_The Murder of Charles the Good_
Among the tragedies enacted at Bruges--and their number is legion--not
one is so weird, so mysterious, so repulsive, and at the same time so
enthralling, as the blood-stained legend of Charles the Good.
It is the theme, as we all know, of Hendrick Conscience's _De Kerels van
Vlaanderen_, a romance which approaches nearer to the original legend
than almost any modern historical account that has come under our
notice. For although for his details Conscience has drawn to a certain
extent on imagination, the main outlines of his story coincide exactly
with the main outlines of the legend handed down to us by writers
contemporary with Charles himself.
Of these contemporary lives of the murdered Count we still possess at
least three. The first is by Walbert, Court Notary, or, as we should
say, Registrar of Bruges. He was a personal friend and staunch adherent
of Count Charles, and, as he himself avers, an eye-witness of much that
he relates. His evidence cannot, however, be regarded as altogether
trustworthy. He was naturally animated with the bitterest feelings
against the great house which compassed his patron's overthrow, and
against Bertulph, one of the chiefs of that house, he seems to have
nourished a personal grudge. On more than one occasion he contradicts
himself flatly, and he is an inveterate backbiter and gossip. From his
direst enemy to his dearest friend there is hardly a man in his crowded
canvas whose character he does not directly or indirectly asperse.
Indeed, in the case of his enemies, when he can find nothing to say
against them, he not unfrequently hints that, in his opinion, their good
actions were inspired by unworthy motives. For the rest, the story of
this twelfth-century Saint-Simon is replete with the most interesting
details, rich in local colour, and almost as thrilling to read as one of
Wilkie Collins's novels. The second life is by Walter, Archdeacon of
Tournai. It was written at the request of 'Blessed' John, who ruled the
united churches of Noyon and Tournai from 1127 to 1130, and is dedicated
to him. Walter, like Walbert, was personally acquainted with Charles. He
was with him at Ypres three days before his death, but was not at Bruges
when that event took place, and his narrative is based on information
furnished by certain trustworthy clerks and citizens of Bruges who
vouched for the truth of what they told him.
In some respects Walter's narrative is a work superior to Walbert's.
The whole story hangs together, his language is often dignified, and
generally temperate, nor are the judgments which he forms, on the face
of them, inaccurate.
The third life is contained in the Acta of Louis the Fat, compiled by
Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, who died in 1142. It must have been written,
therefore, not later than this date, and not earlier than 1137, the year
in which Louis died, from ten to fifteen years, that is to say, after
the death of Charles. As for this account, there is only one thing to be
said about it. Suger held a brief for Charles's avenger, Louis the Fat,
and he did the best he could for his client.
In compiling the following narrative we have made use of these three
lives, of the Danish life by Wegener, of the Bollandist's life, and of
the notes and contemporary documents collected by Vredius in his
_Flandrica Ethnica_. We have also consulted Gaillard, Gheldorf, Kervyn
de Lettenhove, and various other modern Flemish historians.
When Count Charles assumed the government of Flanders the Erembalds were
a power to be reckoned with. Their political influence was unrivalled,
the number of their retainers was legion, their wealth was immense, by
their marriages they had allied themselves with the first families in
the county.
Desiderius Hacket, the head of this house, was Châtelain of Bruges, and,
as such, second man in the realm; Bertulph, his brother, as Provost of
St. Donatian's, was the greatest churchman in Flanders, and, as
hereditary chancellor, chief of the Count's household, whilst other
members of the family held honourable and lucrative appointments about
their sovereign's person. Notwithstanding, however, their great
position, the Erembalds were never included in the ranks of the feudal
nobility. They were originally simple freeholders or Karls, perhaps
hereditary chiefs of some circle or guild, who by commerce, and may be
also by plunder, for the Karls were lawless folk, had amassed vast
wealth, and thereby been enabled to climb to the high places they now
held. That they could by the same means, if they had been so minded,
have also been ennobled, there can be no doubt, but the Erembalds, like
all Karls, despised feudalism and all its works and all its pomps; in
their eyes the title of Freeman was a nobler one than any which princes
could bestow.
