DESCENDED from a poor but illustrious family of the best nobility of Champagne, and nearly allied to the royal house of France—a man of great natural abilities, no less courageous than capable, and withal an ardent lover and lavish patron of literature and the arts—it was no mere vulgar flattery when Jacques Bretex, the troubadour of Arras, averred that Count Guy de Dampierre was the most polished and learned and generous prince of his day. His Court was one of the most brilliant in Christendom; thither flocked musicians, artists, men of letters, from all parts of Europe. His chief delight was to while away his leisure hours with them—in summer-time in the woody glades of Winendael, and in winter in the halls of his sumptuous palace at Bruges. It was thanks to his generous patronage that in days when every French town boasted a poet, in an age that was the age par excellence of French minstrelsy, this gentle art shone with the greatest Éclat in Flanders and in Artois. But if French songsters like Adenez Leroy and Jacques Bretex enchanted the ears of Guy’s Court with pÆans of his virtue and his glory, plain citizens relished more the rude Flemish verse of the poets of the people—verse bitter, caustic, passionate, instinct alike with their hopes and their aversions, verse which, scorning the art of flattery, did not hesitate to discover the source of all this magnificence;—burthensome taxes and forced loans wrung from a long-suffering people by a prince who contemned their liberties. The bitter irony, for example, with which William Uuitenhove in his ReinÆert de Vos (Reynard the Fox) bewails the progress which Master Reynard has made in science, and the haste shown by men hungry for riches to follow no other rule than that which he preached in his den, or the no less bitter and energetic hymns in which Jacob van Maerlant bewails the lot ‘of the sheep wandering among the ravening wolves who have become their shepherds now that pride and avarice have given to every man who possesses gold the right to speak in the council chamber of princes.’

Bred in the traditions of feudalism, Guy mistrusted Flanders, the land of all others where freedom had made most headway, and the Flemish in their turn hated him because his dynasty had been forced on them by France. These two circumstances hampered him at every turn, and there was yet another which indirectly aggravated all his difficulties: he was the impecunious father of seventeen children.[21] Sons had to be settled in life and daughters portioned and married, hence the arbitrary taxation, the fines and forced loans with which he so often vexed his subjects. This too was the fruitful source of foreign complications. Guy, considering above all things how to obtain rich partners for his numerous offspring, did not always take into consideration the political opportuneness of their alliances. From every circumstance he must needs draw some pecuniary advantage, and that without regard to his real and permanent interests. Every town and abbey in his domains lent him money, he had recourse too to the usurers of Lombardy and of Arras, and he was always ready to sell privileges to whomsoever could afford to pay for them. The money thus raised was in great part expended in endowing his progeny. Thus it was that he purchased the lordships and manorial rights of Dunkirk, of Baitlleul, of Cambrai, of St. Omer and Peteghem.

His endeavours to affiance his daughter Phillippine, and when this failed, his youngest daughter Isabelle, to the heir to the English throne, were in great measure the cause of his troubles with France. With what tenacity Guy clung to this project, and that it was not altogether inspired by mercenary motives, the memorial presented by his two sons Robert of Bethune and John of Namur to Pope Boniface, bears witness. The Princess Phillippine was at this time a prisoner at Paris, and one object of the memorial was to interest Boniface in her behalf. ‘Holy Father,’ runs the passage in question, ‘your devoted son Guy, Count of Flanders, is grievously afflicted that the union of his daughter with the Prince of Wales, a matter which had been guaranteed by solemn oaths, is not yet accomplished. It were a fine thing for him to have for his friend and son-in-law the heir to the English throne, and his daughter one day queen, which was what, with God’s blessing, he had ardently hoped would come to pass,—nay, what a grand thing it would be for his subjects that England and Flanders, countries which hitherto have been so often at loggerheads with no little detriment to persons and property, should at length be united in bonds of peace. For the inhabitants of these lands are neighbours and they are wont to have much commercial intercourse the one with the other, chiefly for the transport of wool from England, and cloth from Flanders, but also anent many other products found in one country or the other.’

A fourth circumstance hampered Guy. His nephew Jean II. of Avesnes never forgot that he was the eldest son of the eldest son of Marguerite of Constantinople, that the highest ecclesiastical tribunal in Christendom had pronounced in favour of his father’s legitimacy, and that thus, according to the law of primogeniture, he was rightful Count of Flanders; hence he lost no opportunity of injuring his uncle, and was continually plotting against him. Moreover, Guy was at daggers drawn with several of his great vassals, such as the Lords of Audenarde and Gavre, and he was not beloved by the higher clergy, at all events by these of West Flanders.

Thus it came to pass, in spite of his brilliant qualities, in spite of his all-round capability, in spite of his courage, his perseverance and his finesse, he failed in the noble task which it was his ambition to fulfil—to break from off the neck of Flanders the galling yoke of France—that his most cherished personal hopes were never accomplished; that he had to stand by with folded hands whilst poor little Phillippine, the child of his old age, the apple of his eye, was slowly done to death by Philippe le Bel, and that he himself, an old man broken down by insults and tears, at length died miserably in a French prison.

