_The Terrible Duke and his Gentle Daughter_
During the short reign of that sombre and fantastical hero Charles the
Terrible, or, as he is generally called, Charles the Bold, things went
on at Bruges in something of the same fashion as they had done in the
days of his predecessor. There was much surface glory, a vast amount of
rottenness within, and, added to this, a very general feeling of
disquietude and a continuous undercurrent of grumbling, which, as time
progressed, grew louder and louder, at the hazardous policy of the Duke,
whose dream it was to restore the old Burgundian kingdom, or, at least,
to free himself from the vassalage of France, and who used to ask with
indignation whether it was a seemly thing for a lineal descendant of
Charlemagne to acknowledge the suzerainty of Hugh Capet's heirs.
There were gorgeous jousts and tournaments, when amid shouts of Noël, on
Palm Sunday 1468, Charles made his solemn entry into Bruges, swore to
maintain her rights and privileges, and held his first Chapter of the
Golden Fleece in the Church of Notre Dame, where, by the way, the
escutcheons of his knights are still hanging, and amongst them that of
Edward IV. There was much feasting and merriment, too, when three months
later he brought home his third bride, Edward's sister, Margaret of
York; but it was presently turned into tears and ashes by a sudden and
virulent outbreak of plague, made more terrible by wild rumours that the
nurses, impatient to grow rich on the spoils of their patients, had
infected the wells and even the holy water stoops in the churches in
order to spread the disease. There was much real distress when Warwick
the King-maker, angered with Charles, because he had urged the citizens
of London to oppose the restoration of Henry VI., surprised some Flemish
vessels charged with wine from Saintonge, and blockaded the port of
Sluys; great rejoicings when, two months later, the Lord of Ter-Vere
encountered Warwick's fleet and, after a terrible conflict, dispersed
it, but which, in its turn, gave place to dismay at the fact, made
manifest by the recent naval battles, that the Zwyn was shallower than
ever.
Whereupon the estates of Flanders conferred as to remedial measures, and
after much confabulation, and strenuous opposition on the ground of
expense on the part of Ypres and Ghent, manufacturing towns, whose
interests were not at stake, and the men of the Franc, pastoral folk,
whom the matter in no way concerned, thanks to the support of Charles, a
plan was at length adopted which its advocates averred would restore the
harbour of Sluys to its former depth--to wit, the cutting of a dyke
which closed an ancient channel by which the sea formerly ran into the
port of Sluys, and towards the close of July 1470 it was put into
execution.
Many there were who believed this scheme would be inefficacious, and
after events justified them. Eighteen years later the _Echevins_ of
Bruges decided to re-make the dyke, seeing that the 'Haven of Zwyn was
closing up yet faster than of yore.'
Meanwhile Charles's schemes of conquest were pressing harder and harder
on his unfortunate subjects. In 1474 the Carthusian nuns of the Convent
of St. Anne were forced to part with a portion of their property in
order to pay their taxes, and the burghers grumbled louder than ever.
The obstinate canons of St. Donatian went a step further; they
absolutely refused payment, and were, in consequence, dragged to prison.
In 1476 Charles made fresh demands, and the deputies of the estates of
Flanders waited on him at Bruges to remonstrate, but after much haggling
and many bitter words, granted a subsidy--a hundred thousand _ridders_
and the pay of four thousand sergeants. Presently fresh defeat
constrained him to ask for more, and this time the communes refused. The
people, they said, were overwhelmed with taxes, no further succour of
men or money would they afford him for any of his foreign wars, but if
he should haply find himself in peril from either Swiss or Germans, they
would risk their lives and goods to bring him back safely to Flanders.
Traitors and rebels! thundered Charles, they should soon learn how
terrible was his vengeance. Vain threat; on the 5th of January 1477 the
defeat of Nancy put an end to all his dreams of conquest. In the first
shock of battle the Burgundians were dashed to pieces, and in the dismay
and confusion which followed the Duke had disappeared. No one knew what
had become of him. Some said they had seen him streaming with blood, but
still defending himself like a man. Others averred that at the moment of
defeat he had turned tail and fled. Three days later they discovered in
a frozen pond the remains of a naked human body, scarred with wounds and
half-devoured by beasts of prey. On one finger was a ring which a humble
member of the Duke's household--the woman who washed his linen--fancied
she recognized as having once been the property of her master. On this
testimony the shattered fragments were said to be the body of Charles,
and as such they were honourably buried in the Church of St. George at
Nancy. They were not, however, suffered to rest there. More than fifty
years later the Emperor Charles V. caused them to be brought to Bruges,
and laid them up in the Church of St. Donatian. Five years afterwards
his son, Philip II., translated them to a marvellous shrine in the
Church of Notre Dame. Here they remained in peace till the close of the
last century, when the iconoclasts of the Revolution scattered them, on
the ground that they were the bones of a tyrant. May be they were, but
it is equally likely that they were the relics of some humble toiler.
