_Louis of Maele_
Louis of Maele, the eldest son of Louis of Nevers, so called from the
place of his birth, was a beautiful stripling of sixteen years when the
old Count died. He too had fought at Cressy, had received honourable
wounds there, and had been knighted on the battlefield. But if he
possessed his father's courage, he was heir also to his inclination to
crooked ways, as the communes of Flanders soon learnt to their cost.
Immediately after the great defeat he had set out for Paris, where he
did homage to Philippe of Valois, and from thence sent envoys to Halwyn
to negotiate with the Flemish burghers, who, strangely enough, consented
to accept him for their prince. Perhaps they thought that Louis's youth
would render him manageable, perhaps inherent jealousy prevented them
from agreeing on anyone else, but for all that, the long-headed Flemings
deemed it expedient to make their own conditions--conditions which,
whatever they may have been, Louis seems to have had no hesitation in
accepting, for, by the end of November, we find him installed at Bruges,
and--presage of his future policy--surrounded by the Leliaert nobles who
had been his father's friends. Presently he publicly proclaimed the
first part of his programme, and vehemently urged the communes to
renounce their allegiance to Edward III. From this moment men had little
doubt that the ultimate goal of his ambition was to crush the strength
[Illustration: MAELE CASTLE]
of the towns. For generations the Kings of France had endeavoured to
enslave them, and Philippe of Valois himself had broken his most solemn
pledges, whilst the English monarchs, from time immemorial, had shown
themselves their friends, and for fifteen years King Edward III. had
backed fair promises with blood and sterling gold. Interest and
inclination alike, then, resolved the burghers to stand by him, nay
more, to draw the bonds of union closer by marrying his daughter to
their Count. Louis, when the matter was first broached to him, refused
to listen. He would never wed, he plainly told them, the daughter of his
father's murderer, but when the burghers persisted, no less dogged than
they, he resolved to cut the knot in true Flemish fashion. Not strong
enough to risk a contest at Bruges, the chief centre, for the moment, of
nationalism, he feigned acquiescence, and presently, along with the
city fathers, set out for Bergue, where Edward was holding his Court.
The meeting took place towards the middle of February, at the Abbey of
St. Winoc, and Edward received the Flemish Count with every token of
affection, solemnly assuring him, as he took him by the hand, that he
was a stranger to his father's death, and presently Isabelle of England
and Louis of Flanders mutually plighted their troth.
It had been arranged that the marriage should take place in the middle
of April, and a fortnight previous to the appointed date Edward's
ambassadors waited on Louis, who had meanwhile returned to Bruges, and
besought him to take command of the English forces.
Next day he planned for their entertainment a great hunting party in
Maele Woods. No sooner had the hawks been loosed than, feigning great
zest for the sport, he set off at full speed and was soon out of sight
of his companions, nor did he rein in his horse until he had crossed the
French frontier and reached Lille.
Edward was furious when he learned what had happened, and Isabelle cut
to the quick. She was in sooth, she said, Countess of Flanders, and
until the day of her death she continued to wear the Flemish arms
embroidered on her gown. As to the burghers, they at once took up arms,
and it was only the mutual jealousy of Ghent and Bruges that saved the
truant Count. His policy was to favour the latter town, in order that he
might thereby hold in check alike her great rival and the other cities
of Flanders.
Throughout his long and tumultuous reign of well-nigh forty years, by
his lying, his meanness and his chicanery, Louis of Maele showed himself
the worthy son of Louis of Nevers.
He made Bruges the seat of his government and his chief place of
residence, and here he squandered in riotous living the gold which he
everywhere extorted throughout the rest of his domains.
Embellished by splendid monuments, enriched by the presence of a lavish
and luxurious Court, her trade fostered by privileges innumerable and
concessions without end, the city on the Roya prospered marvellously
during the reign of Louis of Maele. Advancing from day to day in
comeliness and wealth and renown, she, during this period, attained the
acme of her greatness. Merchants from every country in Europe bought and
sold in her markets, ships from all parts of the world brought rich
cargoes to her wharves. No less than twenty foreign Consuls occupied
palaces within her bounds, and her population is said to have numbered
two hundred and fifty thousand souls. But if Bruges now shone
resplendent in a golden halo of magnificence, the moral squalor of her
citizens equalled only the meanness of spirit of the man who had done
such great things for her. Fickle, selfish, cowardly they had ever been,
and they now only showed themselves grateful to their benefactor so long
as it was in his power to help them, and, when they had gone over to the
national party, only supported their new friends whilst their star was
in the ascendant.
