flemish farmhouse is generally a substantial building, with
two large living-rooms, in which valuable old pieces of furniture
are still occasionally to be found, though the curiosity dealers
have, during the last quarter of a century, carried most of them
away, polished them up, and sold them at a high profit. Carved
chests, bearing the arms of ancient families, have been discovered
lying full of rubbish in barns or stables, and handsome cabinets,
with fine mouldings and brass fittings, have frequently been picked
up for a few francs. The heavy beams of the ceilings, black with
age, the long Flemish stoves, and the quaint window-seats deeply
sunk in the thick walls, still remain, and make the interiors of many
of these houses very picturesque; but the 'finds' of old furniture,
curious brass or pewter dishes, and even stray bits of valuable
tapestry, which used to rouse the cupidity of strangers, are now
very rare. Almost all the brass work which is so eagerly bought by
credulous tourists at Bruges in summer is bran-new stuff cleverly
manufactured for sale--and sold it is at five or six times its
real market value! There are no bargains to be picked up on the
Dyver or in the shops of Bruges.
[Illustration: DUINHOEK. Interior of a Farmhouse.]
The country life is simple. A good deal of hard drinking goes on
in most villages. More beer, probably, is consumed in Belgium per
head of the population than in any other European country, Germany
not excepted, and the system of swallowing 'little glasses' of fiery
spirit on the top of beer brings forth its natural fruits. The
drunken ways of the people are encouraged by the excessive number
of public-houses. Practically anyone who can pay the Government
fee and obtain a barrel of beer and a few tumblers may open a
drinking-shop. It is not uncommon in a small country village with
about 200 inhabitants to see the words 'Herberg' or 'Estaminet' over
the doors of a dozen houses, in which beer is sold at a penny (or
less) for a large glass, and where various throat-burning liquors
of the _petit verre_ species can be had at the same price; and
the result is that very often a great portion of the scanty wage
paid on Saturday evening is melted into beer or gin on Sunday and
Monday. As a rule, the Flemish labourer, being a merry, light-hearted
soul, is merely noisy and jovial in a brutal sort of way in his
cups; but let a quarrel arise, out come the knives, and before
the rural policeman saunters along there are nasty rows, ending
in wounds and sometimes in murder. When the lots are drawn for
military service, and crowds of country lads with their friends
flock into the towns, the public-houses do good business. Those
who have drawn lucky numbers, and so escaped the conscription,
get drunk out of joy; while those who find they must serve in the
army drown their sorrow, or celebrate the occasion if they are
of a martial turn, by reeling about the streets arm in arm with
their companions, shouting and singing. Whole families, old and
young alike, often join in these performances, and they must be
very drunk and very disorderly before the police think of making
even the mildest remonstrance.
The gay character of the Flemings is best seen at the 'kermesse,'
or fair, which is held in almost every village during summer. At
Bruges, Ypres, and Furnes, and still more in such large cities
as Brussels or Antwerp, the kermesse has ceased to be typical of
the country, and is supplanted by fairs such as may be seen in
England or in almost any other country. 'Merry-go-rounds' driven
by steam, elaborate circuses, menageries, waxwork exhibitions,
movable theatres, and modern 'shows' of every kind travel about,
and settle for a few days, perhaps even for a few weeks, in various
towns. The countryfolk of the surrounding district are delighted,
and the showmen reap a goodly harvest of francs and centimes; but
these fairs are tiresome and commonplace, much less amusing and
lively than, for example, St. Giles's Fair at Oxford, though very
nearly as noisy. But the kermesse proper, which still survives in
some places, shows the Flemings amusing themselves in something
more like the old fashion than anything which can be seen in the
Market-Place of Bruges or on the boulevards of Brussels or Antwerp.
Indeed, some of the village scenes, when the young people are dancing
or shooting with bows and arrows at the mark, while the elders sit,
with their mugs of beer and long pipes, watching and gossiping,
are very like what took place in the times of the old painters who
were so fond of producing pictures of the kermesses. The dress of
the people, of course, is different, but the spirit of the scene,
with its homely festivities, is wonderfully little changed.
About twenty miles from the French frontier is the town of Ypres,
once the capital of Flanders, and which in the time of Louis of Nevers
was one of the three 'bonnes villes,' Bruges and Ghent being the
others, which appointed deputies to defend the rights and privileges
of the whole Flemish people.
