Belgium

by George W. T. Omond · English · Gutenberg #46248 · 507,047 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Belgium

Author: George W. T. Omond

Illustrator: A. Forestier

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Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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BELGIUM

* * * * * *

THIS BOOK IS ALSO PUBLISHED IN THREE SEPARATE PARTS

A. AND C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

* * * * * *

BELGIUM

* * * * * *

AGENTS

AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
27 RICHMOND STREET WEST, TORONTO

INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA

AUSTRALASIA OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, MELBOURNE

* * * * * *

[Illustration: BRUSSELS

The Hôtel de Ville, a corner of the Grande Place, showing La Maison des
Brasseurs, La Maison du Cygne, and La Maison de l'Étoile.]

BELGIUM

Painted by AMÉDÉE FORESTIER

Text by

GEORGE W. T. OMOND

Published by A. & C.
Black · Soho Square London · W · MCMVIII

[Illustration]

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY OF BRUGES--EARLY HISTORY 3

II. BALDWIN BRAS-DE-FER--THE PLACE DU BOURG--MURDER OF
CHARLES THE GOOD 11

III. THE BÉGUINAGE--CHURCHES--THE RELIC OF THE HOLY BLOOD 23

IV. THE BRUGES MATINS--BATTLE OF THE GOLDEN SPURS 39

V. DAMME--THE SEA-FIGHT AT SLUIS--SPLENDOUR OF
BRUGES IN THE MIDDLE AGES--THE FALL AND LOSS OF TRADE 49

VI. 'BRUGES LA MORTE' 63

VII. THE PLAIN OF WEST FLANDERS--YPRES 83

VIII. FURNES--THE PROCESSION OF PENITENTS 109

IX. NIEUPORT--THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES 119

X. THE COAST OF FLANDERS 129

XI. COXYDE--THE SCENERY OF THE DUNES 151

XII. GHENT 163

XIII. THE DUKES OF BRABANT--THE JOYEUSE ENTRÉE--END
OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 175 XIV. THE BOMBARDMENT
OF 1695--THE GRANDE PLACE--CHURCH OF STE. GUDULE
--CHARLES OF LORRAINE 195

XV. JOSEPH II AND THE REVOLUTION OF BRABANT 209

XVI. THE JACOBINS OF BRUSSELS--VISIT OF NAPOLEON--THE
HUNDRED DAYS 219

XVII. THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT--THE REVOLUTION OF 1830 233

XVIII. THE VICISSITUDES OF ANTWERP 243

XIX. THE PRINCIPALITY OF LIÉGE 273

XX. EARLY HISTORY OF LIÉGE--BISHOP NOTGER--THE
COURT OF PEACE 279

XXI. THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY--DESTRUCTION OF LIÉGE BY CHARLES
THE BOLD 295

XXII. THE WILD BOAR OF ARDENNES 313

XXIII. ÉRARD DE LA MARCK--THE PRINCIPALITY IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 325

XXIV. THE CHIROUX AND THE GRIGNOUX--THE TRAGIC BANQUET
OF WARFUSÉE 339

XXV. THE GAMING-TABLES AT SPA--THE FRENCH REVOLUTION--
ANNEXATION OF THE PRINCIPALITY 353

XXVI. LIÉGE AND THE VALLEY OF THE MEUSE IN MODERN
TIMES--BOUILLON 363

INDEX 377

List of Illustrations

1. Hôtel de Ville, Brussels (showing La Maison des Brasseurs,
La Maison du Cygne, and La Maison de l'Étoile) _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

2. A Corner of the Market on the Grande Place, Bruges 6

3. Bell-ringer playing a Chime 8

4. Porte d'Ostende, Bruges 10

5. Rue de l'Âne Aveugle (showing end of Town Hall and
Bridge connecting it with Palais de Justice), Bruges 14

6. Quai du Rosaire, Bruges 18

7. The Béguinage, Bruges 24

8. Quai des Marbriers, Bruges 38

9. A Flemish Young Woman 42

10. A Flemish Burgher 46

11. Quai du Miroir, Bruges 52

12. View of the Palais du Franc, Bruges 64

13. Maison du Pélican (Almshouse), Bruges 68

14. Vegetable Market, Bruges 78

15. The Flemish Plain 84

16. A Flemish Country Girl 86

17. Interior of a Farmhouse, Duinhoek 88

18. At the Kermesse, Adinkerque 92

19. A Farmsteading 96

20. Place du Musée (showing the top part of the Belfry), Ypres 98

21. Arcade under the Nieuwerk, Ypres 104

22. Grande Place and Belfry, Furnes 110

23. Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice, Furnes 112

24. Interior of Church, Nieuport 114

25. Tower of St. Nicholas, Furnes 116

26. In Ste. Walburge's Church, Furnes 118

27. A Fair Parishioner, Nieuport 120

28. Hall and Vicarage, Nieuport 122

29. The Quay, with Eel-boats and Landing-stages, Nieuport 124

30. The Town Hall, Nieuport 126

31. Church Porch (Evensong), Nieuport 128

32. A Stormy Evening: the Dunes 130

33. An Old Farmer 134

34. Interior of a Flemish Inn, La Panne 138

35. A Flemish Inn--Playing Skittles, La Panne 140

36. A Shrimper on Horseback, Coxyde 152

37. A Shrimper, Coxyde 154

38. Village and Canal, Adinkerque 156

39. An Old Lace-maker, Ghent 164

40. The Banquet Hall, Château des Comtes, Ghent 166

41. Béguinage de Mont St. Amand, Ghent 168

42. The Arrière Faucille (Achter Sikkel), Ghent 170

43. The Ruins of the Cloisters of the Abbey of St. Bavon, Ghent 172

44. Place de Brouckére, Brussels 176

45. Entrance to the Old Church of the Carmelites, Brussels 188

46. The Cathedral of Ste. Gudule, Brussels 200

47. Old House in the Grande Place, Brussels 216

48. Rue de Namur, Brussels 230

49. The Farm of La Belle Alliance, and the Mound surmounted
by the Belgian Lion, Waterloo 232

50. The Cathedral Chapel of St. Joseph, Antwerp 244

51. The Vieille Boucherie, Antwerp 246

52. Old Houses in the Rue de l'Empereur, Antwerp 248

53. Archway under the Vieille Boucherie, Antwerp 252

54. The Concierge of the Musée Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp 254

55. The Place Verte, Antwerp 260

56. The Musée Plantin-Moretus (the Arrière Boutique), Antwe 262

57. The Roadstead from the Tête de Flandre, Antwerp 266

58. The Château de Waulsort on the Meuse 274

59. Château de Walzin, in the Lesse Valley 276

60. The Episcopal Palace--Outer Court, Liége 280

61. Pont des Arches, Liége 284

62. Escalier de la Fontaine, Liége 286

63. The Hospital, Dinant 292

64. La Maison Curtius, Liége 296

65. Le Rocher Bayard, Dinant 302

66. Old House of the Quai de la Goffe, Liége 308

67. A Peasant Woman of the Ardennes 314

68. The River Sambre seen from the Pont de Sambre, Namur 318

69. La Gleize, a Village in the Ardennes 322

70. General View of Dinant 328

71. The Romanesque Church, Hastière 336

72. Le Perron Liégeois, Liége 340

73. La Vieille Boucherie, Liége 346

74. The Episcopal Palace--Inner Court, Liége 350

75. Pont du Prophète, Promenade Meyerbeer, Spa Woods 356

76. Pont de Jambes et Citadelle, Namur 364

77. Château de Bouillon, in the Semois Valley 368

_Sketch-map at the end of Volume._

BRUGES AND WEST FLANDERS

CHAPTER I

THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY--EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES

Every visitor to 'the quaint old Flemish city' goes first to the
Market-Place. On Saturday mornings the wide space beneath the mighty
Belfry is full of stalls, with white canvas awnings, and heaped up with
a curious assortment of goods. Clothing of every description, sabots
and leathern shoes and boots, huge earthenware jars, pots and pans,
kettles, cups and saucers, baskets, tawdry-coloured prints--chiefly
of a religious character--lamps and candlesticks, the cheaper kinds
of Flemish pottery, knives and forks, carpenters' tools, and such
small articles as reels of thread, hatpins, tape, and even bottles
of coarse scent, are piled on the stalls or spread out on the rough
stones wherever there is a vacant space. Round the stalls, in the
narrow spaces between them, the people move about, talking, laughing,
and bargaining. Their native Flemish is the tongue they use amongst
themselves; but many of them speak what passes for French at Bruges, or
even a few words of broken English, if some unwary stranger from across
the Channel is rash enough to venture on doing business with these
sharp-witted, plausible folk.

At first sight this Market-Place, so famed in song, is a disappointment.
The north side is occupied by a row of seventeenth-century houses
turned into shops and third-rate cafés. On the east is a modern
post-office, dirty and badly ventilated, and some half-finished
Government buildings. On the west are two houses which were once
of some note--the Cranenburg, from the windows of which, in olden
times, the Counts of Flanders, with the lords and ladies of their
Court, used to watch the tournaments and pageants for which Bruges was
celebrated, and in which Maximilian was imprisoned by the burghers in
1488; and the Hôtel de Bouchoute, a narrow, square building of dark
red brick, with a gilded lion over the doorway. But the Cranenburg,
once the 'most magnificent private residence in the Market-Place,'
many years ago lost every trace of its original splendour, and is now
an unattractive hostelry, the headquarters of a smoking club; while
the Hôtel de Bouchoute, turned into a clothier's shop, has little to
distinguish it from its commonplace neighbours. Nevertheless,

'In the Market-Place of Bruges stands the Belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.'

It redeems the Market-Place from mediocrity. How long ago the first
belfry tower of Bruges was built is unknown, but this at least is
certain, that in the year 1280 a fire, in which the ancient archives
of the town perished, destroyed the greater part of an old belfry,
which some suppose may have been erected in the ninth century. On
two subsequent occasions, in the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries,
the present Belfry, erected on the ruins of the former structure,
was damaged by fire: and now it stands on the south side of the
Market-Place, rising 350 feet above the Halles, a massive building of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, solemn, weather-beaten, and
majestic. 'For six hundred years,' it has been said, 'this Belfry has
watched over the city of Bruges. It has beheld her triumphs and her
failures, her glory and her shame, her prosperity and her gradual
decay, and, in spite of so many vicissitudes, it is still standing to
bear witness to the genius of our forefathers, to awaken memories of
old times and admiration for one of the most splendid monuments of
civic architecture which the Middle Ages has produced.'[1]

In olden times watchmen were always on duty on the Belfry to give
warning if enemies approached or fire broke out in any part of the
town, a constant source of danger when most of the houses were built
of wood. Even in these more prosaic days the custom of keeping watch
and ward unceasingly is still maintained, and if there is a fire,
the alarum-bell clangs over the city. All day, from year's end to
year's end, the chimes ring every quarter of an hour; and all night,
too, during the wildest storms of winter, when the wind shrieks round
the tower; and in summer, when the old town lies slumbering in the
moonlight.

[Illustration: BRUGES

A corner of the Market on the Grand' Place.]

From the top of the Belfry one looks down onwhat is practically
a medieval city. The Market-Place seems to lose its modern aspect
when seen from above; and all round there is nothing visible but
houses with high-pointed gables and red roofs, intersected by canals,
and streets so narrow that they appear to be mere lanes. Above these
rise, sometimes from trees and gardens, churches, convents, venerable
buildings, the lofty spire of Notre Dame, the tower of St. Sauveur,
the turrets of the Gruthuise, the Hospital of St. John, famous for its
paintings by Memlinc, the Church of Ste. Elizabeth in the grove of the
Béguinage, the pinnacles of the Palais du Franc, the steep roof of the
Hôtel de Ville, the dome of the Convent des Dames Anglaises, and beyond
that to the east the slender tower which rises above the Guildhouse
of the Archers of St. Sebastian. The walls which guarded Bruges in
troublous times have disappeared, though five of the old gateways
remain; but the town is still contained within the limits which it had
reached at the close of the thirteenth century.

Behind the large square of the Halles, from which the Belfry rises, is
the Rue du Vieux Bourg, the street of the Ouden Burg, or old fort; and
to this street the student of history must first go if he wishes to
understand what tradition, more or less authentic, has to say about
the earliest phases in the strange, eventful past of Bruges. The wide
plain of Flanders, the northern portion of the country which we now
call Belgium, was in ancient times a dreary fenland, the haunt of wild
beasts and savage men; thick, impenetrable forests, tracts of barren
sand, sodden marshes, covered it; and sluggish streams, some whose
waters never found their way to the sea, ran through it. One of these
rivulets, called the Roya, was crossed by a bridge, to defend which,
according to early tradition, a fort, or 'burg,' was erected in the
fourth century. This fort stood on an islet formed by the meeting of
the Roya with another stream, called the Boterbeke, and a moat which
joined the two. We may suppose that near the fort, which was probably
a small building of rough stones, or perhaps merely a wooden stockade,
a few huts were put up by people who came there for protection, and
as time went on the settlement increased. 'John of Ypres, Abbot of
St. Bertin,' says Mr. Robinson, 'who wrote in the fourteenth century,
describes how Bruges was born and christened: "Very soon pedlars
began to settle down under the walls of the fort to supply the wants
of its inmates. Next came merchants, with their valuable wares.
Innkeepers followed, who began to build houses, where those who could
not find lodging in the fort found food and shelter. Those who thus
turned away from the fort would say, 'Let us go to the bridge.' And
when the houses near the bridge became so numerous as to form a town,
it kept as its proper name the Flemish word _Brugge_."

[Illustration: BELL-RINGER PLAYING A CHIME]

The small island on which this primitive township stood was bounded on
the south and east by the Roya, on the north by the Boterbeke, and on
the west by the moat joining these two streams. The Roya still flows
along between the site of the old burg and an avenue of lime-trees
called the Dyver till it reaches the end of the Quai du Rosaire, when
it turns to the north. A short distance beyond this point it is vaulted
over, and runs on beneath the streets and houses of the town. The Rue
du Vieux Bourg is built over the course of the Boterbeke, which now
runs under it and under the Belfry (erected on foundations sunk deep
into the bed of the stream), until it joins the subterranean channel of
the Roya at the south-east corner of the Market-Place. The moat which
joined these two streams and guarded the west side of the island was
filled up long ago, and its bed is now covered by the Rue Neuve, which
connects the Rue du Vieux Bourg with the Dyver.

Thus the boundaries of early Bruges can easily be traced; but nothing
remains of the ancient buildings, though we read of a warehouse,
booths, and a prison besides the dwelling-houses of the townsfolk. The
elements, at least, of civic life were there; and tradition says that
in or near the village, for it was nothing more, some altars of the
Christian faith were set up during the seventh and eighth centuries.
Trade, too, soon began to flourish, and grew rapidly as the population
of the place increased. The Roya, flowing eastwards, fell into the
Zwijn, an arm of the sea, which then ran up close to the town, and on
which stood Damme, now a small inland village, but once a busy port
crowded with shipping. The commercial life of Bruges depended on the
Zwijn; and that much business was done before the close of the ninth
century is shown by the fact that Bruges had then a coinage of its
own.[2] It was from such small beginnings that this famous 'Venice of
the North' arose.

[Illustration: BRUGES

Porte d'Ostende.]

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 1: Gilliat-Smith, _The Story of Bruges_, p. 169 (Dent and
Co., London, 1901). Mr. Gilliat-Smith's book is a picturesque account
of Bruges in the Middle Ages. Of the English works relating to Bruges,
there is nothing better than Mr. Wilfrid Robinson's _Bruges, an
Historical Sketch_, a short and clear history, coming down to modern
times (Louis de Plancke, Bruges, 1899).]

[Footnote 2: Gilliodts van Severen, _Bruges Ancienne et Moderne_, pp.
7, 8, 9.]

CHAPTER II

BALDWIN BRAS-DE-FER--THE PLACE DU BOURG--MURDER OF CHARLES THE GOOD

Towards the end of the ninth and at the beginning of the tenth century
great changes took place on the banks of the Roya, and the foundations
of Bruges as we know it now were laid. Just as in the memorable years
1814 and 1815 the empire of Napoleon fell into fragments, and princes
and statesmen hastened to readjust the map of Europe in their own
interests, so in the ninth century the empire of Charlemagne was
crumbling away; and in the scramble for the spoils, the Normans carried
fire and sword into Flanders. Charles the Bald, King of the Franks,
at this crisis called to his aid the strong arm of Baldwin, a Flemish
chief of whose ancestry we know little, but who soon became famous as
Baldwin Bras-de-Fer--Baldwin of the Iron Arm, so called because, in
peace or war, he was never seen without his coat of mail. This grim
warrior had fallen in love with the daughter of Charles the Bald,
Judith, who had been already twice married, first to the Saxon King
Ethelwulf (after the death of his first wife Osberga, mother of Alfred
the Great) and secondly to Ethelbald, on whose death she left England
and went to live at Senlis. Baldwin persuaded the Princess to run away
with him; and they were married without the knowledge of her father,
to escape whose vengeance the culprits fled to Rome. Pope Nicholas
I. brought about a reconciliation; and Charles not only pardoned his
son-in-law, but appointed him ruler of Flanders under the title of
Marquis, which was afterwards changed into that of Count. It is to
the steel-clad Baldwin Bras-de-Fer that the Counts of Flanders trace
the origin of their title; and he was, moreover, the real founder of
that Bruges which rose to such glory in the Middle Ages, and is still,
though fallen from its high estate, the picturesque capital of West
Flanders, whither artists flock to wander about amidst the canals and
bridges, the dismantled ramparts, the narrow streets with their curious
houses, and the old buildings which bear such eloquent testimony to
the ruin which long ago overtook what was once an opulent and powerful
city. When the wrath of his father-in-law had been appeased, Baldwin,
now responsible for the defence of Flanders, came to Bruges with his
wife, and there established his Court. But the old burg, it seems,
was not thought capable of holding out against the Normans, who could
easily land on the banks of the Zwijn; and Baldwin, therefore, set
about building a new stronghold on the east side of the old burg, and
close to it. It was surrounded partly by the main stream of the Roya,
and partly by backwaters flowing from it. Here he built a fortress
for himself and his household, a church dedicated to St. Donatian, a
prison, and a 'ghiselhuis,' or house for the safe keeping of hostages.
The whole was enclosed by walls, built close to the edge of the
surrounding waters.

The Roya is now vaulted over where it ran along the west side of
Baldwin's stronghold, separating it from the original burg, and the
watercourses which defended it on the north and east are filled up;
but the stream on the south still remains in the shape of the canal
which skirts the Quai des Marbriers, from which a bridge leads by a
narrow lane, called the Rue de l'Âne Aveugle, under an arch of gilded
stonework, into the open space now known as the Place du Bourg. Here
we are at the very heart of Bruges, on the ground where Baldwin's
stronghold stood, with its four gates and drawbridges, and the high
walls frowning above the homes of the townsmen clustering round them.
The aspect of the place is completely changed since those early days. A
grove of chestnut-trees covers the site of the Church of St. Donatian;
not a stone remains of Bras-de-Fer's rude palace; and instead of the
prison and the hostage-house, there are the Hôtel de Ville, now more
than five hundred years old, from whose windows the Counts of Flanders
swore obedience to the statutes and privileges of the town, the Palais
de Justice, and the dark crypt beneath the chapel which shelters the
mysterious Relic of the Holy Blood.

[Illustration: BRUGES

Rue de l'Âne Aveugle (showing end of Town Hall and Bridge connecting it
with Palais de Justice).]

In summer it is a warm, quiet, pleasant spot. Under the shade of
the trees, near the statue of Van Eyck, women selling flowers sit
beside rows of geraniums, roses, lilies, pansies, which give a touch
of bright colour to the scene. Artists from all parts of Europe
set up their easels and paint. Young girls are gravely busy with
their water-colours. Black-robed nuns and bare-footed Carmelites
pass silently along. Perhaps some traveller from America opens his
guide-book to study the map of a city which had risen to greatness
long before Columbus crossed the seas. A few English people hurry
across, and pass under the archway of the Rue de l'Âne Aveugle on the
way to their tennis-ground beyond the Porte de Gand. The sunshine
glitters on the gilded façade of the Palais de Justice, and lights up
the statues in their niches on the front of the Hôtel de Ville. There
is no traffic, no noise. Everything is still and peaceful. The chimes,
ever and anon ringing out from the huge Belfry, which rises high above
the housetops to the west, alone break the silence.

