WHEN YPRES WAS A GREATER CITY THAN LONDON
As we returned from our trip to Dixmude, Furnes and Nieuport, the
Professor announced that our next destination would be Ypres. If he
had said that it would he Chingwangtao, or the Comoro Archipelago, the
ladies could hardly have stared at him more blankly. They had never
heard of it. Since October the whole world has heard of it, and the
name of the all but forgotten old town is familiar to every
schoolboy--and will continue so for generations to come. The record of
our visit that follows was written amid the pleasant and peaceful
scenes that it describes. When we were there the swans were swimming
majestically in the waters of the moat that still surrounded the
remnants of the old city walls, but we were told that for military
purposes all this was obsolete. No doubt it was, but the brave old
town was none the less able--with the help of its stubborn English
defenders--to withstand the most furious, determined and bloody
assaults in all history. To the German host the mediæval term _la
morte d'Ypres_ was revived in those awful weeks of October and
November, 1914, for the grim, low-lying ramparts of the town meant
death to countless thousands.
Whether anything whatever is still standing of the old structures
described in this chapter it is at present impossible to say. The
British trenches were under a well-nigh continuous storm of shells for
many weeks, and the town itself must undoubtedly have suffered
severely. Late in November it was reported that the old Cloth Hall had
been destroyed by the furious German bombardment, or, at least,
severely injured. The account of the various points of interest in the
famous old town as they appeared in peaceful June--together with some
brief sketches of its former greatness--may be all the more
interesting now that its ruins lie in the lime-light of the world's
attention. As compared with the half-dozen tourists that averaged to
visit Ypres each day before the war the return of peace will see it
become the Mecca for daily thousands. To these the remains of the town
itself should vie in interest with the trenches of the famous
battle-fields of the Great War, for during a period two or three
times as long as the entire duration of the nation known as the United
States of America, Ypres was one of the greatest and richest cities in
the world.
It was hard to believe it, however, as we rumbled into the railroad
station and, stepping out upon the almost deserted platform, took our
first look at the place. As is usually the case in Flanders, the train
deposits the visitor some distance from the centre of the town. The
very first view was full of delight and promise of better things in
store, however, for as we emerged from the station we found ourselves
facing a pretty little park or square on the opposite side of which we
could see a bit of the ancient city walls which stretched away toward
the right most invitingly.
Postponing the pleasure of inspecting these renowned ramparts till a
later occasion, we made our way through narrow winding streets direct
to the Grande Place, pausing now and then to admire the quaint gabled
houses on the rue au Beurre (Butter Street). At the Grande Place the
Professor led us directly to the huge Cloth Hall, which completely
fills one side of it, for here--he said--we would find the best
introduction to the history and romance of the city. The concierge
proved hard to find, and we wandered up-stairs and through a
deserted corridor, trying several doors that proved all to be locked,
before we located the familiar sign. Our fees being duly paid--fifty
centimes each, which was little enough for the privilege of inspecting
the finest monument of its kind in Flanders, or for that matter in all
Europe--one of the doors was obligingly unlocked and we found
ourselves immediately in the great Guild Hall.
[Illustration: CLOTH HALL, YPRES.]
The _Halle aux Draps_, or Cloth Hall, is the largest civil edifice in
Belgium, and without doubt one of the largest in the world. It is four
hundred and thirty-three feet long by more than two hundred in
width--or larger than Madison Square Garden. Its huge bulk, and that
of the former cathedral hard by, contrast strangely with the present
dimensions of the little city. Yet when they were built Ypres was the
powerful rival of Bruges and Ghent, then at the apex of their glory,
and one of the foremost cities in the world. The Cloth Hall was begun
in 1200 and completed in 1304, or two years after the Battle of the
Spurs, a victory won by the guildsmen of Ypres and Bruges against the
chivalry of France. During that period the city had two hundred
thousand inhabitants, its woollen weavers operated four thousand
looms, and more than four hundred guilds responded to the calls to
arms that sounded, at frequent intervals, from the belfry.
