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A SHORT HISTORY OF BELGIUM
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
NEW YORK
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI
THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
SHANGHAI
A SHORT HISTORY OF BELGIUM
BY
LÉON VAN DER ESSEN, PH.D., LL.D.
_Professor of History in the University of Louvain Member of the
Royal Academy of Archaeology of Belgium_
Second Revised and Enlarged Edition with a Special Chapter on “Belgium
During the Great War”
[Illustration]
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
COPYRIGHT 1916 AND 1920 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
All Rights Reserved
Published January 1916
Second Impression April 1916
Second Edition January 1920
Second Impression July 1920
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
TO
ALBERT I
KING OF THE BELGIANS
THE KNIGHT WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 7
CHAPTER
I. THE PERIOD OF FORMATION 8
II. THE PERIOD OF FEUDALISM 17
III. THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE COMMUNES 36
IV. THE POLITICS AND STRUGGLES OF THE TIME OF THE
COMMUNES 55
V. THE UNION OF THE BELGIAN PRINCIPALITIES UNDER
THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY 74
VI. BELGIUM UNDER CHARLES V (1506-55) AND THE
BEGINNINGS OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG 94
VII. PHILIP II AND THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS
AGAINST SPANISH RULE (1555-96) 101
VIII. THE REIGN OF THE ARCHDUKE ALBERT AND ISABELLA
(1598-1633) 120
IX. THE LAST YEARS OF THE SPANISH RULE (1633-1715) 125
X. BELGIUM UNDER THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA (1713-89) 130
XI. BELGIUM UNDER FRENCH DOMINATION (1792-1814) 141
XII. THE DUTCH RULE AND THE BELGIAN REVOLT OF 1830 145
XIII. INDEPENDENT BELGIUM 163
XIV. THE GREAT TRIAL 170
BIBLIOGRAPHY 183
INDEX 187
INTRODUCTION
There has been much discussion about the time at which Belgian
history should be said to begin. Belgium, as an entirely autonomous,
independent kingdom, has existed only since 1830. But the Belgium of
1830 was, in a certain way, a creation of European diplomacy and the
result of centuries of struggle for personal and political freedom.
Belgium, as a country, and the Belgians, as a people, existed long
before. Since the time of Caesar (57 B.C.), history tells us of the
Belgians, “the bravest of all the people of Gaul,” and, although the
Germanic invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries have added a new
ethnical element to the old Belgian stock, it is from the time of the
Roman conqueror that the history of the Belgian people really begins.
As for Belgium as a united political body, one must go back to the
fifteenth century, when the dukes of Burgundy succeeded in unifying
all the Belgian duchies and counties under one dynasty. Before that
time, Belgium had practically consisted of two very distinct parts,
Lotharingia in the east, Flanders in the west, separated by the river
Scheldt. Lotharingia was, politically speaking, a part of the mediaeval
German empire; Flanders was in subjugation to the kingdom of France.
Each succeeded--Lotharingia first, then Flanders--in evading the
political domination of Germany and France, respectively, and drew
closer and closer together during the last centuries of the Middle
Ages. That work of union was achieved by the Burgundian dukes, who
inherited from the local Lotharingian and Flemish dynasties, in the
fifteenth century.
But in the Middle Ages not only did the increasing tendency of union
between Lotharingia and Flanders exist, but there was also a strong
factor of national union, the common civilization, the common culture,
of Lotharingia and Flanders. The inhabitants of the different duchies
and counties were united by the same religion, the same artistic and
economic aims, the same political institutions, although there were,
of course, some local differences of minor importance. Since early in
the Middle Ages the Belgian people had possessed a distinctive though
mutually common civilization, and the local differences which existed
and which were more or less well defined at the outset disappeared
gradually as the different parts of the country drew closer together
politically.
The history of Belgium and the Belgian people does not begin to date
merely from 1830, not even from the fifteenth century. It dates in
fact from the time when, during the fifth century, Gallo-Romans and
Germanic invaders intermingled and laid the basis of that ethnical and
linguistic duality that has been for many centuries the characteristic
of the Belgian populace and has impressed its mark on the whole course
of Belgian history.