This is Bruges sleeping peacefully in old age, lulled to rest by the
sound of its own carillon. But it is easy, standing there, to recall
the past, and to fancy the scenes which took place from time to time
throughout the long period of foreign danger and internal strife. We
can imagine the Bourg, now so peaceful, full of armed men, rushing to
the Church of St. Donatian on the morning when Charles the Good was
slain; how, in later times, the turbulent burghers, fiery partisans of
rival factions, Clauwerts shouting for the Flemish Lion, and Leliarts
marshalled under the Lily of France, raged and threatened; how the
stones were splashed with blood on the day of the Bruges Matins, when
so many Frenchmen perished; or what shouts were raised when the Flemish
host came back victorious from the Battle of the Golden Spurs.

Though every part of Bruges--not only the Bourg, but the great
Market-Place, and the whole maze of streets and lanes and canals of
which it consists--has a story of its own, some of these stories stand
out by themselves; and amongst these one of the most dramatic is the
story of the death of Charles the Good.

More than two hundred and fifty years had passed away since the coming
of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer; Bruges had spread far beyond the walls of the
Bourg; and Charles, who had succeeded his cousin Baldwin VII., was
Count of Flanders. He was called 'the Good' because of his just rule
and simple life, and still more, perhaps, because he clothed and fed
the poor--not only in Bruges, but throughout all Flanders. The common
people loved him, but his charities gave offence to the rich. He had,
moreover, incurred the special enmity of the Erembalds, a powerful
family, who, though not of noble origin themselves, were connected by
marriage with many noble houses. They had supported his claim to the
throne of Flanders, which had been disputed, and he had rewarded their
services by heaping favours on them. But, after a time, they began to
oppose the methods of government which Charles applied to Flanders.
They resented most of all one of his decrees which made it unlawful
for persons not in his service to carry arms in time of peace. This
decree, which was pronounced in order to prevent the daily scenes of
violence which Charles abhorred, was declared by the Erembalds to be an
interference with Flemish liberty. It did not affect them personally,
for they held office under the Count; but they none the less opposed it
vehemently.

While Charles was thus on bad terms with the Erembalds, a deadly
feud existed between them and the Straetens, another notable family,
which grew to such a height that the rival clans made open war upon
each other, pillaging, burning, and slaying after the manner of these
times. Charles called the leaders of both sides before him, and made
them swear to keep the peace; but when he was at Ypres in the autumn
of 1126, a complaint was laid before him that Bertulf, head of the
Erembalds, who was also Provost of St. Donatian's, had sent one of his
nephews, Burchard by name, on a raid into the lands of the Straetens,
whose cattle he had carried off. On hearing of this outrage, Charles
gave orders that Burchard's house should be pulled down, and that he
should compensate the Straetens for their losses. The Erembalds were
powerless to resist this order, and Burchard's house was razed to the
ground.

It has been said that this was only the beginning of strong measures
which Charles was about to take against the Erembalds; but there is no
certainty as to what his intentions really were. He then lived in the
Loove, a mansion which he had built in the Bourg at Bruges, on the site
now occupied by the Palais de Justice; and there, on his return from
Ypres, he had a meeting with some of the Erembalds, who had been sent
to plead on behalf of Burchard. As to what took place at this interview
there is some doubt. According to one account, Charles drank wine with
the delegates, and granted a free pardon to Burchard, on condition
that he kept the peace. According to another account, his demeanour
was so unbending that the Erembalds left his presence full of angry
suspicions, which they communicated to their friends. Whatever may have
happened, they were bent on mischief. Burchard was sent for, and
a secret consultation was held, after which Burchard and a chosen few
assembled in a house on the Bourg and arranged their plans. This was on
the night of March 1, 1127.

[Illustration: BRUGES

Quai du Rosaire.]

At break of day next morning a cold, heavy mist hung low over Bruges,
and in the Bourg everything was shrouded in darkness. But already some
poor men were waiting in the courtyard of the Loove, to whom Charles
gave alms on his way to early Mass in the Church of St. Donatian. Then
he went along a private passage which led into the church, and knelt
in prayer before the Lady Altar. It was his custom to give help to the
needy when in church, and he had just put some money into the hands of
a poor woman, when suddenly she called out: 'Beware, Sir Count!' He
turned quickly round, and there, sword in hand, was Burchard, who had
stolen up the dim aisle to where Charles was kneeling. The next moment
Burchard struck, and Charles fell dead upon the steps of the altar.

Then followed a scene of wild confusion. The woman ran out into the
Bourg, calling loudly that the Count was slain. In the midst of the
uproar some of the royal household fled in terror, while others who
entered the church were butchered by the Erembalds, who next attacked
the Loove, and, having pillaged it, rushed over Bruges, slaughtering
without mercy all who dared to oppose them.

After some time one of the Count's servants ventured to cover the dead
body with a winding-sheet, and to surround it with lighted tapers; and
there it remained lying on the pavement, until at last the Erembalds,
who were afraid to bury it in Bruges lest the sight of the tomb of
Charles the Good should one day rouse the townsmen to avenge his death,
sent a message to Ghent, begging the Abbot of St. Peter's to take it
away and bury it in his own church. The Abbot came to Bruges, and
before dawn the body of the murdered Count was being stealthily carried
along the aisles of St. Donatian's, when a great crowd rushed in,
declaring that the bones of Charles must be allowed to rest in peace at
Bruges. The arches rang with cries, chairs were overturned, stools and
candlesticks were thrown about, as the people, pressing and struggling
round the Abbot and his servants, told Bertulf, with many an oath, that
he must yield to their wishes. At last the Provost submitted, and on
the morrow, just two days after the murder, the body of Charles was
buried before the Lady Altar, on the very spot, it is said, where the
statue of Van Eyck now stands under the trees in the Bourg.

The triumph of the Erembalds was short, for the death of Charles the
Good was terribly avenged by his friends, who came to Bruges at the
head of a large force. A fierce struggle took place at the Rue de l'Âne
Aveugle, where many were slain. The Erembalds were driven into the
Bourg, the gates of which they shut; but an entrance was forced, and,
after desperate fighting, some thirty of them, all who remained alive,
were compelled to take refuge, first in the nave and then in the tower
of the Church of St. Donatian, where, defending themselves with the
courage of despair, they made a last stand, until, worn out by fatigue
and hunger, they surrendered and came down. Bertulf the Provost,
Burchard, and a few of the other ringleaders had fled some days before,
and so escaped, for a time at least, the fate of their companions,
who, having been imprisoned in a dungeon, were taken to the top of the
church tower and flung down one by one on to the stones of the Bourg.
'Their bodies,' says Mr. Gilliat-Smith, 'were thrown into a marsh
beyond the village of St. André, and for years afterwards no man after
nightfall would willingly pass that way.' In the Church of St. Sauveur
there is a costly shrine containing what are said to be the bones of
Charles the Good, taken from their first resting-place, at which twice
every year a festival is held in commemoration of his virtues.

CHAPTER III

THE BÉGUINAGE--CHURCHES--THE RELIC OF THE HOLY BLOOD

Bruges is one of the most Catholic towns in Catholic Flanders. Convents
and religious houses of all sorts have always flourished there, and
at present there are no less than forty-five of these establishments.
Probably one of the most interesting to English people is the Couvent
des Dames Anglaises, which was founded in 1629 by the English
Augustinian Nuns of Ste. Monica's Convent at Louvain. Its chapel, with
a fine dome of the eighteenth century, contains a beautiful altar built
of marbles brought from Egypt, Greece, and Persia; and amongst its
possessions is the rosary of Catherine of Braganza (Queen of Charles
II. of England), who died at Bruges.

And then there is the Béguinage. There are Béguinages at Amsterdam and
Breda, but with this exception of Holland, Belgium is now the only
country in Europe where these societies, the origin of whose name is
uncertain, are to be found. They consist of spinsters or widows, who,
though bound by a few conventual oaths during their connection with
the society, may return to the world. On entering each sister pays a
sum of money to the general funds, and at first lives for a time along
with other novices. At the end of this term of probation they are at
liberty to occupy one of the small dwellings within the precincts of
the Béguinage, and keep house for themselves. They spend their time in
sewing, making lace, educating poor children, visiting the sick, or
any form of good works for which they may have a taste. They are under
a Mother Superior, the 'Grande Dame,' appointed by the Bishop of the
diocese, and must attend the services in the church of their Béguinage.
Thus the Béguine, living generally in a house of her own, and free
to reenter the world, occupies a different position from the nuns of
the better-known Orders, though so long as she remains a member of
her society she is bound by the vows of chastity and obedience to her
ecclesiastical superiors.

[Illustration: BRUGES

The Béguinage.]

The Béguinage at Bruges, founded in the thirteenth century, is situated
near the Minnewater, or Lac d'Amour, which every visitor is taken to
see. This sheet of placid water, bordered by trees, which was a
harbour in the busy times, is one of the prettiest bits of Bruges;
and they say that if you go there at midnight, and stand upon the
bridge which crosses it on the south, any wish which you may form will
certainly come to pass. It is better to go alone, for strict silence
is necessary to insure the working of this charm. A bridge over the
water which runs from the Lac d'Amour leads through a gateway into the
Béguinage, where a circle of small houses--whitewashed, with stepped
gables, and green woodwork on the windows--surrounds a lawn planted
with tall trees. There is a view of the spire of Notre Dame beyond the
roofs, a favourite subject for the painters who come here in numbers
on summer afternoons. The Church of Ste. Elizabeth, an unpretentious
building, stands on one side of the lawn; and within it, many times a
day, the Sisters may be seen on their knees repeating the Offices of
the Church. When the service is finished they rise, remove their white
head-coverings, and return demurely to their quaint little homes.

Bruges has, needless to say, many churches, but nothing which can be
compared to the magnificent Cathedral of Antwerp, to the imposing front
of Ste. Gudule at Brussels, or to the huge mass which forms such a
conspicuous landmark for several leagues round Malines. Still, some of
the churches are not without interest: the Cathedral of St. Sauveur,
where the stalls of the Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece,
which was founded at Bruges, are to be seen in the choir, and over one
of them the arms of Edward IV. of England; the curious little Church of
Jerusalem, with its 'Holy Sepulchre,' an exact copy of the traditionary
grave in Palestine--a dark vault, entered by a passage so low that one
must crawl through it, and where a light burns before a figure which
lies there wrapped in a linen cloth; and the Church of Notre Dame,
which contains some treasures, such as a lovely white marble statue
of the Virgin and Child, from the chisel of Michael Angelo; the tombs
of Charles the Bold of Burgundy and his daughter--the 'Gentle Mary,'
whose untimely death at Bruges in 1482, after a short married life,
saved her from witnessing the misfortunes which clouded the last years
of her husband, the Archduke Maximilian; and a portion of the Holy
Cross, which came to Bruges in the fifteenth century. The story goes
that a rich merchant, a Dutchman from Dordrecht, Schoutteeten by name,
who lived at Bruges, was travelling through Syria in the year 1380.
One day, when journeying with a caravan, he saw a man hiding something
in a wood, and, following him, discovered that it was a box, which
he suspected might contain something valuable. Mijnheer Schoutteeten
appropriated the box, and carried it home from Syria to Dordrecht,
where a series of miracles began to occur of such a nature as to make
it practically certain that the box (or some wood which it contained,
for on this point the legend is vague) was a part of the true Cross!
In course of time Schoutteeten died in the odour of sanctity, having
on his death-bed expressed a wish that the wood which he had brought
from the East should be given to the Church of Notre Dame at Bruges.
His widow consoled herself by taking a second husband, who, Uutenhove
by name, fulfilled the pious request of his predecessor, and thus
another relic was added to the large collection which is preserved in
the various churches and religious houses of Bruges. It was brought to
Flanders in the year 1473, and must have been a source of considerable
revenue to the Church since then.

The buildings of Notre Dame, with the well-known Gruthuise Mansion
which adjoins them, and the singularly graceful spire, higher than the
Belfry tower, rising from the exquisite portico called 'Het Paradijs,'
form a very beautiful group; but, with this exception, there is nothing
remarkable about the churches of Bruges. One of them, however, has a
peculiar interest--the Chapelle du Saint-Sang, which stands in the
Place du Bourg in the corner next to the Hôtel de Ville. It is built
in two stories. The lower, a dark, solemn chapel, like a crypt, was
dedicated to St. Basil at an early period, and is one of the oldest
buildings in Bruges. The greater part of the upper story does not date
further back than the fifteenth century. But it is not the fabric
itself, venerable though that is, but what it contains, that makes this
place the Holy of Holies in the religious life of Bruges; for here, in
a costly shrine of gold and silver adorned with precious stones, they
guard the wonderful relic which was brought from Palestine in the time
of the Crusaders by Thierry d'Alsace, Count of Flanders, and which is
still worshipped by thousands of devout believers every year.

Thierry d'Alsace, the old chroniclers tell us, visited the Holy Land
four times, and was the leader of the Flemish warriors who, roused by
the eloquence of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, joined the second Crusade
in the summer of 1147. He had married Sybilla, sister of Baldwin, King
of Jerusalem; and when the time came for his return to Europe, his
brother-in-law and the Patriarch of Jerusalem resolved to reward his
services by giving him a part of the most valuable relic which the
Church in Palestine possessed, which was a small quantity of a red
liquid, said to be blood and water, which, according to immemorial
tradition, Joseph of Arimathæa had preserved after he had washed the
dead body of Jesus.

The earlier history of this relic is unknown, and is as obscure as
that of the other 'Relics of the Holy Blood' which are to be found
in various places. But there can be no doubt whatever that in the
twelfth century the Christians at Jerusalem believed that it had been
in existence since the day of the Crucifixion. It was, therefore,
presented to Thierry with great solemnity in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre during the Christmas festivals of 1148. The Patriarch, having
displayed the vessel which contained it to the people, divided the
contents into two portions, one of which he poured into a small vial,
the mouth of which was carefully sealed up and secured with gold wire.
This vessel was next enclosed in a crystal tube, shut at the ends with
golden stoppers, to which a chain of silver was attached. Then the
Patriarch gave the tube to Baldwin, from whose hands Thierry, kneeling
on the steps of the altar, received it with profound emotion.[3]

The Count, however, did not think his hands, which had shed so much
human blood, worthy to convey the relic home; and he entrusted it to
Leonius, chaplain of the Flemish Army, who hung it round his neck, and
so carried it to Bruges, where he arrived in May, 1150, along with
Thierry, who, mounted on a white horse led by two bare-footed monks,
and holding the relic in his hand, was conducted in state to the Bourg,
where he deposited the precious object in the Chapel of St. Basil,
which is commonly known as the Chapel of the Holy Blood.

After some time the relic was found to be dry, but, strange to say, it
became liquid, we are told upon the authority of Pope Clement V., every
Friday, 'usually at six o'clock.' This weekly miracle continued till
about the year 1325. Since then it has never taken place except once,
in 1388, when the vial containing the relic was being transferred to a
new crystal tube; and on this occasion William, Bishop of Ancona, was
astonished to see the relic turning redder than usual, and some drops,
as of newly-shed blood, flowing within the vial, which he was holding
in his hand. Many notable persons who were present, one of them the
Bishop of Lincoln, testified to this event!

Other miracles wrought through the agency of this relic are recorded.
A child which had been born dead was taken to the shrine, and came to
life after three days. A young girl who had suffered for twenty months
from an issue of blood, and for whom the doctors could do nothing, was
cured by the application of a piece of cloth which had been used to
cover the relic. Another girl who had been paralyzed for a long time,
being carried into the Chapel of St. Basil, was restored to complete
strength the moment she kissed the crystal tube. In December, 1689, a
fire broke out in the Bourg, and threatened to destroy the Hôtel de
Ville; but a priest brought forth the tube containing the relic, and
held it up before the flames, which were instantly extinguished. These
and many other similar miracles, confirmed by the oath of witnesses
and received by the Church at the present day as authentic, make the
relic an object of profound devotion to the people of Bruges and the
peasants of the surrounding country, who go in crowds to bow before it
twice every Friday, when it is exhibited for public worship.

It was nearly lost on several occasions in the days of almost constant
war, and during the French Revolution it was concealed for some years
in the house of a private citizen. The Chapel of St. Basil suffered
from the disturbed condition of the country, and when Napoleon came to
Bruges in 1810 it was such a complete wreck that the magistrates were
on the point of sweeping it away altogether. But Napoleon saved it,
declaring that when he looked on the ruins he fancied himself once more
amongst the antiquities of Egypt, and that to destroy them would be a
crime. Four years after the Battle of Waterloo the relic was brought
out from its hiding-place, and in 1856 the chapel was restored from the
designs of two English architects, William Brangwyn and Thomas Harper
King.[4]

On the first Monday after the 2nd of May every year the town of
Bruges is full of strangers, who have come to witness the celebrated
'Procession of the Holy Blood,' which there is good reason to believe
has taken place annually (except during the French Revolution) for the
last 755 years.

Very early in the day a Mass is celebrated in the Upper Chapel of the
Holy Blood, which is crowded to the doors. In the crypt, or lower
chapel, where many people are kneeling before the sacred images, the
gloom, the silence, the bent figures dimly seen in the faint yellow
light of a few tapers, make up a weird scene all the morning till
about nine o'clock, when the relic, in its 'châsse,' or tabernacle,
is carried to the Cathedral of St. Sauveur, and placed on the high
altar, while a pontifical Mass is celebrated by one of the Bishops.
When that is done, the procession starts on its march along the chief
thoroughfares of the town. The houses are decorated with flags, and
candles burn in almost every window. Through the narrow streets,
between crowds of people standing on the pavements or looking down from
the windows, while the church bells ring and wreaths of incense fill
the air, bands of music, squadrons of cavalry, crucifixes, shrines,
images, the banners of the parishes and the guilds, heralds in their
varied dresses, bareheaded pilgrims from England, France, and other
countries, pages, maidens in white, bearing palms, or crowns of thorn,
or garlands, priests with relics, acolytes and chanting choristers,
pass slowly along. The buffoonery of the Middle Ages, when giants,
ballet-dancers, and mythological characters figured in the scene, has
been abandoned; but Abraham and Isaac, King David and King Solomon,
Joseph and the Virgin Mary, the Magi, and many saints and martyrs,
walk in the long procession, which is closed by the Bishops and clergy
accompanying the gorgeous shrine containing the small tube of something
red like blood, before which all the people sink to the ground, and
remain kneeling till it has passed.

The proceedings of the day end with a benediction at an altar erected
in front of the Hôtel de Ville. The Bourg is filled from side to side
with those who have taken part in the procession, and by thousands
of spectators who have followed them from all parts of the town to
witness the closing scene. The crowd gathers under the trees and
along the sides of the square, the centre of which, occupied by the
processionists, is a mass of colour, above which the standards and
images which have been carried through the streets rise against the
dark background of the Hôtel de Ville and the Chapel of the Holy Blood.
The relic is taken out of the châsse, and a priest, standing on the
steps of the altar high above the crowd, holds it up to be worshipped.
Everyone bows low, and then, in dead silence, the mysterious object is
carried into the chapel, and with this the chief religious ceremony of
the year at Bruges is brought to a close.

There are sights in Bruges that night, within a stone's-throw of the
Chapel of the Holy Blood, which are worth seeing, they contrast so
strangely with all this fervour of religion.