But to return to the epoch of Charles's death, or, at all events, of his
disappearance. 'The people, the masses'--we are quoting from
Kervyn--'who had lately been astounded at the pomp and wealth of the
great Burgundian Duke, and who had so long been accustomed to bend to
his iron will, utterly failed to understand how so great a prince, the
sovereign of so many realms, a man so redoubtable throughout all the
West, could have been suddenly swallowed up with all his glory in a pit
which his own foolhardiness had digged for him. At the siege, too, of a
petty town in Lorraine, by a troop of Rhenish boors and a handful of
Swiss shepherds. It altogether passed their comprehension, and they
persuaded themselves that he had escaped, and would one day come back
again, as his great ancestor Baldwin of Constantinople had done two
centuries before.
Some of the vanquished had succeeded in crossing the Meurthe, and were
known to have escaped by concealing themselves in woods and so forth;
perhaps he was among this number. As late as January 15 Margaret of York
still cherished this hope. 'From news which we have received from divers
quarters,' she wrote at this date, 'we expect and hope that by God's
mercy the Duke is still alive and well,' and on the 23rd his daughter
Mary wrote that she was not yet sure that her father was dead. Five
years later a report was set abroad that he was leading the life of a
hermit at Bruchsal in Suabia--_genus vitæ super humanum morem horridum
atque asperum_. An old servant who had fought beside him at Nancy, and
had there been made prisoner by the Swiss, went to see, but he failed to
recognize his master. The figure, voice, beard, hands, scars of the
recluse were not those of Charles the Terrible. But others there were
who believed in the marvellous stories of the hermit of Bruchsal, and
loaded him with presents, thinking to receive them back tenfold when he
returned to his estates. Others swore they had seen Charles at Rome, at
Jerusalem, at Lisbon, at London. Others again whispered that he had been
spirited away by the machinations of Louis XI.[36]
Upon the mysterious disappearance of Charles the Terrible after the
defeat of Nancy, his dominions devolved on his only daughter, a girl of
nineteen years of age, without army, without treasure, without any rock
of defence save those Flemish communes which her ancestors throughout
seven generations had never ceased to persecute. They did not refuse to
help her, but they demanded that their grievances should first be
redressed. Flanders, they urged, was not a fertile land, its prosperity
depended wholly on commerce. Commerce could only flourish where freedom
was respected, and hence it was of paramount importance that the
time-honoured rights and liberties and privileges of the Flemish people
should be once more restored to them.
Nor did the new Sovereign turn a deaf ear to their reclamations. The
whole land was seething with misery and discontent bred of a hundred
years' oppression, and her ministers were wise enough and patriotic
enough to see that only one policy was possible--a policy of general
appeasement. On February 11, 1476, she signed a charter, by which was
established a representative council for the government of all her
states, and note the concluding clause, which is not a little
significant--the Duchess declares that if any of the enactments herein
contained be at any time violated, either wholly or in part, her
subjects and vassals shall be thereby absolved from their allegiance
until such time as they have obtained redress.
Nor was this all; to each of the cities and towns of Flanders a special
charter of liberties was granted. Bruges, by the mouth of Louis of
Gruthuise, had demanded the revocation of the edict by which Philippe
l'Asseuré, thirty years before, had taken away her independence, and by
the 7th of April the Lord of Gruthuise was able to ascend the balcony
over the great door of the Hôtel de Ville and declare, amid the cheers
of the assembled multitude, that Marie had granted their request. Next
day the list of the privileges of the town was solemnly read in the
market-place, as well as a new and more liberal charter than any
hitherto granted, which gave back to the city of Bruges all her communal
liberties and commercial monopolies, as well as her lordship over the
Franc and over the town of Sluys.