As Bruges grew out of the rude fortress on the banks of the Roya,
so Ypres developed from a stronghold built, probably about the year
900, on a small island in the river Yperlee. It was triangular
in shape, with a tower at each corner, and was at first known by
the inhabitants of the surrounding plain as the 'Castle of the
Three Towers.' In course of time houses began to appear on the
banks of the river near the island. A rampart of earth with a ditch
defended these, and as the place grew, the outworks became more
extensive. Owing to its strategic position, near France and in a
part of Flanders which was constantly the scene of war, it was of
great importance; and probably no other Flemish town has seen its
defences so frequently altered and enlarged as Ypres has between
the primitive days when the Crusading Thierry d'Alsace planted
hedges of live thorns to strengthen the towers, and the reign of
Louis XIV., when a vast and elaborate system of fortifications
was constructed on scientific principles, under the direction of
Vauban.
The citizens of Ypres took a prominent part in most of the great
events which distinguished the heroic period of Flemish history. In
July, 1302, a contingent of 1,200 chosen men, '500 of them clothed
in scarlet and the rest in black,' were set to watch the town and
castle of Courtrai during the Battle of the Golden Spurs, and in
the following year the victory was celebrated by the institution
of the Confraternity of the Archers of St. Sebastian, which still
exists at Ypres, the last survivor of the armed societies which
flourished there during the Middle Ages. Seven hundred burghers
of Ypres marched to Sluis, embarked in the Flemish boats which
harassed the French fleet during the naval fight of June, 1340,
and at the close of the campaign formed themselves into the
Confraternity of St. Michael, which lasted till the French invasion
of 1794. Forty years later we find no fewer than 5,000 of the men
of Ypres, who had now changed their politics, on the French side
at the Battle of Roosebeke, fighting in the thick mist upon the
plain between Ypres and Roulers on that fatal day which saw the
death of Philip van Artevelde and the triumph of the Leliarts.
[Illustration: ADINKERQUE. At the Kermesse.]
Next year, so unceasingly did the tide of war flow over the plain
of Flanders, an English army, commanded by Henry Spencer, Bishop
of Norwich, landed at Calais under the pretext of supporting the
partisans of Pope Urban VI., who then occupied the Holy See, against
the adherents of Pope Clement VII., who had established himself at
Avignon. The burghers of Ghent flocked to the English standard,
and the allies laid siege to Ypres, which was defended by the French
and the Leliarts, who followed Louis of Maele, Count of Flanders,
and maintained the cause of Clement.
At that time the gateways were the only part of the fortifications
made of stone. The ramparts were of earth, planted on the exterior
slope with a thick mass of thorn-bushes, interlaced and strengthened
by posts. Outside there were more defences of wooden stockades,
and beyond them two ditches, divided by a dyke, on which was a
palisade of pointed stakes. The town, thus fortified, was defended
by about 10,000 men, and un June 8, 1383, the siege was begun by
a force consisting of 17,000 English and 20,000 Flemings of the
national party, most of whom came from Bruges and Ghent.
The English had been told that the town would not offer a strong
resistance, and on the first day of the siege 1,000 of them tried
to carry it at once by assault. They were repulsed; and after that
assaults by the besiegers and sorties by the garrison continued
day after day, the loss of life on both sides being very great.
At last the besiegers, finding that they could not, in the face of
the shower of arrows, javelins, and stones which met them, break
through the palisades and the sharp thorn fences (those predecessors
of the barbed-wire entanglements of to-day), force the gates, or
carry the ramparts, built three wooden towers mounted on wheels,
and pushed them full of soldiers up to the gates. But the garrison
made a sortie, seized the towers, destroyed them, and killed or
captured the soldiers who manned them.
Spencer on several occasions demanded the surrender of the town,
but all his proposals were rejected. The English pressed closer and
closer, but were repulsed with heavy losses whenever they delivered
an assault. The hopes of the garrison rose high on August 7, the
sixty-first day of the siege, when news arrived that a French army,
100,000 strong, accompanied by the forces of the Count of Flanders,
was marching to the relief of Ypres. Early next morning the English
made a fresh attempt to force their way into the town, but they
were once more driven back. A little later in the day they twice
advanced with the utmost bravery. Again they were beaten back.
