AUDENAERDE AND MARGARET OF PARMA
It was on a pleasant morning in June that the Professor and I set
forth on a little expedition to the famous town of the tapestry
weavers, leaving the ladies to rest and shop at Brussels. The
poplar-trees that line the country roads and canals in all parts of
Belgium were in full bloom and their light cotton-clad seeds were
drifting like snow in every direction. Moreover, contrary to our
experience for some time past, the sun seemed likely to shine all day
and our old friend J. Pluvius was in complete retreat. Our route lay
for a considerable distance through a charming hop country, the plots
being much smaller than one sees in Kent or in Central New York State,
but very numerous, and, no doubt, aggregating a considerable acreage.
Farther along we passed through a superb stretch of hilly country
where many of the houses and barns had thatched roofs and were so
picturesque, both in themselves and in their surroundings, that we
would fain have descended at one of the little stations and spent the
day exploring and photographing this charming corner of Flanders. The
most beautiful spot of all bore the pretty name of Louise-Marie--the
thatch-roofed houses nestling cosily together upon a hillside. This
little station, by the way, is on the line from Blaton to Audenaerde
(in Flemish Oudenaarde), as we were approaching our destination from
the south instead of directly from Brussels. Presently the great tower
of Ste. Walburge loomed up ahead on our right, and we could even catch
a glimpse of the famous Hotel de Ville. Instead of stopping, however,
our train went on past the church, past the town, past everything,
until we began to fear that our faithful "_omnibus_" had suddenly gone
crazy and fancied itself a "_rapide_" bound for goodness knows where.
At last, however, the station came in sight, but we even sped past
that, coming to rest finally some distance down the railroad yard. As
we walked back toward the "_Sortie-Ausgang_" gateway we debated
whether we would drive back to the town in a cab or take a tram.
Emerging on the street we promptly decided to walk, since neither cab
nor tram-car could be seen.
There was no danger of losing our way, for there, straight down the
long street before us, we could see the huge mass of Ste. Walburge
towering far above the little houses around it. After a leisurely walk
of five or six minutes we arrived at a large bleak-looking square,
called the Place de Tacambaro, at the centre of which stood a monument
that--had we been in a carriage or on a tram-car--we would have passed
without more than a passing glance. As it was, we paused to read the
inscriptions and found that, for Americans, they told a story of no
little interest. It appears that this is a memorial erected in honour
of the volunteers from Audenaerde who died in Mexico in the service of
the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian. The south side of the monument,
which represents a reclining female figure by the sculptor, W. Geefs,
bears the following inscription:
"Ordre de Jour
Officiers et Soldats! Vous avez pris votre part des travaux
et des luttes dans la guerre du Mexique, votre
valeur dans les combats, votre discipline
dans les fatigues des longues
marches ont honoré le
nom Belge.
Au moment de vous rembarquer pour aller revoir votre
patrie recevez les adieux de vos frères d'armes du
corps expeditionaire français.
Dans quelques semaines vous aurez revu les rivages de votre
patrie y conservez, je l'espère, bon souvenir de leux
qui ont soufert et combattu à vos cotes,
ainsi que du Maréchal de France
qui a eu l'honneur de
vous commander.
Le Maréchal de France, Commandant en Chef.
BAZAINE."
Proceeding along the street, which still led straight toward the great
church, we discussed the strange fate that had led these valiant
Flemings to give their lives in a war of conquest so many thousands of
miles away--a futile sacrifice as the event proved, with this little
monument as their sole reward.
Almost before we were aware of it we found ourselves at the Grande
Place with the Hotel de Ville right in front of us. We were on the
west side of the little structure, which on the rue Haute adjoins the
ancient Halle aux Draps. An old doorway gives on the rue Haute, but is
no longer used, the entrance being now through the Hotel de Ville.
While the two principal churches of the town have suffered severely
from the fanatical ravages of the iconoclasts, or image breakers, the
Hotel de Ville can be seen in almost its pristine magnificence.
Architecturally this monument is generally considered as one of the
finest, not only in Flanders, but in the whole of Europe. Little it
undeniably is, although it towers up bravely above the low two-story
buildings surrounding it, but its very smallness gives its marvellous
façade the richness and delicacy of the finest lace. Begun in 1525, it
was completed twelve years later at a cost of "65,754 livres parisis,
16 sols, 2 deniers." Those who are curious can ascertain the modern
equivalent of the "Paris pound" of 1537, but even when we add the 16
sols, 2 deniers, it seems as though the burghers got very good value
for their money.
[Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE, AUDENAERDE. Photograph by E. Sacré.]
Late Gothic is the period to which this gem in the galaxy of splendid
Flemish town halls belongs. It is considered the masterpiece of its
architect, Henri Van Péde, who also designed the superb Hotel de Ville
at Brussels and that at Louvain. The many little niches on the front
once contained statues of the noble lords and dames of Flanders,
including no doubt several of the great house of Lalaing, the Count
Philippe de Lalaing having laid the corner stone. Unfortunately these
were all destroyed during the religious wars and the French Revolution
and have never been replaced. This seems a great pity, as Flanders
still possesses many stone-carvers of great skill, and the kindly
hand of time would soon mellow the new work to harmonise with the old.
As it is, every niche contains the iron projection that formerly held
its statue in place, so that the work of restoration would consist of
simply carving each of the little statues in the sculptor's own
atelier, wherever it might be, and afterwards placing them in
position.
One of the original statues still remains in place, however, and is
entitled to the honour of being styled the oldest citizen of
Audenaerde. This is none other than Hanske 't Krijgerke, Petit Jean le
Guerrier, or Little John the Warrior, who, with his diminutive
standard bearing the arms of the city, stands on the topmost pinnacle
of the tower. His gaze is ever toward the South, with a far-away look
in his eyes, across the Grande Place and toward the distant hills.
During the three hundred and seventy-eight years that he has been
standing there, braving the winter rains and the summer sunshine, how
many changes have taken place in the great outside world while little
Audenaerde has stood still!
Even without its statues the principal façade of the Hotel de Ville
merits more than a passing glance. In the admirable harmony of its
proportions, the delicate beauty of its details, in the excellence of
the stone carvings--almost perfectly preserved--that form wreaths and
festoons of stone about its Gothic windows, there is nothing finer to
be seen in all Flanders. The high pointed roof, with its tiny dormer
windows, is exactly as the architect intended it, and the charming
little tower seems as perfect as the day the last of the
sixteenth-century masons left it.
The interior is worthy of the exterior. On the first floor a large
hall, called the Salle du Peuple--Hall of the People--extends from one
side of the building to the other. This contains a fine stone
fireplace surmounted by a splendidly carved Gothic mantelpiece with
statues of Ste. Walburge in the centre and Justice and Power on either
side. Below are the arms of Austria, Flanders, and of Audenaerde. This
masterpiece was carved by Paul Van der Schelden. The walls on each
side of the fireplace are decorated with modern mural paintings
depicting Liederick de Buck, the first Forester of Flanders, Dierick
of Alsace, Baldwin of Constantinople, and Charles the Fifth. Between
the windows overlooking the Grande Place are the Arms of Castile and
Aragon, while at the ends of each of the great beams that support the
ceiling are carved the arms of the various kingdoms and
principalities belonging to Charles V.
Already we perceive that the shadow of the great Emperor rests heavily
on this little city of Audenaerde, and as we proceed further in our
explorations the more dominating and omnipresent does his personality
become. Even the very arms of the city bear a mute evidence to his
generosity and sense of humour. It is related that on a certain
occasion the Emperor and his stately train approached the city without
being perceived by the sentinel stationed in the tower of this very
Hotel de Ville to announce his arrival. On reaching the gates,
therefore, the Imperial cortège found no one to welcome the great
monarch. The Burgomaster and the members of the Council, who should
have been there in their robes of state, were conspicuous by their
absence. Had this happened to his ancestor Charles the Bold, whose
fiery temper brooked no discourtesy, even when unintended, it might
well have gone hard with the unfortunate officials. As it was, the
Emperor overlooked the slight, but not long afterwards he maliciously
inserted a pair of spectacles in the arms of the city, remarking that
in future they would thus be able to see more clearly the approach of
their sovereign.
[Illustration: WOODEN DOORWAY, CARVED BY VAN DER SCHELDEN, HOTEL DE
VILLE, AUDENAERDE.]
Adjoining the Salle du Peuple is a smaller chamber, the Salle des
Échevins, or the Council Chamber of the ancient commune. Here there is
another stone fireplace slightly inferior to the one in the larger
hall, but resembling it in general design. The statues here represent
the Virgin Mary in the centre, with Justice and Hope on either side.