If the communes of Flanders had been at one with themselves, and if
their burghers had been agreed together, the timely concessions of their
new Sovereign would perhaps have enabled the Flemish people to withstand
the machinations of the feeble tyrant whom we shall presently see
compassing their destruction. But the feuds which had so long hampered
them in their conflicts with former rulers had not one whit abated; the
little men still envied the big men, the petty towns the _bonnes
villes_, the Franc Bruges, Bruges Ghent, and, added to this, there was a
fresh source of disunion, a burning thirst for vengeance which could
only be slaked by blood. The men who, under Philippe and Charles, had
bartered liberty for pelf must pay on the scaffold the penalty of their
offences, aye and if need be (for according to the law of Flanders no
citizen could be put to death unless he had previously acknowledged the
justice of the sentence which doomed him), if need be torture must wring
from them the avowal of their guilt. The pleading of the greatest lady
in the land was powerless to save them. Pale with anguish, alone and on
foot, attired in deep mourning and with no headgear but a simple veil,
Marie had made her way to the _Hooghuis_ and from a window there had
addressed the vast throng of angry guildsmen assembled in the Marché au
Vendredi. 'O men of Ghent,' she had besought them, 'remember that I
forgave you, and for my sake forgive your enemies.' But the burghers
refused to listen. It was the first duty of a Sovereign to administer
justice with an even hand, and it should never be said that in Flanders
there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Whereupon, says
Philippe de Commines, '_retourna cette pauvre demoiselle, bien dolente
et descomfortée_.'
In other towns besides Ghent the burghers were as firmly resolved to
have their pound of flesh, and in exacting it they incurred the enmity
of men no less cruel than themselves, as later on they learned to their
cost.
At Bruges the burning question for the moment was the question of the
Franc. Would the bond after all be dishonoured, and would the
_Franchosts_ submit? And when, on the 5th of April, Marie was receiving
the homage of the burghers in the Church of St. Donatian, the mob burst
into the cathedral with cries of 'What of the Franc?' In vain the
Duchess once more proclaimed the overlordship of the city, in vain Louis
of Gruthuise assured them that their apprehensions were unfounded; the
guildsmen refused to disarm, nor was it until the 13th of April, when
the men of the Franc sent in their submission, that peace was once more
restored.
[Illustration: OLD ROOFS BELOW THE BELFRY]
Three days afterwards, on April 16, 1477, ambassadors arrived at Bruges
from the Emperor Frederick III. to demand for his son Maximilian the
hand of the girl Duchess. Louis of Gruthuise and Philip of Hornes
received them solemnly with lighted torches and led them to the
Princenhof. 'I understand,' was Marie's reply, 'that my father approved
this match, and as for me I desire no other.' The proposed marriage was
no less pleasing to the Flemish people, for though Maximilian was so
short of funds that Flanders was obliged to defray his travelling
expenses, 'he brought to the communes menaced by France the august
support of imperial blood and the contested traditions of the suzerainty
of the Germanic Cæsars.'[37]
Three days later the Duke of Bavaria solemnly plighted his troth to the
Duchess Marie in the name of Maximilian.
The reader will call to mind how one summer's morning, at daybreak,
Longfellow from the summit of the Belfry witnessed this quaint
betrothal, along with many other scenes in the history of Bruges.
'I beheld proud Maximilian
Kneeling humbly on the ground;
I beheld the gentle Marie
Hunting with her hawk and hound;
And her lighted bridal chamber
Where a duke slept with the queen,
And the armed guard around them
And the sword unsheathed between.'
The poet's account of the proceedings is not quite accurate. There was
no question of sleeping. The Duchess of Burgundy and the Duke of Bavaria
placed themselves on the nuptial couch for an instant only, and,
moreover, Marie was never a queen. She died before her husband was
elected King of the Romans.
Four months after the betrothal, at eleven o'clock on the night of
August 18 (1477), the youthful bridegroom--he was only eighteen years of
age--reached Ghent, and at once waited on Marie at the Hôtel de Ten
Walle, where a sumptuous banquet had been prepared for him. When he met
his _fiancée_, note the Flemish chroniclers of the day, both she and he
bowed down to the ground, and they each turned deathly pale. Sign of
their cordial love said some, presage of coming woe croaked others.
