LOUIS OF MAELE, the eldest son of Louis of Nevers, so called from the place of his birth, was a beautiful stripling of sixteen years when the old Count died. He too had fought at Cressy, had received honourable wounds there, and had been knighted on the battlefield. But if he possessed his father’s courage, he was heir also to his inclination to crooked ways, as the communes of Flanders soon learnt to their cost. Immediately after the great defeat he had set out for Paris, where he did homage to Philippe of Valois, and from thence sent envoys to Halwyn to negotiate with the Flemish burghers, who, strangely enough, consented to accept him for their prince. Perhaps they thought that Louis’s youth would render him manageable, perhaps inherent jealousy prevented them from agreeing on anyone else, but for all that, the long-headed Flemings deemed it expedient to make their own conditions—conditions which, whatever they may have been, Louis seems to have had no hesitation in accepting, for, by the end of November, we find him installed at Bruges, and—presage of his future policy—surrounded by the Leliaert nobles who had been his father’s friends. Presently he publicly proclaimed the first part of his programme, and vehemently urged the communes to renounce their allegiance to Edward III. From this moment men had little doubt that the ultimate goal of his ambition was to crush the strength

of the towns. For generations the Kings of France had endeavoured to enslave them, and Philippe of Valois himself had broken his most solemn pledges, whilst the English monarchs, from time immemorial, had shown themselves their friends, and for fifteen years King Edward III. had backed fair promises with blood and sterling gold. Interest and inclination alike, then, resolved the burghers to stand by him, nay more, to draw the bonds of union closer by marrying his daughter to their Count. Louis, when the matter was first broached to him, refused to listen. He would never wed, he plainly told them, the daughter of his father’s murderer, but when the burghers persisted, no less dogged than they, he resolved to cut the knot in true Flemish fashion. Not strong enough to risk a contest at Bruges, the chief centre, for the moment, of nationalism, he feigned acquiescence, and presently, along with the city fathers, set out for Bergue, where Edward was holding his Court. The meeting took place towards the middle of February, at the Abbey of St. Winoc, and Edward received the Flemish Count with every token of affection, solemnly assuring him, as he took him by the hand, that he was a stranger to his father’s death, and presently Isabelle of England and Louis of Flanders mutually plighted their troth.

It had been arranged that the marriage should take place in the middle of April, and a fortnight previous to the appointed date Edward’s ambassadors waited on Louis, who had meanwhile returned to Bruges, and besought him to take command of the English forces.

Next day he planned for their entertainment a great hunting party in Maele Woods. No sooner had the hawks been loosed than, feigning great zest for the sport, he set off at full speed and was soon out of sight of his companions, nor did he rein in his horse until he had crossed the French frontier and reached Lille.

Edward was furious when he learned what had happened, and Isabelle cut to the quick. She was in sooth, she said, Countess of Flanders, and until the day of her death she continued to wear the Flemish arms embroidered on her gown. As to the burghers, they at once took up arms, and it was only the mutual jealousy of Ghent and Bruges that saved the truant Count. His policy was to favour the latter town, in order that he might thereby hold in check alike her great rival and the other cities of Flanders.

Throughout his long and tumultuous reign of well-nigh forty years, by his lying, his meanness and his chicanery, Louis of Maele showed himself the worthy son of Louis of Nevers.

He made Bruges the seat of his government and his chief place of residence, and here he squandered in riotous living the gold which he everywhere extorted throughout the rest of his domains.

Embellished by splendid monuments, enriched by the presence of a lavish and luxurious Court, her trade fostered by privileges innumerable and concessions without end, the city on the Roya prospered marvellously during the reign of Louis of Maele. Advancing from day to day in comeliness and wealth and renown, she, during this period, attained the acme of her greatness. Merchants from every country in Europe bought and sold in her markets, ships from all parts of the world brought rich cargoes to her wharves. No less than twenty foreign Consuls occupied palaces within her bounds, and her population is said to have numbered two hundred and fifty thousand souls. But if Bruges now shone resplendent in a golden halo of magnificence, the moral squalor of her citizens equalled only the meanness of spirit of the man who had done such great things for her. Fickle, selfish, cowardly they had ever been, and they now only showed themselves grateful to their benefactor so long as it was in his power to help them, and, when they had gone over to the national party, only supported their new friends whilst their star was in the ascendant.

