the East and the West), the Burgundians, and the Normans, the latter
being descendants of the Vikings from the Baltic. The Belgæ were a
subdivision of the Franks, and made up of several tribes, Trevii,
Eburones, Nervii, etc. Generally speaking, they were Germanic, with a
considerable Celtic admixture. The Cluniac and Cistercian reforms came
from Burgundy, which is partially within the limits of our study, though
later they received great accessions of strength from natives of
Flanders, Brabant, the Rhineland, and Champagne. During the eleventh
century Normandy was the spiritual centre, the dynamic force, of Europe,
while in the twelfth century the leadership was assumed by the Île de
France, as wholly under the inspiration of the Cistercians as Normandy
had been under that of the Cluniacs. It was during these two centuries
that the great burst of Norman and of Gothic architecture occurred in
the Île de France, in Normandy, and in Champagne.
The contributions of the land we now know as Belgium were quite
different; they were at the same time a product of mediæval culture and
one of its causes, for they grew out of the deep and vital impulses
beneath the whole epoch, while they seemed to determine many of its
manifestations. The first of these, the Crusades, has already been
referred to; the second, the great guild system, with its concomitant,
the commune, and its result, a desire for personal, civic, and national
liberty that became a passion, needs some consideration, since it is
from this that came so much of the later mediæval art of Flanders and
Brabant that is so priceless and so appallingly in danger of
destruction.
Just how and why the Flemings should have become a nation of weavers,
merchants, and traders is hard to say, but even in the tenth century,
weaving had become so important an industry a charter was granted the
guild of weavers by Count Baldwin. The supply of wool came overseas from
England, where an important market for the finished wares was also
found, and as a result a close community of interests sprang up between
Flanders and East Anglia. Without natural protection of any kind, the
land lying open to any invasion, walled cities became imperative, as
well as unions for self-defence, and so came the great and rich and
defiant cities such as Ghent and Bruges, Ypres and Courtrai. When the
nobles and knights flocked off on crusade, the citizens remained at
home, and they were not slow to seize the opportunity offered them of
acquiring, almost without protest, the civil power that, elsewhere,
under a dominant and universal feudalism, remained in the hands of the
barons.
By this time the development of the guilds had reached enormous
proportions, and the members were so numerous, so highly organised, and
so defiant of molestation they were almost irresistible. In Ghent, for
example, there were more than 50,000 enrolled craftsmen and artificers
in the thirteenth century; in Bruges there were the four great trading
guilds of wool merchants, linen merchants, mercers, and brewers, and in
addition no less than fifty-two guilds of craftsmen. These guilds were
not only for the protection of the interests of their members, they
equally aimed at maintaining the highest possible standard in their
products (so differentiating themselves sharply from the contemporary
trade-union), while they demanded and received civic rights and
privileges unheard of before and elsewhere. Finally they were military
as well as civil in their nature, all the members being trained to arms
and under competent military direction. The actual power they could
exert is shown by the fact that at one time the weavers in Ghent put an
efficient army of 40,000 men into the field. Every man was bound to
answer the alarm-bell of his own guild on the instant, and so came the
great bell-towers that stood not only as the source of warning and the
rallying-place, but also as visible evidences of the liberty of the men
who obeyed the summons from their great bourdons.
Never before or since has skilled labour occupied a more advantageous
position than in Flanders in the thirteenth century; wages were high,
life liberal and self-respecting, comforts and even luxuries common to
all, while the high standard of workmanship made labour dignified and
enjoyable, and close union of interests guaranteed the protection of all
against the aggressions of the nobles and the feudal system.
Offsetting the gains were corresponding losses. Successful industry,
through group action, together with the consequent development of the
town unit, resulted in a general loss of any national or racial spirit.