Next day the marriage was celebrated very quietly (August 19, 1477) in
the chapel of the Hôtel de Ten Walle, at six o'clock in the morning, in
the presence of Louis of Gruthuise and Jean of Dadizeele, of whom later
on. The same day Maximilian swore to respect the liberties of Ghent, and
shortly afterwards he took a similar oath at Bruges, where the burghers
had adorned their streets in his honour with bunting and greenery and
flowers, and had everywhere traced this one device, significant alike of
present misery and the expectation of brighter days: _Gloriosissime
Princeps defende nos ne pereamus_. Alas! their hopes were doomed to
disappointment. It could hardly have been otherwise. With such a feeble
pilot at the helm a prosperous voyage was out of the question.
Maximilian's faculties had developed so slowly that at the age of twelve
years he had not yet learned to articulate, and it seemed probable that
he would remain all his life with the intellect of a child. It was
doubtless owing to the hopelessness of the task that up to this time no
attempt was made to instruct him, and indeed, if his poor feeble brain
had been early pestered with facts and figures, it is not unlikely that
it would have altogether broken down under the strain. That he was able,
however, later on not only to entirely overcome the difficulty which he
had in speaking, but also to acquire an accurate knowledge of Latin,
French and Italian, shows that there was no radical brain malady, though
he remained, till the day of his death, unusually lacking in will power,
morbid, vacillating, vain, and so given to day-dreaming that his waking
visions sometimes almost amounted to hallucination. It would seem, then,
that his good qualities--his kindliness of heart, his generosity, the
ease with which he forgave injuries--were but the outcome of
inclination, and that his shortcomings--his overweening ambition, his
transparency, even whilst essaying to be most secret, his utter
inability to keep his word, even when sanctioned by the most solemn
oaths--were, after all, rather mental than moral defects.
Such was the man into whose keeping the honour and the freedom of
Flanders were now entrusted, nor were the burghers long in discovering
that the stalwart champion from whom they had hoped such great things
was after all but a broken reed, and soon their enthusiastic loyalty was
turned to bitter resentment.
As the war with France dragged on, and Maximilian, by his hesitancy and
vacillation, continued to frustrate the plans of his generals, and
render his own undoubted courage of no avail, his unpopularity increased
from day to day. His lavish prodigality too was no small cause of
annoyance to the thrifty burghers. Notwithstanding the hard times, they
had contributed generously and without complaint to the cost of the war,
and it was bad enough that the feebleness of their Sovereign should
render their sacrifices unavailing, but not to be borne that he should
lavish on foreign favourites those funds which they of their penury had
contributed for the defence of the fatherland.
But this was not all: Maximilian was rapidly exhausting his wife's
treasure. In 1479 he had already sold to the great house of Medici no
small portion of the famous Burgundian plate. Jewels of incalculable
value had found their way into the hands of Foulques Portinari, who was
now threatening to put them into the smelting pot if the cash for which
they had been pledged were not immediately forthcoming. He had borrowed
large sums from Spanish merchants at usurious rates of interest, paying
sometimes as much as thirty or even forty per cent., whilst a syndicate
of Bruges merchants, amongst whom was Hendrieck Nieulandt, of whom we
shall again hear later on, had advanced him no less than four thousand
_livres de gros_, and, worst of all, by the end of 1481, the famous
library of the Dukes of Burgundy, 'the richest and noblest library in
the world,' had been in great measure dispersed. No wonder that
discontent was rampant in the land, and that Maximilian, or rather the
men on whose advice he acted, was daily more and more hated. Presently
the deputies of the communes met to consider the situation. On one point
they had made up their minds: in these hard times, with trade paralysed,
industry at a standstill, and the country ravaged by war, no more of
their money should find its way into the pockets of foreign favourites.
It was the beginning of the great struggle which ended, so far as Bruges
was concerned, in the cancelling of all her liberties, the total
destruction of her commerce, and the utter and irreparable loss of her
influence and her prestige.
