When the victorious Roman legions reached this outpost of Gaul, they found themselves opposed by men of two different races—the fishermen of the coast and the hunters of the hills and valleys further inland. In the first shock of battle, it was only the personal bravery of CÆsar that saved the legionaries from defeat, and eight years of campaigning were required before the Roman general could report the province subdued. The warlike tribes of the south were well-nigh destroyed. Those, on the other hand, who lived on the sand dunes or in hovels raised on piles above the tides, were more fortunate. CÆsar himself with five legions Transalpine Gaul was, by its conqueror, formed into a single province, of which the land of the Belgae was the northern part, but under Augustus it was divided into three provinces, the most distant one named Belgica. The people of southern Belgica, being nearer to the Roman civilization of Gaul, lost their primitive customs, their energy and courage. The people of the north, less under the influence of the conquerors, kept their love of independence, their frugal, industrious habits, added trade with England to their fisheries as a means of livelihood, and developed a strong stock, to which the future growth of the country was due. Three hundred years after CÆsar’s conquest, the Salian Franks, a confederacy of German tribes, invaded the country and settled between the Rhine and the Waal. They were resisted by most of the Gauls but welcomed by the Menapians of the Belgic coast. There was, however, no real bond of union between the peaceful, hard-working people of the lowlands and the warlike Franks. The shore dwellers north of the Rhine formed with the tribes on the coasts of the German Ocean At this early date the limits were already sharply marked out of the two great divisions of Belgium that have persisted until today—Flanders and the Walloon country. Flanders received continual additions from the German tribes who, worsted in the struggle with Rome, fled across the Rhine, and became the land of the Flemings (the “e” at first pronounced long), or fugitives. Retaining their Teutonic traits, these kept steadily at their difficult task of winning comfort and civilization from the hard conditions in which they were placed. Even today they cling tenaciously to their Flemish tongue, which is a variety of Low German, differing but little from Dutch. The Franks of southern Belgica, on the other The successors of Clovis had many a struggle with the people of the Low Countries, but gradually the Frankish, or Merovingian, kings yielded to the Roman luxury that surrounded them and became a race of “do-nothings.” Then arose those mayors of the palace, of whom Pepin of Heristall, the Belgian, was the father of Charles Martel, the “Hammer” whose vigorous blows crushed the Saracens and drove them from French soil. The year 800 found Charlemagne, mightiest of the Franks, in possession of the Western Empire. The steady progress of the Netherlands was seen in the rise of the towns of Bruges, Ghent, Courtrai and Antwerp, not alone as trading centers but as seats of manufacture. The system of dikes for the protection of the lowlands from the sea had at that time been established by the united efforts of all the people of the region, who had thereby learned in some measure the value of coÖperation. Christianity, introduced in the reign of Clovis, had gained much power. It is impossible to overestimate the work of monks and nuns, whose religious houses were at once schools, hospitals, book marts and universities. Tournai and LiÈge were the seats of bishops, who were even more powerful than the counts who played such a great part in the history of the period. The count was at first only an officer of the king, not an hereditary noble, and received as his salary the revenue of the lands which he held during his term of office. The tenants on these estates were completely in his power. If he could muster a sufficient force of armed men he might even defy the king, and thus retain his office for a longer time. About the middle of the ninth century, Baldwin, a Fleming of great power, who had defended the coast against the Normans, carried off Judith, daughter of the French king, Charles the Bald. Much against his will, Charles was obliged to give his consent to the marriage, and settled upon Baldwin all the land between the Scheldt and the Somme. Baldwin, named Bras-de-fer (of the Iron Arm), was thus the first Count of Flanders. Some authorities consider this the oldest hereditary title of nobility Other powerful vassals of this period were the counts of Louvain and Namur. Still mightier was the Bishop of LiÈge, who felt himself so strong that he even made an attempt—unsuccessful, however—to seize the domain of the Count of Louvain. Under Baldwin II, son of Bras-de-fer, who married the daughter of Alfred the Great of England, the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Courtrai and Ypres were fortified, and thus insured the opportunity of becoming the great mediÆval centers of freedom and progress. After cloth weaving was begun, the first markets were opened at Ghent, Courtrai and Bruges. The word kermesse, the Belgian name for fair or fÊte, is linked in an interesting way with these markets of the Middle Ages. They were called kerk (church) messe (market), because held around the church or cathedral, and only the inconvenient letter k needed to be dropped out to give the word kermesse. At first sight, the history of the Netherlands from about the tenth century down to the nineteenth appears a confused and confusing story of wars and uprisings, of conspiracies and persecutions—count against bishop, city against After the break-up of the Roman Empire, when there were no strong central governments in Europe, when practically the only law was the will of the strongest, it was