The real unity of the history of Belgium in ante-modern times has been
brought into notice by one of Belgium’s leading historians, Henri
Pirenne, professor in the University of Ghent, in his admirable work,
_Histoire de Belgique_. Before the publication of this work, few
scholars understood how to treat the history of Belgium during the
Middle Ages. Having in mind only the political aspect of that history,
they were lost in the particular history of the various duchies
and counties; they saw scarcely any link between the facts of these
different historical sections, and they forgot entirely to take account
of the unifying factor--the common culture and civilization.
Since historians have had their attention called to that unifying
factor, the history of Belgium has been looked upon in a different
manner. It is in the light of that method that I shall try to explain
the course of the historical development of the country.
The national culture of Belgium is a synthesis, if I may so call
it, where one finds the genius of two races--the Romance and the
Germanic--mingled, yet modified by the imprint of the distinctively
Belgian. It is in that very receptivity--the fact that it has absorbed
and unified the best elements of Latin and Teutonic civilization--that
the originality of the Belgian national culture resides.
These distinctive marks of national culture, denoting the unity of a
people, and serving, both in the Middle Ages and today, to distinguish
the Belgian nation from the other nations of Europe, may be described
as a common desire for independence and freedom, a jealous regard for
those popular rights which serve as a guaranty of the continuance of
independence and freedom, and a deeply religious spirit. In the course
of their history the Belgians have always cast off the yoke of those
princes who, like Philip II, Joseph II, and William I of Holland,
attacked their liberties and privileges, or who, like Joseph II and
William I of Holland, tried to impose their own religious beliefs on
them.
Those characteristics of the Belgian nation, as well as its common
civilization, were born during the Middle Ages. For that reason I
shall deal in a special manner with the different aspects of religious,
artistic, literary, and economic life during that period. After the
treatment of the political unity of the Belgian provinces achieved in
the fifteenth century, more attention will be given to the political
aspect of events, without, however, entirely neglecting the different
forms of popular life and social activity.
The history of Belgium may be divided into the following periods: (1)
the formative period, including the time of the Roman occupation, the
invasion of the Franks, and the reign of Charles the Great and his
immediate heirs (57 B.C. to 843 A.D.); (2) the period of feudalism;
(3) the rise of the communes (eleventh to fourteenth century); (4) the
political centralization of the dukes of Burgundy (fifteenth century);
(5) the Spanish rule (sixteenth to seventeenth century); (6) the
Austrian rule (eighteenth century); (7) the French régime (1792-1815);
(8) the Dutch rule and the revolution of 1830; (9) the period of
national independence.
During all these periods of history the names “Belgium” and “Belgians”
have not been uniformly those by which the country and its people have
been designated. The name “Belgae,” of Celtic origin, was given in
Caesar’s time to the confederation of Celtic tribes which occupied the
territory of Belgium, when for the first time the Roman legions came in
contact with them. The name Belgium, “Belgica,” disappeared with the
Roman occupation and does not reappear until the sixteenth century.
During the sixteenth century, and especially at the beginning of the
seventeenth, the name “Belgium” is to be found in books, but seems not
to have been used as a common designation. As a distinctive name for
a race or people, the term “Belges” became generally used at the end
of the eighteenth century, its adjectival form being then “belgique”
(_les provinces belgiques_, “the Belgian provinces”). Between the
end of the Roman occupation and the end of the eighteenth century
the Belgians were successively known as “Franks,” “Lotharingi,” and
“Flemings.” Since the thirteenth century, the country itself has been
called “Netherlands” (_partes advallenses_), when the name Lotharingia
disappeared as a political term. The term “Burgundian provinces” was
sometimes used in the fifteenth century, while the name “Flanders,”
“Fiandra,” “Flandes,” was mainly applied during the Spanish rule.
During the Austrian rule the name “Austrian Netherlands” was the
prevailing designation.[1] The term “Netherlands” was applied, not only
to the actual territory of Belgium, but to the countries which today
correspond to the territories included in the kingdoms of Belgium and
Holland. From the time of the Roman occupation until 1588 Belgium and
Holland have, indeed, a somewhat common history. Since 1588, when the
provinces of the north separated from the south as the United Provinces
of the Netherlands, Belgium and Holland have existed as separate
states, and have no longer a common history.