In 1379 Louis of Maele had granted them permission to construct a canal for the purpose of bringing the waters of the Lys to Bruges, doubtless with the object of preventing, by means of a greater flow of water, the silting up of the Zwyn, which even at this early period had already commenced. During four months, from the 19th of March to the 23rd of July, the men of Bruges were busy at this undertaking, and then a great army of Ghenters, fearing for their own commerce, went out and put them to flight. Louis was unable to afford protection, and the burghers threw open their gates and made common cause with his enemies.

Presently they prepared a sumptuous banquet in honour of their new friends. Among the guests who sat down to it was the Ghent leader, Jean Yoens, dean of the great guild of watermen. That night he died mysteriously of a malady which no physician could diagnose, and the gossips on ‘Change shrugged their shoulders and whispered poison.

But though Bruges had allied herself to the city on the Lys, and a great army of Ghenters was, with her consent, encamped in her midst, her soul was rent with envy, and on May 13, 1380, her citizens surprised and slew no small number of them in the Friday Market, and then these sturdy burghers, still smoking with the blood of their guests, went and sought out Louis of Maele, and demanded from him fresh privileges by way of recompense for their devotion. Just two years later, on May 3, 1382, retribution followed.

For years past Louis had oppressed and persecuted the men of Ghent ‘even as Pharaoh of old had persecuted the children of Israel’; of late fortune had singularly favoured his efforts; he had cut off all their supplies, and the town was sick with hunger. Such was the misery of the people that for a fortnight—we have it on the testimony of Philip van Artevelde—thirty thousand of them had not tasted bread. At length, driven to it by wretchedness, they determined to go forth and beard the lion in his den, and presently Philip van Artevelde and a handful of half-starved burghers set out for Bruges. He had called to his standard all men who were able to take the field, but a bare five thousand of them had answered his summons—to such pitiable plight had famine reduced the strength of the city of Ghent, one of the most populous towns in Europe.

When they reached Oedelem, in the neighbourhood of Maele Castle, Philippe sent envoys to Bruges to make one last effort to negotiate an honourable peace, but the guildsmen remembered their bloody triumph of two years ago, and boasted that in less than an hour they could easily cut to pieces this puny band of Ghenters; and presently Louis, at the head of eight hundred knights and forty thousand tradesmen—tailors, butchers, fishmongers and the like—unarmed and half drunk, in spite of his better judgment was compelled to go forth to battle. With such an auxiliary force behind him the issue was a foregone conclusion. At the first discharge of their opponents’ artillery, the drunken rabble made for Bruges. The Ghenters gave chase, and ran so swiftly that they reached the city gates almost at the same moment as the men they were pursuing; one of the foremost of them was in time to thrust his pike between the doors at the moment the Bruges men were closing them, and soon Van Artevelde and his comrades were thronging into the city.

Louis, who had been unhorsed at the commencement of the stampede, had somehow or other managed to remount, and along with some thirty or forty knights had the good fortune to reach his palace in safety. From thence he sent out heralds to summon all his burghers under pain of death to assemble in the market-place. Hardly had he done so when Robert Maerschalck, the husband of one of his natural daughters, came in hot haste to the palace with tidings that Van Artevelde was now in the heart of the city. Night had already set in, and his counsellors, trembling for the safety of his person, would have had him remain indoors, but Louis refused, and accompanied by a handful of serving men, and crying, ’Flandre au comte au lion,’ rushed out into the darkness. When he reached the Grande Place he knew that his cause was lost. It was filled indeed with armed men, but it was not the burghers of Bruges who had assembled there. Flaunting over the seething throng, he could distinguish the banner of Ghent. ‘Put out your lights,’ hissed the Count to his lackeys, ‘and let each man think of himself.’ Alone, under cover of the darkness and a buttress of St. Amand’s Church—long since demolished—he unbuckled his coat of mail and put on the clothes of one of his serving-men.