The chief masterpiece in this room, however, is the wooden doorway
carved by Van der Schelden, who was instructed by the burghers to make
it as beautiful as possible. How faithfully the artist performed his
task the result shows. Around its top stand wooden cupids surmounting
a richly carved entablature containing the arms of Charles V in the
centre with those of Flanders and of Audenaerde on either side. The
first is supported by two griffins, the second by two lions and the
last by two savages. The panels of the door itself and of the
sidewalls forming the complete portal are richly carved, each design
being different from all the others. For this bit of wood-carving the
frugal burghers paid the sum of one thousand, eighteen livres parisis,
or nine hundred and twenty-three francs--something over $175--and the
artist furnished the wood!
Formerly the walls of this room were decorated with tapestries of
Audenaerde, but at the time of Louis XIV these were all removed and
taken to Paris. Most of the tapestries in the town overlooked by le
Grande Monarque were subsequently taken away by Napoleon, so that the
Hotel de Ville of the city that gave these treasures to the world, and
that should possess the finest collection of them, has been stripped
completely bare. In their stead the Council Chamber at present
contains a collection of paintings of no special artistic merit but of
great historical interest. There is, of course, a portrait of Charles
V, wearing the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece. A portrait
of Louis XIV on horseback and bearing a marshal's baton, by Philippe
de Champaigne, forms a poor substitute for the tapestries filched by
His Majesty. This collection also comprises several portraits of
personages famous in later Flemish history. Of these the most
noteworthy is that of Margaret of Parma, which hangs close to that of
her father, the Emperor.
Just across the Grande Place from the Hotel de Ville stands the Tower
of Baldwin, undoubtedly the oldest structure in the city, and erected
by Baldwin V, a Count of Flanders who died in 1067, making it date
from the Norman Conquest. The concierge of the Hotel de Ville
informed us that this little tower, which adjoins another ancient
edifice now used as a brewery, was the birthplace of Margaret, but
this does not appear to be altogether certain. Some authorities state
that the honour belongs to a little two-story house with a high,
steep-sloping roof that also faces the Place. If the walls of these
old houses had the ears that proverbially belong to all walls, and
were still further provided with lips to whisper the secrets they
overheard, they could no doubt settle this question; and at the same
time throw some additional light upon a famous bit of mediæval romance
and scandal.
Of all the natives of the ancient town of Audenaerde the most famous
was Margaret, afterwards the Duchess of Parma, and for many years
Regent of the Low Countries, over which she ruled with an almost
imperial sway. Her father was the great Emperor, Charles V, who
dallied here for several weeks as guest of the Countess de Lalaing,
wife of the Governor of Audenaerde, while his soldiers were besieging
Tournai in the year 1521. The attraction that kept him so far from his
army was a pretty Flemish maiden named Jehanne or Jeanne Van der
Gheynst. According to the none too trustworthy Strada, this young
lady was a member of the Flemish nobility, but according to the city
archives it appears that she belonged to a family of humble tapestry
workers residing at Nukerke, a suburb of Audenaerde. At all events,
her pretty face attracted the attention of the youthful
Emperor--whether at a ball, as Strada says, or while she was serving
as maid of the Countess de Lalaing, as many writers assume, or perhaps
at a village Kermesse which Charles might well have attended
incognito. After the little Margaret was born the mother received an
annual income of twenty-four livres parisis from the Emperor. In 1525
she married the Maître de Chambre extraordinaire of the Counts of
Brabant, and died in 1541. Charles took his little daughter and had
her brought up as a princess. In 1537, when she was only fifteen years
old, she was married by the Emperor to Alexander, the Duke of Urbin, a
cruel and dissolute Italian prince who, however, died the same year.
The following year she was married to Octavio Farnese, a grandson of
Pope Pius III, who was then only fourteen. She was herself strongly
opposed to this marriage, but the Emperor was obdurate and she finally
yielded. Her son, Alexander Farnese, was the famous Duke of Parma who
became the foremost military leader on the Spanish side during the
sanguinary war between Philip II and the Netherlands. On the death of
her father, Margaret was made Regent of the Low Countries by her
half-brother Philip II. She arrived at Ghent, July 25th, 1559, and on
August 7th the King presented her to the States General, saying that
he had chosen her as his representative because she was so close to
him by birth and "because of the singular affection she has always
borne toward the Low Countries where she was born and raised and of
which she knew all the languages." She retired from the Regency in
1567, but was called back once more in 1580 at the personal request of
the King. As her son Alexander was then at the zenith of his power,
and opposed to her resuming the regency, she finally declined the
honour which was reluctantly given to him. She died in 1586 at the age
of sixty-six.