inevitable that a vast number of petty chieftains should gather about them as many followers as possible, both in order to protect themselves and to plunder others. The ablest of these, by waging a continual warfare, either killed off many of their rivals and took possession of their lands, or reduced them to submission and made them tenants of their own. These tenants held their land only on condition of furnishing a certain number of men for their lord’s wars and paying certain taxes, later called “aids,” for his support. When this state of society became finally Below this landed aristocracy were the two classes of villains and serfs, who led a miserable existence, possessing scarcely one of what we consider the inalienable rights of man. Both villains and serfs were slaves, bound to the soil, but the servitude of the latter was hopeless and irremediable. Serfs must always be serfs. But the villains had the privilege of earning their freedom. When Peter the Hermit, a Walloon of the province of LiÈge, made his impassioned appeals to Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from the Saracen, it was Godfrey of Bouillon, another Walloon, who laid aside his titles and sold his possessions that he might equip an army for the conquest of the Holy Land. Godfrey was made “Advocate” of Jerusalem, It is told of Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, that he challenged and defeated a mighty Saracen in single combat. The device on his shield, which Philip bore away as a trophy, was a black lion on a field of gold. This became the emblem of Flanders. But Philip of Alsace was noted not alone for his prowess in battle; he was an enlightened ruler for his age. He resigned the privileges of “mainmorte” and “half-have.” By “mainmorte,” if a man died without leaving direct heirs, his property went to the count. By “half-have,” half of all the property left by any of his vassals went to the count. In the year 1200, Baldwin, Count of Hainault and Flanders, led the fifth crusade. Turning aside from the road to Jerusalem, he captured Constantinople, and was crowned Emperor in St. Sophia. During the fifty years that Baldwin and his descendants reigned in Constantinople, ships from Flanders brought the luxuries of the Orient to Western Europe. Many cargoes The influence of the Crusades upon social progress in Belgium was not less marked than upon commerce. Shrewd townsmen who furnished their lord with means to equip his followers exacted in return a pledge of additional freedom. While the powerful nobles were in the Holy Land, moreover, their tenants were relieved from their demands, and made progress in all the arts of life. When, after the death of Charlemagne, the river Scheldt was made the boundary of France, to the west of that river lay West Francia, which became France; to the east stretched Lotharingia, shortened to Lorraine, the land of Lothaire, a narrow strip separating France and Germany. As the various counts who possessed the Netherlands grew stronger the Duchy of Lorraine grew weaker. Flanders especially, under the rule of counts descended from Baldwin the Iron-Armed, made great progress—lowlands were protected by dikes, forests were cleared away, and towns were built. It was easily the most powerful part of The townspeople of this period fared rather better than those in the rural districts. Many of the towns had originated as a cluster of peasants’ huts, grouped around a monastery for protection. The inhabitants were tenants of the abbot, who in time became one of the powerful lords of the land. But the necessary organization of town life gave the citizens the habit, to some extent, of working together. Consequently, when a body of townsmen presented their plea for more privileges, they were able to obtain better terms than could be gained by single peasants pleading separately. So great was the prosperity of the towns that, by the year 1066, Flanders was able to assist William the Conqueror, who had married Matilda, daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, and Flemish knights fought side by side with the Normans at Hastings. On the famous Bayeux tapestry—which, however, is not real tapestry—wrought by Matilda, is pictured the story of the Conquest of England. Woolen cloths, the work of Flemish weavers, But the sturdy people of these thriving towns were very jealous of the fundamental rights which had come down to them from their German ancestors. A painting by the Belgian artist, Hennebicq, depicts a landmark in the history of the Netherlands—Baldwin VI, Count of Flanders, granting a charter of rights to the citizens of Grammont, whose representatives stand before him with drawn swords. Baldwin, a kingly, dignified figure, stands on a low platform, his left hand resting on his sheathed sword, while the townsmen before him swear allegiance in return for the guarantee of their liberties. The story is this: Count Baldwin bought the land belonging to one Baron Gerard, and laid it out as a town, to which the name Grammont was given, meaning Gerard’s Mont, or hill. To the men of this town the Count gave, in 1068, the first charter of liberties ever granted in Europe. Not until 1215 was England’s Magna Charta wrung from King John. By the charter were granted “(1) individual liberty; (2) the right to hold, buy, sell, inherit, In the words of an eminent writer, the Belgian commune of this period was essentially “a confederacy of the inhabitants of a town, living within the gates, who bound themselves by an oath to lend advice and a helping hand and to be true to one another, mutually and individually.” The most striking prerogatives of this free association, says the same author, were “(1) a municipal counting-house; (2) a common house, or town hall; (3) a seal; (4) a belfry (belfort in Flemish), a lofty tower which contained the town bell, and which ordinarily