About midnight he summoned up courage to knock at the door of a wretched hovel hard-by, and recognizing in the person who opened it a poor widow to whom he had often given alms, appealed to her generosity. ‘Woman,’ he whispered, ‘save me; I am the Count of Flanders.’ She pointed to a rickety ladder, and bade him go up to the garret. There, under a heap of straw, he lay all that night and all the next day. When darkness had again set in he made his way out of the city, and, after a host of hairbreadth adventures, presently reached Lille. ‘Now mark,’ comments wise old Froissart, ‘all ye who hear this tale, consider what marvellous changes of fortune God in His good pleasure bringeth about. In the morning the Count of Flanders had thought himself one of the mightiest princes in Christendom, and in the evening he found it convenient to hide himself in the mean home of a poverty-stricken woman.’

As for Van Artevelde, he treated the conquered town with no little generosity. By the small hours of the morning he had completely gained the upper hand, and his first act was to forbid further slaughter, and all looting, and every kind of outrage under penalty of death. He next summoned the burghers of Bruges to a conference in the Grande Place. Hardly had they assembled than a member of Van Artevelde’s own family was led bound into his presence. He had been taken red-handed in some act of violence. ‘What,’ exclaimed the great tribune, ‘you, who should have been a pattern of obedience, the first to break my commands!’ and he ordered that he should be flung headlong from one of the windows of the belfry. As he fell some men-at-arms caught him on the points of their spears, and a cruel shout of approbation welled from the throats of the Bruges men—‘Behold a just judge, a man cut out for captain of Flanders!’ and they swore that henceforth the burghers of Bruges would live in brotherly love with the burghers of Ghent.

But Van Artevelde, knowing the men he had to deal with, required something more tangible than their bare word, and the burghers were compelled to deliver into his hands a goodly number of hostages; to witness the destruction of three city gates:—the Porte Ste. Croix, the Porte Ste. CathÉrine and the Porte de Gand, and thirty feet of wall around each of them; and lastly, to submit themselves to the two Ghent captains, Peter Van den Bossche and Peter de Wintere, whom Artevelde appointed governors of the town. For the rest he contented himself with requisitioning an ample supply of provisions for the famine-stricken town of Ghent, and for three whole days the high road from Bruges to that city was crowded with carts and waggons groaning under the weight of food stuffs.

At the expiration of that time, thanks to the energy and prudence of Van Artevelde, the markets were peacefully re-opened, and the town assumed its wonted aspect. During his short rule—it only lasted six months—trade revived, justice was rigorously administered, and peace reigned throughout Flanders. Then came the French invasion, the Flemish defeat at Rosebeke, and the great tribune’s untimely death (November 27, 1382). The conquerors found his mangled body on the battlefield amongst a heap of slain, and they hung it in chains on a lofty tree, and the birds of the air devoured it.

Never had Flanders suffered a defeat so disastrous. ‘Sixty thousand of her sons had perished,[31] the land was deluged with blood.’[32] A blow had been hurled at communal government from which it never really recovered.

