Chapter 05 - The Story of Bruges and Ghent

CHAPTER V

THE STORY OF BRUGES AND GHENT

THE story of the sister cities Bruges and Ghent may be told together, and as it forms the best known part of Belgian history, a brief summary of the leading incidents will suffice.

The story of Bruges begins with the Foresters of Flanders, the officers entrusted by Charlemagne with the guard of that part of his kingdom who eventually became Counts of Flanders. Bruges itself, at the commencement, was known as Flanders (Vlaenderen). It was Baldwin Bras de Fer who gave it a separate name, and that no more high sounding than the place of a bridge. His son, the second Baldwin, fortified it, Ghent, Courtrai, and Ypres at the same time, thus founding together the four famous Flemish communes. Baldwin II married Elstrud, the daughter of Alfred, thus establishing the first link between England and Flanders. The first mention of Ghent is slightly earlier than that of Bruges. It was one of Charlemagne's naval arsenals - the other being Boulogne - and on one occasion the Norman pirates came up the Scheldt in their light draught snekkars and burnt his ships.

If the erection of walls was the first step in the growth of cities, the more important incident in the life of those of Flanders was the establishment of cloth markets in or about the year 960. These markets were established round the principal church, and were distinguished by the name Kerkmesse (Kirk, church, and messe, market). The word soon became "kermesse," and is still in use as the popular name for a Fair. The creation of all Flemish towns was marked by three phases. The building of a church was the first phase. This occurred, as a rule, in the seventh and eighth centuries. The next was the construction of a wall and fortified gates, which may be assigned to the ninth century. The concluding phase was the opening of the cloth markets in the tenth century. The Flemish people thus turned at an earlier period than any other race in northern Europe from agriculture to industry.

A century after the opening of the cloth markets, the citizens who had laid the basis of a sound and expanding prosperity began to talk of and clamor for their rights. Their first triumph was the acquisition of the privilege of erecting a belfry to be used for the purpose of summoning the citizens to public meeting. Up to that moment the only bells had been those in the churches, and the acquisition of a separate belfry was as hard to win as it was highly prized. But the first distinct civic charter was granted neither to Bruges nor to Ghent, but to a town specially created for the purpose of being ruled by a new law by Baldwin VI in the year 1068. This was Grammont, a place which otherwise never obtained fame, and which is today a town of the fifth order. None the less the Charter of Grammont is "the most ancient written monument of civil and criminal laws in Flanders." It established trial by jury, it exempted the citizens from church law except in matters of religion, and it introduced a system of fines in lieu of the almost uniform death sentence. Bruges and Ghent were naturally indisposed to leave Grammont a monopoly of such privileges.

Having won their charters from their Counts, the people of Bruges and their allied communes were in danger of losing them at the hands of the French King, who invaded and occupied a great part of Flanders in the first year of the fourteenth century. This foreign occupation did not last long. The French garrison was massacred during what was known as the Bruges Matins. A few months later this success was completed at the battle of Guinegate or "of the spurs" outside Courtrai on July 11, 1302, a memorable date in the history of Flanders. Although this great victory put an end to the fear of a French conquest, it was followed by a struggle between the Counts and the communes that went on for two centuries, and that only ended in the time of the Emperor Charles V.

The "heroic epoch" of Flanders reached its culminating point with the Arteveldes. The elder, James, was not merely the leading tribune of Ghent, but he was the one Belgian who, prior to the nineteenth century, might be called a great national statesman. His conception of Flanders was that of a great "neutral state" strong enough to repel all assailants, and therefore able to devote its attention to the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of industrial prosperity. To accomplish this required an efficient military organization and the expenditure of money. His views were too large for his age. He was accused of wasting the public treasure, and massacred by his brother citizens. Unwittingly the citizens by declining to follow a national policy, had struck the first blow at the continuance of their own commercial existence. The result proved the truth of the saying that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." The assassination of James van Artevelde occurred on July 17, 1345; the people of Ghent expiated their crime on November 27, 1382, when their forces, led by his son Philip, were routed on the field of Roosebeke by their Count and his French allies.

The highest point of Bruges' prosperity was reached soon after the establishment of the Burgundian rule, and the third marriage of Duke Philip the Good in the year 1430 may be fixed upon as its apogee. It was an incident of special interest for several reasons. The same summer witnessed the Duke's capture of Joan of Arc, and his handing her over to the tender mercies of the Bishop of Beauvais, and also the founding of the most famous order of the Golden Fleece, named in double honor of the mythological quest, and of the source of local prosperity. Philip's third bride was Isabel of Portugal, great granddaughter of John of Gaunt, and she became the mother of Charles the Bold. The Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry V, had married Anne, sister of Philip, and owing to English defeats it had been arranged that Bedford should resign to his brother-in-law the Regency of France which the hero of Agincourt had placed in his charge. From many points of view the occasion was a memorable one, but the one fact that endured longest was the creation of the order of the Golden Fleece.

