GHENT
From Bruges, the capital of West Flanders, to Ghent, the capital of
East Flanders, it is only half an hour's journey by rail; but the
contrast between them is remarkable. Bruges is a city of the dead, of
still life, of stagnant waters, of mouldering walls and melancholy
streets, long since fallen from its high estate into utter decay.
Ghent, on the other hand, is active, bustling, prosperous. The narrow
lanes and gloomy courts of mediæval times have, in many parts, been
swept away to make room for broad, well-lighted streets and squares,
through which electric trams, crowded with busy people, run incessantly
all day long. Bruges is known as 'La Morte.' Ghent is often called
'La Ville de Flore,' from the numerous gardens and hot-houses which
supply plants to the markets of France, Germany, America, and other
countries. Other branches of industry thrive. The trade in flax, linen,
leather goods, engines, and lace, is large and flourishing. There are
warehouses packed full of articles of commerce waiting to be sent off
by canal or railway, and yards piled high with wood from North America,
or bags of Portland cement from England.
Two great canals, one connecting the town with the estuary of the
Scheldt near the sea, and the other leading, through Bruges, to Ostend,
admit merchant vessels and huge barges to a commodious harbour, where
steam cranes and all the appliances of a busy seaport are in full
swing. There never is a crowd in Bruges, except during the yearly
Procession of the Holy Blood; but every day in Ghent, if by chance a
drawbridge over one of the canals is raised, a crowd of working people
gathers to wait impatiently while some deeply-laden barge passes slowly
through, and, the moment the passage is free, rushes over in haste.
These are Flemings in a hurry. One never sees them in Bruges. Ghent,
then, is a modern commercial town; but, in spite of all the changes
which time and progress have brought about, it is, like most of the
other Flemish towns, full of sights which carry us back in a moment to the
distant past.
[Illustration: GHENT
AN old lace-maker.]
The Lys and the Scheldt, winding through Belgium from west to east,
meet almost in the centre of the province of East Flanders; and at the
point where they join a number of islands have been formed by numerous
channels, pools, and backwaters which are connected with the two
rivers. In early times, no doubt, the spot was nothing but a morass,
and on one of the pieces of drier ground the first wooden houses of
Ghent were erected. After that, during the course of centuries, the
town spread from island to island, and as each island was occupied a
bridge was built, so that by degrees between twenty and thirty islands,
joined by a number of bridges, were covered with dwelling-houses and
public buildings, and the whole surrounded by a wall and moat.
But long before buildings of brick or stone replaced the dark wooden
houses, of which only one now remains, the people of Ghent had acquired
the character of being the most intractable of all the Flemings; and
when Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, came back from the Holy Land,
towards the end of the twelfth century, he erected, on the site of an
old fortress which Baldwin Bras-de-Fer had built 200 years before, a
strong castle for the purpose of overawing the townsmen.
On the left bank of the Lys, which, passing through the middle of the
town, threads its way close under the basements of the houses, is the
Place Ste. Pharailde, with its picturesque buildings of the Middle
Ages; and on the north side of this Place stand the massive remains of
the old stronghold.
It is a grim, forbidding place, now known as the Château des Comtes. On
three sides high black walls rise straight out of the water, and on the
fourth side a deep archway leads into a large courtyard, in the middle
of which is the donjon, said to date from the ninth century. There is
a vast, dim banquet-hall, with an immense chimney-piece, and small
windows with stone seats sunk deep in the walls, where King Edward
III. of England and Queen Philippa feasted with Jacques van Artevelde
in the year 1339, during the war with France. Dark, narrow staircases
lead from story to story within the thickness of the walls, or wind up
through turrets pierced with small windows a few inches square. Far
down in the foundations are dismal oubliettes and torture-chambers;
and in one corner of what is supposed to have been a prison is an
iron-bound chest full of the skeletons of persons who suffered in the
religious troubles of the sixteenth century. This gloomy place, once
the abode of so much cruelty, is one of the most interesting sights in
Ghent.
[Illustration: GHENT
THE Banquet Hall, Château des Comtes.]