There was one man who, had he lived, might perhaps have rescued
Flanders--John of Dadizeele, the leader of the popular party. Himself
the scion of an old and noble house, after making his studies at Arras
and at Lille, he had entered the service of Simon de Lalainy, when that
warrior was defending Audenarde against the men of Ghent, and had
remained with him till his death in 1465. About this time he married
Catherine Breidel, a descendant of the great patriot, and returned to
his ancestral home, where it was his delight to give hospitality to the
numerous pilgrims who came to offer their vows at the famous shrine of
our Lady of Dadizeele, amongst them Philippe l'Asseuré, Charles the
Terrible, the English Earl of Scales (Edward IV.'s brother-in-law),
Marie of Burgundy, and Maximilian himself.
From this moment two varied occupations divided his time--the trade of
war and the paternal administration of his estate. At one time we find
him establishing a fair in the little town subject to his sway; at
another, busying himself with the erection of new and more commodious
dwellings for the poor; often leading his vassals to battle, as was the
case at the great triumph of Guinegate, the yeomen mounted on horses
which had lately drawn the plough, and the farm labourers armed with
pitchforks. He had shown himself a loyal and a devoted friend to Charles
the Terrible, and when that prince disappeared after the defeat of Nancy
he became the counsellor and defender of Marie of Burgundy. He had
received Maximilian on the Flemish frontier, and along with Louis of
Gruthuise, as we have seen, was present at the marriage which took place
next day. Later on, called by his victories to the supreme command of
the Flemish host, on more than one occasion he succeeded in foiling the
projects of Louis XI.; presently created Grand Bailiff of Ghent, and
anon High Steward of Flanders, again and again by his moderate counsel
he was able to quell the rising tide of sedition amongst the craftsmen
of Bruges and of Ghent. Respected alike by the Court and the communes,
he was the one man capable of defending the fatherland, threatened as
she was by intrigue and conquest abroad, and by anarchy and treason at
home.
It was destined to be otherwise. In the dusk of the evening of October
7, 1481, as John of Dadizeele was passing along an unfrequented lane in
Antwerp, he was attacked by a band of armed ruffians, and so grievously
wounded that he died three days afterwards.
The authors of this dastardly crime were never discovered, and perhaps
there was no wish to discover them; but rumour pointed to the Lord of
Montigny and the bastard of Gaesbeke, the first the father-in-law, and
the second an illegitimate son of Philip of Hornes, a man known to be
one of the chief foes of the victim and high in the favour of
Maximilian. Had John of Dadizeele lived, he might perhaps have moderated
the passions of his friends, and protected even those who hated him.
'His death was the bursting of the last _digue_ which opposed itself to
the flood of civil discord which had so long been threatening the
country. It was fatal alike to the men who had compassed it and to the
burghers, who celebrated his funeral in a manner befitting a prince; it
was the mourning of all Flanders, condemned as she now was to see the
extinction alike of her domestic peace and of the last faint ebullitions
of her power and liberty.'
Hardly had poor Dadizeele's mangled body been put under the sod than the
first clap of thunder rolled in the lowering heavens and the first flash
of lightning glittered across the sky. It happened thus. Maximilian, as
usual without cash and at his wit's end to know how to replenish his
empty treasury, ventured on a course of action which, had Dadizeele been
still alive, he would never have attempted. Under various flimsy
pretexts he caused to be put under arrest five of the principal
magistrates of Bruges, men of standing and unblemished character,
universally respected in the town and, to their cost, well known to be
the possessors of great wealth--one of them, Martin Lem, had from his
own purse lavished thousands on the war with France--hence the
prosecution. Maximilian hungered for their gold, and presently for a
consideration of two hundred thousand _louis d'or_, paid by way of a
fine, he consented to release them.
Though the _Echevins_ of Bruges were so terrified at the arrest of their
colleagues that they not only made no protest, but in order to
propitiate Maximilian granted him a very considerable subsidy, the
_Echevins_ of Ghent retaliated by pronouncing a sentence of exile for
fifty years against Philip of Hornes, who immediately after Dadizeele's
murder had fled to Marie's Court at Bruges, where, under shelter of her
popularity, he knew that no man would dare lay hands on him, for the
sweet and comely daughter of the Terrible Duke of Burgundy was very dear
to the Flemish people. As Philippe de Commines quaintly has it, '_Elle
estoit très honneste dame et bien aimée de ses sujets, et lui portoient
plus de révérence et de crainte qu'à son mary_.' Keeping herself
entirely apart from the intrigues and machinations of her husband, and
leaving the reins of government entirely in his hands, her delight was
to mix with her people like the wife of some plain citizen. When before
the victory of Guinegate all the women of Bruges walked through the
streets in procession barefoot and with candles in their hands to
implore God's blessing on the Flemish hosts, Marie was among the rest.