In 1379 Louis of Maele had granted them permission to construct a canal
for the purpose of bringing the waters of the Lys to Bruges, doubtless
with the object of preventing, by means of a greater flow of water, the
silting up of the Zwyn, which even at this early period had already
commenced. During four months, from the 19th of March to the 23rd of
July, the men of Bruges were busy at this undertaking, and then a great
army of Ghenters, fearing for their own commerce, went out and put them
to flight. Louis was unable to afford protection, and the burghers threw
open their gates and made common cause with his enemies.
Presently they prepared a sumptuous banquet in honour of their new
friends. Among the guests who sat down to it was the Ghent leader, Jean
Yoens, dean of the great guild of watermen. That night he died
mysteriously of a malady which no physician could diagnose, and the
gossips on 'Change shrugged their shoulders and whispered poison.
But though Bruges had allied herself to the city on the Lys, and a great
army of Ghenters was, with her consent, encamped in her midst, her soul
was rent with envy, and on May 13, 1380, her citizens surprised and slew
no small number of them in the Friday Market, and then these sturdy
burghers, still smoking with the blood of their guests, went and sought
out Louis of Maele, and demanded from him fresh privileges by way of
recompense for their devotion. Just two years later, on May 3, 1382,
retribution followed.
For years past Louis had oppressed and persecuted the men of Ghent 'even
as Pharaoh of old had persecuted the children of Israel'; of late
fortune had singularly favoured his efforts; he had cut off all their
supplies, and the town was sick with hunger. Such was the misery of the
people that for a fortnight--we have it on the testimony of Philip van
Artevelde--thirty thousand of them had not tasted bread. At length,
driven to it by wretchedness, they determined to go forth and beard the
lion in his den, and presently Philip van Artevelde and a handful of
half-starved burghers set out for Bruges. He had called to his standard
all men who were able to take the field, but a bare five thousand of
them had answered his summons--to such pitiable plight had famine
reduced the strength of the city of Ghent, one of the most populous
towns in Europe.
When they reached Oedelem, in the neighbourhood of Maele Castle,
Philippe sent envoys to Bruges to make one last effort to negotiate an
honourable peace, but the guildsmen remembered their bloody triumph of
two years ago, and boasted that in less than an hour they could easily
cut to pieces this puny band of Ghenters; and presently Louis, at the
head of eight hundred knights and forty thousand tradesmen--tailors,
butchers, fishmongers and the like--unarmed and half drunk, in spite of
his better judgment was compelled to go forth to battle. With such an
auxiliary force behind him the issue was a foregone conclusion. At the
first discharge of their opponents' artillery, the drunken rabble made
for Bruges. The Ghenters gave chase, and ran so swiftly that they
reached the city gates almost at the same moment as the men they were
pursuing; one of the foremost of them was in time to thrust his pike
between the doors at the moment the Bruges men were closing them, and
soon Van Artevelde and his comrades were thronging into the city.
Louis, who had been unhorsed at the commencement of the stampede, had
somehow or other managed to remount, and along with some thirty or forty
knights had the good fortune to reach his palace in safety. From thence
he sent out heralds to summon all his burghers under pain of death to
assemble in the market-place. Hardly had he done so when Robert
Maerschalck, the husband of one of his natural daughters, came in hot
haste to the palace with tidings that Van Artevelde was now in the heart
of the city. Night had already set in, and his counsellors, trembling
for the safety of his person, would have had him remain indoors, but
Louis refused, and accompanied by a handful of serving men, and crying,
_'Flandre au comte au lion_,' rushed out into the darkness. When he
reached the Grande Place he knew that his cause was lost. It was filled
indeed with armed men, but it was not the burghers of Bruges who had
assembled there. Flaunting over the seething throng, he could
distinguish the banner of Ghent. 'Put out your lights,' hissed the Count
to his lackeys, 'and let each man think of himself.' Alone, under cover
of the darkness and a buttress of St. Amand's Church--long since
demolished--he unbuckled his coat of mail and put on the clothes of one
of his serving-men.