So were the burghers of Ghent, whom the English reproached for
having deceived them by saying that Ypres would fall in three days,
and whose answer to this accusation was, a furious attack on one
of the gates, in which many of them fell. In the afternoon the
English again advanced, and succeeded in forcing their way through
part of the formidable thorn hedge; but it was of no avail, and once
more they had to retire, leaving heaps of dead behind them. After
a rest of some hours, another attack was made on seven different
parts of the town at the same time. This assault was the most furious
and bloody of the siege, but it was the last. Spencer saw that, in
spite of the splendid courage of his soldiers and of the Flemish
burghers, it would be impossible to take the town before the French
army arrived, and during the night the English, with their allies
from Ghent and Bruges, retired from before Ypres. The failure of
this campaign left Flanders at the mercy of France; but the death
of Count Louis of Maele, which took place in January, 1384, brought
in the House of Burgundy, under whose rule the Flemings enjoyed
a long period of prosperity and almost complete independence.
It was believed in Ypres that the town had been saved by the
intercession of the Virgin Mary, its patron saint. In the Cathedral
Church of St. Martin the citizens set up an image of Notre,
Dame-de-Thuine, that is, Our Lady of the Enclosures, an allusion
to the strong barrier of thorns which had kept the enemy at bay;
and a kermesse, appointed to be held on the first Sunday of August
every year in commemoration of the siege, received the name of
the 'Thuindag,' or Day of the Enclosures.[*] The people of Ypres,
though they fought on the French side, had good reason to be proud
of the way in which they defended their homes; but the consequences
of the siege were disastrous, for the commerce of the town never
recovered the loss of the large working-class population which
left it at that time.
[Footnote *: 'Thuin,' or 'tuin,' in Flemish means an enclosed space,
such as a garden plot.]
[Illustration: A FARMSTEADING]
The religious troubles of the sixteenth century left their mark
on Ypres as well as on the rest of Flanders. Everyone has read
the glowing sentences in which the historian of the Dutch Republic
describes the Cathedral of Antwerp, and tells how it was wrecked
by the reformers during the image-breaking in the summer of 1566.
What happened on the banks of the Scheldt appeals most to the
imagination; but all over Flanders the statues and the shrines,
the pictures and the stores of ecclesiastical wealth, with which
piety, or superstition, or penitence had enriched so many churches
and religious houses, became the objects of popular fury. There
had been field-preaching near Ypres as early as 1562.[*] Other
parts of West Flanders had been visited by the apostles of the New
Learning, and on August 15, 1566, the reformers swept down upon
Ypres and sacked the churches.
[Footnote *: Motley, _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, part ii., chapter
vi.]
In the awful tragedy which soon followed, when Parma came upon
the scene, that 'spectacle of human energy, human suffering, and
human strength to suffer, such as has not often been displayed
upon the stage of the world's events' the town had its share of
the persecutions and exactions which followed the march of the
Spanish soldiery; but for more than ten years a majority of the
burghers adhered to the cause of Philip. In July, 1578, however,
Ypres fell into the hands of the Protestants, and became their
headquarters in West Flanders. Five years later Alexander of Parma
besieged it. The siege lasted until April of the following year,
when the Protestants, worn out by famine, capitulated, and the town
was occupied by the Spaniards, who 'resorted to instant measures
for cleansing a place which had been so long in the hands of the
infidels, and, as the first step towards this purification, the
bodies of many heretics who had been buried for years were taken
from their graves and publicly hanged in their coffins. All living
adherents to the Reformed religion were instantly expelled from
the place.'[*] By this time the population was reduced to 5,000
souls, and the fortifications were a heap of ruins.
[Footnote *: Motley, _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, part ii., chapter
vi.]
[Illustration: YPRES. Place du Musée (showing Top Part of the Belfry).]
A grim memorial of those troublous times is still preserved at
Ypres. The Place du Musée is a quiet corner of the town, where a
Gothic house with double gables contains a collection of old paintings,
medals, instruments of torture, and some other curiosities. It was
the Bishop of Ypres who, at midnight on June 4, 1568, announced to
Count Egmont, in his prison at Brussels, that his hour had come; and
the cross-hilted sword, with its long straight blade, which hangs
on the wall of the Museum is the sword with which the executioner
'severed his head from his shoulders at a single blow' on the following
morning. The same weapon, a few minutes later, was used for the
despatch of Egmont's friend, Count Horn.