The curtain has fallen upon the drama of the day. The flags are furled
and put aside. The vestments are in the sacristy. Shrines, canopies,
censers, all the objects carried in the procession, have disappeared
into the churches. The church doors are locked, and the images are left
to stand all night without so much as one solitary worshipper kneeling
before them. The Bourg is empty and dark, steeped in black shadows at
the door of the chapel where the relic has been laid to rest. It is all
quiet there, but a stroll through the Rue de l'Âne Aveugle and across
the canal by the bridge which leads to the purlieus of the fish-markets
brings one upon another scene. Every second house, if not every house,
is a café, 'herberg,' or 'estaminet,' with a bar and sanded floor and
some rough chairs and tables; and on the night of the Procession of the
Holy Blood they are crowded to the doors. Peasants from the country
are there in great force. For some days before and after the sacred
festival the villagers are in the habit of coming into Bruges--whole
families of them, father and mother, sons and daughters, all in their
best finery. They walk through the streets, following the route by
which the Holy Blood is carried, telling their beads and saying their
prayers, crossing themselves, and kneeling at any image of Christ, or
Madonna, or saint, which they may notice at the street corners. It is
curious to watch their sunburnt faces and uncouth ways as they slouch
along, their hands busy with their beads, and their lips never ceasing
for a moment to mutter prayer after prayer. They follow in the wake
of the Procession of the Holy Blood, or wait to fall upon their knees
when it passes and receive the blessing of the Bishop, who walks with
fingers raised, scattering benedictions from side to side. In the
evening, before starting for home, they go to the cafés.

As evening passes into night the sounds of music and dancing are heard.
At the doors people sit drinking round tables placed on the pavement
or in the rank, poisonous gutter. The hot air is heavy with the smell
of decayed fish. Inside the cafés men and women, old and young, are
dancing in the fetid atmosphere to jingling pianos or accordions.
The heat, the close, sour fumes of musty clothing, tobacco, beer,
gin, fried fish, and unwashed humanity, are overpowering. There are
disgusting sights in all directions. Fat women, with red, perspiring
faces and dirty fingers, still clutching their rosaries; tawdry girls,
field-workers, with flushed faces, dancing with country lads, most of
whom are more than half tipsy; ribald jokes and laughter and leering
eyes; reeling, drunken men; maudlin affection in one corner, and
jealous disputing in another; crying babies; beer and gin spilt on the
tables; and all sorts of indecency and hideous details which Swift
might have gloated over or Hogarth painted.

This is how the day of the Holy Blood procession is finished by
many of the countryfolk. The brutal cabaret comes after the prayers
and adoration of the morning! It is a world of contrasts. But soon
the lights are out, the shutters are put up, the last customer goes
staggering homewards, and the Belfry speaks again, as it spoke when
the sweet singer lay dreaming at the Fleur-de-Blé:

'In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Then, with deep sonorous clangour,
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck the clock eleven,
And, from out the silent heaven,
Silence on the town descended.
Silence, silence everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning,
For a moment woke the echoes
Of the ancient town of Bruges.'

[Illustration: BRUGES

Quai des Marbriers.]

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 3: Canon van Haecke, _Le Précieux Sang à Bruges_
(fourth edition), pp. 95, 96.]

[Footnote 4: Gilliat-Smith, _The Story of Bruges_, p. 103.]

CHAPTER IV

THE BRUGES MATINS--BATTLE OF THE GOLDEN SPURS

The visitor to Bruges is reminded, wherever he goes, of the stirring
events which fill the chronicles of the town for several centuries.
Opposite the Belfry, in the middle of the Market-Place, is the monument
to Peter De Coninck and John Breidel, on which garlands of flowers are
laid every summer, in memory of what they did when the burghers rose
against the French in May, 1302; and amongst the modern frescoes which
cover the walls of the Grande Salle des Échevins in the Hôtel de Ville,
with its roof of fourteenth-century woodwork, is one which represents
the return from the Battle of the Golden Spurs, that famous fight in
which the hardy peasantry of Flanders overthrew the knights of France
whom Philip the Fair had sent to avenge the blood of the Frenchmen who
had died on the terrible morning of the 'Bruges Matins.'

The fourteenth century had opened. The town had now reached the
limits which have contained it ever since--an irregular oval with a
circumference of between four and five miles, surrounded by double
ditches, and a strong wall pierced by nine fortified gateways; and
as the town had grown, the privileges and liberties of the townsmen
had grown likewise. Sturdy, independent, and resolved to keep the
management of their own affairs in their own hands, the burghers
of Bruges, like those of the other Flemish towns, had succeeded in
establishing a system of self-government so complete that it roused
the opposition of Guy de Dampierre, Count of Flanders, whose efforts
to diminish the power of these communities at length brought about a
crisis which gave Philip the Fair of France an excuse for interfering.
The Count, having to contend both against his own subjects and against
the ambitions of the King of France, fell from power, and in the end
Flanders was annexed to France.

Soon after this rich province had been added to his domains, Philip
came with his wife, Joanna of Navarre, on a visit to Bruges. Already
there were two factions in the town--the Leliarts, or French party,
consisting chiefly of the upper classes, and the Clauwerts, or Flemish
party, to which the mass of the people belonged. By the former Philip
was received in royal fashion, and so magnificent were the dresses
and jewels worn by the wives and daughters of the nobles and rich
burgesses, who sat in the windows and balconies as the royal procession
passed along, that the Queen was moved to jealousy. 'I thought,' she
said, 'that I alone was Queen; but here in this place I have six
hundred rivals.' But in the streets below there were sullen looks and
murmurs of discontent, which grew louder and louder every day, when,
after the departure of the Court, the magistrates, who belonged to the
French party, proposed that the merchant guilds should find money to
defray some of the expenses which had been incurred on this occasion.

At this time Peter De Coninck was Dean of the Guild of Weavers, a man
of substance, popular and eloquent. There was a tumultuous gathering
in the Market-Place, when, standing in front of the Belfry, with the
leaders of five-and-twenty guilds around him, he declaimed on liberty,
and attacked the magistrates, calling on his fellow-townsmen to resist
the taxes. The city officers, on the order of the magistrates, arrested
De Coninck and his chief supporters, and hurried them to the prison in
the Bourg. But in a few hours the mob forced an entrance and released
them. The signal for revolt had been given, and for some months Bruges,
like the rest of Flanders, was in disorder. De Coninck, who had been
joined by John Breidel, Dean of the Guild of Butchers, was busy rousing
the people in all parts of the country. He visited Ghent, amongst other
places, and tried to persuade the magistrates that if Ghent and Bruges
united their forces the whole Flemish people would rise, crush the
Leliarts, and expel the French. But the men of Ghent would not listen
to him, and he returned to Bruges. Here, too, he met with a rebuff,
for the magistrates, having heard that Jacques de Châtillon, whom
Philip had made Governor of Flanders, was marching on the town, would
not allow him to remain amongst them. He went to Damme, and with him
went, not only Breidel, but 5,000 burghers of the national party, stout
Clauwerts, who had devoted themselves to regaining the liberty of their
country.

[Illustration: A FLEMISH YOUNG WOMAN]

When Châtillon rode up to the walls of Bruges and demanded entrance
the magistrates agreed to open the gates, on condition that he brought
with him only 300 men-at-arms. But he broke his word, and the town
was entered by 2,000 knights, whose haughty looks and threatening
language convinced the people that treachery was intended. It was
whispered in the Market-Place that the waggons which rumbled over the
drawbridges carried ropes with which the Clauwerts who had remained in
the town were to be hanged; that there was to be a general massacre,
in which not even the women and children would be spared; and that the
Frenchmen never unbuckled their swords or took off their armour, but
were ready to begin the slaughter at any moment. It was a day of terror
in Bruges, and when evening came some of the burghers slipped out, made
their way to Damme, and told De Coninck what was passing in the town.

That night Châtillon gave a feast to his chief officers, and amongst
his guests was Pierre Flotte, Chancellor of France, perhaps the ablest
of those jurists by whose evil councils Philip the Fair was encouraged
in the ideas of autocracy which led him to make the setting up of a
despotism the policy of his whole life. With Flotte--'that Belial,'
as Pope Boniface VIII. once called him--and the rest, Châtillon sat
revelling till a late hour. The night wore on; De Châtillon's party
broke up, and went to rest; the weary sentinels were half asleep at
their posts; and soon all Bruges was buried in silence. Here and there
lights twinkled in some of the guild-houses, where a few of the
burghers sat anxiously waiting for what the morrow might bring forth,
while others went to the ramparts on the north, and strained their eyes
to see if help was coming from Damme.

At early dawn--it was Friday, May 18, 1302--the watchers on the
ramparts saw a host of armed men rapidly approaching the town. They
were divided into two parties, one of which, led by De Coninck, made
for the Porte Ste. Croix, while the other, under Breidel, marched
to the Porte de Damme, a gateway which no longer exists, but which
was then one of the most important entrances, being that by which
travellers came from Damme and Sluis. Messengers from the ramparts ran
swiftly through the streets, in which daylight was now beginning to
appear, and spread the news from house to house. Silently the burghers
took their swords and pikes, left their homes, and gathered in the
Market-Place and near the houses in which the French were sleeping. The
French slept on till, all of a sudden, they were wakened by the tramp
of feet, the clash of arms, and shouts of 'Flanders for the Lion!'
Breidel had led his men into the town, and they were rushing through
the streets to where Châtillon had taken up his quarters, while De
Coninck, having passed through the Porte Ste. Croix, was marching to
the Bourg. The Frenchmen, bewildered, surprised, and only half awake,
ran out into the streets. The Flemings were shouting 'Schilt ende
Vriendt! Schilt ende Vriendt!'[5] and every man who could not pronounce
these words was known to be a Frenchman, and slain upon the spot. Some
fled to the gates; but at every gate they found a band of guards, who
called out 'Schilt ende Vriendt!' and put them to the sword.

All that summer's morning, and on throughout the day, the massacre
continued. Old men, women, and children hurled stones from the roofs
and windows down upon the enemy. Breidel, a man of great strength,
killed many with his own hand, and those whom he wounded were beaten
to death where they fell by the apprentices with their iron clubs. In
the Market-Place, close to where the monument to De Coninck and Breidel
stands, a party of soldiers, under a gallant French knight, Gauthier
de Sapignies, made a stand; but they were overpowered and slaughtered
to the last man. Châtillon tried to rally his forces, but the surprise
had been too complete, and, disguising himself in the cassock of a
priest, he hid, in company with Chancellor Flotte, till it was dark,
when they managed to escape from the town. By this time the carnage had
ceased; the walls of the houses and the gutters ran with blood; and
the burghers of Bruges had done their work so thoroughly that 2,000
Frenchmen lay dead upon the streets.

But the final reckoning with France was yet to come. When Châtillon
reached Paris and told his master the direful story of the Bruges
Matins, Philip swore revenge; and a few weeks later an army 40,000
strong invaded Flanders, under the Comte d'Artois, with whom rode also
Châtillon, Flotte, and many nobles of France. The Flemings went to meet
them--not only the burghers of Bruges, led by De Coninck and Breidel,
marching under the banners of their guilds, but men from every part of
Flanders--and on July 11, near Courtrai, the Battle of the Golden Spurs
was fought.

[Illustration: A FLEMISH BURGHER]

The ground was marshy, with a stream and pools of water between
the two armies; and just as the Scots at Bannockburn, twelve years
afterwards, prepared pitfalls for the heavy cavalry of England, so the
Flemings laid a trap for the French knights by cutting down brushwood
and covering the water. The horsemen, clad in cumbrous armour,
charged, the brushwood gave way, and most of them sank into the water.
The Comte d'Artois got clear, but was beaten to the ground and killed.
The Chancellor Flotte, who had boasted that he would bring the people
of Bruges to their knees, was trampled to death. Châtillon died too;
and when, at last, a long day's fighting came to an end, the Flemings
had gained a complete victory. By this battle, which took its name from
the thousands of golden spurs which were torn from the French knights
who fell, the victors secured--for a time, at least--the liberty of
their country, and the memory of it was for many a day to Flanders
what the memory of Bannockburn was to Scotland or of Morgarten to
Switzerland.

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 5: 'Shield and Friend!']

CHAPTER V

DAMME--THE SEA-FIGHT AT SLUIS--SPLENDOUR OF BRUGES IN THE MIDDLE
AGES--THE FALL AND LOSS OF TRADE

Damme, where the patriots mustered on the eve of the Bruges Matins,
is within a short hour's stroll from the east end of the town. The
Roya, which disappears from view, as we have already seen, opposite
the Quai du Rosaire, emerges from its hidden course at the west end
of the Quai du Miroir, where the statue of Jan van Eyck stands near
the door of the building now used as a public library. This building
was once the Customs House of Bruges, conveniently situated in the
neighbourhood of the Market-Place, and on the side of the Roya, which
thence stretches eastwards between the Quai du Miroir and the Quai
Spinola for a few hundred yards, and then turns sharply to the north,
and continues between the Quai Long and the Quai de la Potterie, which
are built in rambling fashion on either side of the water. Some of
the houses are old, others of no earlier date, apparently, than the
seventeenth or eighteenth centuries; some large and well preserved,
and some mere cottages, half ruinous, with low gables and faded yellow
fronts, huddled together on the rough causeway, alongside of which are
moored canal-boats with brown hulls and deck-houses gay with white
and green paint. At the end of the Quai de la Potterie is the modern
Bassin de Commerce, in which the Roya loses itself, the harbour for the
barges and small steamers which come by the canal connecting Ostend
with Bruges and Ghent; and near this was, in ancient days, the Porte de
Damme, through which Breidel and his followers burst on that fateful
morning in May 600 years ago.

To the right of the Bassin a broad canal, constructed by Napoleon in
1810, extends in a straight line eastwards, contained within dykes
which raise it above a wide expanse of level meadow-lands intersected
by ditches, and dotted here and there by the white-walled cottages with
red roofs and green outside shutters which are so typical of Flemish
scenery. About two miles out of Bruges one comes in sight of a windmill
perched on a slope at the side of the canal, a square church-tower,
a few houses, and some grassy mounds, which were once strong
fortifications. Even the historical imagination, which everyone who
walks round Bruges must carry with him, is hardly equal to realizing
that this was once a bustling seaport, with a harbour in which more
than a hundred merchant ships, laden with produce from all parts of
the world, were sometimes lying at the same time. In those busy times
Damme, they say, contained 50,000 inhabitants; now there are only about
1,100.

Beyond Damme the canal winds on through the same flat landscape,
low-lying, water-logged, with small farm-houses and scanty trees, and
in the distance, on the few patches of higher ground, the churches
of Oostkerke and Westcapelle. At last, soon after passing the Dutch
frontier, the canal ends in a little dock with gray, lichen-covered
sides; and this is Sluis, a dull place, with a few narrow streets, a
market-place, two churches, and a belfry of the fourteenth century.
It is quite inland now, miles from the salt water; and from the high
ramparts which still surround it the view extends to the north across
broad green fields, covering what was once the bed of the sea, in the
days when the tide ebbed and flowed in the channel of the Zwijn, over
which ships passed sailing on their way to Bruges. But any English
traveller who, having gone a little way out of the beaten track of
summer tourists, may chance to mount the ramparts, and look down upon
the fields which stretch away to the shores of the North Sea and the
estuary of the Scheldt, and inland beyond Damme to the Belfry and the
spires of Bruges, is gazing on the scene of a great event in the naval
history of England.

Here, on what is now dry land, on the morning of June 24, 1340, 800
ships of war, full of armed men--35,000 of them--were drawn up in line
of battle; and further out to sea, beyond the entrance of the Zwijn,
the newly-risen sun was shining on the sails of another fleet which was
manoeuvring in the offing.

[Illustration: BRUGES

Quai du Miroir.]

'In the cities of Flanders,' says Dr. Gardiner, 'had arisen
manufacturing populations which supplied the countries round with
the products of the loom. To the Ghent and Bruges of the Middle Ages
England stood in the same relation as that which the Australian
colonies hold to the Leeds and Bradford of our own day. The sheep which
grazed over the wide, unenclosed pasture-lands of our island formed a
great part of the wealth of England, and that wealth depended entirely
on the flourishing trade with the Flemish towns in which English
wool was converted into cloth.' When, therefore, Edward III. claimed
the throne of France, and the Hundred Years' War began, it was of vital
importance to the trade of Flanders and England that the merchants of
the two countries should maintain friendly relations with each other.
But Philip of Valois had persuaded the Count of Flanders, Louis de
Nevers, to order the arrest of all the English in Flanders, and Edward
had retaliated by arresting all the Flemings who were in England,
and forbidding the export of English wool to Flanders. The result
was that the weavers of Bruges and the other manufacturing towns of
Flanders found themselves on the road to ruin; and, having no interest
in the question at issue between the Kings of France and England,
apart from its effect on their commercial prosperity, the burghers of
Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, under the leadership of the famous Jacob van
Artevelde (anticipating, as one of the modern historians of Bruges has
noticed, what the Great Powers did for Belgium in 1830[6]), succeeded
in securing, with the assent of Philip, the neutrality of Flanders.
The French King, however, did not keep faith with the Flemings, but
proceeded to acts of aggression against them, and a league against
France was formed between England and Flanders.

In June, 1340, Edward, who was then in England, hearing that an immense
number of French ships of war were at anchor in the Zwijn, set sail
to give them battle with a squadron of 300 vessels. The English fleet
anchored off the coast between Blankenberghe and Heyst on the evening
of June 23, and from the top of the dunes the English scouts saw in the
distance the masts of the French ships in the Zwijn.

As soon as there was light next morning, the English weighed anchor
and sailed along the coast to the east; past lonely yellow sands,
which have swarmed during recent years with workmen toiling at the
construction of the immense harbour of See-Brugge, which is to be the
future port of Bruges; past what was then the small fishing hamlet of
Heyst; past a range of barren dunes, amongst which to-day Duinbergen,
the latest of the Flemish watering-places, with its spacious hotel and
trim villas, is being laid out; past a waste of storm-swept sand and
rushes, on which are now the digue of Knocke, a cluster of hotels and
crowded lodging-houses, and a golf-course; and so onwards till they
opened the mouth of the Zwijn, and saw the French ships crowding the
entrance, 'their masts appearing to be like a great wood,' and beyond
them the walls of Sluis rising from the wet sands left by the receding
tide.

It was low-water, and while waiting for the turn of the tide the
English fleet stood out to sea for some time, so that Nicholas
Béhuchet, the French Admiral, began to flatter himself that King
Edward, finding himself so completely outnumbered, would not dare to
risk fighting against such odds. The odds, indeed, were nearly three to
one against the English seamen; but as soon as the tide began to flow
they steered straight into the channel, and, Edward leading the van,
came to close quarters, ship to ship. The famous archers of England,
who six years later were to do such execution at Crécy, lined the
bulwarks, and poured in a tempest of arrows so thick that men fell
from the tops of the French ships like leaves before a storm. The
first of the four lines in which Béhuchet had drawn up his fleet was
speedily broken, and the English, brandishing their swords and pikes,
boarded the French ships, drove their crews overboard, and hoisted the
flag of England. King Edward was wounded, and the issue may have been
doubtful, when suddenly more ships, coming from the North of England,
appeared in sight, and hordes of Flemings from all parts of Flanders,
from the coast, and even from inland towns so far away as Ypres,[7]
came swarming in boats to join in the attack. This decided the fate
of the great battle, which continued till sunset. When it ended, the
French fleet had ceased to exist, with the exception of a few ships
which escaped when it was dark. The Flemings captured Béhuchet, and
hung him then and there. Nearly 30,000 of his men perished, many of
whom were drowned while attempting to swim ashore, or were clubbed to
death by the Flemings who lined the beach, waiting to take vengeance
on the invaders for having burned their homesteads and carried off
their flocks. The English lost two ships and 4,000 men; but the victory
was so complete that no courtier was bold enough to carry the news to
King Philip, who did not know what had befallen his great fleet till
the Court jester went to him, and said, 'Oh! the English cowards! the
English cowards! they had not the courage to jump into the sea as our
noble Frenchmen did at Sluis.'

It is strange to think that Flemish peasants work, and cattle feed,
and holiday visitors from Knocke, or Sluis, or Kadzand ramble about
dry-shod where the waves were rolling in on that midsummer's morning,
and that far beneath the grass the timbers of so many stout ships and
the bones of so many valiant seamen have long since mouldered away. And
it is also strange to think, when wandering along the canals of Bruges,
where now the swans glide silently about in the almost stagnant water
which laps the basements of the old houses, how in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries ships of every nation carried in great bales of
merchandise, and that rich traders stored them in warehouses and strong
vaults, which are now mere coal-cellars, or the dark and empty haunts
of the rats which swarm in the canals.