The greatest wonder of the edifice is the immense gallery, or hall,
which occupies the side next to the Grande Place. This extends for the
entire length of the building, broken only by the belfry in the centre
which forms a sort of transept across it. In height it reaches clear
to the roof, the huge roof beams forming its ceiling. There is a
veritable forest of these, massive, sturdy, and as perfect as the day
they were hewed from the fair oaks of the countryside roundabout. The
concierge will not fail to tell you, if you pause to admire this
majestic timber-work of six hundred years ago, that from that day to
this no spider has ever spun its web there--nor is any spider ever
seen. Like the story of the snakes in Ireland, it would be a big pity
to spoil this by finding one and pointing it out--one must needs be a
good runner to do it, and be very sure which road leads to the railway
station, for it might go hard with him--but we could not see any the
day we were there. In fact, the legend has been repeated by many
writers since the sixteenth century and is now such a matter of local
pride that no doubt the concierge who permitted one to get in and set
up housekeeping in this spiderless Eden--for it certainly must look
like the Promised Land to a spider--would not only lose his or her
job, but be severely punished by the indignant city fathers into the
bargain.
Looking at the Cloth Hall from across the Grande Place it has the
aspect of being a low building, but within this gallery one gains
precisely an opposite impression--of unusual loftiness. Just how high
the vast room is can best be estimated by noting the wooden façade of
an ancient house that has been taken down and erected against one wall
in its entirety. With its three stories and high peaked top this
structure appears to be literally lost, looking like an undersized pea
in an extra big pod. The great inner walls of the main gallery, facing
the windows that look out upon the Grande Place, have been decorated
by modern frescoes of great historical and artistic interest painted
by two artists of widely different methods and ideals. The portion
into which one first enters, extending to the break formed by the
tower, was decorated by Ferdinand Pauwels, Director of the Royal
Academy of Dresden. Both the art critics, and those who make no
pretence to superior knowledge in such matters, agree that this work
has been magnificently done. The vastness of the wall spaces made it
possible to paint the pictures on a scale of size and with a wealth of
detail surpassing the fine frescoes of the Hotel de Ville at Bruges
and the general effect upon the beholder is impressive in the extreme.
The pictures represent notable events in the town's history down to
the fourteenth century, and were begun in 1872 and completed in 1881.
The subjects selected by the artist are as follows:
1.--Visit of Count Philip of Alsace to the Hospital of
Our Lady in 1187.
2.--Count Ferdinand of Portugal orders the Magistrates
to fortify the town in 1214.
3.--Countess Jeanne of Constantinople setting prisoners
free on Good Friday, 1206.
4.--5.--The Magistrates give the Countess Margaret the
ransom of her son William, who was made prisoner
during the 7th Crusade.
6.--Building the West wing of the Guild Hall in the time
of Guy of Dampierre, 1285.
7.--8.--Return of the armed forces of Ypres in 1302
after the Battle of the Spurs.
9.--The Plague, known as la Morte d'Ypres, in 1347.
10.--11.--Banquet offered in this very hall to Mahaut,
Countess of Flanders, and Matthew, Duke of Lorraine
on their marriage in 1314.
12.--An episode of the siege of Ypres by the English
and the men of Ghent in 1383.
As will be noted, the pictures are not arranged in exact chronological
order, but, taken together, they form a wonderful pictorial summary
of the city's history--down to the Fall of 1914, which merits a
separate gallery by itself. To us the most impressive of the series
was the vast picture in two sections showing the triumphant return
from the Battle of Courtrai and the tragic representation of the Black
Death, which swept through all the densely populated Flemish towns;
but was more destructive at Ypres than elsewhere. The visitation here
represented was by no means the only one in the city's history, and
for centuries _la morte d'Ypres_ was a name of terror throughout the
countryside.
In the section of the Great Hall beyond the belfry the mural paintings
are the work of Louis Delbeke, a painter of Ypres. His pictures were
the subject of violent criticism when they were first exhibited, and
are entirely unlike those in the other portion of the chamber. The
artist endeavoured to give his work an archaic appearance, in keeping
with the antiquity of its surroundings, and it was his intention to
symbolise the various manifestations of the public life of the
city--Civic Freedom, Commerce, Industry, Charities, Literature and so
on. The work was interrupted by his death and has never been
completed.
