_The French Annexation_
Descended from a poor but illustrious family of the best nobility of
Champagne, and nearly allied to the royal house of France--a man of
great natural abilities, no less courageous than capable, and withal an
ardent lover and lavish patron of literature and the arts--it was no
mere vulgar flattery when Jacques Bretex, the troubadour of Arras,
averred that Count Guy de Dampierre was the most polished and learned
and generous prince of his day. His Court was one of the most brilliant
in Christendom; thither flocked musicians, artists, men of letters, from
all parts of Europe. His chief delight was to while away his leisure
hours with them--in summer-time in the woody glades of Winendael, and in
winter in the halls of his sumptuous palace at Bruges. It was thanks to
his generous patronage that in days when every French town boasted a
poet, in an age that was the age _par excellence_ of French minstrelsy,
this gentle art shone with the greatest _éclat_ in Flanders and in
Artois. But if French songsters like Adenez Leroy and Jacques Bretex
enchanted the ears of Guy's Court with pæans of his virtue and his
glory, plain citizens relished more the rude Flemish verse of the poets
of the people--verse bitter, caustic, passionate, instinct alike with
their hopes and their aversions, verse which, scorning the art of
flattery, did not hesitate to discover the source of all this
magnificence;--burthensome taxes and forced loans wrung from a
long-suffering people by a prince who contemned their liberties. The
bitter irony, for example, with which William Uuitenhove in his
_Reinæert de Vos_ (Reynard the Fox) bewails the progress which Master
Reynard has made in science, and the haste shown by men hungry for
riches to follow no other rule than that which he preached in his den,
or the no less bitter and energetic hymns in which Jacob van Maerlant
bewails the lot 'of the sheep wandering among the ravening wolves who
have become their shepherds now that pride and avarice have given to
every man who possesses gold the right to speak in the council chamber
of princes.'
Bred in the traditions of feudalism, Guy mistrusted Flanders, the land
of all others where freedom had made most headway, and the Flemish in
their turn hated him because his dynasty had been forced on them by
France. These two circumstances hampered him at every turn, and there
was yet another which indirectly aggravated all his difficulties: he was
the impecunious father of seventeen children.[21] Sons had to be settled
in life and daughters portioned and married, hence the arbitrary
taxation, the fines and forced loans with which he so often vexed his
subjects. This too was the fruitful source of foreign complications.
Guy, considering above all things how to obtain rich partners for his
numerous offspring, did not always take into consideration the political
opportuneness of their alliances. From every circumstance he must needs
draw some pecuniary advantage, and that without regard to his real and
permanent interests. Every town and abbey in his domains lent him money,
he had recourse too to the usurers of Lombardy and of Arras, and he was
always ready to sell privileges to whomsoever could afford to pay for
them. The money thus raised was in great part expended in endowing his
progeny. Thus it was that he purchased the lordships and manorial
rights of Dunkirk, of Baitlleul, of Cambrai, of St. Omer and Peteghem.
His endeavours to affiance his daughter Phillippine, and when this
failed, his youngest daughter Isabelle, to the heir to the English
throne, were in great measure the cause of his troubles with France.
With what tenacity Guy clung to this project, and that it was not
altogether inspired by mercenary motives, the memorial presented by his
two sons Robert of Bethune and John of Namur to Pope Boniface, bears
witness. The Princess Phillippine was at this time a prisoner at Paris,
and one object of the memorial was to interest Boniface in her behalf.
'Holy Father,' runs the passage in question, 'your devoted son Guy,
Count of Flanders, is grievously afflicted that the union of his
daughter with the Prince of Wales, a matter which had been guaranteed by
solemn oaths, is not yet accomplished. It were a fine thing for him to
have for his friend and son-in-law the heir to the English throne, and
his daughter one day queen, which was what, with God's blessing, he had
ardently hoped would come to pass,--nay, what a grand thing it would be
for his subjects that England and Flanders, countries which hitherto
have been so often at loggerheads with no little detriment to persons
and property, should at length be united in bonds of peace. For the
inhabitants of these lands are neighbours and they are wont to have much
commercial intercourse the one with the other, chiefly for the transport
of wool from England, and cloth from Flanders, but also anent many other
products found in one country or the other.'
A fourth circumstance hampered Guy. His nephew Jean II. of Avesnes never
forgot that he was the eldest son of the eldest son of Marguerite of
Constantinople, that the highest ecclesiastical tribunal in Christendom
had pronounced in favour of his father's legitimacy, and that thus,
according to the law of primogeniture, he was rightful Count of
Flanders; hence he lost no opportunity of injuring his uncle, and was
continually plotting against him. Moreover, Guy was at daggers drawn
with several of his great vassals, such as the Lords of Audenarde and
Gavre, and he was not beloved by the higher clergy, at all events by
these of West Flanders.
Thus it came to pass, in spite of his brilliant qualities, in spite of
his all-round capability, in spite of his courage, his perseverance and
his _finesse_, he failed in the noble task which it was his ambition to
fulfil--to break from off the neck of Flanders the galling yoke of
France--that his most cherished personal hopes were never accomplished;
that he had to stand by with folded hands whilst poor little
Phillippine, the child of his old age, the apple of his eye, was slowly
done to death by Philippe le Bel, and that he himself, an old man broken
down by insults and tears, at length died miserably in a French prison.