We shall not attempt to deal here with the history of the northern
provinces from the early Middle Ages down to 1588, for that is the
task of the historian of Holland, and although, politically speaking,
the provinces of Belgium and Holland both shared the same vicissitudes
until 1588, yet, as has been pointed out by Professor Colenbrander,[2]
from the point of view of artistic, literary, and economic life the
national culture of the two was quite distinct.
On the other hand, included in this history is that of the principality
of Liège. Liège was never a part of the Netherlands; until 1795 it
was an ecclesiastical state with a separate entity, ruled by bishops,
princes of the Holy Roman Empire. But Liège had a civilization,
and especially institutions, common to those of the other Belgian
provinces, and, geographically and historically speaking, it was really
a part of Belgium.
Having thus indicated what is to be dealt with in this _Short History
of Belgium_, it remains only to mention the bibliographical list
appended at the close of the work, which includes the most important
books on general Belgian history. A reference to these will facilitate
a deeper study of the subject and will enable the student to enter more
in detail into the history of the country.[3]
LÉON VAN DER ESSEN
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The editors have urged me to add in this edition a final chapter on
the history of Belgium during the Great War. These events, of course,
do not yet belong to history, but it seems possible to give at least a
brief sketch of what happened in Belgium during the invasion and the
German occupation. The knowledge which we have acquired in the year
that has elapsed since the armistice has enabled us to establish the
facts.
CHAPTER I
THE PERIOD OF FORMATION
When, in 57 B.C., the Roman Republic, then in control of most of the
Mediterranean countries, the south of Gaul included, determined to
conquer also the rest of that country, Belgium was occupied by a people
of Celtic origin, called the Belgians, “Belgae.” They were a part of
the larger group of the Gauls who possessed the country between the
Pyrennees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the sea. The Belgians occupied,
not only the actual territory of Belgium, but also a part of Northern
France and of Rhenish Prussia. They formed a confederation of several
tribes, among which the Nervians, dwelling in the provinces of Hainaut,
Brabant, and Flanders, were the most important.
The Roman general, Julius Caesar, intrusted with the task of subduing
the north of Gaul, attacked the Belgians in 57 B.C. The Roman army
would have been routed by the Nervians in the first attack but for
Caesar, who himself led the troops and saved the day. Notwithstanding a
fierce guerrilla warfare that lasted four years, all the Belgian tribes
were successively subdued and some of them exterminated. Their heroic
resistance made Caesar say of them: “Among all the Gauls, the bravest
are the Belgians.”
Once subdued, Belgium accepted the Roman rule and remained loyal to the
Empire. Civilization was rapidly introduced; great military roads were
constructed through the Belgian forests and marshes, connecting the
different towns, and along their course villages were built and farms
developed. Tongres and Tournai became entirely Romanized cities, where
splendid monuments were built; remains of these are still to be found
today. Farms were laid out and country houses were erected according
to Roman pattern, with such changes as were imposed by the rigors of
the northern climate. The Belgians adopted Roman manners and customs
and the Latin language: they became Gallo-Romans, and even the national
gods were renamed with Roman names.
If Belgium shared the splendor and the civilization of the Roman
Empire, it shared also the disastrous days of its decline. There came
a time when the Empire, once so strong, but now growing weaker and
weaker, was quite unable to resist the hordes of barbarians, which,
coming from the dark forests of Germany, threatened the rich provinces
of Gaul, and Italy itself, with invasion. From the third century on,
Franks and Alamans devastated Gaul and left the wealthy territories
covered with ruins. The emperors did not succeed in expelling the
Franks from the country: those tribes of Teutonic race were allowed
to remain in the northern parts of Belgium, Flanders and Campine,[4]
and became soldiers of the Empire. They early became dissatisfied with
the territory allotted to them and resumed their march southward,
conquering the whole of Belgium. The year 406 witnessed a terrible
catastrophe. The Teutons, driven out of their country by the invasion
of the Huns, burst like a hurricane upon the unfortunate provinces of
Belgium, burned and devastated everything on their march, destroyed
Tongres and Tournai, and finally, swarming over the Alps and the
Pyrennees, invaded both Italy and Spain. After their passage, Belgium
was left undefended by the Roman legions, recalled to defend Italy
itself, and the Franks of Flanders and Campine occupied the abandoned
territory without difficulty.