Another room of great interest is the _Salle Echevinale_, where for
five centuries the magistrates of Ypres held their sessions. Between
1322 and 1468 local artists painted on the wall above the three Gothic
arches in this room a frieze comprising portraits of the early Counts
and Countesses of Flanders, beginning with Louis of Nevers and ending
with Charles the Bold. When the French occupied the town in 1794 they
covered these "emblems of superstition and portraits of tyrants" with
a thick coat of whitewash which was only accidentally knocked off in
1844, exposing a bit of the ancient and still brilliantly coloured
painting. The discovery created quite a sensation, as the very
existence of this work had been forgotten, and a native artist was
commissioned to remove the whitewash and restore the paintings, which
he did in a manner that is not entirely satisfactory, but none the
less gives us an opportunity to view once more this interesting
work--one of the earliest pieces of mural painting in Flanders. On the
north wall of this room is a modern fresco by Godefroid Guffens,
representing "The State Entry of Philip the Bold" in 1384, while on
the other side of the room is a monumental Flemish chimney-piece
carved by Malfait of Brussels, with mural paintings on each side by
Jean Swerts--like Guffens, a painter of the modern Antwerp school.
These represent the Magistrates of Ypres issuing an order regarding
the maintenance of the poor, in 1515; and the visit of the Magistrates
to one of the Free Schools founded in 1253--thus illustrating the
early interest taken by the commune in free education and public
charities.
Leaving this interesting building we went across a small roughly paved
square to the Church of St. Martin, which dates from the thirteenth
century, and was for many centuries a cathedral. The unfinished square
tower was erected in 1433. The choir is Romano-ogival, while the nave
and aisles are early Gothic, and the edifice has many other peculiar
features of interest to students of architecture. It contains the
usual paintings, of which none are of remarkable interest, and some
excellent choir stalls. The most famous of the Bishops of St. Martin,
while it was a Cathedral Church, was Jansenius, one of the leading
figures in the Reformation, who died of the Plague in 1638. His great
work on St. Augustine occupied twenty-two years of his life while at
Ypres and caused a tremendous discussion. It was finally declared to
be heretical, but its teachings had already given rise to an ardent
group of followers of the learned Flemish churchman, who were called
Jansenists. The archives of the city and church contain much
interesting material regarding this celebrated mediæval theologian.
His tomb, which still stands in the church of which he was once the
head, formerly contained a long and highly eulogistic inscription,
which, by an order from the Pope in 1655, was cut down to the bare
remnant that still remains.
The Grande Place of Ypres is another of the surprises that this tiny
city has to offer to those unacquainted with its history, for it is
one of the largest in all Flanders--a veritable Sahara of a Place on a
hot summer day, albeit a Sahara bordered with many pleasant oases
where cooling drinks, if they do not bubble up from the ground, can at
least be had without much difficulty. During most of the week the vast
paved space is almost deserted, save for an occasional peasant's cart
that rumbles slowly and clumsily across it, but on market-days it is
full of picturesque and swarming life. Then the peasants come in from
the countryside by the thousand, while the itinerant hucksters and
pedlars who, in Belgium travel from one fair or market-place to
another, set up their canvas-covered booths in long streets from one
side of the Grande Place to the other. The country people press along
between these rows of tiny shops and haggle energetically with the
proprietors for whatever takes their fancy. An astounding variety of
wares are offered for sale on these market days--dress goods of every
description in the great Cloth Hall, which for a brief moment reflects
a feeble glimmer of its ancient glory; ready-made garments for man,
woman and child; footwear, headwear, and every conceivable kind of
hardware, of tinware, of crockery. In short, the display is a
veritable department store, for the most part cheap stuff, it is true,
but now and then one runs across laces for which the prices asked are
quite high. Then, of course, there is the inevitable array of
everything possible to eat--from the butchers' stalls in the basement
of the Cloth Hall to the huckster selling live chickens from a bag on
the corner, and the scores of stands selling fruits and vegetables of
every seasonable variety.
At last, however, the market comes to an end, the hucksters and market
gardeners take down their booths and drive away in their heavy Flemish
carts; the country people, after a more or less protracted visit to
the places of refreshment around the Place and in the adjacent
streets, go homeward, and the Grande Place settles down again into its
sleep of centuries. While we were there the moon was at its full, and
as its white light fell upon the grass-grown Place and the huge grey
mass of the Cloth Hall it was not hard to picture the old days come
back again and review, in fancy, some of the stirring times that the
old houses around it have looked down upon. The great bell in the
Cloth Hall tower rings and from far and wide come hurrying throngs of
sturdy artisans, with their lances, pikes and clubs. The _Serments_,
or oath-bound corporations, take their positions gravely and in good
order--men of substance these, portly, well-fed, and prosperous. Then
the _Métiers_, or lesser craftsmen, assemble--no doubt more noisily
and boisterously, as would be expected from their rougher class and
lower breeding. Each of the four hundred guilds assembles around its
respective banner, the Count and others of the nobility come riding
up; and with them, on terms of full equality, the commanders of the
citizen soldiery confer. Then, as the trumpets sound, or mayhap the
great bell peals again, the hosts march off in serried ranks to the
city gates, or to take their positions along the walls. The old
streets echo to the sound of their tramping feet, the noise of their
shouts and cries dies away, and once more the still moonlight falls
upon the deserted old Place.