Charles V. was born at Ghent in the Cour des Princes, a magnificent
palace, of which nothing but a single gateway now remains. John of
Gaunt (or Ghent) was born here, too. Here took place the marriage of
the Archduke Maximilian to Mary of Burgundy, which gave the Netherlands
to the House of Austria. And here, in the Carthusian monastery in the
Rue des Chartreux, in a room which is now one of the refectories, Lord
Gambier, as Ambassador for George III., signed, on Christmas Eve, 1814,
the articles of peace which put an end to the war between Great Britain
and the United States of America.
Everywhere, however, in Flanders the chief connecting-link between the
past and the present is to be found at the Hôtel de Ville, the centre
of the civic life; and it would be hard to find in all the Netherlands,
except at Brussels, a more splendid example of Gothic architecture than
the north side of the Hôtel de Ville at Ghent.
Within, on the walls of a great hall, the Salle des États, is a tablet
in memory of the famous 'Pacification of Ghent,' signed there in 1576,
when the leaders of the Dutch and Catholic Netherlands united for
the purpose of securing civil and religious liberty and the downfall
of the Spanish oppression. Opposite this tablet is a window, through
which one steps on to a small balcony where proclamations were made of
war, or peace, or royal marriages, and laws were promulgated, in olden
times. In another part of the building the twelve Catholics, thirteen
Liberals, and fourteen Socialists, who (1907) make up the Council of
to-day, meet and debate, in a Gothic hall of the fifteenth century,
with the Burgomaster in the chair. The civil marriages, which by the
Belgian Constitution of 1831 must always precede the religious ceremony
in church, take place in an old chapel of 1574, where there is a large
picture by Wauters of Mary of Burgundy asking the burghers of Ghent to
pardon one of her Ministers. Just outside the door of this Salle des
Mariages a painting of the last moments of Count Egmont and Count Horn
hangs in a passage, with a roof 500 years old, leading to the offices
of the Tramway Company. Thus the everyday business of the town is
conducted in the midst of the memorials of the past.
[Illustration: GHENT
BÉGUINAGE de Mont St. Amand.]
In front of the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville there used to be a wide,
open space, in which the burghers assembled; but now the ground is
occupied by a row of houses (the Rue Haut-Port), intersected by narrow
streets, one of which leads to the Marché de Vendredi, the scene of
the greatest events in the history of Ghent. This is a large square,
surrounded by a double row of trees, in the middle of which is a statue
of Jacques van Artevelde, the 'Brewer of Ghent,' who stands with arm
up-raised, pointing to the west, as if to show his fellow-citizens that
help was coming from England, or that the enemy was on the march from
France.
Not far from the Hôtel de Ville the compact tower of St. Nicholas rises
above the housetops; and the churches of St. Pierre, St. Michael, and
St. Jacques are worth a visit. There is also the Béguinage de Ste.
Élisabeth, a group of houses of dark red brick with tiled roofs, trim
grass paddocks, and winding streets, clustering round a church--the
quietest spot in Ghent, where five or six hundred Beguines, in their
blue robes and white head-dresses, spend their days in making lace or
attending the services of the Catholic Church. But the antiquary and
student of history will find more to interest him if he makes his way
to the Abbey of St. Bavon (birthplace of John of Gaunt), the ruins of
which lie on the east side of the town, near the Porte d'Anvers.
The tradition is that this abbey was founded, early in the seventh
century, by St. Amandus, the 'Apostle of Flanders,' and enlarged, some
twenty years later, by St. Bavon. In the middle of the ninth century it
was almost entirely destroyed by the Normans, but rose once more at a
later period, only to be demolished by Charles V., who erected a castle
there about the year 1540. A quarter of a century later, on September
23, 1567, Egmont and Horn were brought here by the orders of Alva, and
kept in prison until they were carried, 'guarded by two companies of
infantry and one of cavalry,' to Brussels, where the execution took
place, in the Grande Place, on June 5, 1568.
[Illustration: GHENT
THE Arrière Faucille (Achter Sikkel).]
When the Congress of Ghent assembled in 1576, the castle was occupied
by a Spanish garrison, who refused to capitulate. It was accordingly
besieged by William of Orange, and 'the deliberations of the Congress
were opened under the incessant roar of cannon.' The siege ended, by
the surrender of the Spaniards, on the very day on which the sittings
of the Congress were finished by the conclusion of the treaty known as
the 'Pacification,' which was signed at Ghent on November 9, 1576.