The conquest by the Franks is an important event in Belgian history.
Indeed, it is from the fifth century that the bilingualism and the
ethnographical dualism of Belgium may be said to date. The Franks,
composed of two tribes, the Salians and the Ripuarians, advanced from
the north and the east into Belgium and occupied the country in such a
way that the actual provinces of Flanders, Antwerp, Limburg, the larger
part of Brabant, and Liège fell into their power. Farther south they
did not enter Belgium: their march was stopped by a dense and extended
forest which, in Southwestern and Central Belgium, constituted the
continuation of the forests of the Ardennes. The forest in question
was called Sylva Carbonaria, “Coal Wood,” and covered the largest part
of the actual province of Hainaut, the seat of the modern Belgian coal
industry. Behind the curtain of that forest the oldest inhabitants of
the country, the Gallo-Romans, remained free from oppression by the
invaders and retained their Latin culture and civilization. So Belgium
was separated by the Sylva Carbonaria into two quite distinct parts:
the northern part, occupied by the Franks, with their Teutonic culture
and civilization; the southern part, occupied by the Gallo-Romans.
A line was thus drawn dividing the Belgian people, and an ethnical
and linguistic duality, destined to remain for centuries one of the
main characteristics of the country, was established. Indeed, the
Walloons[5] of today are the descendants of the old Gallo-Romans from
behind the limits of the Sylva Carbonaria, and the Flemings of Northern
Belgium are the descendants of the Franks. This line drawn in the fifth
century has undergone little change in the course of ages and, although
the famous coal wood disappeared many centuries ago, the separation
between Walloons and Flemings has remained more or less apparent down
to the present. In this case the Sylva Carbonaria played a part like
that of the Alps in the case of the Romanches and the Italians of the
Tessino, and that of the hills of Wales and Cornwall in the case of the
Britons of England.
The first king of the Franks known in history is Clodion, who conquered
the countries of Tournai and Cambrai and established the seat of his
realm in Tournai. It is in this town that his grave was discovered
in 1653; the King was found buried, according to the customs of his
people, together with his arms and royal ornaments; he was identified
by the presence of a ring on which his likeness and his name were
engraved.
It was from Tournai that the famous descendant of Clodion, King
Clodovech, started his campaign of further conquest that gave
him possession of Northern France and, after the war against the
Burgundians and the West-goths (506), the control of nearly the whole
of their country. From this time on, the Frankish kings established
their capital at Paris. Belgium is no longer associated with the
recollection of their glorious deeds.
Clodion and his successors, so far as we know by the general history
of Europe, belonged to the so-called dynasty of the Merovingians. The
kings of that dynasty, in the course of the seventh century, were
weaklings, actually dominated by their powerful ministers, the mayors
of the palace. One of these, Peppin, in 751, succeeded in becoming
himself a king and was the founder of a new royal dynasty, the
Carolingians.
The new dynasty was, geographically speaking, essentially a Belgian
dynasty, for it had many possessions in Eastern Belgium and all its
members had occupied influential offices at the court of the Austrasian
kings, who, in the sixth and seventh centuries, ruled over that part of
the country.
The most famous of the Carolingians is Charles the Great, who
re-established the old Roman Empire (800) and who, by successful
campaigns, succeeded in extending his domination over the territory
lying between the river Elbe, the Bohemian mountains, and the Raab on
the east, the sea on the west, the North Sea, and the Garigliano River
in Italy and the Ebro River in Spain on the south.
The favorite residence of the great Emperor was at Aix, and this
contributed largely to the development of Belgian trade and industry
at the beginning of the ninth century. Politically abandoned by the
Frankish kings when they moved to Paris, Belgium again became important
in the time of Charles the Great as the most favorably located portion
of the Frankish Empire.