As we sat in one of the cafés facing the Cloth Hall, our minds filled
with these and other fancies of the olden days--the moonlight, the old
houses all around us, and the many quaint and ancient things we had
seen during the day all contributing to the dreamy sense of
enchantment--the Professor told us something of the legend and history
of that far-off thirteenth century when much of the Ypres we had seen
that day was built. It was an age when men firmly believed in magic
and fairies and delighted in tales of mystery and enchantment. Some of
the most famous stories told by the old Flemish chroniclers relate to
the career of Baldwin IX, who came to be known as Baldwin of
Constantinople. After the long and wise reigns of Dierick of Alsace
and his son Philip, Flanders had become one of the richest and most
prosperous countries in Europe. The French, who looked upon its
fertile plains and fair cities with covetous eyes, composed these
lines, which no doubt expressed their sincere conviction:
"La plus belle Comté est La Flandre,
La plus belle Duché est La Bourgogne,
La plus belle Royaume est France."
Baldwin was not only Count of Flanders, but also Count of Hainaut, of
which Mons was the capital--his dominions therefore extending from the
North Sea to the River Meuse and including much of the Ardennes. It
was in this region--the true fairy-land of Belgium--that the Count met
with an adventure, according to certain of the chroniclers, which gave
his reign a most sinister beginning. It happened in this wise. The
Count was very fond of hunting, and very neglectful of the duty his
loyal subjects felt that he owed to them--of getting married and
securing children to insure the succession. For nothing was more
disastrous to a country than to have its line of princes die out,
leaving their title to be fought for by all who felt themselves strong
enough to seize it. The Count was to have married Beatrice of France,
the most beautiful princess in Christendom, but to the neglect of this
important matter he went hunting in the Ardennes, where from time
immemorial the wild boars have been very large and fierce.
Here, after a day of poor sport, the Count came upon a black boar of
enormous strength which killed several of his dogs and even wounded
one of his companions. Pursuing the savage beast eagerly the Count
lost sight of his followers and when he finally brought it to bay he
was alone. With a blow from his javelin he finally killed it, and then
cut off its monstrous head. As he paused to get his breath he heard a
slight rustle in the bushes and there was the most beautiful lady he
had ever seen, seated on a palfrey. Upon his inquiring who she was,
and why she was there in the forest alone, she replied that she was an
Eastern princess and had come to find and wed the richest Count in
Christendom, adding that she had learned that the Count of Flanders
was the noblest lord in all the West, and it was therefore that Count
for whom she was seeking.
To this the Count, who had already fallen deeply in love with the
beautiful stranger, whose dark eyes flashed upon him with a glance at
once mysterious and entrancing, replied that he was the Count of
Flanders and the richest Count under Heaven. He then and there
proposed to the damsel, offering to marry her at once, nor did he
perceive that the wild boar he had lately slain had disappeared, and
even the blood of the battle was gone, while as for the huge head that
he had cut off with his own hands the palfrey upon which the Eastern
princess was seated stood on the very spot. He then blew so loud a
recall upon his horn that it was heard for miles through the great
forest, and presently the lesser counts and knights who formed his
train came riding up. To these he introduced the strange princess and,
despite the prudent counsels of some that it might be well to learn
more about the lady, he forthwith repaired to Cambrai where they were
married in great splendour. The Countess, beautiful as she was, did
not become popular, the people attributing to her the heavy taxes they
had to pay. It was also whispered that she never attended the
elevation of the Host at mass, always leaving before the bell was
rung.