It was her fortune, or rather misfortune, to rule over the Netherlands
at a period when the seething forces of religious unrest and protest
were becoming too violent to be restrained. Had Philip II, her
half-brother, been less bigoted, less cruel, and less blind to the
best interests of the country and of his own dynasty, it is possible
that the great popularity of the Duchess--who was sincerely loved by
the majority of her subjects and respected by all--might have enabled
the Government to restrain the rising passions of the people. If,
instead of a policy of savage repression, the King of Spain had
authorised Margaret to pursue a policy of moderation and conciliation,
the fearful history of the next eighty years--the blackest page in
human history--might never have been written. Unfortunately,
moderation and conciliation were as foreign to the nature of that
sombre monarch as to Torquemada himself, and fanaticism fought
fanaticism with a fury that was as devoid of intelligence as it was of
mercy.
The first act in the drama of blood was the sudden outbreak of the
frenzy of the iconoclasts, or image-breakers, which swept over the
greater part of the Spanish Netherlands in the month of August, 1566.
Scarcely a church, a chapel, a convent or a monastery, escaped the
devastation that resulted from these fanatical attacks. Paintings,
statuary, altars and chapels, even the tablets and monuments of the
dead--the accumulated art treasures of centuries--were torn to pieces
or carried bodily away. In some places the work of destruction was
completed in a few hours, in others organised bands of pillagers
worked systematically for days before the local authorities--taken
completely by surprise--recovered their wits and put a stop to the
work of desecration. The loss to art and civilisation effected by the
iconoclasts in Flanders is beyond computation. The Regent acted with
energy and decision, her spirited appeals to the magistrates finally
bringing them to their senses and resulting in a speedy restoration of
order. Philip, who had just cause for resentment, meditated vengeance,
however, and in 1568 replaced the too gentle Margaret by the Duke of
Alva.
For the Professor the Hotel de Ville contained still another room of
inexhaustible interest. This was the museum of the commune which
occupies the entire second floor. For some reason--certainly not from
fear of the suffragette, which is a non-existent species in
Belgium--this is closed to the public, but we were admitted by
courtesy of the Secretary of the Commune. The collection is of the
utmost value to the historian and archeologist, but is rather badly
kept. Among the most interesting objects were four chairs once used by
Charles V; the ancient keyboard of the _carillon_ which formerly hung
in the belfry of the town hall but is now installed in the tower of
Ste. Walburge, and some water-colour designs for tapestries. A large
painting of the Last Judgment covered a considerable part of one wall.
This is attributed to Heuvick, and originally hung in the Salle des
Échevins. It was the ancient custom to have a painting of this
subject, covered by curtains, in the olden justice halls. When a
witness was about to be sworn the curtains were suddenly drawn back
and the sight of the picture, which represented with great vividness
the destruction of the damned, was intended to prevent false
testimony. The collection also included a variety of ancient arms and
coins, several curious mediæval strong boxes, and two huge snakes
which hung from the rafters overhead. There are no snakes in Belgium
to-day, but our guide assured us that a crocodile had once been taken
in the River Scheldt near Audenaerde, so the snakes may have been
natives after all--assuming, of course, that the crocodile story is
correct.
Back of the Hotel de Ville proper is the still more ancient Cloth
Hall, dating from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Its small,
high windows were built slantingly, to prevent archers from sending
arrows directly into the interior. At some comparatively recent
period two large windows were cut through, the walls on each side,
but a goodly number of the earlier windows still remain, and the beams
that support the high, pointed roof are still as sound as the day they
were laid in position.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF STE. WALBURGE, AUDENAERDE.]
To the west of the Grande Place, and scarcely a stone's throw from
Baldwin's Tower, rises the vast grey mass of Ste. Walburge, with ten
or twelve tiny fifteenth or sixteenth century houses nestling snugly
up against it. This splendid church dates from the very foundation of
the city, an early chapel erected on this site having been sacked and
burned by the Norsemen in 880. Twice after this the church was
destroyed in the wars between Flanders and France, but in 1150 was
begun an edifice of which some portions still remain. When John the
Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, chose Audenaerde as his Flemish place of
residence the burghers determined to enlarge and beautify their church
and erected the semi-circular portion of the choir in 1406 to 1408.
Soon afterwards the great nave was begun, but was not completed for
fully a century, in 1515. The tower, one of the finest in the world,
advanced still more slowly and was not entirely finished until 1624.