The interests of each man were those of his guild or town, and during
the entire Middle Ages there was the most kaleidoscopic grouping and
regrouping of towns and provinces, now against the Empire, now against
[Illustration: ST. BAVON’S TOWER, GHENT]
France, Burgundy, England, now against each other or some count or duke
working in his turn for dynastic or political dominance. Another cause
of dissension was the complicated absurdity of feudal tenure, whereby
the French-speaking people of Brabant and Lorraine were united to the
Empire, the Flemings to France, while, as happened in the case of the
Count of Flanders, a prince might be one of the Twelve Peers of France,
and a vassal of the King, and yet be vassal to the Emperor for portions
of his land. The process of progressive unification which was taking
place elsewhere was here reversed, and by the end of the twelfth century
Brabant had been broken up into five counties, while as far as the Seine
were small and involved feudal domains and bishoprics, such as Hainault,
Vermandois, Ponthièvre, Amiens, Reims, Coucy, Beauvais.
Flanders retained a certain unstable unity, and against this Philip
Augustus of France set himself in his comprehensive policy of
unification; after his first invasion Ferrand of Portugal, who had
married the heiress of the last Baldwin of Flanders and Hainault, took
the lead in forming an alliance with England and the Empire for the
crushing of France and the division of the kingdom. Bouvines saw the
ending of the ambitious plot, and as well the beginnings of modern
France. Later came the League of Grammont and the second attempt to
destroy France, which failed also; but at the battle of Courtrai by the
Lys, the Flemish army of 25,000 utterly defeated a French force of
double the number, with the loss of the proudest blood in France. A
thousand knights fell, with 20,000 squires and men-at-arms, and in the
Church of Our Lady of Courtrai, 700 gold spurs, from the heels of dead
knights, were hung to the glory of the great victory.
So through the thirteenth century incessant fighting went on both in
Flanders and Brabant, and in the great bishopric of Liége, the net
result being the complete downfall of feudalism in advance of the rest
of Europe and the solidifying of the popular passion for personal
liberty and self-government.
The fourteenth century was the golden age of the communes and as well of
renewed resistance to the continuous encroachments of France, when the
brief period of the commercial alliance with England under Edward III
came to an end. This English alliance, prompted by both commercial and
political considerations, had been the dream of the first Van
Artevelde, Jacques by name, the leader of the weavers of Ghent. For nine
years he had laboured for the interests of his fellow guildsmen and
Ghentois, supporting King Edward III in his claims on the crown of
France, plotting and planning to preserve the independence of Flanders.
He fell a victim, however, to the spirit of irresponsible faction which
already had been the inevitable outcome of the democratic, socialistic,
and selfishly greedy elements inherent in an unhampered guild system,
and was murdered by his own followers in the streets of Ghent.
In the meantime Louis de Mâle, had become Count of Flanders, in
succession to his father, Louis de Nevers, while Wenceslas of
Luxembourg, son of the King of Bohemia, who had married one of the
daughters of John III, became Duke of Brabant. Here, as in Flanders, the
various guilds had gained a control that was periodically contested by
the nobles, particularly in Louvain, where the disorders continued for
twenty years. In the end the cities were defeated, for they had used
their power ill, determining their action by superhuman cruelty and
greed, oppressing the weaker communes whenever they threatened their
trade, fighting amongst themselves, splitting up into factions, and
vacillating between sudden enthusiasms and corresponding treachery.
Already the tendency was setting in away from the mediæval looseness,
mobility, and even democracy in government, and toward that
centralisation coupled with autocracy which was to be the contribution
of the Renaissance to the science of government and was to end in the
absolutism of Henry VIII, Philip of Spain, and Louis XIV. Even if the
guilds had shown a high standard of morals and of statesmanship, if the
communes had been truly patriotic and national in their aims and
methods, they could hardly have stood against a tendency already clearly
defined and marking the new era, now coming to birth, as their high
beginnings had marked that already drawing to its close.
Louis made war against Brabant, lost, but regained Malines, which he had
sold to his father-in-law of Brabant, and then turned his attention to a
final suppression of Ghent, the last stronghold of the declining
democracy of Flanders. It was in 1279 that Bruges asked for a canal to
the Lys to make amends for the silting up of her only outlet to the sea.