There seems good reason to believe that the Golden Fleece was founded by the Duke of Burgundy out of a spirit of emulation. He was a Knight of the Garter, established by Edward III three-quarters of a century earlier, and he resolved to have his own Order and to endow it with features peculiar to himself. The Garter was a chivalric order with a decoration and a badge; the Fleece was a distinct power in the land with its members immune from the general law. A Knight of the Golden Fleece could only be tried by the Chapter of his order. When Alva caused Egmont and Horn to be executed, the worst crime he committed in the eyes of many was in violating the rules of the Order to which he also belonged, and in ignoring the privileges of two brother Knights.

The Order was ostensibly founded in honor of the new bride, and so intent was the Duke on its maintenance that he passed on its sovereignty to the husband of the last heiress of his family, Timely precedence fared the Order from extraction on more than one occasion. The first motto chosen for the Order was essentially applicable to the marriage: "Aultre n'aray, Dame Isabeau tant que vivray" As it was his third venture in the matrimonial lifts, he thought it proper to proper to give the young princess some pledge, but this motto was not long m use. In a few years it was superseded by the motto of the Burgundian family, "Je l'ay emprins"-"l hare undertaken." The Order, which was dedicated to the Virgin and St Andrew, the patron faint of Burgundy, was hunted to the sovereign and twenty four knights. At first the archives and treasury of the Order were preserved at Bruges, where the knight had their stalls in the Church of Notre Dame ; but die Archduke, afterwards Emperor Maximilian, removed them to Ste Gudule in Brussels, When the French Revolution broke out they were taken for safety to Vienna, where they still remain. In 1725 the Order was divided into two branches, the Golden Fleece of Austria and the Golden Fleece of Spam,

The marriage of Philip the Good was celebrated when Bruges was at its prime, A century earlier a Queen of France on visiting it had been so struck by the rich costumes of its ladies, that she exclaimed, "1 thought I was the only Queen here, but 1 see a thousand around me." At that time Bruges was the lead bag financial city in Western Europe, or as it was put in those days, north of the Alps. The prices on its exchange ruled those elsewhere. It was said that more trading ships than in any other port save Venice. The Hansa, English, and Italian merchants had their resident agencies and counting houses. But a great national disaster was impending, with which neither the skill nor the resources of the men of the age could cope.

The prosperity of Bruges was based on its access to the sea, but even at the moment of the marriage fetes it was known that the navigable channel from the sea to Damme was silting up, and that before many more years had passed it would be permanently closed. This stage was reached in the year 1490. The Zwyn became merged in that tract of unfathomed sand extending from Knocke to Terneuzen, which represents the Dutch possessions south of the Scheldt today. The merchants and the Guilds left the thus isolated city, transferring their headquarters to Antwerp, and Bruges entered upon its long sleep as a place of enterprise. Only in the twentieth century has it begun to show signs of returning vitality through the construction of the ship canal that connects it with the North Sea.

The prosperity of Ghent rested on a surer basis than that of Bruges, or perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that it was less dependent on the cooperation of foreigners. The decline of Bruges in creased the importance of Ghent, which was for a century after the marriage of Philip the Good, the center of the political life of Flanders. It carried on a fierce struggle for its constitutional rights during that period, and it was only when the Emperor Charles V, banding together all the forces at his disposal, came down upon it with heavy hand in 1540, and imposed his memorable chastisement, that it succumbed. Some idea of the stubborn and never failing courage of the people of Ghent during the last century of its existence as a political entity may be formed from a brief summary of the events that preceded the final humiliation in 1540. The story commences in 1453 with the terrible battle of Gavre - "the red sea of Gavre" - when twenty thousand citizens were slain. Philip the Good seemed touched by the slaughter, for he exclaimed, "These were my subjects/' but none the less he hung all his prisoners, including some English archers, who were hoisted to the loftiest trees. Among the penalties imposed were the imposition of a heavy fine, and the suppression of the trained bands of the guilds known as the White Hoods. Yet, in 1467, Charles the Bold, in the midst of a turbulent populace uttering threats on the very day of his inauguration as Count of Flanders, found himself obliged to restore all the privileges his father had confiscated fourteen years before. "Wait ten years," he exclaimed, "and we shall see who is master." Ten years later he fell in the battle of Nancy. His successor, his only child and daughter, Mary of Burgundy, was left face to face with the citizens, who took full advantage of her troubles. Before they would allow her to be proclaimed they compelled her to sign a new charter embodying all the old privileges. Then only would they permit her to ring the .bell known as Roland. Nor were the citizens satisfied until they had executed the principal ministers of their last Duke. The atrocities of the individual ruler are treasured up by the historian, those of the masses or the mob are consigned to an indulgent oblivion.