served as a prison or a repository for the archives; and (5) an arsenal.” Besides these communal rights, there were individual, It was this same Baldwin VI who granted the charter of Grammont of whom the old chroniclers wrote: “He might be seen riding across Flanders with a falcon or hawk on his wrist; he ordered his bailiffs to carry a white staff, long and straight, in sign of justice and clemency; no one was allowed to go out armed; the labourer could sleep without fear with his doors open, and he could leave his plow in the fields without apprehension of being robbed.” When the King of France, the nominal overlord of the greater part of Flanders, interfered in their government in 1071, the citizens quickly The Flemish burghers of the twelfth century have the honour of initiating a mighty forward step in civilization. In every country of Europe, up to that time, when one man had wronged another the injured party took justice into his own hands and punished his enemy himself. The Church had, by the Truce of God, prohibited these blood feuds on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of every week, and also on certain holy days, but Philip of Alsace was the first ruler who did away with this relic of barbarism and ordered that henceforth every man should bring his quarrel for trial to the juries chosen by the By 1260, the cities of Flanders had become so strong that they dared to resist their count, and passed from his rule to that of the French king, whose aid they had sought. Forty years later, they rose against this new master. The townsmen of Bruges slaughtered the French garrison, and the following year won the “battle of the spurs” at Courtrai, after which seven hundred golden spurs were picked up on the field. Early that morning, twenty thousand artisans of Bruges, in their working dress and armed with boar-spears or plowshares set in long clubs, received on their knees the blessing of the Church, raised a bit of Flemish soil to their lips, kissed it, and vowed to die for their country, then gave battle to sixty thousand of the steel-clad knights and men-at-arms of France. A few years later, Brabant compelled its duke to grant it an assembly which should transact all legal and judicial business, and should consist of fourteen deputies, four chosen from the nobles and the other ten from the people. The towns soon began to join their forces. Brabant and Flanders formed a sort of union. But the burghers owed allegiance not to a country but only to a small bit of a country, each to We speak of the cities of the Netherlands, but in the thirteenth century they bore little resemblance to the cities of today. They were walled towns, to be sure, but the walls were generally ramparts of earth with an outside covering of thick planking. Within the walls the better class of people lived in low wooden dwellings roofed with thatch, the churches and the houses of the noblemen and the chief citizens were often built of stone, but the poor, we may imagine, found shelter in rude mud huts. The “streets” were usually mere crooked cart tracks, the dumping ground for the rubbish of the community, in which boards and straw were thrown down in an effort to bridge the numerous holes and pools of muddy water. In Bruges and Ghent, as we learn from the ancient records, the principal streets were paved with stone from the quarries near the Meuse. The squares were, perhaps, not unlike the “common” of a New England village, open grassy places in which were pumps—the common source of water supply for the inhabitants—and drinking Edward III of England now laid claim to the crown of France. Jacob van Artevelde, the Brewer of Ghent, rallied the Flemings against the tyranny of their count, who was supported by France, and threw off his yoke. Among the petty jealousies and rivalries of that mediÆval time, the Great Brewer—so called only because he was registered in the brewers’ guild—stands out as the lone statesman of his land. (Van Artevelde at first belonged to the aristocratic clothmakers’ guild, and perhaps changed to that of the brewers in order to ally himself more closely with the democracy of the city.) His outlook was broader than the narrow circle of municipal interests. He endeavoured to unite The combined English and Flemish fleets gained the great naval victory of Sluys over the French. The Great Brewer was made ruward, or conservator of the peace, of Flanders, and used his almost kingly power to strengthen the alliance with England and to favour the trade with that country. But he was too great a man for his time, and the traders of his native city were easily stirred by a trumped-up charge that he was plotting to deliver Flanders to the Black Prince. He met his death in 1345, at the hands of a mob, before his own doorway. The confederacy of Flemish towns still held together for a while. They assisted Edward in the siege and capture of Calais, and when he left them to their own resources, they compelled their young Count, Louis de Maele, to recognize their right to govern themselves, and still maintained their independence of France. The wiles of Louis and the fierce hatred between Gantois and Brugeois once more plunged the In the period between the two Arteveldes, the Joyous Entry became the bulwark of the liberties of Brabant and afterward of the whole country. Duke John III of Brabant summoned to Louvain, in 1354, representatives of all the cities of Brabant and Limburg, and, announcing the marriage of his daughter Johanna and Wenzel of Luxembourg, asked that they might be confirmed as rulers of the duchy after his death. The delegates were shrewd traders. They granted his request only in consideration of a corresponding grant on his part of a liberal charter to Brabant. The Joyous Entry became the title of the charter because it was not proclaimed until Johanna and Wenzel made their |