Ghent protested, fearing loss of her own trade, and took up arms when
Louis granted the canal. The “White Hoods” defeated the forces sent
against them, whereupon the fickle burgers of Bruges and Ypres went over
to their side and long, hard fighting followed, until Louis found
himself besieged in Audenaarde by some 60,000 “White Hoods” and was only
saved by the intervention of his son-in-law Charles of Burgundy.
Retreating to France, with headquarters at Lille, he reorganised his
forces, renewed the attack, captured Ypres, and, one after the other,
all the cities of Flanders except Ghent, to which he laid siege. At this
last crisis in its fortunes Ghent turned to Philip, son of Jacques van
Artevelde, who took command, organised a force of 5,000 men, led them
against Count Louis’ army of 40,000, attacked near Bruges, and defeated
it utterly, Louis escaping only in the clothes of his servant. Bruges
was occupied and its walls destroyed, Ypres and Courtrai joined in with
Ghent, and Bruges itself turned against its count.
The issue was now fairly joined between commons and knights; Louis de
Mâle made his cause that of order and the nobility against anarchy and
the proletariat, the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy joined him,
and under Oliver, constable of France, 80,000 men, amongst whom no
communal levies were admitted, marched on Ghent and its allies. Against
this force Philip van Artevelde mustered 40,000 men who advanced to the
attack with a mad confidence born of their recent victory over Louis. In
a thick fog they hurled themselves in a solid body on the centre of the
enemy, broke it, saw victory before them, and then, the fog lifting,
found themselves flanked on both sides by the constable’s horse, and
abandoned themselves to a panic that ended in the slaughter of more than
half their number, including Van Artevelde himself, whose brief day of
success and glory had lasted exactly eleven months.
The French sacked Courtrai and went home, whereupon Ghent again took
heart of hope, and, aided by Henry Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, with
3,000 men, defied Louis and laid siege to Ypres, which was relieved by
the returning French, and a truce was finally signed at Calais.
It was the end of the democratic communes, not only in Flanders but in
Brabant, where Duke Wenceslas at the same time had defeated the communes
at Louvain, and as well in France, where the growing spirit of communal
[Illustration: THE QUAI AUX HERBES, GHENT]
independence was wiped out by a king who had found in Flanders the proof
that this cannot co-exist with a strong and centralised monarchy.
Already industrial decline had set in; the country had been harried by
French armies and by civil wars, many had gone overseas to England to
establish there a rival industry that slowly sapped the prosperity of
Flanders and Brabant. The Black Death had decimated the remaining
population, and Bruges, Courtrai, Ypres, indeed nearly all the great
towns but Ghent, slowly lost their population until hardly a tenth was
left. Still a large degree of prosperity remained, and wealth was as
much desired and as successfully attained as before, only within
narrower lines and by a far smaller number of people.
When Louis de Mâle died, shortly after the victory of his French allies
over the communes, his son-in-law, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy,
became Count of Flanders, and the fifteenth century was dominated by
Burgundian efforts to build up a strong central kingdom when it became
evident that it could not control the destinies of France. Flanders,
Brabant, and Namur were all incorporated in Burgundy, and later Holland
and Hainault, so that it seemed for a time that a great central state
might arise between the Empire and the kingdom of France.
Philip’s first efforts were to wean Flanders from its friendship with
England in order that he might use the country for the invasion he had
planned to bring about. He died in 1404 before he could carry out his
schemes and was succeeded by his son, John the Fearless, whose aim was
the French crown, in opposition to the Duke of Orleans who had become
supreme in Paris. He marched on the capital, which opened its gates to
him, while Orleans took refuge in the south but returned and too
confidingly patched up some kind of a peace with Burgundy, who had him
assassinated in the streets of Paris in the following year. Out of his
murder grew the league of the partisans of Orleans, the “Armagnacs,” who
took their name from Count d’Armagnac, father-in-law of one of the
daughters of the murdered duke, and the warfare between them and the
house of Burgundy.