Tancmar, the head of the great feudal house of Straten, was the owner of
the lordship of Straten, in the neighbourhood of Bruges, where he had
built himself an impregnable fortress, a wealthy devotee who had gained
no little renown for piety and good works, the great Abbey of St.
Andrew, hard-by his own domain, was the especial object of his
munificence. He held high office in the Count's household, was a member
of his Privy Council, and, what was worth more to him than anything
else, his sovereign's confidential and devoted friend.
Tancmar himself had no children, but he had adopted two nephews, sons,
perhaps, of his brother; Giselbert, or, as we should say Gilbert, and
Walter, whom men called the Winged Lie.
Between the families of Erembald and Straten there had gradually grown
up a deadly feud. As to the first cause of it both Walter and Walbert
are silent, but the former writer tells us that, like many other great
quarrels before and since, it arose out of a very small matter.
Wegener, indeed, comes to the conclusion that the primary quarrel was
between Charles himself and Bertulph, that it sprang from the Count's
hatred of the Erembalds, whose pride and lawlessness were marring his
projects of reform, and that the Stratens on the one side, and
Bertulph's kinsfolk on the other, were mere tools in the hands of these
two wire-pullers, who themselves at first remained in the background.
Certainly all the facts of the case, taken together, go to show that if
Charles himself was not its first instigator, he at all events exploited
the quarrel for his own political ends.
In the early years of his reign, he had issued an edict by which he
forbade all men save his own officers to go armed in time of peace--an
edict particularly galling to the Karls, who regarded the bearing of
arms as the inherent right of a freeman, and to deprive them of it was,
in their estimation, and perhaps also in the estimation of the Count, to
deprive them of their personal liberty. The Karls, it is true, were a
cruel and a quarrelsome race. The territory in which they dwelt was
often drenched with blood. Scenes of rapine and murder were with them
matters of everyday occurrence; their hereditary feuds and petty wars
were a constant menace to the State. Charles was determined to put an
end to all this, and he knew of but one way of doing so--to submit the
territory of the Karls to the tender mercies of feudalism, for, in his
estimation, law and order were matters of far greater moment than mere
personal freedom. This, however, was not the opinion of the Erembalds.
Although they themselves, as officers of the Count, were in no way
touched by the edict in question, they opposed it with all their might,
and from that moment Charles determined to crush them.
To attack his old friends openly was an undertaking too hazardous. It
was to the Erembalds, as Bertulph used to boast, that Charles owed his
crown, and he had repaid the debt with gold and favours. Their power
was now as great as his own, and their popularity perhaps greater.
Moreover, to strike at them was to strike at the Church, for Bertulph,
their chief, was chief also of the clergy of Flanders. It behoved
Charles, then, to be very wary. He determined therefore for the moment
to keep himself in the background, to bide his time, and when the plot
was ripe to act through trusty agents. He had not long to wait, the
crisis came early in 1126. It happened thus.
Richard of Raeske, one of the many barons allied by marriage to the
house of Erembald, and a man of no little repute in Flanders, fell out
about this time with Walter of Straten and defied him in the Count's
presence to mortal combat. To the surprise of every one the challenge
was refused, and the ground of the refusal was still more astounding. "I
will never measure my sword," hissed 'the Winged Lie,' "with any but a
free man, and the Lord of Raeske, by wedding a serf, has forfeited his
right to that title." He was alluding to one of Charles's own edicts,
perhaps made in anticipation of the quarrel, by which it was decreed
that 'the freeman (_liber_) who married a slave (_ancillam_) should,
after a year's wedlock, cease to be free, and sink to his wife's
condition.'
The calumny, as Archdeacon Walter calls it, came like a bolt from the
blue. The Erembalds had been châtelains of Bruges for well-nigh a
hundred years, and no man heretofore had ever ventured even to hint at
the possibility of a flaw in their escutcheon. Walter had aimed his
shaft well, it had flown far and pierced deep. By it was threatened not
only the honour and the liberty and the purse of every man in whose
veins flowed the blood of an Erembald, but alike the honour and the
liberty and the purse of each one of the score or more of proud barons
allied by marriage to the dishonoured race. The Erembalds were cut to
the quick, and the words of defiance which Bertulph himself hurled
back, words which in the light of after events seem almost prophetic,
voiced the indignation of the whole clan. 'I am a free man,' he
thundered out; 'my forefathers were free men, and no one shall be found
mighty enough to take away my freedom.' Strange as it may seem, the
aristocracy, almost to a man, rallied round the attainted house, whilst
almost alone at the side of his friend stood the Count.