'There is,' says Mr. Robinson, 'in the National Library at Paris a
list of the kingdoms and cities which sent their produce to Bruges at
that time. England sent wool, lead, tin, coal, and cheese; Ireland and
Scotland, chiefly hides and wool; Denmark, pigs; Russia, Hungary, and
Bohemia, large quantities of wax; Poland, gold and silver; Germany,
wine; Liége, copper kettles; and Bulgaria, furs.' After naming many
parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, that sent goods, the manuscript
adds: 'And all the aforesaid realms and regions send their merchants
with wares to Flanders, besides those who come from France, Poitou, and
Gascony, and from the three islands of which we know not the names of
their kingdoms.' The trade of Bruges was enormous. People flocked there
from all quarters.

'Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.'

We read of 150 ships entering in one day, and of German merchants
buying 2,600 pieces of cloth, made by Flemish weavers, in a morning's
marketing. A citizen of Bruges was always at the head of the Hanseatic
League, and maintained the rights of that vast commercial society
under the title of 'Comte de la Hanse.' Merchant princes, members of
the Hanse, lived here in palaces. Money-changers grew rich. Edward
III. borrowed from the Bardi at Bruges on the security of the Crown
jewels of England. Contracts of insurance against maritime risks were
entered into from an early period, and the merchant shipping code which
regulated traffic by sea was known as the 'Röles de Damme.'[8] There
were twenty consulates at one time in Bruges, and the population of
the town is said, though it is difficult to believe that this is not an
exaggeration, to have been more than 200,000 before the middle of the
fourteenth century.

Six years after the Battle of Sluis, Louis of Nevers was killed at
Crecy, and his son, Louis of Maele, reigned in his stead as Count of
Flanders. He was a Leliart to the core, and his reign of nearly forty
years, one long struggle against the liberties of his people, witnessed
the capture of Bruges by Philip van Artevelde, the invasion of Flanders
by the French, the defeat of the Nationalists, and the death of Van
Artevelde on the field of Roosebeke. Nevertheless, during this period
and after it Bruges grew in beauty and in wealth. The Hôtel de Ville,
without the grandeur of the Hôtel de Ville at Brussels, but still a gem
of mediæval architecture, was built on the site of the old 'Ghiselhuis'
of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer. Other noble buildings, rich in design and
beautiful in all their outlines, and great mansions, with marble halls
and ceilings of exquisitely carved woodwork, rose on every side; towers
and pinnacles, shapely windows and graceful arches, overhung the
waterways; luxury increased; in the homes of the nobles and wealthy
merchants were stores of precious stones, tapestries, silk, fine
linen, cloth of gold; the churches and many buildings gleamed with
gilded stone and tinted glass and brilliant frescoes. Art flourished as
the town grew richer. The elder and the younger Van Eyck, Gerard David,
and Memlinc, with many others before and after them, were attracted by
its splendour, as modern painters have been attracted by its decay; and
though the 'Adoration of the Immaculate Lamb' hangs in the choir of St.
Bavon at Ghent, the genius which coloured that matchless altar-piece
found its inspiration within the walls of Bruges.

The history of Bruges for many long years, especially under the
rule of the House of Burgundy, was, in the midst of war, turmoil,
and rebellion, the history of continuous progress. But all this
prosperity depended on the sea. So long as the Zwijn remained open,
neither war nor faction, not even the last great rising against the
Archduke Maximilian, which drove away the foreign merchants, most
of whom went to Antwerp, and so impoverished the town that no less
than 5,000 houses were standing empty in the year 1405,[9] could have
entirely ruined Bruges. These disasters might have been retrieved if
the channel of communication with Damme and Sluis had not been lost;
but for a long time the condition of this important waterway had been
the cause of grave anxiety to the people of Bruges. The heavy volume
of water which poured with every ebbing tide down the Scheldt between
Flushing and Breskens swept past the island of Walcheren, and spread
out into the North Sea and down the English Channel, leaving the mud
it carried with it on the sands round the mouth of the Zwijn, which
itself did not discharge a current strong enough to prevent the slow
but sure formation of a bank across its entrance. Charters, moreover,
had been granted to various persons, under which they drained the
adjoining lands, and gradually reclaimed large portions from the sea.
The channel, at no time very deep, became shallower, narrower, and
more difficult of access, until at last, during the second half of the
fifteenth century, the passage between Sluis and Damme was navigable
only by small ships. Soon the harbour at Damme was nearly choked up
with sand. Many schemes were tried in the hope of preserving the Zwijn,
but the sea-trade of Bruges dwindled away to a mere nothing, and
finally disappeared before the middle of the sixteenth century. And so
Bruges fell from greatness. There are still some traces of the ancient
bed of the Zwijn amongst the fields near Coolkerke, a village a short
distance to the north of Bruges--a broad ditch with broken banks, and
large pools of slimy water lying desolate and forlorn in a wilderness
of tangled bushes. These are now the only remains of the highway by
which the 'deep-laden argosies' used to enter in the days of old.

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 6: Robinson, _Bruges, an Historical Sketch_, p. 107.]

[Footnote 7: Vereecke, _Histoire Militaire de la Ville d'Ypres_, p. 36.]

[Footnote 8: Gilliodts van Severen, _Bruges Ancienne et Moderne_, p.
14.]

[Footnote 9: Gilliodts van Severen, p. 25.]

CHAPTER VI

'BRUGES LA MORTE'

They call it 'Bruges la Morte,' and at every turn there is something to
remind us of the deadly blight which fell upon the city when its trade
was lost. The faded colours, the timeworn brickwork, the indescribable
look of decay which, even on the brightest morning, throws a shade of
melancholy over the whole place, lead one to think of some aged dame,
who has 'come down in the world,' wearing out the finery of better
days. It is all very sad and pathetic, but strangely beautiful, and the
painter never lived who could put on canvas the mellow tints with which
Time has clothed these old walls, and thus veiled with tender hand
the havoc it has made. To stand on the bridge which crosses the canal
at the corner of the Quai des Marbriers and the Quai Vert, where the
pinnacles of the Palais du Franc and the roof of the Hôtel de Ville,
with the Belfry just showing above them, and dull red walls rising from
the water, make up a unique picture of still-life, is to read a sermon
in stones, an impressive lesson in history.

The loss of trade brought Bruges face to face with the 'question of
the unemployed' in a very aggravated form. How to provide for the poor
became a most serious problem, and so many of the people were reduced
to living on charity that almshouses sprang up all over the town. God's
Houses ('Godshuisen') they called them, and call them still. They are
to be found in all directions--quaint little places, planted down
here and there, each with a small chapel of its own, with moss-grown
roofs and dingy walls, and doors that open on to the uneven cobbles.
Every stone of them spells pauperism. The Church does much towards
maintaining these shelters for the poor--perhaps too much, if it is
true that there are 10,000 paupers in Bruges out of a population of
about 55,000. There is a great deal of begging in the streets, and a
sad lack of sturdy self-respect amongst the lower class, which many
think is caused by the system of doles, for which the Church is chiefly
responsible. Bruges might not have been so picturesque to-day if her
commerce had survived; but the beauty of a town is dearly purchased at
the cost of such degradation and loss of personal independence.

[Illustration: BRUGES

View of the Palais du Franc.]

It was not only the working class which suffered. Many rich families
sank into poverty, and their homes, some of which were more like
palaces than private houses, had to be dismantled. The fate of one of
these lordly mansions is connected with an episode which carries us
back into the social life of Bruges in the middle of the seventeenth
century. On the right side of the Rue Haute, as one goes from the
Place du Bourg, there is a high block containing two large houses,
Nos. 6 and 8, of that street. It is now a big, plain building without
a trace of architectural distinction; but in the seventeenth century
it was a single mansion, built about the year 1320, and was one of the
many houses with towers which gave the Bruges of that time almost the
appearance of an Oriental city. It was called the House of the Seven
Towers, from the seven pinnacles which surmounted it; and at the back
there was a large garden, which extended to the canal and Quai des
Marbriers.

In April, 1656, the 'tall man above two yards high, with dark brown
hair, scarcely to be distinguished from black,' for whom the Roundheads
had searched all England after the Battle of Worcester, found his way
to Bruges, with his brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and the train
of Royalists who formed their Court. For nearly three years after
Worcester, Charles II. had lived in France; but in July, 1654, the
alliance between Cromwell and Mazarin drove him to Germany, where
he remained till Don John of Austria became Governor of the Spanish
Netherlands. Thereupon the prospect of recovering the English throne
by the assistance of Spain led him to remove his Court, which had been
established for some time at Cologne, to Flanders. He arrived at Bruges
on April 22, 1656. His brother James, Duke of York, and afterwards King
of England, held a commission in the French army, and Mazarin offered
him a command in Italy. Charles, however, requested him to leave the
French army, and enter the service of Spain. At first James refused;
but by the mediation of their sister, the Princess of Orange, he was
persuaded to do as his brother wished, and join the Court at Bruges.
The Irish Viscount Tarah received Charles, when he first arrived, in
his house in the Rue du Vieux Bourg, and there gave him, we read in
local history, 'une brillante hospitalité.' But in the beginning of
June the Court took up its quarters in the House of the Seven Towers.

During his sojourn in Flanders, Charles was carefully watched by the
secret service officers of the Commonwealth Government, who sent home
reports of all he did. These reports, many of which are in the Thurloe
State Papers and other collections, contain some curious details about
the exiled Court.

There never was a more interesting 'English colony' at Bruges than at
that time. Hyde, who received the Great Seal at Bruges, was there with
Ormonde and the Earls of Bristol, Norwich, and Rochester. Sir Edward
Nicholas was Secretary of State; and we read of Colonel Sydenham, Sir
Robert Murray, and 'Mr. Cairless', who sat on the tree with Charles
Stewart after Worcester fight. Another of the exiles at Bruges was
Sir James Turner, the soldier of fortune, who served under Gustavus
Adolphus, persecuted the Covenanters in Scotland, and is usually
supposed to have been the original of Dugald Dalgetty in Sir Walter
Scott's _Legend of Montrose_. A list of the royal household is still
preserved at Bruges. It was prepared in order that the town council
might fix the daily allowance of wine and beer which was to be given to
the Court, and contains the names of about sixty persons, with a note
of the supply granted to each family.

A 'Letter of Intelligence' (the report of a spy), dated from Bruges
on September 29, 1656, mentions that Lilly, the astrologer of London,
had written to say that the King would be restored to the throne next
year, and that all the English at Bruges were delighted. But in the
meantime they were very hard up for ready money. Ever since leaving
England Charles and his followers had suffered from the most direful
impecuniosity. We find Hyde declaring that he has 'neither shoes nor
shirt.' The King himself was constantly running into debt for his
meals, and his friends spent many a hungry day at Bruges. If by good
luck they chanced to be in funds, one meal a day sufficed for a party
of half a dozen courtiers. If it was cold they could not afford to
purchase firewood. The Earl of Norwich writes, saying that he has to
move about so as to get lodgings on credit, and avoid people to whom
he owes money. Colonel Borthwick, who claims to have served the King
most faithfully, complains that he is in prison at Bruges on suspicion
of disloyalty, has not changed his clothes for three years, and is
compelled by lack of cash to go without a fire in winter. Sir James
Hamilton, a gentleman-in-waiting, gets drunk one day, and threatens to
kill the Lord Chancellor. He is starving, and declares it is Hyde's
fault that the King gives him no money. He will put on a clean
shirt to be hanged in, and not run away, being without so much as a
penny. Then we have the petition of a poor fencing-master. 'Heaven,'
he writes piteously, 'hears the groans of the lowest creatures, and
therefore I trust that you, being a terrestrial deity, will not disdain
my supplication.' He had come from Cologne to Bruges to teach the royal
household, and wanted his wages, for he and his family were starving.

[Illustration: BRUGES

Maison du Pélican (Almshouse).]

Don John of Austria visited Charles at Bruges, and an allowance from
the King of Spain was promised, so that men might be levied for the
operations against Cromwell; but the payments were few and irregular.
'The English Court,' says a letter of February, 1657, 'remains still at
Bridges [Bruges], never in greater want, nor greater expectations of
money, without which all their levies are like to be at a stand; for
Englishmen cannot live on bread alone.'

A 'Letter of Intelligence' sent from Sluis says that Charles is 'much
loocked upon, but littell respeckted.' And this is not wonderful if
the reports sent home by the Commonwealth agents are to be trusted.
One of the spies who haunted the neighbourhood of Bruges was a Mr.
Butler, who writes in the winter of 1656-1657: 'This last week one of
the richest churches in Bruges was plundered in the night. The people
of Bruges are fully persuaded that Charles Stewart's followers have
done it. They spare no pains to find out the guilty, and if it happen
to light upon any of Charles Stewart's train, it will mightily incense
that people against them.... There is now a company of French comedians
at Bruges, who are very punctually attended by Charles Stewart and his
Court, and all the ladies there. Their most solemn day of acting is
the Lord's Day. I think I may truly say that greater abominations were
never practised among people than at this day at Charles Stewart's
Court. Fornication, drunkenness, and adultery are esteemed no sins
amongst them; so I persuade myself God will never prosper any of their
attempts.'[10] In another letter we read that once, after a hunting
expedition, Charles and a gentleman of the bedchamber were the only two
who came back sober. Sir James Turner was mad when drunk, 'and that was
pretty often,' says Bishop Burnet.

But, of course, it was the business of the spies to blacken the
character of Charles; and there can be little doubt that, in spite of
his poverty and loose morals, he was well liked by the citizens of
Bruges, who, notwithstanding a great deal of outward decorum, have
at no time been very strait-laced. 'Charles,' we learn from a local
history, 'sut se rendre populaire en prenant part aux amusements de la
population et en se pliant, sans effort comme sans affectation, aux
usages du pays.' During his whole period of exile he contrived to amuse
himself. Affairs of gallantry, dancing, tennis, billiards, and other
frivolous pursuits, occupied as much of his attention as the grave
affairs of State over which Hyde and Ormonde spent so many anxious
hours. When on a visit to Brussels in the spring of 1657, he employed,
we are told, most of his time with Don John dancing, or at 'long paume,
a Spanish play with balls filled with wire.' And, again: 'He passes his
time with shooting at Bruges, and such other obscure pastimes.'

This 'shooting' was the favourite Flemish sport of shooting with bow
and arrows at an artificial bird fixed on a high pole, the prize being,
on great occasions, a golden bird, which was hung by a chain of gold
round the winner's neck. In the records of the Guilds of St. George
and St. Sebastian at Bruges there are notices relating to Charles.
The former was a society of cross-bowmen, the latter of archers. On
June 11, 1656, Charles and the Duke of Gloucester were at the festival
of the Society of St. George. Charles was the first to try his skill,
and managed to hit the mark. After the Duke and many others had shot,
Peter Pruyssenaere, a wine merchant in the Rue du Vieux Bourg, brought
down the bird, and Charles hung the golden 'Bird of Honour' round his
neck. On June 25 Charles visited the Society of St. Sebastian, when
Michael Noé, a gardener, was the winner. The King and Gloucester both
became members of the St. Sebastian, which is still a flourishing
society. Going along the Rue des Carmes, the traveller passes the
English convent on the left, and on the right, at the end of the
street, comes to the Guildhouse of St. Sebastian, with its slender
tower and quiet garden, one of the pleasantest spots in Bruges. There
the names of Charles and his brother are to be seen inscribed in a
small volume bound in red morocco, the 'Bird of Honour' with its chain
of gold, a silver arrow presented by the Duke of Gloucester, and some
other interesting relics. On September 15, 1843, Queen Victoria, Prince
Albert, King Leopold I., and the Queen of the Belgians, went to the
Rue des Carmes and signed their names as members of this society, which
now possesses two silver cups, presented by the Queen of England in
1845 and 1893. The Duke of York seems to have been successful as an
archer, for in the Hôtel de Ville at Bruges there is a picture by John
van Meuninxhove, in which Charles is seen hanging the 'Bird of Honour'
round his brother's neck.

In April, 1657, the English Government was informed that the Court of
Charles was preparing to leave Bruges. 'Yesterday' (April 7) 'some of
his servants went before to Brussels to make ready lodgings for Charles
Stewart, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Gloucester. All that have
or can compass so much money go along with Charles Stewart on Monday
morning. I do admire how people live here for want of money. Our number
is not increased since my last. The most of them are begging again for
want of money; and when any straggling persons come, we have not so
much money as will take a single man to the quarters; yet we promise
ourselves great matters.' They were hampered in all their movements
by this want of hard cash, for Charles was in debt at Bruges, and
could not remove his goods until he paid his creditors. It was sadly
humiliating. 'The King,' we read, 'will hardly live at Bruges any
more, but he cannot remove his family and goods till we get money.'
The dilemma seems to have been settled by Charles, his brothers, and
most of the Court going off to Brussels, leaving their possessions
behind them. The final move did not take place till February, 1658,
and Clarendon says that Charles never lived at Bruges after that date.
He may, however, have returned on a short visit, for Jesse, in his
_Memoirs of the Court of England under the Stuarts_, states that the
King was playing tennis at Bruges when Sir Stephen Fox came to him with
the great news, 'The devil is dead!' This would be in September, 1658,
Cromwell having died on the third of that month. After the Restoration
Charles sent to the citizens of Bruges a letter of thanks for the way
in which they had received him. Nor did he forget, amidst the pleasures
of the Court at Whitehall, the simple pastimes of the honest burghers,
but presented to the archers of the Society of St. Sebastian the sum of
3,600 florins, which were expended on their hall of meeting.

More than a hundred years later, when the Stuart dynasty was a thing
of the past and George III. was seated on the throne of England, the
Rue Haute saw the arrival of some travellers who were very different
from the roystering Cavaliers and frail beauties who had made it gay
in the days of the Merry Monarch. The English Jesuits of St. Omer,
when expelled from their college, came to Bruges in August, 1762, and
took up their abode in the House of the Seven Towers, where they found
'nothing but naked walls and empty chambers.' A miserable place it must
have been. 'In one room a rough table of planks had been set up, and
the famished travellers were rejoiced at the sight of three roast legs
of mutton set on the primitive table. Knives, forks, and plates there
were none. A Flemish servant divided the food with his pocket-knife.
A farthing candle gave a Rembrandt-like effect to the scene. The boys
slept that night on mattresses laid on the floor of one of the big
empty rooms of the house. The first days at Bruges were cheerless
enough.'[11] The religious houses, however, came to the rescue. Flemish
monks and the nuns of the English convent helped the pilgrims, and the
Jesuits soon established themselves at Bruges, where they remained in
peace for a few years, till the Austrian Government drove them out.
The same fate overtook the inmates of many monasteries and convents
at Bruges in the reign of Joseph II., whose reforming zeal led to
that revolt of the Austrian Netherlands which was the prelude to the
invasion of Flanders by the army of the French Revolution.

After the conquest of Belgium by the French it looked as if all the
churches in Bruges were doomed. The Chapel of St. Basil was laid in
ruins. The Church of St. Donatian, which had stood since the days of
Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, was pulled down and disappeared entirely. Notre
Dame, St. Sauveur, and other places of worship, narrowly escaped
destruction; and it was not till the middle of the nineteenth century
that the town recovered, in some measure, from these disasters.