In the meantime Henry V had laid claim to the French throne, had invaded
France, and fought the battle of Agincourt. Thus far John the Fearless
had kept out of the fight, but now he allied himself with the Dauphin
and went to meet him at Montereau to seal his allegiance. Here he was
in turn slain by the Armagnacs in revenge for his own murder of the Duke
of Orleans, and his son, Philip the Good, at once threw himself into the
arms of England, against France, and it was he who handed over the B.
Jeanne d’Arc to the Bishop of Beauvais, after her capture at Compiègne
in 1430, as a witch and sorceress.
Philip was more devoted to his new possessions than to his native
Burgundy, and under him Bruges and Ghent took precedence of his old
capital of Dijon. Philip also was the founder of the Order of the Golden
Fleece on the occasion of one of his numerous marriages, this time in
Bruges and to the Countess of Nevers. The marriage was a great event in
many ways, for to it came the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, he being then
Regent of France for the English king and realising that the triumphant
career of Jeanne d’Arc was having results that urged him to make the
most of the Duke of Burgundy, the only friend left to his royal master.
The Golden Fleece, the oldest order on the Continent, was instituted in
particular honour of Flanders, and especially the city of Bruges, the
world centre of the wool trade. There were to be but twenty-four
knights, under the leadership of the duke, and they were granted
extraordinary privileges, amongst them immunity from all other states,
princes and laws, being subject only to their sovereign master, though
they remained citizens of their respective states, whatever those may
have been. Philip II of Spain did away with this intolerable anomaly,
and in 1725 the order was divided between Spain and Austria, so losing
wholly its original and most distinctive quality as a signal honour
especially pertaining to Flanders.
By 1435 Philip, whose affection for England had been at the best
lukewarm, could bear no longer the appalling misery of France and the
excesses of the English armies. All north of the Loire had become a
wilderness and even in the later Middle Ages pity was a feeling still
easily aroused. By the treaty of Arras Burgundy finally separated itself
from the English alliance and joined Charles VII, the immediate result
being a letting-up of the war in France and a transferring of
hostilities to Flanders. The duke led an enthusiastic force of Flemings
against Calais, failed to capture it, and then discovered
[Illustration: BRUGES, FROM THE QUAI DU ROSAIRE]
the erratic nature of his Flemish subjects, for they forthwith turned
against him as suddenly as they had deserted the English alliance, and
Philip proceeded forthwith to break their spirit, or rather the frantic
independence of their cities. He succeeded, and yet Flanders prospered
in spite of the sporadic internecine warfare. Prosperity somehow came
back and wealth increased, while Memling, the Van Eycks and their great
line of successors, together with other masters of art in allied fields,
gave a glory to the time that will endure for ever. Then followed years
of strife and turbulence, of shifting alliances and of sympathies as
ready to turn as to be aroused. Philip died, was succeeded by his son,
Charles the Bold, and the disorders broke out afresh so successfully
that at first he was forced to give back all the communal privileges his
father had taken away. In addition to his domestic troubles he found
himself the object of the serpentine plots of Louis XI now King of
France. Charles was equal to the occasion, however; he married Margaret
of York, sister to the English King, so acquiring a new ally; marched
against Liége, the centre of the local disaffection, captured it
triumphantly, then turned on the crafty and unscrupulous Louis and
proceeded to beat him at his own game. In the midst of this enviable
adventure, Liége revolted once more, and this time Charles, dragging
Louis at his heels, captured the city again, now showing none of the
mercy he had before exhibited. The whole city was sacked, only the
churches and monasteries being spared, and the ruins were given to the
flames. In spite of the exemption accorded religious property, the
destruction of the great city was too manifestly a violation of the
common decencies of Christian conduct to be neutrally endured by the
Pope, who at that time (it was almost five centuries ago) did not fear
to take a strong stand for righteousness when occasion offered, and
Charles had to make his peace with the head of the Church as best he
could.