He still hesitated, however, to show his true colours; he would himself,
he said, in no way interfere, but leave the matter in the hands of his
judges--a commission should be appointed to examine the affair, and he
would abide by their decision. But Bertulph was not to be hoodwinked,
and spread it abroad that the Count was plotting his ruin:--'This
Charles of Denmark, whom I made, would fain through his judges reduce me
to slavery. Let him try.' Nor did he hesitate to fling back in Charles's
teeth the retort that he himself was illegitimate, aye and a bastard,
too, base born. 'This Charles of Denmark!' he contemptuously
cried--Bertulph, who was a true Fleming, could never forget or forgive
his master's foreign extraction--'This Charles of Denmark, who boasts
that he is a king's son! In good sooth, a scullion begat him! By what
right doth he torment us?' Truly Provost Bertulph had a bitter tongue.
But neither scorn nor threats nor bitter speech could turn the Count
from his purpose. The promised commission was duly appointed, and after
a lengthy inquiry made its award:--Let the Lady of Raeske swear that she
is of free birth in the presence of twelve nobles who shall confirm her
oath with their own; but with no little inconsistency a proviso was
added that this decision concerned only the case of the Lady of Raeske
personally, and in no way derogated from the Count's right, if he would,
to proceed against any other member of the Erembald family. This
compromise Charles accepted, and, partially laying aside the cloak of
neutrality which hitherto prudence had bade him assume, lost no time in
claiming the Erembalds for his serfs, nor until the day of his death,
more than a year later, did he cease so to regard them.
They no less persistently repudiated the claim, and Charles either could
not or would not enforce it, and for the moment was fain to content
himself with slighting words and half-veiled threats. Meanwhile the
Erembalds and the Stratens were flying at one another's throats. Cattle
were being looted, boundaries were being razed, and blood was flowing in
torrents. A hurricane of strife had been let loose on the land, and all
the efforts of the sower of the wind, now thoroughly afraid at his own
handiwork, and clumsily playing the double _rôle_ of peacemaker and
partisan, were powerless to quell it.
Suddenly, when the turmoil was at its height, Charles was called to
France. An intermittent warfare had for years been carried on between
the Count of Auvergne and the Bishop of Clermont, and things had at
length come to a crisis. The former had made appeal to his liege lord,
Duke William of Aquitaine, and the latter, by their united efforts,
driven from his See, had now invoked, not vainly, the aid of Louis the
Fat, who forthwith summoned his vassals (amongst whom of course was
Charles) and set out for Clermont.
The Count of Flanders was undoubtedly placed in a very awkward
predicament. To leave his realm at the present juncture was to risk
revolution, and by staying at home he would certainly estrange his one
reliable friend. The civil war at the beginning of his reign, and the
famine and pestilence which followed, had sown broadcast misery and
discontent, whilst the well-meant but arbitrary measures which Charles
had taken for the relief of the poor, especially his edict as to the
price of wheat, had alienated the rich, who openly accused him of
showing favour to the people at their expense. 'If it be so,' he was
wont to reply, 'it is because I know the misery of the poor and the
pride of the upper classes,' but, unfortunately for Charles, in his day
the classes alone counted, and the classes were in a high fever of
suspicion and unrest. The great purveyors of bread-stuffs had been
touched in their pockets, the free landholders of the sea-board thought
themselves already slaves, the honour of the first family in Flanders
had been trampled in the dust. No one was sure that it would not be his
turn next. Others besides Bertulph were questioning Charles's right to
torment them. The whole land was sick of foreign rule, and men were
beginning to whisper in corners of William of Löo. It was probably this
last consideration which prompted Charles to obey. If he had failed to
do so, his powerful kinsman might have veered round to the side of the
legitimate heir, and in that case he would in all probability have lost
his county.
Charles must have taken a heavy heart with him to Clermont, but his
biographers do not inform us that he was in any way disquieted.