Bruges has doubtless shared in the general prosperity which has spread
over the country since Belgium became an independent kingdom after the
revolution of 1830, but its progress has been slow. It has never lost
its old-world associations; and the names of the streets and squares,
and the traditions connected with numberless houses which a stranger
might pass without notice, are all so many links with the past. There
is the Rue Espagnole, for example, where a vegetable market is held
every Wednesday. This was the quarter where the Spanish merchants
lived and did their business. There used to be a tall, dark, and, in
fact, very dirty-looking old house in this street known by the Spanish
name of the 'Casa Negra.' It was pulled down a few years ago; but
lower down, at the foot of the street, the great cellars in which the
Spaniards stored their goods remain; and on the Quai Espagnol was the
Spanish Consulate, now a large dwelling-house. A few steps from the
Quai Espagnol is the Place des Orientaux (Oosterlingen Plaats), where
a minaret of tawny brick rises above the gables of what was once the
Consulate of Smyrna, and on the north side of which, in the brave days
of old, stood the splendid Maison des Orientaux, the headquarters of
the Hanseatic League in Bruges, the finest house in Flanders, with
turrets and soaring spire, and marvellous façade, and rooms inside all
ablaze with gilding. The glory has departed; two modern dwelling-houses
have taken the place of this commercial palace; but it must surely be a
very dull imagination on which the sight of this spot, now so tranquil
and commonplace, but once the centre of such important transactions,
makes no impression. From the Place des Orientaux it is only a few
minutes stroll to the Rue Cour de Gand and the dark brown wooden front
of the small house, now a lace shop, which tradition says was one of
Memlinc's homes in Bruges, where we can fancy him, laboriously and with
loving care, putting the last minute touches to some immortal painting.

Then there is the Rue Anglaise, off the Quai Spinola, where the English
Merchant Adventurers met to discuss their affairs in houses with such
names as 'Old England' or 'The Tower of London.' The head of the
colony, 'Governor of the English Nation beyond the Seas' they called
him, was a very busy man 400 years ago.[12] The Scottish merchants were
settled in the same district, close to the Church of Ste. Walburge.
They called their house 'Scotland,' and doubtless made as good bargains
as the 'auld enemy' in the next street. There is a building called the
Parijssche Halle, or Halle de Paris, hidden away among the houses to
the west of the Market-Place, with a cafe and a theatre where Flemish
plays are acted now, which was formerly the Consulate of France; and
subscription balls and amateur theatricals are given by the English
residents of to-day in the fourteenth-century house of the Genoese
merchants in the Rue Flamande. The list of streets and houses with
old-time associations like these might be extended indefinitely, for in
Bruges the past is ever present.

[Illustration: BRUGES

Vegetable Market.]

Even the flat-fronted, plain houses with which poverty or the bad taste
of the last century replaced many of the older buildings do not spoil
the picturesque appearance of the town as a whole, because it is no
larger now than it was 600 years ago, and these modern structures are
quite lost amongst their venerable neighbours. Thus Bruges retains
its mediæval character. In the midst, however, of all this wealth of
architectural beauty and historical interest, the atmosphere of common
everyday life seems to be so very dull and depressing that people
living there are apt to be driven, by sheer boredom, into spending
their lives in a round of small excitements and incessant, wearisome
gossip, and into taking far more interest in the paltry squabbles of
their neighbours over some storm in a teacup than in the more important
topics which invigorate the minds of men and women in healthier and
broader societies. Long before Rodenbach's romance was written this
peculiarity of Bruges was proverbial throughout Belgium.

But it is possible that a change is at hand, and that Bruges may once
again become, not the Venice of the North--the time for that is
past--but an important town, for the spirit of commercial enterprise
which has done so much for other parts of Belgium during the last
seventy-five years is now invading even this quiet place, whose
citizens have begun to dream of recovering some portion of their former
prosperity. In 1895 the Belgian Parliament passed a law providing
for the construction, between Blankenberghe and Heyst, of a harbour
connected with Bruges by a canal of large dimensions, and of an inner
port at the town. The works at See-Brugge, as the outer port is called,
are nearly completed, and will allow vessels drawing 26-1/2 feet of
water to float at any state of the tide. The jetty describes a large
curve, and the bend is such that its extremity is parallel to the
coast, and 930 yards distant from the low-water mark. The sheltered
roadstead is about 272 acres in extent, and communication is made
with the canal by a lock 66 feet wide and 282 yards in length. From
this point the canal, which has a depth of 26-1/2 feet and is fed by
seawater, runs in a straight line to Bruges, and ends at the inner
port, which is within a few hundred yards of where the Roya used to
meet the Zwijn. It is capable of affording a minimum capacity of
1,000,000 tons per annum, and the whole equipment has been fitted up
necessary for dealing with this amount of traffic.

The first ship, an English steamer, entered the new port at Bruges on
the morning of May 29 in the present year (1905). The carillon rung
from the Belfry, guns were fired, and a ceremony in honour of the event
took place in the Hôtel de Ville. It now remains to be seen whether any
part of the trade which was lost 400 years ago can be recovered by the
skill of modern engineers and the resources of modern capital.

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 10: Letter from Mr. J. Butler, Flushing, December 2, 1656,
Thurloe State Papers, V., 645.]

[Footnote 11: Robinson, _Bruges, an Historical Sketch_, p. 291.]

[Footnote 12: In the _Flandria Illustrata_ of Sanderus, vol. i., p.
275, there is a picture of the 'Domus Anglorum.']

CHAPTER VII

THE PLAIN OF WEST FLANDERS--YPRES

To the west of Bruges the wide plain of Flanders extends to the French
frontier. Church spires and windmills are the most prominent objects in
the landscape; but though the flatness of the scenery is monotonous,
there is something pleasing to the eye in the endless succession of
well-cultivated fields, interrupted at intervals by patches of rough
bushland, canals, or slow-moving streams winding between rows of
pollards, country houses embowered in woods and pleasure-grounds,
cottages with fruitful gardens, orchards, small villages, and compact
little towns, in most of which the diligent antiquary will find
something of interest--a modest belfry, perhaps, with a romance of its
own; a parish church, whose foundations were laid long ago in ground
dedicated, in the distant past, to the worship of Thor or Woden; or
the remains, it may be, of a medieval castle, from which some worthy
knight, whose name is forgotten except in local traditions, rode away
to the Crusades.

This part of West Flanders, which lies wedged in between the coast,
with its populous bathing stations, and the better-known district
immediately to the south of it, where Ghent, Tournai, Courtrai, and
other important centres draw many travellers every year, is seldom
visited by strangers, who are almost as much stared at in some of the
villages as they would be in the streets of Pekin. It is, however, very
accessible. The roads are certainly far from good, and anything in
the shape of a walking tour is out of the question, for the strongest
pedestrian would have all his pleasure spoilt by the hard-going of the
long, straight causeway. The ideal way to see the Netherlands and study
the life of the people is to travel on the canals; but these are not
so numerous here as in other parts of the country, and, besides, it is
not very easy to arrange for a passage on the barges. But, in addition
to the main lines of the State Railway, there are the 'Chemins-de-fer
Vicinaux,' or light district railways, which run through all parts
of Belgium. The fares on these are very low, and there are so many
stoppages that the traveller can see a great many places in the course
of a single day. There are cycle tracks, too, alongside most of
the roads, the cost of keeping them in order being paid out of the
yearly tax paid by the owners of bicycles.[13]

[Illustration: THE FLEMISH PLAIN]

This is the most purely Flemish part of Flanders. One very seldom
notices that Spanish type of face which is so common elsewhere--at
Antwerp, for instance. Here the race is almost unmixed, and the
peasants speak nothing but Flemish to each other. Many of them do not
understand a word of French, though in Belgium French is, as everyone
knows, the language of public life and of literature. The newspapers
published in Flemish are small, and do not contain much beyond local
news. The result is that the country people in West Flanders know very
little of what is going on in the world beyond their own parishes. The
standard of education is low, being to a great extent in the hands of
the clergy, who have hitherto succeeded in defeating all proposals for
making it universal and compulsory.

But, steeped as most of them are in ignorance and superstition, the
agricultural labourers of West Flanders are, to all appearance, quite
contented with their lot. Living is cheap, and their wants are few.
Coffee, black bread, potatoes, and salted pork, are the chief articles
of diet, and in some households even the pork is a treat for special
occasions. They seldom taste butter, using lard instead; and the
'margarine' which is sold in the towns does not find its way into the
cottages of the outlying country districts. Sugar has for many years
been much dearer than in England, and the price is steadily rising, but
with this exception the food of the people is cheap. Tea enters Belgium
duty free, but the peasants never use it. Many villagers smoke coarse
tobacco grown in their own gardens, and a 10-centimes cigar is the
height of luxury. Tobacco being a State monopoly in France, the high
price in that country makes smuggling common, and there is a good deal
of contraband trading carried on in a quiet way on the frontiers of
West Flanders. The average wage paid for field labour is from 1 franc
50 centimes to 2 francs a day for married men--that is to say, from
about 1s. 3d. to 1s. 8d. of English money. Bachelors generally receive
1 franc (10d.) a day and their food. The working hours are long, often
from five in the morning till eight in the evening in summer, and in
winter from sunrise till sunset, with one break at twelve o'clock
for dinner, consisting of bread with pork and black coffee, and another
about four in the afternoon, when what remains of the mid-day meal is
consumed.

[Illustration: A FLEMISH COUNTRY GIRL]

The Flemish farmhouse is generally a substantial building, with two
large living-rooms, in which valuable old pieces of furniture are still
occasionally to be found, though the curiosity dealers have, during the
last quarter of a century, carried most of them away, polished them
up, and sold them at a high profit. Carved chests, bearing the arms
of ancient families, have been discovered lying full of rubbish in
barns or stables, and handsome cabinets, with fine mouldings and brass
fittings, have frequently been picked up for a few francs. The heavy
beams of the ceilings, black with age, the long Flemish stoves, and
the quaint window-seats deeply sunk in the thick walls, still remain,
and make the interiors of many of these houses very picturesque; but
the 'finds' of old furniture, curious brass or pewter dishes, and even
stray bits of valuable tapestry, which used to rouse the cupidity of
strangers, are now very rare. Almost all the brass work which is so
eagerly bought by credulous tourists at Bruges in summer is bran-new
stuff cleverly manufactured for sale--and sold it is at five or six
times its real market value! There are no bargains to be picked up on
the Dyver or in the shops of Bruges.

[Illustration: DUINHOEK

Interior of a Farmhouse.]

The country life is simple. A good deal of hard drinking goes on in
most villages. More beer, probably, is consumed in Belgium per head
of the population than in any other European country, Germany not
excepted, and the system of swallowing 'little glasses' of fiery spirit
on the top of beer brings forth its natural fruits. The drunken ways
of the people are encouraged by the excessive number of public-houses.
Practically anyone who can pay the Government fee and obtain a barrel
of beer and a few tumblers may open a drinking-shop. It is not uncommon
in a small country village with about 200 inhabitants to see the words
'Herberg' or 'Estaminet' over the doors of a dozen houses, in which
beer is sold at a penny (or less) for a large glass, and where various
throat-burning liquors of the _petit verre_ species can be had at the
same price; and the result is that very often a great portion of the
scanty wage paid on Saturday evening is melted into beer or gin on
Sunday and Monday. As a rule, the Flemish labourer, being a merry,
light-hearted soul, is merely noisy and jovial in a brutal sort of way
in his cups; but let a quarrel arise, out come the knives, and
before the rural policeman saunters along there are nasty rows, ending
in wounds and sometimes in murder. When the lots are drawn for military
service, and crowds of country lads with their friends flock into the
towns, the public-houses do good business. Those who have drawn lucky
numbers, and so escaped the conscription, get drunk out of joy; while
those who find they must serve in the army drown their sorrow, or
celebrate the occasion if they are of a martial turn, by reeling about
the streets arm in arm with their companions, shouting and singing.
Whole families, old and young alike, often join in these performances,
and they must be very drunk and very disorderly before the police think
of making even the mildest remonstrance.

The gay character of the Flemings is best seen at the 'kermesse,' or
fair, which is held in almost every village during summer. At Bruges,
Ypres, and Furnes, and still more in such large cities as Brussels or
Antwerp, the kermesse has ceased to be typical of the country, and is
supplanted by fairs such as may be seen in England or in almost any
other country. 'Merry-go-rounds' driven by steam, elaborate circuses,
menageries, waxwork exhibitions, movable theatres, and modern 'shows'
of every kind travel about, and settle for a few days, perhaps even
for a few weeks, in various towns. The countryfolk of the surrounding
district are delighted, and the showmen reap a goodly harvest of
francs and centimes; but these fairs are tiresome and commonplace,
much less amusing and lively than, for example, St. Giles's Fair at
Oxford, though very nearly as noisy. But the kermesse proper, which
still survives in some places, shows the Flemings amusing themselves in
something more like the old fashion than anything which can be seen in
the Market-Place of Bruges or on the boulevards of Brussels or Antwerp.
Indeed, some of the village scenes, when the young people are dancing
or shooting with bows and arrows at the mark, while the elders sit,
with their mugs of beer and long pipes, watching and gossiping, are
very like what took place in the times of the old painters who were so
fond of producing pictures of the kermesses. The dress of the people,
of course, is different, but the spirit of the scene, with its homely
festivities, is wonderfully little changed.

About twenty miles from the French frontier is the town of Ypres, once
the capital of Flanders, and which in the time of Louis of Nevers was
one of the three 'bonnes villes,' Bruges and Ghent being the others,
which appointed deputies to defend the rights and privileges of the
whole Flemish people.

As Bruges grew out of the rude fortress on the banks of the Roya, so
Ypres developed from a stronghold built, probably about the year 900,
on a small island in the river Yperlee. It was triangular in shape,
with a tower at each corner, and was at first known by the inhabitants
of the surrounding plain as the 'Castle of the Three Towers.' In
course of time houses began to appear on the banks of the river near
the island. A rampart of earth with a ditch defended these, and as
the place grew, the outworks became more extensive. Owing to its
strategic position, near France and in a part of Flanders which was
constantly the scene of war, it was of great importance; and probably
no other Flemish town has seen its defences so frequently altered and
enlarged as Ypres has between the primitive days when the Crusading
Thierry d'Alsace planted hedges of live thorns to strengthen the
towers, and the reign of Louis XIV., when a vast and elaborate system
of fortifications was constructed on scientific principles, under the
direction of Vauban.

The citizens of Ypres took a prominent part in most of the great
events which distinguished the heroic period of Flemish history. In
July, 1302, a contingent of 1,200 chosen men, '500 of them clothed in
scarlet and the rest in black,' were set to watch the town and castle
of Courtrai during the Battle of the Golden Spurs, and in the following
year the victory was celebrated by the institution of the Confraternity
of the Archers of St. Sebastian, which still exists at Ypres, the last
survivor of the armed societies which flourished there during the
Middle Ages. Seven hundred burghers of Ypres marched to Sluis, embarked
in the Flemish boats which harassed the French fleet during the naval
fight of June, 1340, and at the close of the campaign formed themselves
into the Confraternity of St. Michael, which lasted till the French
invasion of 1794. Forty years later we find no fewer than 5,000 of the
men of Ypres, who had now changed their politics, on the French side
at the Battle of Roosebeke, fighting in the thick mist upon the plain
between Ypres and Roulers on that fatal day which saw the death of
Philip van Artevelde and the triumph of the Leliarts.

[Illustration: ADINKERQUE

At the Kermesse.]

Next year, so unceasingly did the tide of war flow over the plain
of Flanders, an English army, commanded by Henry Spencer, Bishop of
Norwich, landed at Calais under the pretext of supporting the
partisans of Pope Urban VI., who then occupied the Holy See, against
the adherents of Pope Clement VII., who had established himself at
Avignon. The burghers of Ghent flocked to the English standard, and
the allies laid siege to Ypres, which was defended by the French and
the Leliarts, who followed Louis of Maele, Count of Flanders, and
maintained the cause of Clement.

At that time the gateways were the only part of the fortifications
made of stone. The ramparts were of earth, planted on the exterior
slope with a thick mass of thorn-bushes, interlaced and strengthened by
posts. Outside there were more defences of wooden stockades, and beyond
them two ditches, divided by a dyke, on which was a palisade of pointed
stakes. The town, thus fortified, was defended by about 10,000 men, and
on June 8, 1383, the siege was begun by a force consisting of 17,000
English and 20,000 Flemings of the national party, most of whom came
from Bruges and Ghent.

The English had been told that the town would not offer a strong
resistance, and on the first day of the siege 1,000 of them tried
to carry it at once by assault. They were repulsed; and after that
assaults by the besiegers and sorties by the garrison continued
day after day, the loss of life on both sides being very great. At
last the besiegers, finding that they could not, in the face of the
shower of arrows, javelins, and stones which met them, break through
the palisades and the sharp thorn fences (those predecessors of the
barbed-wire entanglements of to-day), force the gates, or carry the
ramparts, built three wooden towers mounted on wheels, and pushed them
full of soldiers up to the gates. But the garrison made a sortie,
seized the towers, destroyed them, and killed or captured the soldiers
who manned them.

Spencer on several occasions demanded the surrender of the town, but
all his proposals were rejected. The English pressed closer and closer,
but were repulsed with heavy losses whenever they delivered an assault.
The hopes of the garrison rose high on August 7, the sixty-first day
of the siege, when news arrived that a French army, 100,000 strong,
accompanied by the forces of the Count of Flanders, was marching to the
relief of Ypres. Early next morning the English made a fresh attempt
to force their way into the town, but they were once more driven
back. A little later in the day they twice advanced with the utmost
bravery. Again they were beaten back. So were the burghers of Ghent,
whom the English reproached for having deceived them by saying that
Ypres would fall in three days, and whose answer to this accusation
was a furious attack on one of the gates, in which many of them fell.
In the afternoon the English again advanced, and succeeded in forcing
their way through part of the formidable thorn hedge; but it was of no
avail, and once more they had to retire, leaving heaps of dead behind
them. After a rest of some hours, another attack was made on seven
different parts of the town at the same time. This assault was the most
furious and bloody of the siege, but it was the last. Spencer saw that,
in spite of the splendid courage of his soldiers and of the Flemish
burghers, it would be impossible to take the town before the French
army arrived, and during the night the English, with their allies
from Ghent and Bruges, retired from before Ypres. The failure of this
campaign left Flanders at the mercy of France; but the death of Count
Louis of Maele, which took place in January, 1384, brought in the House
of Burgundy, under whose rule the Flemings enjoyed a long period of
prosperity and almost complete independence.

It was believed in Ypres that the town had been saved by the
intercession of the Virgin Mary, its patron saint. In the Cathedral
Church of St. Martin the citizens set up an image of Notre
Dame-de-Thuine, that is, Our Lady of the Enclosures, an allusion to
the strong barrier of thorns which had kept the enemy at bay; and a
kermesse, appointed to be held on the first Sunday of August every year
in commemoration of the siege, received the name of the 'Thuindag,'
or Day of the Enclosures.[14] The people of Ypres, though they fought
on the French side, had good reason to be proud of the way in which
they defended their homes; but the consequences of the siege were
disastrous, for the commerce of the town never recovered the loss of
the large working-class population which left it at that time.

[Illustration: A FARMSTEADING]

The religious troubles of the sixteenth century left their mark on
Ypres as well as on the rest of Flanders. Everyone has read the glowing
sentences in which the historian of the Dutch Republic describes the
Cathedral of Antwerp, and tells how it was wrecked by the reformers
during the image-breaking in the summer of 1566. What happened on
the banks of the Scheldt appeals most to the imagination; but all over
Flanders the statues and the shrines, the pictures and the stores of
ecclesiastical wealth, with which piety, or superstition, or penitence
had enriched so many churches and religious houses, became the objects
of popular fury. There had been field-preaching near Ypres as early as
1562.[15] Other parts of West Flanders had been visited by the apostles
of the New Learning, and on August 15, 1566, the reformers swept down
upon Ypres and sacked the churches.

In the awful tragedy which soon followed, when Parma came upon the
scene, that 'spectacle of human energy, human suffering, and human
strength to suffer, such as has not often been displayed upon the stage
of the world's events', the town had its share of the persecutions
and exactions which followed the march of the Spanish soldiery; but
for more than ten years a majority of the burghers adhered to the
cause of Philip. In July, 1578, however, Ypres fell into the hands
of the Protestants, and became their headquarters in West Flanders.
Five years later Alexander of Parma besieged it. The siege lasted
until April of the following year, when the Protestants, worn out by
famine, capitulated, and the town was occupied by the Spaniards, who
'resorted to instant measures for cleansing a place which had been so
long in the hands of the infidels, and, as the first step towards this
purification, the bodies of many heretics who had been buried for years
were taken from their graves and publicly hanged in their coffins. All
living adherents to the Reformed religion were instantly expelled from
the place.'[15] By this time the population was reduced to 5,000 souls,
and the fortifications were a heap of ruins.