About midnight he summoned up courage to knock at the door of a wretched
hovel hard-by, and recognizing in the person who opened it a poor widow
to whom he had often given alms, appealed to her generosity. 'Woman,' he
whispered, 'save me; I am the Count of Flanders.' She pointed to a
rickety ladder, and bade him go up to the garret. There, under a heap of
straw, he lay all that night and all the next day. When darkness had
again set in he made his way out of the city, and, after a host of
hairbreadth adventures, presently reached Lille. 'Now mark,' comments
wise old Froissart, 'all ye who hear this tale, consider what marvellous
changes of fortune God in His good pleasure bringeth about. In the
morning the Count of Flanders had thought himself one of the mightiest
princes in Christendom, and in the evening he found it convenient to
hide himself in the mean home of a poverty-stricken woman.'
As for Van Artevelde, he treated the conquered town with no little
generosity. By the small hours of the morning he had completely gained
the upper hand, and his first act was to forbid further slaughter, and
all looting, and every kind of outrage under penalty of death. He next
summoned the burghers of Bruges to a conference in the Grande Place.
Hardly had they assembled than a member of Van Artevelde's own family
was led bound into his presence. He had been taken red-handed in some
act of violence. 'What,' exclaimed the great tribune, 'you, who should
have been a pattern of obedience, the first to break my commands!' and
he ordered that he should be flung headlong from one of the windows of
the belfry. As he fell some men-at-arms caught him on the points of
their spears, and a cruel shout of approbation welled from the throats
of the Bruges men--'Behold a just judge, a man cut out for captain of
Flanders!' and they swore that henceforth the burghers of Bruges would
live in brotherly love with the burghers of Ghent.
But Van Artevelde, knowing the men he had to deal with, required
something more tangible than their bare word, and the burghers were
compelled to deliver into his hands a goodly number of hostages; to
witness the destruction of three city gates:--the _Porte Ste. Croix_,
the _Porte Ste. Cathérine_ and the _Porte de Gand_, and thirty feet of
wall around each of them; and lastly, to submit themselves to the two
Ghent captains, Peter Van den Bossche and Peter de Wintere, whom
Artevelde appointed governors of the town. For the rest he contented
himself with requisitioning an ample supply of provisions for the
famine-stricken town of Ghent, and for three whole days the high road
from Bruges to that city was crowded with carts and waggons groaning
under the weight of food stuffs.
At the expiration of that time, thanks to the energy and prudence of Van
Artevelde, the markets were peacefully re-opened, and the town assumed
its wonted aspect. During his short rule--it only lasted six
months--trade revived, justice was rigorously administered, and peace
reigned throughout Flanders. Then came the French invasion, the Flemish
defeat at Rosebeke, and the great tribune's untimely death (November 27,
1382). The conquerors found his mangled body on the battlefield amongst
a heap of slain, and they hung it in chains on a lofty tree, and the
birds of the air devoured it.
Never had Flanders suffered a defeat so disastrous. 'Sixty thousand of
her sons had perished,[31] the land was deluged with blood.'[32] A blow
had been hurled at communal government from which it never really
recovered.
Thanks to the intervention of Louis of Maele, and his son-in-law the
Duke of Burgundy, backed by the support of certain great nobles whose
goodwill the burghers had purchased with heavy bribes, Bruges suffered
less at the hands of the French than the other communes of Flanders. She
was not handed over to pillage, but the Breton mercenaries, disappointed
of the rich booty which they thought to have obtained there, scoured the
country round with fire and sword. 'The French,' says the monk of St.
Denis, 'cut the throats of all whom they met, sparing neither rank, nor
age, nor sex, and thus it may be truly said of them that they slew the
widow and the orphan, the youth and the maid, the old man and the
suckling at its mother's breast.' As for Louis of Maele, he approved
what he could not prevent. 'Some people ask, most redoubtable lord,'
said he to King Charles VI., 'how may best be crushed the turbulent
spirit of this race--by sparing the land or by reducing it to a desert.