Thanks to the intervention of Louis of Maele, and his son-in-law the Duke of Burgundy, backed by the support of certain great nobles whose goodwill the burghers had purchased with heavy bribes, Bruges suffered less at the hands of the French than the other communes of Flanders. She was not handed over to pillage, but the Breton mercenaries, disappointed of the rich booty which they thought to have obtained there, scoured the country round with fire and sword. ‘The French,’ says the monk of St. Denis, ‘cut the throats of all whom they met, sparing neither rank, nor age, nor sex, and thus it may be truly said of them that they slew the widow and the orphan, the youth and the maid, the old man and the suckling at its mother’s breast.’ As for Louis of Maele, he approved what he could not prevent. ‘Some people ask, most redoubtable lord,’ said he to King Charles VI., ‘how may best be crushed the turbulent spirit of this race—by sparing the land or by reducing it to a desert. As for me, I can only say: deal with the county of Flanders according to thy good pleasure, and whatsoever thou shalt deem fit to ordain I shall be contented.’ In truth Louis’s influence in the counsels of the French King was almost a thing of the past, and what little influence he still possessed was diminishing day by day. The campaign against Flanders had, indeed, been undertaken ostensibly for his behoof, but its real object was to deal a blow at England and to shatter the forlorn hope—the Flemish communes—of the restive communes of France; and when two years later (January 26, 1384) a truce was concluded between Richard II. and Charles VI., what Louis deemed his interests were wholly disregarded. In spite of his opposition—on this King Richard had insisted—the communes of Flanders, who had not even laid down their arms, were included in the truce of Lelinghem.

An exile from the rich land which he had once tyrannized over and exploited—for Louis no longer dared show his face in Flanders—without influence and without means, literally a homeless, impotent, poverty-stricken old man, dependent for his daily bread on alms which France begrudged him, so mean a creature did the once magnificent Louis appear in the eyes of the Duke of Berri that during the discussion of the terms of truce he had not hesitated to answer his vehement protest with insolent and contemptuous speech. Cousin, he said, si votre imprudence vous a couvert de maux et de honte, il est temps de renoncer À vos fureurs et de suivre de meilleurs conseils.

Cut to the quick by the insult, and powerless to resent it, Louis did not wait for the negotiations to be terminated, but withdrew in dudgeon to St. Omer, and here it was that he presently learned that the treaty in question had been signed. It was the last straw. The hand of death was upon him, and he knew it.

Louis was lodging in the great Benedictine Abbey where lay the bones of the founder of his house, Baldwin, Bras de Fer. Thither he summoned his companions in misfortune—the Dean of St. Donatian’s, the Lord of Gruthuise—founder of the Gruthuise Palace—John of Heusden, his physician, who was also Provost of Notre Dame, and Robert, his natural son, and in their presence he dictated his last will and testament. ‘Be it known to all,’ said the dying Count, ‘that I, mindful of the great honours, wealth and possessions, which Jesus Christ of His pure grace hath bestowed on me, unworthy, in this world, the which I have not used in His service and honour but for mine own vain glory, commend my poor sinful soul, as humbly as I may, to Him, to the Blessed Virgin, fount of mercy, and to all the saints in Paradise, whom I humbly beg to obtain for me forgiveness of my many and great sins.’ Then, with his own hands, he wrote to the Duke of Burgundy, conjuring him to repair the wrong which he had done to Flanders. He was sore grieved, he said, at the destruction of his people, who had been punished at his request.

On the night of the 30th of January 1384 a mighty hurricane swept over the land of Flanders. It was as though the four winds were blowing together, and yet neither tree nor steeple was touched by it, but the skeletons of Louis’s victims swayed to and fro on their gibbets and trembled in their chains. The spirits of darkness, said the people, were whirling his soul to hell.[33] ‘Ce dont plusieurs gens disoient ce que bon leur semblait,’ comments shrewd Juvenal des Ursins, which is as much as to say the wish was father to the thought.

A splendid specimen of civic architecture, perhaps the most perfect building of its kind in Northern Europe, still bears witness to poor Louis’s generosity to his beloved city Bruges. The present HÔtel de Ville

THE HÔTEL DE VILLE
THE HÔTEL DE VILLE

was his gift. He laid the foundation stone during the heyday of his magnificence, on January 14, 1376. In May 1379 the building must have been nearly completed, for about this time we find one Gilles de Man, a name still common in Bruges, busy gilding and colouring the statuary and niches of the faÇade, and the municipal accounts inform us that he received seven livres and fourteen escalins for his labour. Early in the following year the work was suspended on account of the trouble with Ghent, in all probability it was not resumed during Louis’s lifetime, and it was perhaps only completed in 1420.