When in winter time the Minne Water was frozen and the lads and lasses
of the city disported themselves on skates, many a happy burgher was as
pleased and as proud at the skill and the grace of his beautiful
girl-sovereign as if she had been his own daughter. So too was it when
Marie, along with her ladies, went out to hunt. As she rode down the
_rue des Pierre_, across the _Grande Place_, and along the _rue aux
Laines_ towards the _Porte de Gand_ on her way to the marshes of
Oostcamp or to the woods of Maele the people cheered her to the echo.
One morning early in the spring of 1482, about
[Illustration: THE BELFRY FROM THE QUAI VERT]
six months after Dadizeele's death, Marie went out by the _Porte des
Maréchaux_ to hunt in the forest of Winendael, preceded by bands of
music, joyous, radiant, in festive attire. In the evening they carried
her home on a litter, pale, insensible, half dead. Her steed had
suddenly reared, overbalanced himself, and rolled on her. Marie was
expecting the hour of her delivery. From the first there was no hope of
saving her life. She lingered on for three weeks, and on the 27th of
March, 1482, passed quietly away.
Though the greater part of the stately Princenhof has been pulled down,
and the fragment which still remains has been irreparably disfigured and
spoiled, at least so far as the exterior is concerned, by stucco and
plaster, and the addition of three new storeys, the room in which Marie
died is still standing, and has been little changed, so it is said,
since the days when that hapless princess occupied it. It is an
oblong-shaped, comfortable-looking apartment of not very large
dimensions, with a beautiful panelled ceiling moulded all over with
flowers and foliage, and it gives on a pleasant garden.
The fair young Duchess was laid to rest in the Church of Notre Dame, and
if her wraith is not among the many ghosts who wander about that
mysterious fane, the memory of her beauty and her gentleness still
lingers there, kept green by the cunning workmanship of Pierre de
Becker, erst artist, sculptor, setter of gems, and skilled craftsman in
metal work at Brussels. This man conceived, and with his own hands
carried out, patiently toiling at it for seven years, from 1495 to 1502,
and thereby expending health, strength, fortune, and receiving in return
no adequate reward, a masterpiece the like of which is rarely seen. An
altar tomb of black marble, enriched with statues of saints and angels
of the most delicate workmanship, and with creeping plants and scrolls
and heraldic shields in bronze and gold and enamel, which now stands in
a side chapel off the southern ambulatory of Notre Dame. On it reposes
the form of a beautiful girl with her crowned head resting on a cushion
and at her feet two hounds. A quaint epitaph in old French proclaims her
name and rank, and begs also those who read it not to forget her soul.
Sepulcre de très Illustre princesse dame Marie de Bourgoigne....
Laquelle dame trèspassa de ce siecle. En l'age de vintcinq ans le
28e jour de mars, l'an 1482.... Regrettee plainte et ploree fut
de ses subjets et de tous autres qui la cognoissoient. Autant que
fut onques princesse. Priez Dieu pour son ame. Amen.
But what of her once beautiful body? All that remains of it lies in a
vault beneath the choir, and here too are the bones of the Terrible Duke
and the dried-up heart of the son who erected to the memory of his
mother the glorious monument described above. They are all scattered
about pell-mell amongst the débris of the casket and the coffins which
once contained them. Thus: until the spring of 1796, the monument of
Marie of Burgundy, as well as the monument of her father, stood side by
side in the chancel of Notre Dame just over the vault which still
contains their ashes. At this time the French Revolutionists were
playing havoc with the churches of Bruges, and in order to preserve
these treasures from their fury, Peter de Zitter, who was then parish
beadle, with the assistance of Stephen of Sierzac, a stone mason,
dismounted them and secretly carried away the fragments to a house hard
by the church. The Republicans, thus baulked of a rich booty, vented
their spleen on the ducal sepulchre, broke it open, wrenched off the
lids of the coffins, carried away all the iron and lead they could lay
hands on, and scattered the bones of Charles and of Marie on the bare
stone pavement.
Ten years after, in 1806, the monuments were brought forth from their
hiding-place and erected in the chapel where they now stand.
[Illustration: A Renaisance Gable]