Before the end of that dismal sixteenth century Flanders regained
some of the liberties for which so much blood had been shed; but
while the Protestant Dutch Republic rose in the north, the 'Catholic'
or 'Spanish' Netherlands in the south remained in the possession
of Spain until the marriage of Philip's daughter Isabella to the
Archduke Albert, when these provinces were given as a marriage
portion to the bride. This was in 1599. Though happier times followed
under the moderate rule of Albert and Isabella, war continued to
be the incessant scourge of Flanders, and during the marching and
countermarching of armies across this battlefield of Europe, Ypres
scarcely ever knew what peace meant. Four times besieged and four
times taken by the French in the wars of Louis XIV., the town had
no rest; and for miles all round it the fields were scarred by the
new system of attacking strong places which Vauban had introduced
into the art of war. Louis, accompanied by Schomberg and Luxembourg,
was himself present at the siege of 1678; and Ypres, having been ceded
to France by the Treaty of Nimeguen in that year, was afterwards
strengthened by fortifications constructed from plans furnished by
the great French engineer.[*]
[Footnote *: Letter from Vauban to Louvois on the fortifications
of Ypres, 1689; Vereecke, pp. 325-357.]
In the year 1689 Vauban speaks of Ypres as a place 'formerly great,
populous, and busy, but much reduced by the frequent sedition and
revolts of its inhabitants, and by the great wars which it has
endured.' And in this condition it has remained ever since. Though
the period which followed the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714, when Flanders
passed into the possession of the Emperor Charles VI., and became
a part of the 'Austrian Netherlands,' was a period of considerable
improvement, Ypres never recovered its position, not even during
the peaceful reign of the Empress Maria Theresa. The revolution
against Joseph II. disturbed everything, and in June, 1794, the town
yielded, after a short siege, to the army of the French Republic.
The name of Flanders disappeared from the map of Europe. The whole of
Belgium was divided, like France, with which it was now incorporated,
into _départements_, Ypres being in the Department of the Lys. For
twenty years, during the wars of the Republic, the Consulate, and
the Empire, though the conscription was a constant drain upon the
youth of Flanders, who went away to leave their bones on foreign
soil, nothing happened to disturb the quiet of the town, and the
fortifications were falling into decay when the return of Napoleon
from Elba set Europe in a blaze. During the Hundred Days guns and
war material were hurried over from England, the old defences were
restored, and new works constructed by the English engineers; but
the Battle of Waterloo rendered these preparations unnecessary, and
the military history of Ypres came to an end when the short-lived
Kingdom of the Netherlands was established by the Congress of Vienna,
though it was nominally a place of arms till 1852, when the
fortifications were destroyed. Nowadays everything is very quiet
and unwarlike. The bastions and lunettes, the casemates and moats,
which spread in every direction round the town, have almost entirely
disappeared, and those parts of the fortifications which remain
have been turned into ornamental walks.[*]
[Footnote *: The evolution of Ypres from a feudal tower on an island
until it became a great fortress can be traced in a very interesting
volume of maps and plans published by M. Vereecke in 1858, as a
supplement to his _Histoire Militaire d'Ypres_. It shows the first
defensive works, those erected by Vauban, the state of the
fortifications between 1794 and 1814, and what the English engineers
did in 1815.]
But while so little remains of the works which were constructed,
at such a cost and with so much labour, for the purposes of war,
the arts of peace, which once flourished at Ypres, have left a
more enduring monument. There is nothing in Bruges or any other
Flemish town which can compare for massive grandeur with the pile
of buildings at the west end of the Grand Place of Ypres. During
two centuries the merchants of Flanders, whose towns were the chief
centres of Western commerce and civilization, grew to be the richest
in Europe, and a great portion of the wealth which industry and
public spirit had accumulated was spent in erecting those noble
civic and commercial buildings which are still the glory of Flanders.
The foundation-stone of the Halle des Drapiers, or Cloth Hall, of
Ypres was laid by Baldwin of Constantinople, then Count of Flanders,
at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but more than 100 years
had passed away before it was completed. Though the name of the
architect who began it is unknown, the unity of design which
characterizes the work makes it probable that the original plans
were adhered to till the whole was finished. Nothing could be simpler
than the general idea; but the effect is very fine. The ground-floor
of the façade, about 150 yards long, is pierced by a number of
rectangular doors, over which are two rows of pointed windows,
each exactly above the other, and all of the same style. In the
upper row every second window is filled up, and contains the statue
of some historical character. At each end there is a turret; and
the belfry, a square with towers at the corners, rises from the
centre of the building.
Various additions have been made from time to time to the original
Halle des Drapiers since it was finished in the year 1304, and of
these the 'Nieuwerck' is the most interesting. The east end of the
Halle was for a long time hidden by a number of wooden erections,
which, having been put up for various purposes after the main building
was finished, were known as the 'Nieuwe wercken,' or new works.