Who the original architect may have been is a matter of conjecture. Monsieur Verschelde, the founder of the ArchÆological Society of Bruges, and for many years city architect, suggests Jean de Valenciennes, the artist whom we know designed and in great measure himself executed the sculpture which adorns the edifice. If this conjecture be warranted, Jean was, indeed, a creator of no ordinary talent, but of his story no vestige has come down to us, save only this: a man of the same name, perhaps his father, perhaps Jean himself, was vinder of the Bruges guild of painters in 1364.

It will be interesting to note that the faÇade of the HÔtel de Ville is the earliest structure in which appears an architectural arrangement which seems to have originated at Bruges, and which is perhaps the most distinguishing feature of its civic architecture. We allude to the long panels or arcades in which windows placed one over the other are frequently enclosed in such a manner as to give them the appearance of a series of long single windows ascending from the basement to the topmost storey.

Amongst the other remarkable structures of this period, note the nave and aisles and the upper portion of the transepts of the present cathedral, which replace work of an earlier date destroyed by fire on April 9, 1358, and were probably completed some two years later. If we can judge from the remnant still standing:—the choir ambulatory and the lower portion of the transepts, the old Church of St. Sauveur was far superior, both as regards design and execution, to the present edifice.

The great northern outer nave to the Church of Notre Dame dates also from this epoch (probably 1360). Here we have a striking example of the persistence of a feature rarely if ever met with in Gothic architecture either in England or in France, and which is, perhaps, so far as Northern Europe is concerned, at all events during the period in question, peculiar to Flanders—the semi-circular arch. The architects of Bruges seem never to have entirely abandoned it, and hence in that city its presence does not necessarily indicate that the building in which it is found is of Romanesque origin. Thus we find it in the tower of Notre Dame, which, as we have seen, dates from the close of the thirteenth century; in the northern transept of the cathedral of the same date; in the windows of the Porte de Gand, and of the Porte Ste. Croix of a century later; in the great porch of the hospital of St. John, and in the western faÇade of the Church of Notre Dame, and in domestic architecture of every period, over and over again. Sometimes it is used alone, sometimes in conjunction with the pointed arch. In the case of the northern nave of Notre Dame, it is employed for the vaulting, for the huge doorway at the western end, now bricked up, and for the five small bays of the outer arcade which connect it with the main building, whilst for the windows, for the bays of the inner arcade, and for the great opening at the east end which gives access to the tower, pointed arches are used.

For the rest, the building in question is characterised by its great height, the magnificent span of its vault, the grandeur of its proportions and the general simplicity

IV.—Genealogical Table of the Counts of Flanders from Guy de Dampierre to Marguerite of Maele.

IV.—Genealogical Table of the Counts of Flanders from Guy de Dampierre to Marguerite of Maele.

of its design. There is an unusual dearth of sculptured ornament, but what little there is, is happily conceived and delicately carried out.

As the building now stands, with its once glowing frescoes blotted out with white-wash, with its windows bereft of their painted glass and even of their tracery (this is now being replaced), with its cold, dismantled altars, and its chilling eighteenth-century pavement of marble, black and white, its general appearance is sufficiently bleak, and we were going to say sufficiently uninteresting, but that, no part of Notre Dame can ever be. The old church is too irregular, too picturesque, too mysterious. The incense of a thousand sweet memories still clings to its columns, the music of a thousand noble deeds still re-echoes in its vaulted roof, and in weird nooks and corners the red lamp of tragedy still burns. Something of its glory we have already noted, and we shall tell something more in its proper place.

Reader, make a pilgrimage to Notre Dame in the gloaming, and if thou art one of the initiated thou shalt haply learn the rest.