Before starting, however, he seems to have summoned the Erembalds and
the Stratens to his presence and to have made them swear to a truce, but
to swear to a truce under existing circumstances was little better than
a farce. Such was the hatred of the belligerents for one another, that
even a temporary suspension of hostilities had become impossible, and
during the whole period of Charles's absence the land was a prey to
their mutual depredations.
It was not till the fall of the year that Charles came back to his
domains. At Ypres he was met by a deputation of peasants, retainers
seemingly of the Stratens, who made complaint that the Erembalds,
headed by the provost's nephew Burchard, had plundered their dwellings,
laid waste their land and driven off their cattle. Charles promised them
justice, and having taken counsel with his barons, decreed that
Burchard's house at Straten should be razed to the ground. The sentence
was promptly carried out, and Walter adds that the Count in person
superintended its execution. That this was only a prelude there can be
no doubt. Charles had returned to Flanders crowned with the laurels of
victory. His successes at Clermont had earned for him the gratitude of
Louis the Fat, who had most likely promised him help. The time had come
when he felt himself strong enough to carry out his plan against the
Erembalds. Nor were these last ignorant of his intentions. At length,
driven to bay, they were determined to make one desperate stand for
liberty. They would save their honour, even if the price paid for it
should be their sovereign's life.
Charles had arrived at Bruges late on the evening of 28th February, and
towards the close of the next day a deputation waited on him on behalf
of the threatened clan. There seems to have been little hope of bringing
about a reconciliation, but Bertulph had most likely insisted that no
effort should be left untried before having recourse to violence. The
accounts which the contemporary lives give of this interview do not
tally, but they are at one as to its issue--Charles was adamant. The die
was cast. That night the Erembalds met in secret conclave. Early next
morning Charles rose, feverish and ill at ease, from a couch
overshadowed by the wraith of his coming doom. His servants would have
had him remain indoors. Some rumour of the midnight meeting had leaked
out, and they suspected foul play, but Charles refused to listen, and
notwithstanding that the day had dawned so thick, 'that a man could see
no further than a spear's length before him,' betook himself almost
unattended to St. Donatian's, there to hear Mass.[8]
Hardly had the service begun than Burchard, accompanied by a crowd of
retainers, entered the church by a side door, and sheltering himself
behind the great columns of the northern aisle, stealthily crept up to
the place where Charles was kneeling before the Lady altar, and touched
him on the shoulder. The Count turned his head to see who was there, and
for a moment their eyes met, and then, quick as thought, a blow from
Burchard's sword felled him dead on the pavement.
'If this Dane should be cut down,' Burchard was reported to have said a
few days before the murder--'If this Dane should be cut down, who will
rise up to avenge him?' and now that the blow had been struck and
Charles was dead, it at first seemed that Burchard had accurately gauged
the situation.
Thémard, Châtelain of Brudburch, who was kneeling by Charles's side when
the fatal blow was struck, indeed made some show at defending him, but
he was quickly overpowered by numbers, and fell, mortally wounded,
beside the body of his master. As to the other members of the Count's
household, those of them who were not privy to the conspiracy were too
terrified to think of anything but their own safety. The Stratens and
their adherents had fled the county. William of Löo, the next heir to
the throne, sent letters of salutation and promises of help. Even the
clergy were silent, and the burghers, amongst whom the Erembalds had
always been popular, so far from showing signs of disapproval of the
crime, were working night and day at the fortifications of the town, in
order to enable it to withstand a possible attack.
For the moment the Erembalds had triumphed. The death of their sovereign
had brought them life.
After the long months of shame and suspense, during which wealth,
honour, liberty, all that makes life dear, were trembling in the
balance, it must have been no little consolation to these fierce, proud
Karls to know that their enemy, the man who had persecuted them, had
himself been brought low. But there was one thing which was a cause of
anxiety and of reproach--that thing which to many another murderer
before and after has been the source of no little embarrassment--the
body.
There it lay, in the place where the deed had been done, set out in
ghastly state amid flaming torches, a silent witness to their broken
troth. What should they do with it?