Belgium is, indeed, for trade purposes, the natural meeting-ground of
the West-European nations. Lying between England, France, Germany, and
Holland, it has good water communications with each. Though not quite
so near the English coast as a corner of France is, it has the great
advantage of exactly fronting the mouth of the Thames. With France it
is connected by the upper courses of the Lys, the Scheldt, the Sambre,
and the Meuse, the last named being navigable by deep-draught vessels
far into Lorraine. With Germany its connection is less direct, the
outlet of the Rhine running of course through Holland.[6]
These geographical conditions played a large part in the development
of Belgian trade in the time of Charles the Great. The presence of the
imperial palace at Aix attracted a great deal of traffic: from every
part of the empire merchants, soldiers, priests, in short all classes
of people, came through Belgium in order to reach the residence of the
Emperor, and their presence resulted in unparalleled prosperity in
that part of the Carolingian empire. Charles the Great was not only a
great soldier and legislator, but also a man who knew the importance
of the Christian religion in cultural matters. During his reign the
development of religious life in the different parts of the empire grew
rapidly.
Something ought to be said concerning the introduction of the Christian
religion into Belgium. The preaching of the gospel in Belgium goes
back as far as the Roman occupation of the time of the Empire,
but the religious organization of the church in the country dates
from the middle of the fourth century. At that time we find in the
city of Tongres the oldest historically known bishop of Belgium,
St. Servatius. The historical origin of the bishoprics of Arras,
Tournai, Boulogne, Cambrai--all of them at that time in Belgian
territory--remains a matter of conjecture. The baptism of King
Clodovech in 496 made the development of the Christian religion easier,
although the conversion of the King to the Catholic faith did not at
all mean the conversion of the whole people. Large parts of Belgium,
especially the eastern part, remained heathen until the eighth century,
and the introduction of the Christian religion in these sections of
the country is mainly the work of missionaries. These missionaries
worked on their own initiative, without any such prearranged plan
as, for instance, existed for the introduction of Catholicism into
England. It was mainly by Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries that the
gospel was made known, and the most famous of those heralds of the
Catholic religion was the Anglo-Saxon missionary Willibrord. The work
of the missionaries was completed by the bishops, who visited large
portions of their very extensive dioceses. Bishops Eligius, Amandus,
Lambert, and Hubert are closely connected with the religious history
of Belgium in the seventh and eighth centuries. The boundaries of the
dioceses corresponded exactly with the limits of the old administrative
circles of the Roman Empire, the provinces. In the eighth century,
Belgium was divided into the dioceses of Noyon-Tournai, Térouanne
(later Saint-Omer), Arras, Cambrai, Liège, and Utrecht. The dioceses of
Utrecht and Liège were subject to the metropolitan church of Cologne,
the others to the metropolitan church of Rheims.
These dioceses had been established without taking into account
the racial differences existing between the inhabitants of the
ecclesiastical territory. Including in the same diocese Gallo-Romans
and Franks, the church, unconsciously of course, prepared the
inhabitants of Belgium for the task of being intermediaries between the
Latin and the Teutonic civilization. The seats of the bishoprics being
mostly located in the Romance section of the country, the inhabitants
of the Teutonic section were obliged to meet the Walloons: they had
the same religious center. As a result of this action of the church,
the national or racial differences were diminished and the linguistic
frontier no more operated as a barrier in any real sense between the
people it separated.
If the conversion to the Catholic faith was mainly the task of the
missionaries, the introduction of civilization was mainly the task
of the monasteries. Here the Benedictine monks played a very large
part, both as civilizers and as colonizers. Their monasteries were,
from the sixth century on, centers of economic and intellectual life.
While some of their monks attacked the thick forests of Southern and
Central Belgium with axes, others engaged in literary labors in the
monasteries’ libraries, transcribing the ancient Greek and Latin
manuscripts, composing hymns and Lives of Saints, and opening schools
for the education of the people. They planted in the very hearts of the
people the roots of that strong religious spirit, which has steadily
developed, and which has become one of the characteristics of the
national spirit of Belgium.
Each monastery became a kind of model farm, where the population of
the neighborhood could learn the best agricultural methods. In the
monastery, too, they could find physicians who knew how to take care
of the sick. The monastery, being protected by the respect that was
inspired by the saint to whom it was dedicated, was also a place of
safety in time of danger. Consequently, dwellings became more and more
numerous around the monasteries, and villages developed under their
influence and protection.
It is not, then, surprising that in the course of time tales and
legends developed wherein the founders of those monasteries became the
heroes of poetical and sometimes extraordinary adventures. In this
manner did the people of mediaeval times express their gratitude for
all they owed to those early pioneers of culture and civilization.