A grim memorial of those troublous times is still preserved at Ypres.
The Place du Musée is a quiet corner of the town, where a Gothic house
with double gables contains a collection of old paintings, medals,
instruments of torture, and some other curiosities. It was the Bishop
of Ypres who, at midnight on June 4, 1568, announced to Count Egmont,
in his prison at Brussels, that his hour had come; and the cross-hilted
sword, with its long straight blade, which hangs on the wall of the
Museum is the sword with which the executioner 'severed his head from
his shoulders at a single blow' on the following morning. The same
weapon, a few minutes later, was used for the despatch of Egmont's
friend, Count Horn.

[Illustration: YPRES

Place du Musée (showing Top Part of the Belfry).]

Before the end of that dismal sixteenth century Flanders regained
some of the liberties for which so much blood had been shed; but
while the Protestant Dutch Republic rose in the north, the 'Catholic'
or 'Spanish' Netherlands in the south remained in the possession of
Spain until the marriage of Philip's daughter Isabella to the Archduke
Albert, when these provinces were given as a marriage portion to the
bride. This was in 1599. Though happier times followed under the
moderate rule of Albert and Isabella, war continued to be the incessant
scourge of Flanders, and during the marching and countermarching of
armies across this battlefield of Europe, Ypres scarcely ever knew what
peace meant. Four times besieged and four times taken by the French in
the wars of Louis XIV., the town had no rest; and for miles all round
it the fields were scarred by the new system of attacking strong places
which Vauban had introduced into the art of war. Louis, accompanied by
Schomberg and Luxembourg, was himself present at the siege of 1678; and
Ypres, having been ceded to France by the Treaty of Nimeguen in that
year, was afterwards strengthened by fortifications constructed from
plans furnished by the great French engineer.[17]

In the year 1689 Vauban speaks of Ypres as a place 'formerly great,
populous, and busy, but much reduced by the frequent sedition and
revolts of its inhabitants, and by the great wars which it has
endured.' And in this condition it has remained ever since. Though the
period which followed the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714, when Flanders
passed into the possession of the Emperor Charles VI., and became
a part of the 'Austrian Netherlands,' was a period of considerable
improvement, Ypres never recovered its position, not even during the
peaceful reign of the Empress Maria Theresa. The revolution against
Joseph II. disturbed everything, and in June, 1794, the town yielded,
after a short siege, to the army of the French Republic. The name of
Flanders disappeared from the map of Europe. The whole of Belgium
was divided, like France, with which it was now incorporated, into
_départements_, Ypres being in the Department of the Lys. For twenty
years, during the wars of the Republic, the Consulate, and the Empire,
though the conscription was a constant drain upon the youth of
Flanders, who went away to leave their bones on foreign soil, nothing
happened to disturb the quiet of the town, and the fortifications
were falling into decay when the return of Napoleon from Elba set
Europe in a blaze. During the Hundred Days guns and war material were
hurried over from England, the old defences were restored, and new
works constructed by the English engineers; but the Battle of Waterloo
rendered these preparations unnecessary, and the military history of
Ypres came to an end when the short-lived Kingdom of the Netherlands
was established by the Congress of Vienna, though it was nominally
a place of arms till 1852, when the fortifications were destroyed.
Nowadays everything is very quiet and unwarlike. The bastions and
lunettes, the casemates and moats, which spread in every direction
round the town, have almost entirely disappeared, and those parts
of the fortifications which remain have been turned into ornamental
walks.[18]

But while so little remains of the works which were constructed, at
such a cost and with so much labour, for the purposes of war, the arts
of peace, which once flourished at Ypres, have left a more enduring
monument. There is nothing in Bruges or any other Flemish town which
can compare for massive grandeur with the pile of buildings at the west
end of the Grand' Place of Ypres. During two centuries the merchants of
Flanders, whose towns were the chief centres of Western commerce and
civilization, grew to be the richest in Europe, and a great portion of
the wealth which industry and public spirit had accumulated was spent
in erecting those noble civic and commercial buildings which are still
the glory of Flanders. The foundation-stone of the Halle des Drapiers,
or Cloth Hall, of Ypres was laid by Baldwin of Constantinople, then
Count of Flanders, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but more
than 100 years had passed away before it was completed. Though the name
of the architect who began it is unknown, the unity of design which
characterizes the work makes it probable that the original plans were
adhered to till the whole was finished. Nothing could be simpler than
the general idea; but the effect is very fine. The ground-floor of the
façade, about 150 yards long, is pierced by a number of rectangular
doors, over which are two rows of pointed windows, each exactly above
the other, and all of the same style. In the upper row every second
window is filled up, and contains the statue of some historical
character. At each end there is a turret; and the belfry, a square with
towers at the corners, rises from the centre of the building.

Various additions have been made from time to time to the original
Halle des Drapiers since it was finished in the year 1304, and of these
the 'Nieuwerck' is the most interesting. The east end of the Halle was
for a long time hidden by a number of wooden erections, which, having
been put up for various purposes after the main building was finished,
were known as the 'Nieuwe wercken,' or new works. They were pulled
down in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and replaced by the
stone edifice, in the style of the Spanish Renaissance, which now goes
by the name of the Nieuwerck, with its ten shapely arches supported by
slender pillars, above whose sculptured capitals rise tiers of narrow
windows and the steeply-pitched roof with gables of curiously carved
stone. Ypres had ceased to be a great commercial city long before the
Nieuwerck was built; but the Cloth Hall was a busy place during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when Ypres shared with Bruges the
responsibility of managing the Flemish branch of the Hanseatic League.

The extensive system of monopolies which the League maintained was,
as a matter of course, the cause of much jealousy and bad feeling.
In Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres defended their own privileges
against other towns, and quarrelled amongst themselves. The merchants
of Ypres had a monopoly which forbade all weaving for three leagues
round the town, under a penalty of fifty livres and confiscation of the
looms and linen woven; but the weavers in the neighbouring communes
infringed this monopoly, and sold imitations of Ypres linen cloth on
all hands. There was constant trouble between the people of Ypres and
their neighbours at Poperinghe. Sometimes the weavers of Ypres, to
enforce their exclusive privileges, marched in arms against Poperinghe,
and sometimes the men of Poperinghe retaliated by attacking their
powerful rivals. Houses were burnt, looms were broken up, and lives
were lost in these struggles, which were so frequent that for a long
time something like a chronic state of war existed between the two
places.

[Illustration: YPRES

Arcade under the Nieuwerck.]

Besides the troubles caused by the jealousy of other towns, intestine
disputes arising out of the perpetual contest between labour and
capital went on from year to year within the walls of Ypres. There, as
in the other Flemish towns, a sharp line was drawn between the working
man, by whose hands the linen was actually woven, and the merchants,
members of the Guilds, by whom it was sold. In these towns, which
maintained armies and made treaties of peace, and whose friendship
was sought by princes and statesmen, the artisans, whose industry
contributed so much to the importance of the community, resented any
infringement of their legal rights. By law the magistrates of Ypres
were elected annually, and because this had not been done in 1361 the
people rose in revolt against the authorities. The mob invaded the
Hôtel de Ville, where the magistrates were assembled. The Baillie, Jean
Deprysenaere, trusting to his influence as the local representative of
the Count of Flanders, left the council chamber, and tried to appease
the rioters. He was set upon and killed. Then the crowd rushed into
the council chamber, seized the other magistrates, and locked them
up in the belfry, where they remained prisoners for some days. The
leaders of the revolt met, and resolved to kill their prisoners, and
this sentence was executed on the Burgomaster and two of the Sheriffs,
who were beheaded in front of the Halle in the presence of their
colleagues.[19] It was by such stern deeds that the fierce democracy of
the Flemish communes preserved their rights.

Each town, however, stood for itself alone. The idea of government by
the populace on the market-place was common to them all, but they were
kept apart by the exclusive spirit of commercial jealousy. The thirst
for material prosperity consumed them; but they had no bond of union,
and each was ready to advance its own interests at the expense of its
rivals. Therefore, either in the face of foreign invasion, or when the
policy of some Count led to revolt and civil war, it was seldom that
the people of Flanders were united. 'L'Union fait la Force' is the
motto of modern Belgium, but in the Middle Ages there was no powerful
central authority round which the communes rallied. Hence the spectacle
of Ghent helping an English army to storm the ramparts of Ypres, or of
the Guildsmen of Bruges girding on their swords to strike a blow for
Count Louis of Maele against the White Hoods who marched from Ghent.

Hence the permanent unrest of these Flemish towns, the bickerings and
the sheddings of blood, the jealousy of trade pitted against trade or
of harbour against harbour, the insolence in the hour of triumph and
the abject submission in the hour of defeat, and all the evils which
discord brought upon the country. No town suffered more than Ypres from
the distracted state of Flanders, which, combined with the ravages of
war and the religious dissensions of the sixteenth century, reduced it
from the first rank amongst the cities of the Netherlands to something
very like the condition of a quiet country town in an out-of-the-way
corner of England. That is what the Ypres of to-day is like--a sleepy
country town, with clean, well-kept streets, dull and uninteresting
save for the stately Cloth Hall, which stands there a silent memorial
of the past.

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 13: Bicycles entering Belgium pay an _ad valorem_ duty of 12
per cent.]

[Footnote 14: Thuin,' or 'tuin,' in Flemish means an enclosed space,
such as a garden plot.]

[Footnote 15: Motley, _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, part ii., chapter
vi.]

[Footnote 16: Motley, _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, part ii., chapter
vi.]

[Footnote 17: Letter from Vauban to Louvois on the fortifications of
Ypres, 1689; Vereecke, pp. 325-357.]

[Footnote 18: The evolution of Ypres from a feudal tower on an
island until it became a great fortress can be traced in a very
interesting volume of maps and plans published by M. Vereecke in
1858, as a supplement to his _Histoire Militaire d'Ypres_. It shows
the first defensive works, those erected by Vauban, the state of the
fortifications between 1794 and 1814, and what the English engineers
did in 1815.]

[Footnote 19: Vereecke, p. 41.]

CHAPTER VIII

FURNES--THE PROCESSION OF PENITENTS

The traveller wandering amongst the towns and villages in this corner
of West Flanders is apt to feel that he is on a kind of sentimental
journey as he moves from place to place, and finds himself everywhere
surrounded by things which belong to the past rather than to the
present. The very guidebooks are eloquent if we read between the
lines. This place 'was formerly of much greater importance.' That 'was
formerly celebrated for its tapestries.' From this Hôtel de Ville 'the
numerous statuettes with which the building was once embellished have
all disappeared.' The tower of that church has been left unfinished
for the last 500 years. 'Fuimus' might be written on them all. And so,
some twenty miles north of Ypres, on a plain which in the seventeenth
century was so studded with earthen redoubts and serrated by long lines
of field-works and ditches that the whole countryside between Ypres and
Dunkirk was virtually one vast entrenched camp, we come to the town of
Furnes, another of the places on which time has laid its heavy hand.

The early history of Furnes is obscure, though it is generally supposed
to have grown up round a fortress erected by Baldwin Bras-de-Fer
to check the inroads of the Normans. It suffered much, like its
neighbours, from wars and revolutions,[20] and is now one of the
quietest of the Flemish towns. The market-place is a small square,
quaintly picturesque, surrounded by clusters of little brick houses
with red and blue tiled roofs, low-stepped gables, and deep mouldings
round the windows. Behind these dwelling-places the bold flying
buttresses of the Church of Ste. Walburge, whose relics were brought
to Furnes by Judith, wife of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, and the tower of St.
Nicholas, lift themselves on the north and east; and close together in
a corner to the west are the dark gray Hôtel de Ville and Palais de
Justice, in a room of which the judges of the Inquisition used to
sit.

[Illustration: FURNES

Grande Place and Belfry.]

Though some features are common to nearly all the Flemish towns--the
market-place, the belfry, the Hôtel de Ville, the old gateways, and
the churches, with their cherished paintings--yet each of them has
generally some association of its own. In Bruges we think of how the
merchants bought and sold, how the gorgeous city rose, clothed itself
in all the colours of the rainbow, glittered for a time, and sank in
darkness. In the crowded streets of modern Ghent, the busy capital of
East Flanders, we seem to catch a glimpse of bold Jacques van Artevelde
shouldering his way up to the Friday Market, or of turbulent burghers
gathering there to set Pope, or Count of Flanders, or King of Spain at
defiance. Ypres and its flat meadows suggest one of the innumerable
paintings of the Flemish wars, the 'battle-pieces' in which the Court
artists took such pride: the town walls with ditch and glacis before
them, and within them the narrow-fronted houses, and the flag flying
from steeple or belfry; the clumsy cannon puffing out clouds of smoke;
the King of France capering on a fat horse and holding up his baton
in an attitude of command in the foreground; and in the distance the
tents of the camp, where the travelling theatre was set up, and the
musicians fiddled, and an army of servingmen waited on the rouged and
powdered ladies who had followed the army into Flanders.

Furnes, somehow, always recalls the Spanish period. The Hôtel de
Ville, a very beautiful example of the Renaissance style, with its
rare hangings of Cordovan leather and its portraits of the Archduke
Albert and his bride, the Infanta Isabella, is scarcely changed since
it was built soon after the death of Philip II. The Corps de Garde
Espagnol and the Pavilion des Officiers Espagnols in the market-place,
once the headquarters of the whiskered bravos who wrought such ills
to Flanders, are now used by the Municipal Council of the town as a
museum and a public library; but the stones of this little square were
often trodden by the persecutors, with their guards and satellites,
in the years when Peter Titelmann the Inquisitor stalked through the
fields of Flanders, torturing and burning in the name of the Catholic
Church and by authority of the Holy Office. The spacious room in which
the tribunal of the Inquisition sat is nowadays remarkable only for
its fine proportions and venerable appearance; but, though it was not
erected until after the Spanish fury had spent its force, and at a
time when wiser methods of government had been introduced, it reminds
us of the days when the maxims of Torquemada were put in force amongst
the Flemings by priests more wicked and merciless than any who could
be found in Spain. And in the market-place the people must often have
seen the dreadful procession by means of which the Church sought to
strike terror into the souls of men. Those public orgies of clerical
intolerance were the suitable consummation of the crimes which had been
previously committed in the private conclave of the Inquisitors. The
burning or strangling of a heretic was not accompanied by so much pomp
and circumstance in small towns like Furnes as in the great centres,
where multitudes, led by the highest in the land, were present to
enjoy the spectacle; but the Inquisition of the Netherlands, under
which Flanders groaned for so many years, was, as Philip himself once
boasted, 'much more pitiless than that of Spain.'

[Illustration: FURNES

Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice.]

The groans of the victims will never more be heard in the
torture-chamber, nor will crowds assemble in the market-place to watch
the cortège of the _auto-da-fé_; but every year the famous Procession
of Penitents, which takes place on the last Sunday of July, draws many
strangers to Furnes.

It is said in Bruges that the ghost of a Spanish soldier, condemned
to expiate eternally a foul crime done at the bidding of the Holy
Office, walks at midnight on the Quai Vert, like Hamlet's father on the
terrace at Elsinore; and superstitious people might well fancy that a
spectre appears in the market-place of Furnes on the summer's night
when the town is preparing for the annual ceremony. The origin of the
procession was this: In the year 1650 a soldier named Mannaert, only
twenty-two years old, being in garrison at Furnes, went to Confession
and Communion in the Chapel of the Capucins. After he had received the
consecrated wafer, he was persuaded by one of his comrades, Mathurin
Lejeusne, to take it out of his mouth, wrap it in a cloth, and, on
returning to his lodging, fry it over a fire, under the delusion that
by reducing it to powder he would make himself invulnerable. The
young man was arrested, confessed his guilt, and himself asked for
punishment. Condemned to be strangled, he heard the sentence without
a murmur, and went to his death singing the penitential psalms. Soon
afterwards Mathurin Lejeusne, the instigator of the sacrilege, was
shot for some breach of military duty. This was regarded as a
proof of Divine justice, and the citizens resolved that something must
be done to appease the wrath of God, which they feared would fall upon
their town because of the outrage done, as they believed, to the body
of His Son. A society calling itself the 'Confrèrie de la Sodalité du
Sauveur Crucifié et de la Sainte Mère Marie, se trouvant en douleur
dessous la Croix, sur Mont Calvaire,' had been formed a few years
before at Furnes, and the members now decided that a Procession of
Penitents should walk through the streets every summer and represent to
the people the story of the Passion.

[Illustration: NIEUPORT

Interior of Church.]

Though the procession at Furnes is a thing of yesterday compared to
the Procession of the Holy Blood at Bruges, it is far more suggestive
of mediævalism. The hooded faces of the penitents, the quaint wooden
figures representing Biblical characters, the coarse dresses, the
tawdry colours, the strangely weird arrangement of the whole business,
take us back into the monkish superstitions of the Dark Ages, with
their mystery plays. It is best seen from one of the windows of the
Spanish House, or from the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville, on a sultry
day, when the sky is heavy with black clouds, and thunder growls over
the plain of Flanders, and hot raindrops fall now and then into the
muddy streets. The first figure which appears is a veiled penitent
bearing the standard of the Sodality. Then come, one after another,
groups of persons representing various scenes in the Bible story, each
group preceded by a penitent carrying an inscription to explain what
follows. Abraham with his sword conducts Isaac to the sacrifice on
Mount Moriah. A penitent holding the serpent and the cross walks before
Moses. Two penitents wearily drag a ear on which Joseph and Mary are
seen seated in the stable at Bethlehem. The four shepherds and the
three Magi follow. Then comes the flight into Egypt, with Mary on an
ass led by Joseph, the infant Christ in her arms. Later we see the
doctors of the Temple walking in two rows, disputing with the young
Jesus in their midst. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem is represented
by a crowd of schoolchildren waving palm-branches and singing hosannahs
round Jesus mounted on an ass. The agony in the garden, Peter denying
his Lord and weeping bitterly, Jesus crowned with thorns, Pilate in
his judgment-hall, the Saviour staggering beneath the cross, the
Crucifixion itself, the Resurrection and the Ascension, are all
shown with the crude realism of the Middle Ages. There are penitents
bearing ponderous crosses on their shoulders, or carrying in their
hands the whips, the nails, the thorns, the veil of the Temple rent in
twain, a picture of the darkened sun, and other symbols of the Passion.
At the end, amidst torches and incense and solemn chanting, the Host is
exhibited for the adoration of the crowd.

[Illustration: FURNES

Tower of St. Nicholas.]

Much of this spectacle is grotesque, and even ludicrous; but there is
also a great deal that is terribly real, for the penitents are not
actors playing a part, but are all persons who have come to Furnes for
the purpose of doing penance. They are disguised by the dark brown
robes which cover them from head to foot, so that they can see their
way only through the eyeholes in the hoods which hide their faces;
but as they pass silently along, bending under the heavy crosses, or
holding out before them scrolls bearing such words as, 'All they that
see Me laugh Me to scorn,' 'They pierced My hands and My feet,' or,
'See if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow,' there are glimpses
of delicate white hands grasping the hard wood of the crosses, and of
small, shapely feet bare in the mud. What sighs, what tears and vain
regrets, what secret tragedies of passion, guilt, remorse, may not be
concealed amongst the doleful company who tread their own Via Dolorosa
on that pilgrimage of sorrow through the streets of Furnes!

[Illustration: FURNES

In St. Walburge's Church.]

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 20: 'Furnes était devenue un _oppidium_, aux termes d'une
charte de 1183, qui avait à se défendre à la fois contre les incursions
des étrangers et les attaques d'une population "indocile et cruelle,"
comme l'appelle l'Abbé de Saint Riquier Hariulf, toujours déchirée par
les factions et toujours prête à la révolte.'--GILLIODTS VAN SEVEREN:
_Recueil des Anciennes Coutumes de la Belgique_; _Quartier de Furnes_,
vol. i., p. 28.]

CHAPTER IX

NIEUPORT--THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES

On the morning of July 2, in the year 1600, two armies--Spaniards,
under the Archduke Albert, and Dutchmen, under Prince Maurice of
Nassau--stood face to face amongst the dunes near Nieuport, where the
river Yser falls into the sea about ten miles west from Ostend.