It must not be supposed from what has been noted above that Guy was
animated by the instincts of a tyrant; he had no wish to establish a
despotism in Flanders--nay, he undoubtedly had the welfare of his
country at heart, but self came first. When he was not blinded by his
own personal interests, he showed himself a just and a benevolent
prince, following in his methods of government the example of his
predecessors, Jeanne and Marguerite. Like them he favoured industry and
commerce, and to a certain extent the freedom of the towns, but he
viewed with an evil eye the extreme independence of the great communes,
the like of which existed nowhere else in Northern Europe, and he would
have reduced their liberties to the same level as those obtaining in
France.
The jealousy with which the upper classes viewed the increasing
well-being of the people was another item in the political situation of
the day, and Guy endeavoured to exploit it for his own ends. The quarrel
was not, as has so often been represented, a duel between burgher and
noble, it was rather a tug-of-war between men of wealth and men of
moderate means.
On the one side were doubtless a certain number of rich feudal lords,
but there were also allied to them almost all the great merchants and
traders of the greater communes, and nearly all the higher clergy--in a
word, the _majores et potentiores_, as Monachus Gandavensis calls them.
On the other, the small traders, the lower clergy, and perhaps a
sprinkling of the Court nobility.
The former class alone monopolised all municipal authority, every post
of profit and advancement was reserved for them, and the latter viewed
this state of things with great disfavour; and Guy, with a view to
crushing the oligarchy which governed the towns, fomented and increased
the quarrel, backing up the small men who were not strong enough to
disquiet him.
The Flemish as a nation have never been renowned for loyalty to the
princes who governed them, and the sturdy patriotism of this hard-headed
race will most frequently be found to have been inspired less by motives
of sentiment than by motives of self-interest. This was certainly the
case with the '_majores et potentiores_' of Bruges and Ypres and Ghent
in the days of Count Guy.
So long as their rights and privileges and monopolies were respected, so
long as all political and municipal power was in their hands, it
mattered little to them whether they were called Frenchmen or Flemings,
whether their nominal chief styled himself Count of Flanders or King of
France. Thus it came to pass that when Guy, in order to curtail their
power, threw his weight on the side of the little men, the governing
oligarchy appealed from their Count to the parliament of his liege lord,
the King of France, and that when, thanks to their aid, that monarch had
made Flanders a French province, and had then thrown off the mask, and
attempted to deprive them of all they held most dear, they veered round
to the side of their rightful government, united with the little men,
and finally chased the French from Flanders.
'Philippe le Bel,' says Kervyn, 'represents in the thirteenth century
the worst tendencies of absolute monarchy.' He was firmly resolved to
gather up all power into his own hands, that he alone should rule
France, and that in the domains of his vassals nothing should take place
without his consent. And note this. He was the first French sovereign
who used the formula--_Par le plenitude de notre puissance royal_, and
the first too who styled himself _metuendissimus_.
Flanders was the first province to which he directed his attention. Her
princes were amongst the mightiest and the most independent of his
vassals, and behind them was the strength of their free cities. United,
these two forces would have been invincible; in hurling himself against
the bed rock of their omnipotence Philippe would have only dashed
himself to pieces, but, unhappily, at the time of which we are treating,
Guy and his burghers were at daggers drawn, and their mutual
animosities--animosities which he made it his business to
foment--afforded Philippe a favourable opportunity for crushing both.
From the commencement of his reign the French King had persistently
worried the Count of Flanders with a policy of exasperation which
culminated, in 1296, in the decoying and detention of his favourite
daughter Phillippine. This it was which at length drove Guy to openly
break with his suzerain, and on the 7th of January 1297, after signing
on the previous day at Winendael an offensive and defensive alliance
with Edward of England, he despatched the abbots of Gembloux and of
Florceffe to Paris to inform the French King that on account of his evil
deeds and his perfidy, Count Guy of Flanders henceforth held himself to
be quit, delivered and absolved from all bonds, alliances, conventions,
obediences, and services by which he might hitherto have been bound to
him.
Philippe replied by invading Flanders at the head of 60,000 men. The
greater communes, of whose rights and liberties he posed as the
champion, received him with open arms, and so hard pressed were Count
Guy and his allies that early in October (1297) they were glad to
consent to an armistice which was afterwards prolonged to a truce of
three years.
Having thus for the moment discarded the trade of war, Philippe busied
himself with diplomacy; purchased the defection of Albert of Nassau;
concluded a secret treaty with the English King, affiancing his daughter
Isabelle to the Prince of Wales, and his sister Marguerite to Edward
himself. Thus on the very day when the truce expired he was enabled to
pour his troops into Flanders with every anticipation of a successful
and speedy issue. Nor was he doomed to disappointment. What could Guy
do? Betrayed by his burghers, without friends and without cash, by the
end of April he had lost all heart, and presently he was on his knees at
Ardenburg before Charles of Valois, the French commander, humbly suing
for peace. Absolute submission to the King's mercy, total abandonment of
the remnant of territory which he still held, and a journey to Paris
along with two of his sons and fifty of his barons, there to treat face
to face with the King--these were the only terms upon which Valois
would consent to relinquish hostilities, but he guaranteed to Guy, in
the King's name, that if he failed to obtain peace in the course of the
year, he should be free to return to Flanders. Stern as the conditions
were, Guy and his little following forthwith set out for Paris, but only
on their arrival there to be thrown into prison. Philippe was not bound,
he said, by a treaty to which he had never assented, and presently,
having obtained judgment from his lawyers that Guy had forfeited his
dominions by reason of felony, he took possession of the entire county,
and declared it annexed to the French crown. This was early in the year
1300. 'The burghers of the Flemish cities,' says a German historian,
'had been all corrupted by the gold or the promises of the French King,
who would never have dared to cross their frontiers if they had been
true to their Count.'[22] The rest of this story is more intimately
connected with Bruges, and it must be told at greater length.