Notwithstanding her unpopularity, and the gossip of the busybodies,
the Count still loved his bride who bore him two children, Jeanne and
Margaret, and ever remained as wonderfully beautiful as the day they
first met in the forest. As they were celebrating Easter one year at
Wynandael with a great feast a pilgrim arrived from the East with news
that the Saracens were besieging Constantinople. He was forthwith
invited into the great hall of the castle and food placed before him,
which he ate eagerly. Just then the Countess entered, with a train of
ladies. At sight of her the pilgrim stopped eating and trembled, while
the Countess turned deadly pale and whispered to her lord to send
that stranger away as he was wicked and meant only evil by coming
there. But the Count bade the pilgrim say whereat he was alarmed,
whereupon the stranger rose and in a loud voice bade the devil who
filled the body of the Countess to depart from it. At this the
Countess rose and confessed she was indeed one of the devils cast out
of Paradise who had inhabited the body of the most beautiful maiden of
the East, the soul having departed from it. With this confession, at
which all present were naturally appalled, she rose in all her beauty
before them and vanished through a window of the hall, nor was she
ever seen or heard of again.
Other chroniclers and historians deny this story, pointing out that
the Count was, in fact, happily married to Marie of Champagne and that
it was the beautiful French Countess and no princess of satanic origin
who bore his two daughters, Jeanne and Margaret. This, in truth, was
the case, but many of the superstitious Flemings believed the tale
about the devil none the less, and the Count's brilliant but tragic
later career caused the story to be repeated and handed down for many
generations.
Only five years after coming to the throne Count Baldwin announced his
intention of going on a crusade, and in the presence of a vast throng
both he and Marie took the cross in the church of St. Donatian at
Bruges. This was in 1199, but the Count was not able to leave his
dominions at once and in the following year he and Marie came to Ypres
to dedicate the foundation stone of the great Cloth Hall. He finally
set out in 1203, but the Venetians compelled the crusaders, in payment
for their passage, to make a campaign which resulted in the capture of
Constantinople, the founding of the Latin Empire, and the election of
Count Baldwin as the first Emperor. Marie, meanwhile, had gone to
Syria by another route and there she died of the plague, only learning
in her last hour that her husband had become an Emperor and that she
was an Empress. Her death was the first of the reverses of fortune in
Baldwin's meteoric career. A year later, in 1205, he fell wounded in a
battle before the walls of Adrianople--or, perhaps, slain. Certain it
is that he disappeared from the world of men and for a space of twenty
years was heard of no more.
Then, in the heart of the great forest that in those days stretched
from Tournai to Valenciennes, some wood-cutters found a long bearded,
white-haired old man, his face covered with scars, living the life of
a hermit in a hut none of them remembered ever having seen before.
Gradually this wonder attracted more and more of the people thereabout
to see the stranger, and men began to say that he resembled the good
Count Baldwin. Some of the nobles who had known the Count heard of it,
visited the hut in the forest, and declared that this was indeed Count
Baldwin and the Emperor.
If he was the Count his country needed him sorely, for the King of
France, Philip Augustus, had during his twenty years' absence all but
made Flanders a French province. When it became clear that Baldwin was
either dead or a prisoner of the pagans Philip had seized his two
daughters--Jeanne being then a girl of fourteen, and Margaret still in
her cradle--claiming their wardship as the dead Count's suzerain. Five
years he kept them, nor did he permit them to return till he had
married Jeanne to a kinsman of his own, Ferdinand of Portugal, who he
thought would be a mere puppet in his hands. Ferdinand, however,
proved to be a man of determination and resisted Philip's seizure of
St. Omer and Aire, two Flemish towns. Philip invaded Flanders with a
great army, capturing Cassel and destroying Damme and all the
merchandise stored there, Lille, Courtrai and many smaller towns.
Ferdinand, unable to resist the superior forces of Philip
single-handed, brought about an alliance with King John of England.
The battle of Bouvines shattered this alliance, and for twelve years
Ferdinand languished in a French prison, while King John was forced to
grant the Magna Carta to his English subjects. Thus a victory for
tyranny in Flanders resulted indirectly in a greater victory for the
cause of freedom in England. Jeanne, while her husband was in prison,
was the titular Countess of Flanders, but Philip kept her completely
under the influence of his counsellors. Margaret, meanwhile, had been
married, but her husband was unable to make head against the
far-reaching power of the King of France.
It was under these circumstances that the hermit who men thought
resembled Count Baldwin came on the stage. If he was an impostor his
_coup_ was shrewdly planned, for Jeanne was as hated by the Flemings
as her father had been loved. If he was really the good Count and the
Emperor his arrival in Flanders seemed to that distracted country like
a direct interposition of Providence. A great delegation from
Valenciennes went out to the forest and hailed him as their Count
and then he at last admitted that he was indeed Baldwin of
Constantinople.