Bertulph and Hacket had indeed from the first disclaimed all knowledge
of the murder, and though perhaps their ignorance was wilful, in doing
so they probably spoke the truth; but the guilt of Burchard and of
several other members of the family was notorious and undenied, and so
strong were ties of blood in the eyes of the Karl, that when one of them
had sinned all his kindred deemed themselves not only responsible for,
but, in a certain measure, also participators in the crime.
The ghastly trophy, then, in the choir of St. Donatian's, was as dire a
reproach to Bertulph and his brother as to the blood-stained Burchard
himself.
Time pressed. Every moment that the mutilated corpse remained above
ground was increasing the risk that pity would goad men to rebellion.
What should they do with it? This was the problem which the Erembalds
assembled in Bertulph's house[9] had now to solve, and, if their
new-born hope was not to be stifled, to solve quickly.
There were several weighty reasons why the interment should not take
place at Bruges. To bury Charles in the capital, where the circumstances
of his death were notorious, were to indelibly grave their own ignominy
in the hearts of future generations. Perhaps, too, the presence of the
body would entail also the presence of an avenging shade. Moreover,
there was no precedent for a royal interment at Bruges, and the only
church in the city where such a function could be fittingly celebrated
had been defiled by blood, none but the Bishop of Tournai had the right
to reconsecrate it, and even if there were time to communicate with him,
it was in the highest degree improbable that old Simon of Tournai,
Charles's own brother-in-law, would consent to smooth the path of his
kinsman's murderers.
On the other hand, there was a strong feeling amongst the people in
favour of Bruges, and Bertulph was sufficiently acquainted with the
temper of his fellow-townsmen to know that any attempt to run counter to
their wishes would be hazardous. After much confabulation, it was at
length decided to request Arnulph, Abbot of Blandinium, a man whom
Bertulph could trust, to secretly convey the body of Charles to his
cloister and there give it Christian burial. Nor did Arnulph belie the
confidence placed in him.
Although it was the hour of compline when Bertulph's messenger reached
Ghent, on learning of his old friend's dilemma, he at once made ready to
start, and pushing on through the darkness, in spite of bad roads and
bad weather, made such expedition that he reached Bruges before
cock-crow. All was in readiness, the body had been prepared for
burial--the trusty abbot had secured a conveyance which was now drawn up
in a secluded corner hard by the cathedral, before daybreak he would
again be free of the town, and once in the open country there was little
fear of hindrance or detection.
All that remained of Charles had been placed on the bearers' shoulders,
and under the direction of Bertulph and the abbot, the weird _cortège_
was slowly wending its way down the nave of St. Donatian's, had indeed
almost reached the great western portal, when suddenly the stillness of
the early morning became a whirl of angry voices and tramping feet.
There could be no mistake as to its import. Somehow or other the project
had become known, and all Bruges had turned out to oppose it.
In order to understand the cause of this seemingly sudden revulsion of
feeling, a word of explanation is perhaps necessary.
The whole life of Charles of Denmark is wrapped and swathed from
beginning to end in mystery and contradiction. Half soldier, half saint,
with his Bible in one hand, and Charlemagne's sword 'Joyeuse' in the
other, he flits across the stage of European history like some pale,
crimson-robed phantom from another world.[10]
Was he a cunning schemer--a layer of deep plots which he never lived to
carry out, or was he only a dreamer of dreams, tossed about by wayward
impulses and passing fancies, this incomprehensible Dane, king's son or
scullion's son, as the case may be, who almost accomplished so much and
in reality achieved so little--this tissue of inconsistencies who
usurped for himself a petty principality and despised an imperial
diadem, who crushed his proud lords with a lion's fierceness, and went
barefoot to kiss the hands of beggars, this most marvellous devotee who
showed himself on occasions so generous and at times appears so mean,
who deprived himself of meat and raiment that he might have the more to
succour the needy, and spat on his best friends and trampled them in the
dust? This friend and father of churches, who all his life long lavished
on them wealth, honour, obedience, and whose end, by a strange irony of
fate, was at length destined to be the outcome of an unjust quarrel
which he himself had forced on his own ecclesiastical chief.