It must not be supposed from what has been noted above that Guy was animated by the instincts of a tyrant; he had no wish to establish a despotism in Flanders—nay, he undoubtedly had the welfare of his country at heart, but self came first. When he was not blinded by his own personal interests, he showed himself a just and a benevolent prince, following in his methods of government the example of his predecessors, Jeanne and Marguerite. Like them he favoured industry and commerce, and to a certain extent the freedom of the towns, but he viewed with an evil eye the extreme independence of the great communes, the like of which existed nowhere else in Northern Europe, and he would have reduced their liberties to the same level as those obtaining in France.

The jealousy with which the upper classes viewed the increasing well-being of the people was another item in the political situation of the day, and Guy endeavoured to exploit it for his own ends. The quarrel was not, as has so often been represented, a duel between burgher and noble, it was rather a tug-of-war between men of wealth and men of moderate means.

On the one side were doubtless a certain number of rich feudal lords, but there were also allied to them almost all the great merchants and traders of the greater communes, and nearly all the higher clergy—in a word, the majores et potentiores, as Monachus Gandavensis calls them. On the other, the small traders, the lower clergy, and perhaps a sprinkling of the Court nobility.

The former class alone monopolised all municipal authority, every post of profit and advancement was reserved for them, and the latter viewed this state of things with great disfavour; and Guy, with a view to crushing the oligarchy which governed the towns, fomented and increased the quarrel, backing up the small men who were not strong enough to disquiet him.

The Flemish as a nation have never been renowned for loyalty to the princes who governed them, and the sturdy patriotism of this hard-headed race will most frequently be found to have been inspired less by motives of sentiment than by motives of self-interest. This was certainly the case with the ‘majores et potentiores’ of Bruges and Ypres and Ghent in the days of Count Guy.

So long as their rights and privileges and monopolies were respected, so long as all political and municipal power was in their hands, it mattered little to them whether they were called Frenchmen or Flemings, whether their nominal chief styled himself Count of Flanders or King of France. Thus it came to pass that when Guy, in order to curtail their power, threw his weight on the side of the little men, the governing oligarchy appealed from their Count to the parliament of his liege lord, the King of France, and that when, thanks to their aid, that monarch had made Flanders a French province, and had then thrown off the mask, and attempted to deprive them of all they held most dear, they veered round to the side of their rightful government, united with the little men, and finally chased the French from Flanders.

‘Philippe le Bel,’ says Kervyn, ‘represents in the thirteenth century the worst tendencies of absolute monarchy.’ He was firmly resolved to gather up all power into his own hands, that he alone should rule France, and that in the domains of his vassals nothing should take place without his consent. And note this. He was the first French sovereign who used the formula—Par le plenitude de notre puissance royal, and the first too who styled himself metuendissimus.

Flanders was the first province to which he directed his attention. Her princes were amongst the mightiest and the most independent of his vassals, and behind them was the strength of their free cities. United, these two forces would have been invincible; in hurling himself against the bed rock of their omnipotence Philippe would have only dashed himself to pieces, but, unhappily, at the time of which we are treating, Guy and his burghers were at daggers drawn, and their mutual animosities—animosities which he made it his business to foment—afforded Philippe a favourable opportunity for crushing both.

From the commencement of his reign the French King had persistently worried the Count of Flanders with a policy of exasperation which culminated, in 1296, in the decoying and detention of his favourite daughter Phillippine. This it was which at length drove Guy to openly break with his suzerain, and on the 7th of January 1297, after signing on the previous day at Winendael an offensive and defensive alliance with Edward of England, he despatched the abbots of Gembloux and of Florceffe to Paris to inform the French King that on account of his evil deeds and his perfidy, Count Guy of Flanders henceforth held himself to be quit, delivered and absolved from all bonds, alliances, conventions, obediences, and services by which he might hitherto have been bound to him.

Philippe replied by invading Flanders at the head of 60,000 men. The greater communes, of whose rights and liberties he posed as the champion, received him with open arms, and so hard pressed were Count Guy and his allies that early in October (1297) they were glad to consent to an armistice which was afterwards prolonged to a truce of three years.

Having thus for the moment discarded the trade of war, Philippe busied himself with diplomacy; purchased the defection of Albert of Nassau; concluded a secret treaty with the English King, affiancing his daughter Isabelle to the Prince of Wales, and his sister Marguerite to Edward himself. Thus on the very day when the truce expired he was enabled to pour his troops into Flanders with every anticipation of a successful and speedy issue. Nor was he doomed to disappointment. What could Guy do? Betrayed by his burghers, without friends and without cash, by the end of April he had lost all heart, and presently he was on his knees at Ardenburg before Charles of Valois, the French commander, humbly suing for peace. Absolute submission to the King’s mercy, total abandonment of the remnant of territory which he still held, and a journey to Paris along with two of his sons and fifty of his barons, there to treat face to face with the King—these were the only terms upon which Valois would consent to relinquish hostilities, but he guaranteed to Guy, in the King’s name, that if he failed to obtain peace in the course of the year, he should be free to return to Flanders. Stern as the conditions were, Guy and his little following forthwith set out for Paris, but only on their arrival there to be thrown into prison. Philippe was not bound, he said, by a treaty to which he had never assented, and presently, having obtained judgment from his lawyers that Guy had forfeited his dominions by reason of felony, he took possession of the entire county, and declared it annexed to the French crown. This was early in the year 1300. ‘The burghers of the Flemish cities,’ says a German historian, ‘had been all corrupted by the gold or the promises of the French King, who would never have dared to cross their frontiers if they had been true to their Count.’[22] The rest of this story is more intimately connected with Bruges, and it must be told at greater length.