As for me, I can only say: deal with the county of Flanders according to
thy good pleasure, and whatsoever thou shalt deem fit to ordain I shall
be contented.' In truth Louis's influence in the counsels of the French
King was almost a thing of the past, and what little influence he still
possessed was diminishing day by day. The campaign against Flanders had,
indeed, been undertaken ostensibly for his behoof, but its real object
was to deal a blow at England and to shatter the forlorn hope--the
Flemish communes--of the restive communes of France; and when two years
later (January 26, 1384) a truce was concluded between Richard II. and
Charles VI., what Louis deemed his interests were wholly disregarded. In
spite of his opposition--on this King Richard had insisted--the communes
of Flanders, who had not even laid down their arms, were included in the
truce of Lelinghem.
An exile from the rich land which he had once tyrannized over and
exploited--for Louis no longer dared show his face in Flanders--without
influence and without means, literally a homeless, impotent,
poverty-stricken old man, dependent for his daily bread on alms which
France begrudged him, so mean a creature did the once magnificent Louis
appear in the eyes of the Duke of Berri that during the discussion of
the terms of truce he had not hesitated to answer his vehement protest
with insolent and contemptuous speech. _Cousin_, he said, _si votre
imprudence vous a couvert de maux et de honte, il est temps de renoncer
à vos fureurs et de suivre de meilleurs conseils_.
Cut to the quick by the insult, and powerless to resent it, Louis did
not wait for the negotiations to be terminated, but withdrew in dudgeon
to St. Omer, and here it was that he presently learned that the treaty
in question had been signed. It was the last straw. The hand of death
was upon him, and he knew it.
Louis was lodging in the great Benedictine Abbey where lay the bones of
the founder of his house, Baldwin, Bras de Fer. Thither he summoned his
companions in misfortune--the Dean of St. Donatian's, the Lord of
Gruthuise--founder of the Gruthuise Palace--John of Heusden, his
physician, who was also Provost of Notre Dame, and Robert, his natural
son, and in their presence he dictated his last will and testament. 'Be
it known to all,' said the dying Count, 'that I, mindful of the great
honours, wealth and possessions, which Jesus Christ of His pure grace
hath bestowed on me, unworthy, in this world, the which I have not used
in His service and honour but for mine own vain glory, commend my poor
sinful soul, as humbly as I may, to Him, to the Blessed Virgin, fount of
mercy, and to all the saints in Paradise, whom I humbly beg to obtain
for me forgiveness of my many and great sins.' Then, with his own hands,
he wrote to the Duke of Burgundy, conjuring him to repair the wrong
which he had done to Flanders. He was sore grieved, he said, at the
destruction of his people, who had been punished at his request.
On the night of the 30th of January 1384 a mighty hurricane swept over
the land of Flanders. It was as though the four winds were blowing
together, and yet neither tree nor steeple was touched by it, but the
skeletons of Louis's victims swayed to and fro on their gibbets and
trembled in their chains. The spirits of darkness, said the people, were
whirling his soul to hell.[33] '_Ce dont plusieurs gens disoient ce que
bon leur semblait_,' comments shrewd Juvenal des Ursins, which is as
much as to say the wish was father to the thought.
A splendid specimen of civic architecture, perhaps the most perfect
building of its kind in Northern Europe, still bears witness to poor
Louis's generosity to his beloved city Bruges. The present _Hôtel de
Ville_
[Illustration: THE HÔTEL DE VILLE]
was his gift. He laid the foundation stone during the heyday of his
magnificence, on January 14, 1376. In May 1379 the building must have
been nearly completed, for about this time we find one Gilles de Man, a
name still common in Bruges, busy gilding and colouring the statuary and
niches of the façade, and the municipal accounts inform us that he
received seven _livres_ and fourteen _escalins_ for his labour. Early in
the following year the work was suspended on account of the trouble with
Ghent, in all probability it was not resumed during Louis's lifetime,
and it was perhaps only completed in 1420.
Who the original architect may have been is a matter of conjecture.
Monsieur Verschelde, the founder of the Archæological Society of Bruges,
and for many years city architect, suggests Jean de Valenciennes, the
artist whom we know designed and in great measure himself executed the
sculpture which adorns the edifice. If this conjecture be warranted,
Jean was, indeed, a creator of no ordinary talent, but of his story no
vestige has come down to us, save only this: a man of the same name,
perhaps his father, perhaps Jean himself, was _vinder_ of the Bruges
guild of painters in 1364.