His tale was a strange one, but more easily believed in those wild
days than it would be now. He had, he asserted, been wounded before
Adrianople and made a prisoner by the Bulgarians. While a captive a
Bulgarian princess saw him, fell in love, and contrived to effect his
escape after he had promised to marry her. Once free, however, he
repented of his pledge to marry an infidel, and murdered his
benefactress. This wicked deed was quickly followed by his recapture
by the barbarians, who made him a slave and even a beast of burden.
Escaping at last, after many years, he had become a hermit in penance
for his great sin.
The men of Valenciennes believed this story, and pardoning his
self-confessed crime as of little moment, since it affected only an
infidel, proclaimed him their Count. The great towns of Flanders flung
open their gates to him wherever he went, and finally he held his
court in Bruges. His neighbours, the Dukes of Brabant and Limbourg,
and his former ally, the King of England, acknowledged his claims,
while his daughter Jeanne fled to France for protection.
The chief reason for believing that Baldwin was an impostor is the
fact that at this crisis of his career he failed signally to show any
of the decision and judgment that twenty years before had made the
true Baldwin Emperor. To be sure, twenty years of slavery, and the
haunting memory of the beautiful Marie of Champagne who had followed
him to her death, and of the Bulgarian princess whom he had so basely
slain, may have enfeebled his intellect. He was now an old man. At all
events, after a period of indecision he did the very thing he never
should have done--he appealed to Philip for aid against his daughter.
Summoned to Péronne, where the King of France was then holding court,
he was subjected to a trial by the royal Council, which clearly showed
its determination to convict him as an impostor. Perceiving that he
had blundered into a trap, the old man fled from the castle and
escaped to Flanders. Here, however, the appeal to Philip and its
result, together with much French gold judiciously expended in behalf
of Jeanne, caused the nobility to turn cold. He determined to lay his
cause before the Pope, but while on his way to Rome was captured and
sold to Jeanne who ordered him to be hanged in chains in the
market-place at Lille between two hounds. If he was the true
Baldwin, after all, few careers in history offer wider contrasts of
glory and shame.
[Illustration: HOTEL MERGHELYNCK, YPRES.]
Whether one stays at Ypres a day or a week he will not lack for
objects of interest, for the Cloth Hall and the Cathedral are but the
beginning of the list. A day is hardly too much to devote to the rue
de Lille alone, for here are the Hospice Belle, with a number of
valuable old paintings, and the Hotel-Musée Merghelynck. The latter is
an institution as unique as it is admirable. Built in 1774 by François
Merghelynck, a Treasurer and Grand Bailiff of Ypres, this fine mansion
is filled with furniture and objets d'art of the eighteenth century
coming from Flanders, Holland and France and collected with rare taste
and judgment. In its entirety it represents the residence of a
nobleman of the period, complete down to the smallest detail, with
every article in its proper place, as if the owner had just stepped
out and might be expected back at any moment. The seven principal
rooms are panelled with carved wood. The dining-room is decorated with
bas-reliefs representing all of the principal implements of husbandry.
These were carved by Antony Deledicque of Lille and have been compared
with the work in some of the smaller rooms in the Palace of
Versailles. The music-room is similarly embellished with
representations of musical instruments, and all have fine panel
friezes and gilded carvings. In each room the proprietor of the
mansion, Arthur Merghelynck, the great-grandson of the original owner,
has collected a complete equipment of eighteenth-century furniture.
The dining-room has rare porcelain from Tournai, with the precious
gilt marks of the choicest make, the music-room has an old-time
harpsichord, the kitchen possesses an array of old-time pewter, copper
and brassware. In the chambers the same plan has been faithfully
carried out, even to placing the owner's uniforms and gala raiment in
the wardrobes. Permission to visit these delightful rooms is freely
granted to all visitors to Ypres without charge, other than an
optional fee to the attendant. We were told that natives of the city
are not admitted, but forgot to ask the caretaker if this was true.
A little farther down this same rue de Lille is an old edifice that
for many years has been called the House of the Templars. It has been
restored and is now used as the Post Office--it was for a long time a
brewery--but it is not now believed that this was ever the House of
the famous mediæval order. The Templars, however, did erect at
Ypres their first house in Europe, and it may well be that this
structure was copied from it. Beyond this interesting edifice we
encountered a grim-looking old church, that of St. Peter, within the
doorway of which is a most curious mediæval Calvary. This church is
one of the oldest in Flanders, having been built in 1073 by Robert the
Frisian, one of the early Counts. On this street also stands the
Hospice St. Jean which was founded in 1277. It contains one fine
timbered ceiling room, with panelled walls, called the nuns' workroom,
and some paintings by Kerel van Yper, an obscure local artist of the
sixteenth century.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. PETER, YPRES.]