Its original height was three hundred and seventy-three feet, but in
1804 the wooden spire was struck by lightning and burned. It has
never been rebuilt, and the present height of the tower is two hundred
and ninety-five feet. As it is, it dominates the little city and
commands a wide view across the broad valley of the Scheldt in every
direction. It was a stiff climb, up a perpetually winding stone
stairway, to the top, but the view well repaid us for the exertion.
The interior of the edifice suggests a great metropolitan cathedral
rather than the chief church of a small provincial town. The choir,
which suffered severely from the ravages of the iconoclasts, has
recently been restored with great skill, and is now one of the most
beautiful in Europe. This church contains several paintings by Simon
de Pape, a native of Audenaerde, whose father was the architect of the
spire burned in 1804, also an "Assumption of the Virgin Mary" by
Gaspard de Crayer, a follower of Rubens, who painted more than two
hundred religious pictures. This, like all the others, is of mediocre
merit. To the student of history and of ancient art one of the most
interesting treasures of the church is its collection of tapestries of
Audenaerde. Three of the more important ones represent landscapes--in
fact the majority of Audenaerde tapestries that I have seen may be
thus described--with castles, churches, and farmhouses in the centre
and roses, tulips and other flowers in the foreground. Like most
Audenaerde tapestries also they are crowded with winged
creatures--birds flying or singing in the trees and hens, turkeys and
pheasants strolling in the grass. A tapestry of a different genre is
one belonging to the Confrerie de la Ste. Croix, which shows an
Oriental landscape with Jerusalem in the distance, and at the four
corners the figures of Herod, Pilate, Anna and Caiphas.
Tapestry weaving was introduced into Flanders during the time of the
Crusades, the reports of the returning crusaders regarding the
splendid carpets and rugs of the Orient arousing a desire on the part
of the Flemish weavers to imitate them. Castle walls, however thick
and strongly built, were apt to be damp and cold and a great demand
speedily sprang up for the new productions for wall coverings.
Starting at Arras and Tournai, the manufacture of tapestries spread to
all the cities in the valley of the Scheldt and received a
particularly important development at Audenaerde, which soon became
the leading tapestry centre of Flanders. The weavers adopted Saint
Barbara as their patron, and in 1441 were organised into a
corporation. In their original charter it was stipulated that each
apprentice must work three years for his first employer. Despite the
severity of this regulation the manufacture of tapestries expanded
with such rapidity that in 1539 no less than twenty thousand
persons--including men, women and children--were employed as tapestry
weavers at Audenaerde and its environs.
Among the famous Flemish artists who painted designs for the tapestry
weavers of Audenaerde may be mentioned Floris, Coxcie, Rubens, David
Teniers, Gaspar de Witte, Victor Janssens, Peter Spierinckx, Adolphus
de Gryeff, and Alexander Van Bredael, while there were a host of
others. Gradually, however, the artisans began to be discontented with
their rate of pay, which the master tapestry makers kept at a low
figure, and the advent of the religious wars found them eager to join
any movement of revolt. After the outburst of the iconoclasts and the
arrival of the Duke of Alva many fled to the Dutch provinces and to
England, never to return. This emigration continued well into the
seventeenth century, as various decrees passed by the magistrates
between 1604 and 1621, confiscating the possessions of such emigrants,
testify.
[Illustration: A FLEMISH TAPESTRY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
Another cause that contributed to the ruin of the tapestry industry at
Audenaerde was the active effort made by the Kings of France, Louis
XIII and Louis XIV, to induce the best weavers and master-workmen to
emigrate to Paris. Philippe Robbins, one of the most celebrated
master-weavers of Audenaerde, was invited to come to France in 1622
and was afterwards proclaimed at Beavais to be the _Chef de tous les
tapitsers du Roy_. Many of the weavers who went to Paris and Brussels
on their own account established ateliers where they manufactured what
they proclaimed to be _veritables tapis d'Audenaerde_, and this
competition still further injured the industry which soon afterward
disappeared entirely from the city that gave its name to this type of
tapestry and has never since been re-established there. With the
departure of its weavers the little city on the Scheldt rapidly
declined in importance, and for the past two centuries has been the
sleepy little market-town that it is to-day.
On the other side of the River Scheldt, which flows through the town
and is crossed by several bridges, is the interesting Church of Notre
Dame de Pamela, which dates from the thirteenth century, having been
constructed in the remarkably short space of four years and completed
in 1239. It thus belongs to the transitional period between the
Romanesque style and the pure Gothic and is of interest to the student
of architecture as one of the most perfect examples of this period in
Flanders. The general effect of the interior, especially when viewed
from the foot of the organ loft, is noble and imposing in the highest
degree. Our visit was during a sunny afternoon, and the effect of the
long beams of light falling from the lofty windows of the nave across
the stately pillars below was indescribably beautiful. Truly this
masterpiece of stone expresses in its every line the truth of
Montalembert's beautiful remark that in such a church every column,
every soaring arch, is a prayer to the Most High.