The policy of “frightfulness” had its advantages to its perpetrator,
however, and the other rebellious cities surrendered at discretion,
losing their treasured liberties and becoming simply communities in a
united and centralised state. In the end Charles lost, for Louis XI was
a schemer of such profound duplicity that only the devil himself could
have matched him in the long run, and on even terms. The duke met
failure at every turn: in his effort to co-ordinate his unruly
provinces into a working organism, in his ambition to become King of
Burgundy instead of duke, in his last war against the Swiss when he was
utterly defeated and slain. He was succeeded by his daughter, the famous
Mary of Burgundy, who also became a victim of the royal spider of
France, but countered on him by suddenly marrying Maximilian, son of the
Emperor, and so beginning that train of events that severed Burgundy
from its French associations and brought its several parts into a
relationship with Germany that continued for nearly three centuries.
Young, beautiful, clever, and immensely popular, Mary of Burgundy seemed
destined to accomplish what her father had failed to bring about, the
unification and restoration of a great Burgundian state, but after only
five years of rule she was killed by a fall from her horse while
hunting, and Philip, her infant son, became duke in name, and the old
political troubles rose to a climax that in the end brought in the
Spanish dominion and the ruin that followed in its wake.
The cities of Flanders and Brabant turned again to France, in a frantic
effort to regain their lost liberties, while Maximilian, who had been
crowned King of Rome, and was of course next in succession to the
Empire, fought again and again to restore his supremacy, and regain his
infant son, the future Philip the Fair, who had been sent to France to
be educated and to get him out of the hands of his father. In the end he
defeated the ring-leading cities, Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, and was
acknowledged regent. In 1493 Frederick died and Maximilian succeeded him
as Emperor, proclaiming Philip as Count of Flanders, marrying him out of
hand to Joanna, Infanta of Castile, and betrothing his sister to Don
John, heir to the crown of Spain. The sudden rise of a great new power
in the Iberian Peninsula had overturned all the old alignments; the
driving of the Moors from Spain and the union of Aragon and Castile in
Ferdinand and Isabella had revealed a new force that might be used
against France, and more dependable than England, and the new Emperor
was not slow to recognise his opportunity. His sister never married Don
John, who died before the projected wedding, and was followed by his
sister, the Queen of Portugal, so suddenly the Count of Flanders and his
countess became heirs to the throne of Spain. They gained little
advantage from this, although after the death of Queen Isabella in 1505
they went to Spain, and were proclaimed as king and queen, but their
glory was short-lived, for in the following year Philip met a sudden and
untimely end, his queen went mad through grief, and the Emperor became
the dominating influence in Spain as well as in Flanders through the
guardianship of his five-year-old grandson, the future Charles V.
During his minority his aunt, Margaret of Austria, had acted as regent,
and with a wisdom and a benevolence her male predecessors had never
shown, so that when in 1515 Charles became actual ruler of Flanders, he
found himself in possession of a calm and contented community. Carefully
educated by his admirable aunt, Charles, the heir to seventeen kingdoms,
could speak the language of each, and he had, moreover, the enormous
advantage of being tutored by the great Erasmus of Rotterdam. Hardly had
he become King of Spain through the death of Ferdinand, when his
grandfather died, and he became Emperor as well. Practically all Europe,
and America also, were his, and after his war with France which ended at
Pavia with the capture of Francis I (when all was “lost save honour”),
he was the temporal Lord of the World, except England alone, while the
spiritual power of the Papacy was his only rival on the Continent, and
the Pope himself was his old tutor, Adrian, Archbishop of Toledo.
Charles was as able as he was universal in his sovereignty; he organised
his vast empire on practical lines under well-chosen regents, none of
whom was more excellent than Margaret of Austria, under whom the country
prospered exceedingly. She was as shrewd and far-seeing as she was
admirable in character; a poet in her own right, she fostered art,
letters, and general culture, and her death in 1530 was a loss to
Flanders and also to the Emperor, who immediately appointed his sister
Mary regent in her place, a lady of less distinguished abilities, but a
good and faithful servant for a quarter of a century.