It will be interesting to note that the façade of the Hôtel de Ville is
the earliest structure in which appears an architectural arrangement
which seems to have originated at Bruges, and which is perhaps the most
distinguishing feature of its civic architecture. We allude to the long
panels or arcades in which windows placed one over the other are
frequently enclosed in such a manner as to give them the appearance of a
series of long single windows ascending from the basement to the topmost
storey.
Amongst the other remarkable structures of this period, note the nave
and aisles and the upper portion of the transepts of the present
cathedral, which replace work of an earlier date destroyed by fire on
April 9, 1358, and were probably completed some two years later. If we
can judge from the remnant still standing:--the choir ambulatory and
the lower portion of the transepts, the old Church of St. Sauveur was
far superior, both as regards design and execution, to the present
edifice.
The great northern outer nave to the Church of Notre Dame dates also
from this epoch (probably 1360). Here we have a striking example of the
persistence of a feature rarely if ever met with in Gothic architecture
either in England or in France, and which is, perhaps, so far as
Northern Europe is concerned, at all events during the period in
question, peculiar to Flanders--the semi-circular arch. The architects
of Bruges seem never to have entirely abandoned it, and hence in that
city its presence does not necessarily indicate that the building in
which it is found is of Romanesque origin. Thus we find it in the tower
of Notre Dame, which, as we have seen, dates from the close of the
thirteenth century; in the northern transept of the cathedral of the
same date; in the windows of the _Porte de Gand_, and of the _Porte Ste.
Croix_ of a century later; in the great porch of the hospital of St.
John, and in the western façade of the Church of Notre Dame, and in
domestic architecture of every period, over and over again. Sometimes it
is used alone, sometimes in conjunction with the pointed arch. In the
case of the northern nave of Notre Dame, it is employed for the
vaulting, for the huge doorway at the western end, now bricked up, and
for the five small bays of the outer arcade which connect it with the
main building, whilst for the windows, for the bays of the inner arcade,
and for the great opening at the east end which gives access to the
tower, pointed arches are used.
For the rest, the building in question is characterised by its great
height, the magnificent span of its vault, the grandeur of its
proportions and the general simplicity
IV.--Genealogical Table of the Counts of Flanders from Guy de Dampierre
to Marguerite of Maele.
Matilda of = =Guy de Dampierre= = Isabel of
Bethune | _d._ 1304 | Namur
| +-------+----------+------+------+--------+
| John of = Marie of | Philippine | 4 other
| Namur | Artois | | children
| _d._ 1330 | Guy Isabel
| John II.
| of Namur
| _d._ 1335
+------+------------------+-----------+-----------------+---------+
=Robert III.= = Yolonde William, Marie = William Philip 5 other
( of Bethune) | of mar. Adela | of married children
_d._ 1322 | Nevers daughter of | Juliers Matilda
| Rodulph of | of
| Nesle | Thiette
+---------+-----------------------+ +-----+
Louis, Count = Jeanne, daughter Robert William of
of Nevers | and heiress of of Juliers,
_d._ 1322 | Hugo IV., Count Cassel Provost of
| of Rethel Maestricht
| _d._ 1305
Louis I. = Marguerite, daughter
_d._ 1346 | of Philip (the Long
| of France)
=Louis II.= = Marguerite
(of Maele) | of Brabant
_d._ 1384 |
Marguerite = Philippe
of Maele le Hardi,
_d._ 1405 Duke of
Burgundy
_d._ 1404
of its design. There is an unusual dearth of sculptured ornament, but
what little there is, is happily conceived and delicately carried out.
As the building now stands, with its once glowing frescoes blotted out
with white-wash, with its windows bereft of their painted glass and even
of their tracery (this is now being replaced), with its cold, dismantled
altars, and its chilling eighteenth-century pavement of marble, black
and white, its general appearance is sufficiently bleak, and we were
going to say sufficiently uninteresting, but that, no part of Notre Dame
can ever be. The old church is too irregular, too picturesque, too
mysterious. The incense of a thousand sweet memories still clings to its
columns, the music of a thousand noble deeds still re-echoes in its
vaulted roof, and in weird nooks and corners the red lamp of tragedy
still burns. Something of its glory we have already noted, and we shall
tell something more in its proper place.
Reader, make a pilgrimage to Notre Dame in the gloaming, and if thou art
one of the initiated thou shalt haply learn the rest.