'The Pacification, as soon as published, was received with a shout of
joy. Proclaimed in the market-place of every city and village, it was
ratified, not by votes, but by hymns of thanksgiving, by triumphal
music, by thundering of cannon, and by the blaze of beacons throughout
the Netherlands.'[29] The Castle, a monument of the Spanish tyranny,
was pulled down; but many fragments still remain of the ancient Abbey
of St. Bavon.
[Illustration: GHENT
THE ruins of the cloisters of the Abbey of St. Bavon.]
In the first quarter of the fifteenth century Hubert van Eyck and
his brother Jan were living at Ghent. Here Hubert began to paint the
celebrated altar-piece, 'The Adoration of the Immaculate Lamb,' which
his brother finished after his death. This great painting, having
survived the greed of Philip II., the fanaticism of the Puritan
iconoclasts, and the rapacity of the French revolutionary army, now
hangs in the Cathedral of St. Bavon; and every year hundreds of
travellers visit Ghent in order to see what is, beyond doubt, the
finest production of the Early Flemish School. In the choir, too,
of the Cathedral are four huge candlesticks of copper, which were
originally made as ornaments for the grave of Henry VIII. at Windsor,
but were sold during the Commonwealth.
In 1500 the infant who afterwards became the Emperor Charles V. was
carried from the Cour des Princes to the Cathedral. 'His baptism,'
we read in local history, 'was celebrated with right royal pomp in
the Church of St. Bavon. Great rejoicings signalized the event. The
fountains lavishly sent up streams of purple wine from their fantastic
jets, "mysteries" and mummeries, masks and merry-makings, usurped
for a time the place of commerce and earnest speculation. The brave
and steady citizens of Ghent ran riot from the house, and never was
Venice herself more wild in the days of her maddest carnival. We are
told that a magic gallery, 200 feet long, which was maintained during
this temporary jubilee in a state of sufficient security to insure the
safety of the thousands who thronged it, was erected at a giddy height
across the streets, connecting the tower of the great Belfry with that
of the Church of St. Nicholas. This was, for three consecutive nights,
profusely illuminated, and threw a brilliant glow over the gay scene,
in which all Ghent was revelling below.'
In the time of Charles V., Ghent was not only the most powerful city in
the rich Netherlands, but one of the most opulent in all Europe.
And what the Belfry, whose chimes ring out with such sweet melody
by night and day, was to Bruges, that was to the more warlike men
of Ghent the 'iron tongue' of Roland, the mighty bell which hung in
the lofty watch-tower. It called them to arms. It sent them forth to
battle. It welcomed them home victorious, or bade them meet and defend
their privileges in the market-place. 'It seemed, as it were, a living
historical personage, endowed with the human powers and passions which
it had so long directed and inflamed.'
The Belfry of Ghent, black with age, still towers above the Cloth Hall.
But when, in 1540, the Emperor went there for the purpose of humbling
the town, and punishing the burghers for their disobedience, he made
a decree that Roland, whose voice had so often given the signal for
revolt, should be taken down. No greater insult could have been offered
to the proud city.
Bruges fell into the decay from which she has never yet recovered
chiefly because, at a time when the whole commerce of Flanders and
Brabant was beginning to languish, she lost her communications with the
sea; and Ypres was ruined by years of internal discord and constant
war. But Ghent, the third of the three 'Bonnes Villes' of Flanders,
though the industrial depression which spread over the Netherlands
and the long struggle against Spain combined to ruin her, has come
triumphant through all vicissitudes. In the old days the men of Ghent
were famous for their turbulent spirit and love of independence. It was
no easy task to rule them, as Counts of Flanders, or Dukes of Burgundy,
or Kings of Spain often found to their cost. And now it seems as if
the robust character of the burghers who fought so hard, in mediæval
times, to maintain their liberties, had been merely turned into another
channel, and transmitted to their descendants in the shape of that keen
activity in commerce which makes this town so prosperous at the present
day.
FOOTNOTES.
[Footnote 29: Motley's _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, part iv., chap. v.]