In this section we were so fortunate as to see the lace workers, of
whom there are still several hundred, making _point de Valenciennes_
outside the doors of their tiny houses. Mrs. Professor never tired of
watching these women,--who are for the most part middle-aged, while
some of them are very old--as their nimble fingers dexterously shifted
the innumerable little bobbins to and fro, while the delicate fabric
slowly took the design upon which they were working. It is said that
more Valenciennes lace is made here at Ypres, and at Courtrai and
among the little Flemish towns between these two cities, than in the
French city from which this fine point derives its name.
It is along the rue de Lille that the visitor will (let us hope!) find
the wooden house that is the last, or nearly the last, survival of a
type of architecture that was once very common in Ypres. It is
inferior to the one in the Cloth Hall, which also came from this
street, but is still in use--although it seemed to be closed when we
passed it. A few steps further on we came to the Porte de Lille with
its three semi-circular towers, erected in 1395. The Porte is
connected with the open country beyond by a bridge across the wide
moat, in which a stately white swan was swimming. The ancient walls,
built by the famous military engineer Vauban, extend here for a long
distance in both directions and are in a fairly good state of
preservation. At the Porte de Thourout, where the fortifications end
on the northeastern side of the town, there is an open-air swimming
pool which, according to the local guidebook is free during certain
hours for men Saturday and Sunday, for women Wednesday, for soldiers
Thursday and Friday, and for ladies Tuesday. The distinction between
the women who can come on Wednesday and the ladies who are admitted
Tuesday is not stated.
From the Porte de Lille we walked along the top of the ramparts toward
the railway station--a promenade full of interest and charm. The broad
moat in which a dozen snow white swans were swimming, the huge trees
arching overhead, the quaint little houses to our right, with now and
then a narrow street bending back into the town as if inviting us to
follow and explore it--everything seemed to combine to make this one
of our pleasantest experiences in Flanders, and we regretted that we
did not have weeks instead of days in which to study this rare old
town and visit some of the charming old Flemish villages by which it
is surrounded.
The causes for the decline of the city from the proud position it
occupied in the Middle Ages to its comparative insignificance to-day
can be sketched in a very few words. Like the rest of Flanders, it had
flourished exceedingly in consequence of the Hundred Years' War
between France and England. As commerce and industry in these
two great neighbouring countries declined, that of the Low
Countries--which were then enjoying a prolonged period of comparative
peace--augmented with abnormal rapidity. It was inevitable that when
peace across the frontier was restored much of the trade that France
had temporarily lost should return to it. A series of great sieges cut
off the wool traffic with England that formed the foundation of the
city's industry and prosperity. The first of these was in 1383 when
the guildsmen of Ypres successfully beat off a powerful army from
Ghent, aided by a large contingent from England. The plague, that
terror of every overcrowded industrial town in those days, swept off
thousands of people in 1347 and in 1490, and a third of the
inhabitants in 1552. These disasters still further crippled the cloth
industry. In 1583 and 1584 an eight months' siege and the plague
together reduced the population so fearfully that when the town at
last surrendered to the Prince of Parma barely five thousand remained.
After the religious wars were over it recovered some of its ancient
prosperity, but between 1648 and 1678 it was besieged no less than
four times, being a border town and one of the first to be attacked as
the fortunes of war swayed, first one way and then the other. Roused
by the ravages of the plague the magistrates cleaned the city, passed
stringent sanitary regulations, paved the streets and built a costly
system of sewers--Ypres being one of the first cities in Europe to
have these modern improvements. Wise as these steps were, they came
too late to arrest the decline of the town's industries and commerce.
One by one the artisans gave up the battle against the forces that
were sapping the foundations of their prosperity and moved away--some
to Ghent and Bruges, both of which were already beginning to decline;
others to far-off England, where they remained to lay the foundations
of the vast textile industry that has since grown up across the
Channel, but which traces its origin back to the artisans of Ypres in
the days when the fame of that until lately all but forgotten town was
known from one end of the world to the other.