Questions difficult to answer these, with the evidence at present at our
disposal. Dr. Wegener thinks (p. 6) there is ground for believing that
the dream of Charles's life was to win his paternal heritage--the crown
of Denmark, and that if he had lived longer he might perhaps have
realized it. May be his hopes flew higher still, and that the ultimate
goal of his ambition was to carry out his father's darling project and
establish once more, in all its glory, the kingdom of Canute the Great.
But, however this may be, and whatever may have been Charles's failings
and his foibles and his faults, one thing is certain: his good deeds
alone followed him. The hospitals and asylums which he founded, the
churches and monasteries which he built, his courtesy and sweetness to
the poor and the simple, the sympathy and protection which he showed to
the oppressed, the lordly feasts which he made in his palace at Bruges
for the blind and the halt and the maimed--these are the things which
lived after him, and friend and foe alike agreed to forget the rest.
Prayers and Masses were everywhere offered for the repose of his soul,
perhaps even in his honour. Bertulph himself sang 'Requiem' for the foe
who had once been his friend, and when all was over and the poor had
returned to their houses enriched by his alms, his servants found him
weeping over the grave. Even Burchard sought reconciliation. Despite the
ban of the Church, Pagan practices died hard with the Flemish Karls of
the seaboard, and Burchard, who was a true Karl, would make his peace
with Charles after the manner of his forefathers. Accompanied by a band
of wild retainers from the Forest of Thor, he entered at midnight the
choir of St. Donatian's, where lay the body, and there, by the light of
flaming torches, celebrated the weird _Dodsisas_, or banquet of the
dead. Libations of wine and libations of ale were poured over the grave,
and as the loving-cup passed from hand to hand each man muttered, 'We
drink to thee, Count Charles,' and then Burchard alone knelt down on the
pavement and with his lips touched the marble slab which covered his
victim's remains, saying, as he did so, 'Accept, O shade, this kiss of
peace and reconciliation, and, appeased by these our offerings,
vouchsafe to lay aside all thought of enmity and vengeance.' In a word,
owing to the tragic circumstances of his death, the memory of 'this
Charles of Denmark' was clean wiped out. The citizens of Bruges were
only mindful, and to this day they are only mindful, of 'Blessed Charles
the Good.'
Such being the case, it is not to be wondered at that, in an age when
relics were prized above rubies, the burghers should be loth to part
with so precious a thing as the body of their martyred Count. At all
hazards they would keep it, thus they averred, and with much clamour and
a mighty rush they burst into the cathedral. In the midst of the uproar
rumour passed from mouth to mouth that a hunchback had been actually
healed, in the twinkling of an eye, there, in the midst of them all, by
simply touching the holy thing they were fighting for--fresh
confirmation, were any needed, of Charles's sanctity. Bertulph indeed
only laughed at the tale; that poor Charles should be able to work
miracles after his death seemed to him so very improbable. But Bertulph
was a sceptic, so it was said, and nobody minded him. Five hundred
unimpeachable burghers could vouch for the truth of the story, and the
tumult increased tenfold. The clergy themselves, either from fear or
conviction, now threw in their lot with the mob, and seizing on chairs,
stools, thuribles, candlesticks, anything that came to hand, laid about
them manfully. What did the provost mean by taking this step without
consulting their wishes? Was not St. Donatian's as great as Blandinium,
and were not the canons of Bruges as good men and true as the monks of
Ghent? By God and His saints the body of Charles should never quit their
cathedral! They would die first! In face of the opposition of his own
clergy and the increasing fury of the mob, resistance was impossible,
and Bertulph gave way, whilst Abbot Arnulph, giving thanks to God that
he had escaped with a whole skin, was glad to go back to his monastery
without the much-coveted treasure. This satisfied the people for the
moment and they returned quietly to their homes, but in public
estimation the crime of endeavouring to give Charles decent burial
outside Bruges was as great a one as that of his murder, and in the
sequel Bertulph had to pay dearly for it.
On the following morning (Friday, March 4), after a solemn Requiem Mass
had been chanted for him in the chapel of St. Peter outside the Bourg,
Charles was laid to rest in the place where he fell in front of the Lady
Altar in St. Donatian's.
[Illustration: Angle of the Rue de l'Ane Aveugle]