They were pulled down in the beginning of the seventeenth century,
and replaced by the stone edifice, in the style of the Spanish
Renaissance, which now goes by the name of the Nieuwerck, with its
ten shapely arches supported by slender pillars, above whose sculptured
capitals rise tiers of narrow windows and the steeply-pitched roof
with gables of curiously carved stone. Ypres had ceased to be a
great commercial city long before the Nieuwerck was built; but the
Cloth Hall was a busy place during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, when Ypres shared with Bruges the responsibility of
managing the Flemish branch of the Hanseatic League.
The extensive system of monopolies which the League maintained
was, as a matter of course, the cause of much jealousy and bad
feeling. In Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres defended their own
privileges against other towns, and quarrelled amongst themselves.
The merchants of Ypres had a monopoly which forbade all weaving for
three leagues round the town, under a penalty of fifty livres and
confiscation of the looms and linen woven; but the weavers in the
neighbouring communes infringed this monopoly, and sold imitations of
Ypres linen cloth on all hands. There was constant trouble between
the people of Ypres and their neighbours at Poperinghe. Sometimes
the weavers of Ypres, to enforce their exclusive privileges, marched
in arms against Poperinghe, and sometimes the men of Poperinghe
retaliated by attacking their powerful rivals. Houses were burnt,
looms were broken up, and lives were lost in these struggles, which
were so frequent that for a long time something like a chronic
state of war existed between the two places.
[Illustration: YPRES. Arcade under the Nieuwerk.]
Besides the troubles caused by the jealousy of other towns, intestine
disputes arising out of the perpetual contest between labour and
capital went on from year to year within the walls of Ypres. There,
as in the other Flemish towns, a sharp line was drawn between the
working man, by whose hands the linen was actually woven, and the
merchants, members of the Guilds, by whom it was sold. In these
towns, which maintained armies and made treaties of peace, and whose
friendship was sought by princes and statesmen, the artisans, whose
industry contributed so much to the importance of the community,
resented any infringement of their legal rights. By law the magistrates
of Ypres were elected annually, and because this had not been done
in 1361 the people rose in revolt against the authorities. The mob
invaded the Hôtel de Ville, where the magistrates were assembled.
The Baillie, Jean Deprysenaere, trusting to his influence as the
local representative of the Count of Flanders, left the council
chamber, and tried to appease the rioters. He was set upon and
killed. Then the crowd rushed into the council chamber, seized
the other magistrates, and locked them up in the belfry, where
they remained prisoners for some days. The leaders of the revolt
met, and resolved to kill their prisoners, and this sentence was
executed on the Burgomaster and two of the Sheriffs, who were beheaded
in front of the Halle in the presence of their colleagues.[*] It
was by such stern deeds that the fierce democracy of the Flemish
communes preserved their rights.
[Footnote *: Vereecke, p. 41.]
Each town, however, stood for itself alone. The idea of government
by the populace on the marketplace was common to them all, but they
were kept apart by the exclusive spirit of commercial jealousy.
The thirst for material prosperity consumed them; but they had no
bond of union, and each was ready to advance its own interests
at the expense of its rivals. Therefore, either in the face of
foreign invasion, or when the policy of some Count led to revolt
and civil war, it was seldom that the people of Flanders were united.
'L'Union fait la Force' is the motto of modern Belgium, but in the
Middle Ages there was no powerful central authority round which the
communes rallied. Hence the spectacle of Ghent helping an English
army to storm the ramparts of Ypres, or of the Guildsmen of Bruges
girding on their swords to strike a blow for Count Louis of Maele
against the White Hoods who marched from Ghent. Hence the permanent
unrest of these Flemish towns, the bickerings and the sheddings of
blood, the jealousy of trade pitted against trade or of harbour
against harbour, the insolence in the hour of triumph and the abject
submission in the hour of defeat, and all the evils which discord
brought upon the country. No town suffered more than Ypres from
the distracted state of Flanders, which, combined with the ravages
of war and the religious dissensions of the sixteenth century,
reduced it from the first rank amongst the cities of the Netherlands
to something very like the condition of a quiet country town in an
out-of-the-way corner of England. That is what the Ypres of to-day
is like--a sleepy country town, with clean, well-kept streets, dull
and uninteresting save for the stately Cloth Hall, which stands
there a silent memorial of the past.
FURNES--THE PROCESSION OF PENITENTS