In a field to the east of Nieuport there is a high, square tower, part
of a monastery and church erected by the Templars in the middle of the
twelfth century, which, though it escaped complete destruction, was
set on fire and nearly consumed when the town was attacked and laid in
ruins by the English and the burghers of Ghent in 1383, the year of
their famous siege of Ypres. It is now in a half-ruinous condition, but
in July, 1600, it was an important part of the fortifications, and from
the top the watchmen of the Spanish garrison could see the country all
round to a great distance beyond the broad moat which then surrounded
the strong walls of Nieuport. A few miles inland, to the south-west,
in the middle of the plain of Flanders, were the houses of Furnes,
grouped round the church tower of St. Nicholas. To the north a wide
belt of sandhills (the 'dunes'), with the sea beyond them, extended far
past Ostend on the east, and to the harbour of Dunkirk on the west.
Nearer, on the landward side of the dunes to the east, and within
less than a mile of each other, were the villages of Westende and
Lombaerdzyde. Close at hand, all round Nieuport, there were numerous
small lakes and watercourses connected with the channel of the Yser,
which, flowing past the town, widened out until it joined the sea, and
became a harbour, which on that morning was full of shipping.

A new chapter had just begun in the history of West Flanders when the
Dutchmen and the Spaniards thus met to slaughter each other amongst
the sand and rushes of the dunes. Philip II. had offered to cede the
Spanish Netherlands to his daughter, the Infanta Isabella, on condition
that a marriage was arranged between her and the Archduke Albert of
Austria. After the death of Philip II. this offer was confirmed by his
successor, Philip III., and the wedding took place in April, 1599.

[Illustration: NIEUPORT

A Fair Parishioner.]

Albert and Isabella were both entering on the prime of life, the
Archduke being forty and the Infanta thirty-two at the time of their
marriage, and were both of a character admirably fitted for the lofty
station to which they had been called. In their portraits, which hang,
very often frayed and tarnished, on the walls of the Hôtel de Ville of
many a Flemish town, there is nothing very royal or very attractive;
but, even after making every allowance for the flattery of contemporary
historians, there can be little doubt that their popularity was well
deserved--well deserved if even a part of what has been said about them
is true. The Archduke is always said to have taken Philip II. as a
model of demeanour, but he had none of the worst faults of the sullen,
powerful despot, with that small mind, that 'incredibly small' mind of
his, and cold heart, cold alike to human suffering and human love, who
had held the Flemings, whom he hated, for so many years in the hollow
of his hand. His grave mien and reserved habits, probably acquired
during his sojourn at the Court of Spain, were distasteful to the gay
and pleasure-loving people of Flanders, who would have preferred a
Prince more like Charles V., whose versatility enabled him to adapt
himself to the customs of each amongst the various races over whom he
ruled. Nevertheless, if they did not love him they respected him, and
were grateful for the moderation and good feeling which distinguished
his reign, and gave their distracted country, after thirty years of
civil war, a period of comparative tranquillity.

The Infanta Isabella, _débonnaire_, affable, tolerant, and
noble-hearted, as she is described, gained the hearts of the Flemings
as her husband never did. 'One could not find any Court more truly
royal or more brilliant in its public fêtes, which sometimes recall
the splendid epoch of the House of Burgundy. Isabella loves a country
life. She is often to be seen on horseback, attending the tournaments,
leading the chase, flying the hawk, taking part in the sports of the
bourgeoise, shooting with the crossbow, and carrying off the prize.'
Above all things, her works of charity endeared her to the people. In
time of war she established hospitals for the wounded, for friends and
enemies alike, where she visited them, nursed them, and dressed their
wounds with her own hands, with heroic courage and tenderness.[21]

Even on their first coming into Flanders, before their characters were
known except by hearsay, they were received with extraordinary
enthusiasm. Travelling by way of Luxembourg, they came to Namur, where
their first visit was made the occasion of a military fête, conducted
under the personal supervision of Comte Florent de Berlaimont. At
Nivelles the Duc d'Arschot paid out of his own purse the cost of the
brilliant festivities to which the people of Brabant flocked in order
to bid their new rulers welcome, and himself led the procession,
accompanied by the Archbishop of Malines and the Bishop of Antwerp. So
they journeyed on amidst scenes of public rejoicing until they came to
Brussels, where they established their Court in accordance with the
customs and ceremonies which had been usual under the Dukes of Burgundy
and the Kings of Spain.

[Illustration: NIEUPORT

Hall and Vicarage.]

But when the Archdukes, as they were called, passed from town to town
on this Royal progress, the phantoms of war, pestilence, and famine
hung over the land. The great cities of Flanders had been deserted
by thousands of their inhabitants. The sea trade of the country had
been destroyed by the vigorous blockade which the Dutch ships of war
maintained along the coast. Religious intolerance had driven the most
industrious of the working classes to find a refuge in Holland or
England. Villages lay in ruins, surrounded by untilled fields and
gardens run to seed. Silent looms and empty warehouses were seen on
every side. To such a pass had the disastrous policy of the Escurial
brought this fair province of the Spanish Empire! From all parts of
Flanders the cry for peace went up, but the time for peace was not yet
come.[22]

The new reign had just begun when Maurice of Nassau suddenly invaded
Flanders with a great force, and laid siege to Nieuport, the garrison
of which, reinforced by an army, at the head of which the Archduke
Albert had hurried across Flanders, was under the command of the
Archduke himself, and many Spanish Generals of great experience in the
wars.

Though the Court at Brussels had been taken by surprise, the Dutch army
was in a position of great danger. Part of it lay on the west side of
the Yser, and part to the east, amongst the dunes near Lombaerdzyde
and Westende, with a bridge of boats thrown across the river as their
only connection. Their ships were at anchor close to the shore; but
Prince Maurice frankly told his men that it was useless to think of
embarking in case of defeat, and that, therefore, they must either
win the day or perish there, for the Spaniards were before them
under the protection of Nieuport, the river divided them, the sea was
behind them, and it would be impossible for a beaten army to escape by
retreating through the dunes in the direction of Ostend.

[Illustration: NIEUPORT
The Quay, with Eel-boats and Landing-stages.]

Such was the position of affairs beneath the walls of Nieuport at
sunrise on July 2, 1600. The morning was spent by the Dutch in
preparing for battle. Towards noon the Spanish leaders held a council
of war, at which it was decided to attack the enemy as soon as
possible, and about three o'clock the battle began. A stiff breeze from
the west, blowing up the English Channel, drove clouds of sand into
the eyes of the Spaniards, and the bright rays of the afternoon sun,
shining in their faces as they advanced to the attack, dazzled and
confused them. But, in spite of these disadvantages, it seemed at first
as if the fortunes of the day were to go in their favour.

The bridge of boats across the Yser was broken, and some of the Dutch
regiments, seized by a sudden panic, began to retreat towards the sea;
but, finding it impossible to reach the ships, they rallied, and began
once more to fight with all the dogged courage of their race. For some
hours the battle was continued with equal bravery on both sides, the
Spaniards storming a battery which the Dutch had entrenched amongst
the dunes, and the Dutch defending it so desperately that the dead and
wounded lay piled in heaps around it. But at last the Spanish infantry
were thrown into confusion by a charge of horsemen; the Archduke Albert
was wounded, and had to retire from the front to have his injuries
attended to. Prince Maurice ordered a general advance of all his army,
and in a few minutes the enemy were fleeing from the battlefield,
leaving behind them 3,000 dead, 800 prisoners, and more than 100
standards. The loss on the Dutch side was about 2,000.

The Archduke Albert, who had narrowly escaped being himself taken
prisoner, succeeded in entering Nieuport safely with what remained of
his army. The town remained in the hands of the Spaniards, for Prince
Maurice, after spending some days in vain attempts to capture it,
marched with his whole force to Ostend, where soon afterwards began the
celebrated siege, which was to last for three long years, and about
which all Europe never tired of talking.[23]

[Illustration: NIEUPORT

The Town Hall.]

The history of Nieuport since those days has been the history of a
gradual fall. Its sea trade disappeared slowly but surely; the fishing
industry languished; the population decreased year by year; and it
has not shared to any appreciable extent in the prosperity which has
enriched other parts of Flanders since the Revolution of 1830. It is
now a quiet, sleepy spot, with humble streets, which remind one of some
fishing village on the east coast of Scotland. Men and women sit at the
doors mending nets or preparing bait. The boats, with their black hulls
and dark brown sails, move lazily up to the landing-stages, where a few
small craft, trading along the coast, lie moored. Barges heavily laden
with wood are pulled laboriously through the locks of the canals which
connect the Yser with Ostend and Furnes. The ancient fortifications
have long since disappeared, with the exception of a few grass-grown
mounds; and only the grim tower of the Templars, standing by itself
in a field on the outskirts of the town, remains to show that this
insignificant place was once a mighty stronghold.

In those old Flemish towns, however, it is always possible to find
something picturesque; and here we have the Cloth Hall, with its low
arches opening on the market-place, and the Gothic church, one of the
largest in Flanders, with its porch and tower, where the bell-ringers
play the chimes and the people pass devoutly to the services of the
church. But that is all. Nieuport has few attractions nowadays, and
is chiefly memorable in Flemish history because under its walls they
fought that bloody 'Battle of the Dunes,' in which the stubborn
strength and obstinacy of the Dutch overcame the fiery valour of the
Spaniards.

They are all well-nigh forgotten now, obstinate Dutchman and valiant
Spaniard alike. Amongst the dunes not a vestige remains of the
field-works for which they fought. Bones, broken weapons and shattered
breastplates, and all the débris of the fight, were long ago buried
fathoms deep beneath mounds of drifting sand. Old Nieuport--Nieuport
Ville, as they call it now--for which so much blood was shed, is
desolate and dreary with its small industries and meagre commerce; but
a short walk to the north brings us to Nieuport-Bains, and to the gay
summer life which pulsates all along the Flemish coast, from La Panne
on the west to the frontiers of Holland.

[Illustration: NIEUPORT

Church Porch (Evensong).]

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 21: De Gerlache, i. 260.]

[Footnote 22: _L'Abbé Nameche_, xxi. 6-8.]

[Footnote 23: 'Le siège d'Ostende fut, pendant ces trois ans,
la fable et la nouvelle de l'Europe; on ne se lassait pas d'en
parler. Des princes, des étrangers de toutes les nations venaient y
assister.'--_L'Abbé Nameche_, xxi. 24.]

CHAPTER X

THE COAST OF FLANDERS

To walk from Nieuport Ville to the Digue de Mer at Nieuport-Bains is
to pass in a few minutes from the old Flanders, the home of so much
romance, the scene of so many stirring deeds, from the market-places
with the narrow gables heaped up in piles around them, from the
belfries soaring to the sky, from the winding streets and the
narrow lanes, in which the houses almost touch each other, from the
tumble-down old hostelries, from the solemn aisles where the candles
glimmer and the dim red light glows before the altar, from the land
of Bras-de-Fer, and Thierry d'Alsace, and Memlinc, and Van Eyck, and
Rubens, the land which was at once the Temple and the Golgotha of
Europe, into the clear, broad light of modern days.

The Flemish coast, from the frontiers of France to the frontiers of
Holland, is throughout the same in appearance. The sea rolls in and
breaks upon the yellow beach, which extends from east to west for some
seventy kilometres in an irregular line, unbroken by rocks or cliffs.
Above the beach are the dunes, a long range of sandhills, tossed into
all sorts of queer shapes by the wind, on which nothing grows but
rushes or stunted Lombardy poplars, and which reach their highest
point, the Hoogen-Blekker, about 100 feet above the sea, near Coxyde,
a fishing village four or five miles from Nieuport. Behind the dunes a
strip of undulating ground ('Ter Streep'), seldom more than a bare mile
in width, covered with scanty vegetation, moss, and bushes, connects
the barren sandhills with the cultivated farms, green fields, and
woodlands of the Flemish plain. On the other side of the Channel the
chalk cliffs and rocky coast of England have kept the waves in check;
but the dunes were, for many long years, the only barrier against the
encroachments of the sea on Flanders. They are, however, a very weak
defence against the storms of autumn and winter. The sand drifts like
snow before the wind, and the outlines of these miniature mountain
ranges change often in a single night. At one time, centuries ago,
this part of Flanders, which is now so bare, was, it is pretty clear,
covered by forests, the remains of which are still sometimes found
beneath the subsoil inland and under the sea. When the great change
came is unknown, but the process was probably gradual. At an early
period, here, as in Holland, the fight against the invasions of the
sea began, and the first dykes are said to have been constructed in
the tenth century. The first was known as the Evendyck, and ran from
Heyst to Wenduyne. Others followed, but they were swept away, and now
only a few traces of them are to be found, buried beneath the sand and
moss.[24]

[Illustration: THE DUNES

A Stormy Evening.]

The wild storms of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries changed
the aspect of the coast of Flanders. Nieuport rose in consequence
of one of these convulsions of Nature, when the inhabitants of
Lombaerdzyde, which was then a seaport, were driven by the tempests
to the inland village of Santhoven, the name of which they changed
to 'Neoportus'--the new harbour. This was in the beginning of the
twelfth century, and thenceforth the struggle against the waves went
on incessantly. Lands were granted by Thierry d'Alsace on condition
that the owner should construct dykes, and Baldwin of Constantinople
appointed guardians of the shore, charged with the duty of watching
the sea and constructing defensive works. But the struggle was carried
on under the utmost difficulties. In the twelfth century the sea burst
in with resistless force upon the low-lying ground, washing away the
dunes and swallowing up whole towns. The inroads of the waves, the
heavy rains, and the earthquakes, made life so unendurable that there
were thousands who left their homes and emigrated to Germany.

Later, in the thirteenth century, there was a catastrophe of appalling
dimensions, long known as the 'Great Storm,' when 40,000 Flemish men
and women perished. This was the same tempest which overran the Dutch
coast, and formed the Zuyder Zee, those 1,400 square miles of water
which the Dutch are about to reclaim and form again into dry land. In
the following century the town of Scarphout, in West Flanders, was
overwhelmed, and the inhabitants built a new town for themselves on
higher ground, and called it Blankenberghe, which is now one of the
most important watering-places on the coast.

Ever since those days this constant warfare against the storms has
continued, and the sea appears to be bridled; but anyone who has
watched the North Sea at high tide on a stormy day beating on the
shores of Flanders, and observed how the dunes yield to the pressure
of the wind and waves, and crumble away before his eyes, must come to
the conclusion that the peril of the ocean is not yet averted, and can
understand the meaning of the great modern works, the _digues de mer_,
or sea-fronts, as they would be called in England, which are being
gradually constructed at such immense cost all along the coast.

A most interesting and, indeed, wonderful thing in the recent history
of the Netherlands is the rapid development of the Flemish littoral
from a waste of sand, with here and there a paltry fishing hamlet and
two or three small towns, into a great cosmopolitan pleasure resort.
Seventy-five years ago, when Belgium became an independent country,
and King Leopold I. ascended the throne, Ostend and Nieuport were the
only towns upon the coast which were of any size; but Ostend was then
a small fortified place, with a harbour wholly unsuited for modern
commerce, and Nieuport, in a state of decadence, though it possessed
a harbour, was a place of no importance. To-day the whole coast is
studded with busy watering-places, about twenty of them, most of
which have come into existence within the last fifteen years, with a
resident population of about 60,000, which is raised by visitors in
summer to, it is said, nearly 125,000. The dunes, which the old Counts
of Flanders fought so hard to preserve from the waves, and which were
at the beginning of the present century mere wastes of sand, a sort of
'no man's land', of little or no use except for rabbit-shooting, are
now valuable properties, the price of which is rising every year.

The work of turning the sand into gold, for that is what the
development of the Flemish coast comes to, has been carried out partly
by the State and partly by private persons. In early times this belt
of land upon the margin of the sea was held by the Counts of Flanders,
who treated the ridge of sandhills above high-water mark as a natural
rampart against the waves, and granted large tracts of the flat ground
which lay behind to various religious houses. At the French Revolution
these lands were sold as Church property at a very low figure, and
were afterwards allowed, in many cases, to fall out of cultivation by
the purchasers. So great a portion of the district was sold that at
the present time only a small portion of the dune land is the property
of the State--the narrow strip between Mariakerke and Middelkerke
on the west of Ostend, and that which lies between Ostend and
Blankenberghe on the east. The larger portions, which are possessed by
private owners, are partly the property of the descendants of those
who bought them at the Revolution, and partly of building societies,
incorporated for the purpose of developing what Mr. Hall Caine once
termed the 'Visiting Industry'--that is to say, the trade in tourists
and seaside visitors.[25]

[Illustration: AN OLD FARMER]

Plage de Westende, Le Coq, and Duinbergen--three charming summer
resorts--have been created by building societies. Nieuport-Bains and
La Panne have been developed by the owners of the adjoining lands, the
families of Crombez and Calmeyn. Wenduyne, on the other hand, which
lies between Le Coq and Blankenberghe, has been made by the State,
while the management of Blankenberghe, Heyst, and Middelkerke, as
bathing stations, is in the hands of their communal councils.

On the coast of Flanders, Ostend--'La Reine des Plages'--is, it need
hardly be said, the most important place, and its rise has been very
remarkable. Less than fifty years ago the population was in all about
15,000. During the last fifteen years it has increased by nearly
15,000, and now amounts to about 40,000 in round numbers. The increase
in the number of summer visitors has been equally remarkable. In the
year 1860 the list of strangers contained 9,700 names; three years ago
it contained no less than 42,000. This floating population of foreign
visitors who come to Ostend is cosmopolitan to an extent unknown at any
watering-place in England. In 1902 11,000 English, 8,000 French, 5,000
Germans, and 2,000 Americans helped to swell the crowds who walked on
the sea-front, frequented the luxurious and expensive hotels, or left
their money on the gaming-tables at the Kursaal. On one day--August 15,
1902--7,000 persons bathed.[26]

Blankenberghe, with its 30,000 summer visitors, comes next in
importance to Ostend, while both Heyst and Middelkerke are crowded
during the season. But the life at these towns is not so agreeable as
at the smaller watering-places. The hotels are too full, and have, as
a rule, very little except their cheapness to recommend them. There
is usually a body calling itself the _comité des fêtes_, the members
of which devote themselves for two months every summer to devising
amusements, sports, and competitions of various kinds, instead of
leaving people to amuse themselves in their own way, so that hardly
a day passes on which the strains of a second-rate band are not
heard in the local Kursaal, or a night which is not made hideous by
a barrel-organ, to which the crowd is dancing on the _digue_. At
the smaller places, however, though these also have their _comités
des fêtes_, one escapes to a great extent from these disagreeable
surroundings.

May, June, and September are the pleasantest months upon the coast of
Flanders, for the visitors are not so numerous, and even in mid-winter
the dunes are worth a visit. Then the hotels and villas fronting the
sea are closed, and their windows boarded up. The bathing-machines are
removed from the beach, and stand in rows in some sheltered spot. The
_digue_, a broad extent of level brickwork, is deserted, and the wind
sweeps along it, scattering foam and covering it with sand and sprays
of tangled seaweed. The mossy surface of the dunes is frozen hard
as iron, and often the hailstones rush in furious blasts before the
wind. For league after league there is not a sign of life, except the
seabirds flying low near the shore, or the ships rising and falling in
the waves far out to sea. In the winter months the coast of Flanders is
bleak and stormy, but the air in these solitudes is as health-giving as
in any other part of Europe.

Of late years the Government, represented by Comte de Smet de Naeyer,
has bestowed much attention on the development of the littoral,
and King Leopold II. has applied his great business talents to the
subject. Large sums of money have been voted by the Belgian Parliament
for the construction of public works and the extension of the means
of communication from place to place. There is a light railway, the
'Vicinal,' which runs along the whole coast, at a short distance from
the shore, from Knocke, on the east, to La Panne in the extreme west,
and which is connected with the system of State railways at various
points. From Ostend, through Middelkerke, to Plage de Westende, an
electric railway has been constructed, close to the beach and parallel
to the Vicinal (which is about a mile inland), on which trains run
every ten minutes during the summer season. As an instance of the speed
and energy with which these works for the convenience of the public
are carried out, when once they have been decided upon, it may be
mentioned that the contract for the portion of the electric line
between Middelkerke and Plage de Westende, a distance of about a mile
and a half, was signed on May 9, that five days later 200 workmen began
to cut through the dunes, embank and lay the permanent way, and that on
June 25, in spite of several interruptions owing to drifting sand and
heavy rains, the first train of the regular service arrived at Plage de
Westende.