One of the most curious of the paintings in Notre Dame de Pamela is a
triptych by Jean Snellinck, a painter of Antwerp and a forerunner of
Rubens who was greatly in vogue among the tapestry weavers of
Audenaerde. This work represents the "Creation of Eve" in the central
panel, the "Temptation" at the left and the "Expulsion from Eden" at
the right. The figures are all finely painted, especially those in the
left wing, and the entire work is an admirable example of early
Flemish art. The church also possesses an interesting work by Simon
de Pape representing the invention of the cross. Beneath the organ
loft were three tapestries of Audenaerde workmanship which the
caretaker obligingly spread out on the church floor for our
inspection. All were in a poor state of preservation. One represented
a woodland scene with three peasants on their way to market in the
foreground. The second had a curious group of fowls in the foreground,
while the third showed a sylvan scene with a mother and three
daughters, each of the girls bearing a basket of flowers.
Both Ste. Walburge and Notre Dame de Pamela suffered severely from the
fury of the iconoclasts, although the storm broke in Audenaerde at a
later period than in the larger cities farther to the eastward. The
curé of Ste. Walburge and four priests of Notre Dame de Pamela were
thrown by the rioters into the Scheldt and drowned October 4th, 1572,
while both churches were sacked.
On our way back from visiting the smaller church we paused on the quay
named Smallendam to admire the superb view of Ste. Walburge across the
river. A bit further on we entered a quaint little estaminet bearing
the inviting name of _In der Groote Pinte_ which we freely translated
as "the big pint." Apparently our Flemish was inexact, for the
beverage with which we were served was not notable for quantity. It
proved, moreover, to be exceedingly sour and unpleasant, and we left
our glasses unfinished. In the course of a tour around the town we
inspected what remains of the ancient Château de Bourgogne, the early
residence of the Dukes of Burgundy. The principal building is now used
by a Justice of the Peace, and we found little of interest save some
old walls and a massive inner courtyard. At the hospital of Notre
Dame, opposite the great tower of Ste. Walburge, we found two more
Audenaerde tapestries in an admirable state of preservation, while a
dozen fine mediæval doorways in different parts of the town attracted
our attention. For so small a place there are a great many religious
institutions, many of them of great antiquity. Among these may be
mentioned the Convents of the Black Sisters (Couvents des
Soeurs-Noires), the Abbey of Maegdendale, the Convent of Notre Dame de
Sion, and the Béguinage--the last an especially charming little spot
with a delightful street entrance dating from the middle of the
seventeenth century.
It is hard to believe, as one wanders about the half-deserted streets
of this sleepy old Flemish town, that in its day of greatness it was a
city of no mean power, holding its own sturdily against the greatest
princes in the world. Of its ancient walls and towers not a single
trace remains, yet those vanished ramparts four times in less than two
centuries defied the armies of the neighbouring--but, alas, not always
neighbourly--city of Ghent, even the redoubtable Philip Van Artevelde
retiring from in front of them discomfited in 1382. Three centuries
later, in 1684, Louis XIV was beaten off from an assault on these same
walls, but in revenge he ordered the bombardment of the city. This
resulted in a conflagration from which it had not fully recovered half
a century later. In 1708 the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of
Savoy won a great victory over the French under the walls of
Audenaerde. To this day along the frontier between France and Flanders
the peasant women lull their babies to sleep with a crooning ballad
which begins:
Malbrook s'en va't en guerre,
Mirlonton, mirlonton, mirlontaine;
Malbrook s'en va't en guerre,
Dieu sait quand il reviendra.
Il reviendra à Pâques,
Mirlonton, mirlonton, mirlontaine,
_Il reviendra à Pâques,
Ou à la Trinité. (bis)_
Small wonder that even the nursery songs tell of war and chant the
name of the great Duke two hundred years after the Battle of
Audenaerde, for during three centuries the Flemish plains were the
battlefield of Europe. Happily the present war has not as yet smitten
Audenaerde with any serious damage, although Le Petit Guerrier, from
his perch on the belfry of the Hotel de Ville, has no doubt looked
down upon long lines of marching men and gleaming bayonets.