What the citizens of Ghent wrested from the last Duchess of Burgundy they kept under her youthful son, Philip the Fair. They held him as a hostage against his father, the Archduke Maximilian, who overran much of the Provinces with a German army. One of the incidents of the struggle was when the citizens of Bruges locked Maximilian up in the Craenenburg, and kept him there for three months. He was only released on giving his promise by oath to abstain from further interference in the government, and to leave his son in the hands of the Flemings. It is not surprising that Maximilian took the oath to recover his freedom, but it is surprising that he was believed. No sooner had he got to a safe distance than he repudiated his promises, and he returned in a few months with a large German army to besiege Ghent, which had thrown in its fortunes with Bruges. This was the turning-point in the history of the great Flemish communes. In bad as in good fortune they had up to this managed to hold their own in the struggle with their feudal and hereditary rulers. But they were now confronted by a more formidable master, who had behind him the big battalions of the German Empire. The citizens did not appreciate the change until it was too late. Bruges and Ghent were compelled to pay enormous fines, and by the treaties of Damme and Cadzand they surrendered their privileges. The wounded dignity of Maximilian for his imprisonment was further appeased by the execution of a considerable number of the leading citizens of the two cities.

Such was the situation at the dawn of the sixteenth century, when the citizens of Ghent, laving aside their political ambitions, applied themselves to the development of their trade and industry. The pacific rule of Margaret of Austria, sister of Philip the Fair, acting in the name of her young nephew who became Charles V, was highly favorable to their designs, and it was freely said that the prosperity of Ghent had never been greater than it was in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the hour of their greatest prosperity the people of Ghent brought down upon themselves the wrath and punishment of their prince. Some contemporary writers declared that there had been a decay in the manners and character of the citizens - one of them wrote: "The old represent that everything is changed in the customs of our citizens, and they complain that instead of simple, frank, loyal, courageous, robust, and tall men a generation has succeeded corrupted by vice, idleness, ambition, and pride."

In 1536 the Emperor, for the purposes of war with France, demanded a subsidy from Flanders, and the city of Ghent was called upon to provide a third of the total. The citizens refused to pay, and finding that the prince had no available means to compel them to do so, they grew defiant. They formed an association among themselves to carry on the government of their city, and they invited Francis of France to aid them against their liege lord. Unfortunately for them that monarch had just signed a ten years' peace with his old rival, and he dismissed their envoys with cold comfort. Still the citizens were full of confidence in themselves, and to show their contempt for the Emperor they executed his chief representative, Lieven Pym, who told them with his dying breath they would be sorry when "too late." They acted thus recklessly in the belief that as the Emperor was in Spain, and had many things to attend to, it would certainly be a long time before he could think of them.

All their expectations were falsified by the act of the French King, who sent Charles a pressing invitation to travel through France so that he might be able to promptly chastise his mutinous subjects. The offer, unusual in those days, was accepted, and in February, 1540, Charles appeared before Ghent at the head of a chosen army. Resistance would have been futile; none was attempted. Having occupied the city with his troops, Charles made a solemn entry at the head of his generals and courtiers. A formal indictment was drafted, and Ghent was placed on its trial. The verdict was delivered with all the proper observances, and after due deliberation the Emperor solemnly ratified it. Seven - not nineteen, as Motley says - of the men who judicially murdered Lieven Pym were executed, but that was the full extent of the bloodshed. The Emperor's sentence was directed against institutions and not men - but in its way it could not have been more severe. The sentence began by depriving the town "body and community" of all its privileges in perpetuity. It was deprived of municipal government, and the guilds as well as the city lost their charters. All sheriffs and magistrates were to be appointed by the Emperor alone. Public property, including artillery, was to be ceded to the Emperor, and the famous Roland, which had so often given tongue to the discontent of the land, and summoned the people to arms, was cast down and sentenced to eternal silence. In addition, the city had to pay not only the refused subsidy, but a heavy fine. Finally, the chief citizens had to make humble penitence in their shirts barefooted, and with halters round their necks. Thus, after five centuries, ended the special privileges and political importance of Ghent, the city associated in the English mind with the names of James van Artevelde and John of Gaunt.

Source: Boulger, Demetrius C. Belgium. Detroit: Published for the Bay View Reading Club, 1913. Print.

• Prev
• Next