[Illustration: LA PANNE

Interior of a Flemish Inn.]

A large sum, amounting to several millions of francs, is voted
every year for the protection of the shores of Flanders against
the encroachments of the sea, by the construction of these solid
embankments of brickwork and masonry, which will, in the course of a
few years, extend in an unbroken line along the whole coast from end to
end. The building of these massive sea-walls is a work of great labour
and expense, for what seems to be an impregnable embankment, perhaps 30
feet high and 90 feet broad, solid and strong enough to resist the most
violent breakers, will be undermined and fall to pieces in a few hours,
if not made in the proper way. A _digue_, no matter how thick, which
rests on the sand alone will not last. A thick bed of green branches
bound together must first be laid down as a foundation: this is
strengthened by posts driven through it into the sand. Heavy timbers,
resting on bundles of branches lashed together, are wedged into the
foundations, and slope inwards and upwards to within a few feet of the
height to which it is intended to carry the _digue_. On the top another
solid bed of branches is laid down, and the whole is first covered with
concrete, and then with bricks or tiles, while the edge of the _digue_,
at the top of the seaward slope, is composed of heavy blocks of stone
cemented together and bound by iron rivets.

_Digues_ made in this solid fashion, all of them higher above the
shore than the Thames Embankment is above the river, and some of them
broader than the Embankment, will, before very many years have passed,
stretch along the whole coast of Flanders without a break, and will
form not only a defence against the tides, but a huge level promenade,
with the dunes on one side and the sea on the other. This is a gigantic
undertaking, but it will be completed during the lifetime of the
present generation.

[Illustration: LA PANNE

A Flemish Inn--Playing Skittles.]

Another grandiose idea, which is actually being carried into effect,
is to connect all the seaside resorts on the coast of Flanders by
a great boulevard, 40 yards wide, with a road for carriages and
pedestrians, a track for motor-cars and bicycles, and an electric
railway, all side by side. Large portions of this magnificent roadway,
which is to be known as the 'Route Royale,' have already been completed
between Blankenberghe and Ostend, and from Ostend to Plage de Westende.
From Westende it will be continued to Nieuport-Bains, crossing the Yser
by movable bridges, and thence to La Panne, and so onwards, winding
through the dunes, over the French borders, and perhaps as far as Paris!

A single day's journey through the district which this 'Route Royale'
is to traverse will lead the traveller through the most interesting
part of the dunes, and introduce him to most of the favourite _plages_
on the coast of Flanders, and thus give him an insight into many
characteristic Flemish scenes. La Panne, for instance, and Adinkerque,
in the west and on the confines of France, are villages inhabited by
fishermen who have built their dwellings in sheltered places amongst
the dunes. The low white cottages of La Panne, with the strings of
dried fish hanging on the walls, nestle in the little valley from which
the place takes its name (for _panne_ in Flemish means 'a hollow'),
surrounded by trees and hedges, gay with wild roses in the summer-time.
Each cottage stands in its small plot of garden ground, and most of
the families own fishing-boats of their own, and farm a holding which
supplies them with potatoes and other vegetables.

For a long time these cottages were the only houses at La Panne, which
was seldom visited, except by a few artists; but about fifteen years
ago the surveyors and the architects made their appearance, paths and
roads were laid out, and, as if by magic, cottages and villas and the
inevitable _digue de mer_ have sprung up on the dunes near the sea, and
not very far from the original village. The chief feature of the new
La Panne is that the houses are, except those on the sea-front, built
on the natural levels of the ground, some perched on the tops of the
dunes, and others in the hollows which separate them. The effect is
extremely picturesque, and the example of the builders of La Panne is
being followed at other places, notably at Duinbergen, one of the very
latest bathing stations, which has risen during the last three years
about a mile to the east of Heyst.

Another very interesting place is the Plage de Westende, the present
terminus of the electric railway from Ostend. The old village of
Westende lies a mile inland on the highway between Nieuport and
Ostend, close to the scene of the Battle of the Dunes. This Plage is,
indeed, a model seaside resort, with a _digue_ which looks down upon
a shore of the finest sand, and from which, of an evening, one sees
the lights of Ostend in the east, and the revolving beacon at Dunkirk
shining far away to the west. The houses which front the sea, all
different from each other, are in singularly good taste; and behind
them are a number of detached cottages and villas, large and small, in
every variety of design. Ten years ago the site of this little town was
a rabbit warren; now everything is up to date: electric light in every
house, perfect drainage, a good water-supply, tennis courts, and an
admirable hotel, where even the passing stranger feels at home. Though
only three-quarters of an hour from noisy, crowded, bustling Ostend by
the railway, it is one of the quietest and most comfortable places on
the coast of Flanders, and can be reached by travellers from England in
a few hours.

Some years hence the lovely, peaceful Plage de Westende may have grown
too big, but when the sand has all been turned into gold, and when the
contractors and builders have grown rich, those who have known Westende
in its earlier days will think of it as the quiet spot about which at
one time only a few people used to stroll; where perhaps the poet
Verhaeren found something to inspire him; where many a long summer's
evening was spent in pleasant talk on history, and painting, and music
by a little society of men and women who spoke French, or German, or
English, as the fancy took them, and laughed, and quoted, and exchanged
ideas on every subject under the sun; where the professor of music once
argued, and sprang up to prove his point by playing--but that is an
allusion, or, as Mr. Kipling would say, 'another story.'

The district in which Westende lies, with Lombaerdzyde, Nieuport,
Furnes, and Coxyde close together, is the most interesting on the coast
of Flanders. Le Coq, on the other hand, is in that part of the dune
country which has least historical interest, and is chiefly known as
the place where the Royal Golf Club de Belgique has its course. It is
only twenty minutes from Ostend on the Vicinal railway, which has a
special station for golfers near the Club House. There is no _digue_,
and the houses are dotted about in a valley behind the dunes. This
place has a curious resemblance to a Swiss village.

A few years ago the owners of lands upon the Flemish littoral began to
grasp the fact that there was a sport called golf, on which Englishmen
were in the habit of spending money, and that it would be an addition
to the attractions of Ostend if, beside the racecourse, there was a
golf-course. King Leopold, who is said to contemplate using all the
land between the outskirts of Ostend and Le Coq for sporting purposes,
paid a large sum, very many thousands of francs, out of his own pocket,
and the golf-links at Le Coq were laid out. The Club House is handsome
and commodious, but, unfortunately, the course itself, which is the
main thing, is not very satisfactory, being far too artificial. The
natural 'bunkers' were filled up, and replaced by ramparts and ditches
like those on some inland courses in England. On the putting greens
the natural undulations of the ground have been levelled, and the
greens are all as flat and smooth as billiard-tables. There are clumps
of ornamental wood, flower-beds, and artificial ponds with goldfish
swimming in them. It is all very pretty, but it is hardly golf. What
with the 'Grand Prix d'Ostende,' the 'Prix des Roses,' the 'Prix des
Ombrelles, handicap libre, réservé aux Dames,' the 'Grand Prix des
Dames,' and a number of other _objets d'art_, which are offered for
competition on almost every day from the beginning of June to the
end of September, this is a perfect paradise for the pot-hunter and
his familiar friend Colonel Bogey. Real golf, the strenuous game,
which demands patience and steady nerves, perhaps, more than any other
outdoor game, is not yet quite understood by many Belgians; but the bag
of clubs is every year becoming more common on the Dover mail-boats.

Most of these golf-bags find their way to Knocke, where many of the
English colony at Bruges spend the summer, and which, as the coast of
Flanders becomes better known, is visited every year by increasing
numbers of travellers from the other side of the Channel. Knocke is in
itself one of the least attractive places on the Flemish littoral. The
old village, a nondescript collection of houses, lies on the Vicinal
railway about a mile from the sea, which is reached by a straight
roadway, and where there is a _digue_, numerous hotels, pensions, and
villas, all of which are filled to overflowing in the season. The air,
indeed, is perfect, and there are fine views from the _digue_ and the
dunes of the island of Walcheren, Flushing, and the estuary of the
Scheldt; but the place was evidently begun with no definite plan:
the dunes were ruthlessly levelled, and the result is a few unlovely
streets, and a number of detached houses standing in disorder amidst
surroundings from which everything that was picturesque has long since
departed.

But the dunes to the east are wide, and enclose a large space of
undulating ground; and here the Bruges Golf and Sports Club has its
links, which present a very complete contrast to the Belgian course
at Le Coq. The links at Knocke, if somewhat rough and ready, are
certainly sporting in the highest degree. Some of the holes, those
in what is known as the Green Valley, are rather featureless; but in
the other parts of the course there are numerous natural hazards,
bunkers, and hillocks thick with sand and rushes. It has no pretentions
to be a 'first-class' course (for one thing, it is too short), but
in laying out the eighteen holes the ground has been utilized to the
best advantage, and the Royal and Ancient game flourishes more at
Knocke than at any other place in Belgium. The owners of the soil and
the hotel-keepers, with a keen eye to business, and knowing that the
golfing alone brings the English, from whom they reap a golden harvest,
to Knocke, do all in their power to encourage the game, and it is quite
possible that before long other links may be established along the
coast. The soil of the strip behind the dunes is not so suitable for
golf as the close turf of St. Andrews, North Berwick, or Prestwick, for
in many places it consists of sand with a slight covering of moss; but
with proper treatment it could probably be improved and hardened. It is
merely a question of money, and money will certainly be forthcoming if
the Government, the communes, and the private owners once see that this
form of amusement will add to the popularity of the littoral.

A short mile's walk to the west of Knocke brings us to Duinbergen, one
of the newest of the Flemish _plages_, founded in the year 1901 by the
Société Anonyme de Duinbergen, a company in which some members of the
Royal Family are said to hold shares. At Knocke and others of the older
watering-places everything was sacrificed to the purpose of making
money speedily out of every available square inch of sand, and the
first thing done was to destroy the dunes. But at Duinbergen the good
example set by the founders of La Panne has been followed and improved
upon, and nothing could be more _chic_ than this charming little place,
which was planned by Herr Stübben, of Cologne, an architect often
employed by the King of the Belgians, whose idea was to create a small
garden city among the dunes. The dunes have been carefully preserved;
the roads and pathways wind round them; most of the villas and cottages
have been erected in places from which a view of the sea can be
obtained; and even the _digue_ has been built in a curve in order to
avoid the straight line, which is apt to give an air of monotony to
the rows of villas, however picturesque they may be in themselves,
which face the sea at other places. So artistic is the appearance of
the houses that the term 'Style Duinbergen' is used by architects to
describe it. Electric lighting, a copious supply of water rising by
gravitation to the highest houses, and a complete system of drainage,
add to the luxuries and comforts of this _plage_, which is one of the
best illustrations of the wonders which have been wrought among the
dunes by that spirit of enterprise which has done so much for modern
Flanders during the last few years.

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 24: Bortier, _Le Littoral de la Flandre au IX^e et au XIX^e
Siècles_.]

[Footnote 25: Letter to the Manx Reform League, November, 1903.]

[Footnote 26: I give these figures on the authority of M. Paul Otlet,
Advocate, of Brussels, to whom I am indebted for much information
regarding the development of the coast of Flanders. See also an article
by M. Otlet in _Le Cottage_, May 15 to June 15, 1904.]

CHAPTER XI

COXYDE--THE SCENERY OF THE DUNES

The whole of the coast-line is within the province of West Flanders,
and its development in recent years is the most striking fact in the
modern history of the part of Belgium with which this volume deals. The
change which has taken place on the littoral during the last fifteen
or twenty years is extraordinary, and the contrast between the old
Flanders and the new, between the Flanders which lingers in the past
and the Flanders which marches with the times, is brought vividly
before us by the difference between such mediæval towns as Bruges,
Furnes, or Nieuport, and the bright new places which glitter on the
sandy shores of the Flemish coast. But in almost every corner of the
dunes, close to these signs of modern progress, there is something to
remind us of that past history which is, after all, the great charm
of Flanders.

One of the most characteristic spots in the land of the
dunes is the village of Coxyde, which lies low amongst the sandhills,
about five miles west from Nieuport, out of sight of the sea, but
inhabited by a race of fisherfolk who, curiously enough, pursue their
calling on horseback. Mounted on their little horses, and carrying
baskets and nets fastened to long poles, they go into the sea to catch
small fish and shrimps. It is strange to see them riding about in the
water, sometimes in bands, but more frequently alone or in pairs; and
this curious custom, which has been handed down from father to son for
generations, is peculiar to the part of the coast which lies between La
Panne and the borders of France.

Near Coxyde, and at the corner where the road from Furnes turns in the
direction of La Panne, is a piece of waste ground which travellers on
the Vicinal railway pass without notice. But here once stood the famous
Abbey of the Dunes.

[Illustration: COXYDE

A Shrimper on Horseback.]

In the first years of the twelfth century a pious hermit named Lyger
took up his abode in these solitary regions, built a dwelling for
himself, and settled down to spend his life in doing good works and
in the practice of religion. Soon, as others gathered round him,
his dwelling grew into a monastery, and at last, in the year 1122, the
Abbey of the Dunes was founded. It was nearly half a century before
the great building, which is said to have been the first structure of
such a size built of brick in Flanders, was completed; but when at
last the work was done the Abbey was, by all accounts, one of the most
magnificent religious houses in Flanders, consisting of a group of
buildings with no less than 105 windows, a rich and splendid church, so
famous for its ornamental woodwork that the carvings of the stalls were
reproduced in the distant Abbey of Melrose in Scotland, and a library
which, as time went on, became a storehouse of precious manuscripts and
hundreds of those wonderfully illustrated missals on which the monks of
the Middle Ages spent so many laborious hours. We can imagine them in
the cells of Coxyde copying and copying for hours together, or bending
over the exquisitely coloured drawings which are still preserved in the
museums of Flanders.

But their most useful work was done on the lands which lay round the
Abbey. There were at Coxyde in the thirteenth century no fewer than
150 monks and 248 converts engaged at one time in cultivating the
soil.[27] They drained the marshes, and planted seeds where seeds
would grow, until, after years of hard labour on the barren ground,
the Abbey of the Dunes was surrounded by wide fields which had been
reclaimed and turned into a fertile oasis in the midst of that savage
and inhospitable desert.

When St. Bernard was preaching the Crusade in Flanders he came to
Coxyde. On his advice the monks adopted the Order of the Cistercians,
and their first abbot under the new rule afterwards sat in the chair of
St. Bernard himself as Abbot of Clairvaux. Thereafter the Cistercian
Abbey of the Dunes grew in fame, especially under the rule of St.
Idesbaldus, who had come there from Furnes, where he had been a Canon
of the Church of Ste. Walburge. 'It has also a special interest for
English folk. It long held lands in the isle of Sheppey, as well as the
advowson of the church of Eastchurch, in the same island. These were
bestowed on it by Richard the Lion-Hearted. The legend says that these
gifts were made to reward its sixth abbot, Elias, for the help he gave
in releasing Richard from captivity. Anyhow, Royal Charters, and
dues from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a Bull of Pope Celestine
III., confirmed the Abbey in its English possessions and privileges.
The Abbey seems to have derived little benefit from these, and finally,
by decision of a general congregation of the Cistercian Order, handed
them over to the Abbot and Chapter of Bexley, to recoup the latter for
the cost of entertaining monks of the Order going abroad, or returning
from the Continent, on business of the Order.'[28]

[Illustration: COXYDE

A Shrimper.]

The English invasion of the fifteenth century destroyed the work of the
monks in their fields and gardens, but the Abbey itself was spared;
and the great disaster did not come until a century later, when the
image-breakers, who had begun their work amongst the Gothic arches of
Antwerp, spread over West Flanders, and descended upon Coxyde. The
Abbey was attacked, and the monks fled to Bruges, carrying with them
many of their treasures, which are still to be seen in the collection
on the Quai de la Poterie, beyond the bridge which is called the Pont
des Dunes. The noble building, so long the home of so much piety and
learning, and from which so many generations of apostles had gone
forth to toil in the fields and minister to the poor, was abandoned,
and allowed to fall into ruins, until at last it gradually sunk into
complete decay, and was buried beneath the sands. Not a trace of it now
remains. History has few more piteous sermons to preach on the vanity
of all the works of men.

The fishermen on the coast of Flanders have, from remote times, paid
their vows in the hour of danger to Notre Dame de Lombaerdzyde. If they
escape from some wild storm they go on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving.
They walk in perfect silence along the road to the shrine, for not a
word must be spoken till they reach it; and these hardy seafaring men
may be seen kneeling at the altar of the old, weather-beaten church
which stands on the south side of the highway through the village, and
in which are wooden models of ships hung up as votive offerings before
an image of the Virgin, which is the object of peculiar veneration. The
Madonna of Lombaerdzyde did not prevail to keep the sea from invading
the village at the time when the inhabitants were driven to Nieuport,
but the belief in her miraculous power is as strong to-day as it was in
the Dark Ages.

[Illustration: ADINKERQUE

Village and Canal.]

There is a view of Lombaerdzyde which no one strolling on the dunes
near Nieuport should fail to see--a perfect picture, as typical
of the scenery in these parts as any landscape chosen by Hobbema or
Ruysdael. A causeway running straight between two lofty dunes of bare
sand, and bordered by stunted trees, forms a long vista at the end
of which Lombaerdzyde appears--a group of red-roofed houses, with
narrow gables and white walls, and in the middle the pointed spire
of the church, beyond which the level plain of Flanders, dotted with
other villages and churches and trees in formal rows, stretches away
into the distance until it merges in the horizon. Adinkerque, a
picturesque village beyond Furnes, is another place which calls to
mind many a picture of the Flemish artists in the Musée of Antwerp and
the Mauritshuis at The Hague; and the recesses of the dune country
in which these places are hidden has a wonderful fascination about
it--the irregular outlines of the dunes, some high and some low,
sinking here into deep hollows of firm sand, and rising there into
strange fantastic shapes, sometimes with sides like small precipices
on which nothing can grow, and sometimes sloping gently downwards and
covered with trembling poplars, spread in confusion on every side.
Often near the shore the sandy barrier has been broken down by the
wind or by the waves, and a long gulley formed, which cuts deep into
the dunes, and through which the sand drifts inland till it reaches a
steep bank clothed with rushes, against which it heaps itself, and so,
rising higher with the storms of each winter, forms another dune. This
process has been going on for ages. The sands are for ever shifting,
but moss begins to grow in sheltered spots; such wild flowers as can
flourish there bloom and decay; the poplars shed their leaves, and
nourish by imperceptible degrees the fibres of the moss; some hardy
grasses take root; and at length a scanty greensward appears. By such
means slowly, in the microcosm of the dunes, have been evolved out of
the changing sands places fit for men to live in, until now along the
strip which guards the coast of Flanders there are green glades gay
with flowers, and shady dells, and gardens sheltered from the wind,
plots of pasture-land, cottages and churches which seem to grow out of
the landscape, their colouring so harmonizes with the colouring which
surrounds them. And ever, close at hand, the sea is rolling in and
falling on the shore. 'Come unto these yellow sands,' and when the sun
is going down, casting a long bar of burnished gold across the water,
against which, perhaps, the sail of some boat looms dark for a moment
and then passes on, the sky glows in such a lovely, tender light that
those who watch it must needs linger till the twilight is fading away
before they turn their faces inland. There are few evenings for beauty
like a summer evening on the shores of Flanders.

FOOTNOTES.

[Footnote 27: Derode, _Histoire Religieuse de la Flandre Maritime_, p.
86.]

[Footnote 28: Robinson, _Bruges, an Historical Sketch_, p. 176.]

EAST FLANDERS AND BRABANT

CHAPTER XII

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 th

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