THE great struggle with the communes of Flanders was continued by Philippe l’AsseurÉ, who ascended the throne upon the death of his father, John the Fearless, in 1419, but from this time forth, slowly but surely, the cities lost ground, and ere Philippe was gathered to his fathers, in 1467, the stubbornest of them had made their submission.

It was not until 1437 that serious trouble began at Bruges. Its ostensible cause was the old dispute anent her jurisdiction over Sluys, but in reality it was the outcome of the people’s discontent at Philippe’s centralizing policy, and at the ignoble means by which he pursued it; by stirring up strife betwixt class and class, and town and town, and man and man; by corrupting magistrates, in order that they might lend themselves to the falsification of money, and the increase of taxation; by undermining the authority of city officers by modifying the basis on which it reposed, and by exciting the lower classes against them.

The treaty of Arras, by which Philippe concluded, on July 1, 1435, a formal alliance with France, was profoundly unpopular with the Flemish burghers, and the war with England, in which it involved them, was still less to their liking. They knew very well that it was not to their interest to quarrel with their former ally, and if in those days there had been in England an Edward III., or an Artevelde in Flanders, they would have had no hesitation in joining hands with the English against the tyrant who was oppressing them, as they had done in the days of Louis of Maele. As it was, it needed all Philippe’s tact and sophistry, and no inconsiderable expenditure of cash in bribes, to induce them to render him assistance, and perhaps even then there was some secret understanding with the enemy. The force which the burghers had given him only remained under arms some two months, from June 11 to August 26, (1436). When the Burgundian fleet under De Horne fled before the English admiral, a great cry went up from the Flemings encamped before Calais—‘Go, go wy zyn all vermanden,’ and they forthwith packed up their traps, staved in the casks of wine that they were unable to carry with them and returned to their homes.

In consequence of this defection Philippe was compelled to raise the siege of Calais, and soon the English were overrunning the greater part of West Flanders. Henry VI., as soon as he had learned what had happened, sent letters to all the towns which acknowledged his authority, bitterly complaining of ‘the disloyal conduct of that most faithless Philippe, commonly called Duke of Burgundy,’ who, having acknowledged his suzerainty from his (Henry’s) youth upwards, had at length ventured to renounce it. In doing so, the letter continued, Philippe had rendered himself guilty of lÈse-majestÉ and had thereby forfeited all claim to the county of Flanders, which, as its suzerain, Henry now awarded to his own uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. This letter was dated August 30, 1436. Soon all the towns in the neighbourhood of Calais were in Gloucester’s hands; at Poperinghe he was solemnly recognized as Count, and presently the English fleet was seen slowly coasting along towards the waters of the Zwyn where De Horne was anchored off Sluys, but dared not go out to engage it. Indeed the news of its approach filled him with such consternation that he fled to shore. His fate is not without significance. Wandering about amongst the sandhills, he presently fell in with a band of Karls, who recognizing in the woe-begone stranger the admiral of their Count’s fleet, used him so ill that he died from the effects, at Ostend, a fortnight later.

About this time the burghers of Bruges sent an armed force to Sluys, demanding that the fleet and the town should be handed over to them, on the ground that from time immemorial Sluys had been subject to their jurisdiction. But Sluys was a hot-bed of Leliaerts, or Burgundians as they were now called, as it had been since the days of Louis of Maele, and though the Bruges men brought with them an order, signed by the Duchess of Burgundy, and had come ostensibly to defend the port against the English, the governor, Roland van Uutkerk, refused to permit more than forty of them on board ship, and the rest were forced to spend the night in the open, in torrents of rain, save some half-dozen, who perhaps had friends in the city, and somehow or other managed to find a lodging there. These men, however, next morning incurred an inconvenience greater than a wetting. When their comrades remonstrated on the treatment which they had received, the men who had lodged in the city were forthwith thrown out of window. Every other citizen of Bruges, who happened to be in Sluys, was ordered to at once quit the town under penalty of losing his head, and Van Uutkerk, declaring that the whole gang of them were traitors and mutineers, bade them go back to the place from whence they came.

What was the true cause of this extraordinary reception accorded by the Sluysers to men who were supposed to be their allies, and had come forth ostensibly to fight for the Duke? Was it simply the outcome of the national jealous temperament, or did the Sluysers suspect, or had they, perhaps, been secretly informed, that some great act of treachery was in contemplation by the men of Bruges, that if the fleet and the citadel had been given into their keeping, they would have handed them over to the English? It is hard to say. ‘The influence of the Dukes of Burgundy,’ notes Kervyn, ‘has so deeply penetrated the historical sources of this period that it is almost impossible to throw light on questions relative to the movements of the Flemish burghers.’ Certain it is that Bruges was profoundly mortified and disappointed, and that a riot ensued, during which the Duke’s representative, ÉcoutÈte Eustace Buch, fell a victim to the people’s anger. But this was not all. The charter of 1323, which placed Sluys under the jurisdiction of Bruges, having been solemnly read from the Halles gallery, the city magistrates were called upon to explain why and how they had connived at its infraction, and their answers not appearing satisfactory, so great was the feeling of the people, that the houses of several of them were sacked. So terrified was the Duchess of Burgundy at the threatening attitude of the mob that in the midst of it all she set out for Ghent, where Philippe was at present stationed, and though no attempt was made to offer Isabelle violence, or to restrict her personal liberty of action, the burghers deemed it prudent to retain as hostages two of her women, the widow of Jean de Hornes, and the wife of his successor, Roland van Uutkerk, who were actually snatched from the ducal litter.

In all this we may see the handiwork of the guildsmen, and likewise in the events which followed. The city of Bruges was not left to fight her battle alone. The Franc gave her assistance—a circumstance not a little remarkable, as the men of the Franc and the men of the city had already begun to grow jealous of one another—and, more remarkable still, all the neighbouring communes, including Ghent, rallied round her. Philippe, unable to resist the united pressure thus brought to bear on him, acknowledged the rights of Bruges over Sluys, consented to the banishment of Roland van Uutkerk for a hundred years and a day, and intimated that he would shortly come to Damme with a view to redressing grievances.

Thus far fortune had favoured the men of Bruges, but she was not destined to show herself their friend much longer. When Philippe reached Damme, on the 4th of October, he at once made it known that before anything else could be done, the burghers must lay down their arms; but that, if within three days a general disarmament were effected, he would at once re-establish and confirm all the ancient rights and privileges of the city. The guildsmen seem to have been satisfied of Philippe’s good faith, for by the 9th of October the disarmament was completed, but when four days had gone by, and Philippe made no sign of fulfilling his part of the contract, they began to grow suspicious; and when presently information was brought them that the Duke had only named Damme as the place of conference in order to obtain possession of that important vantage post, and that since his arrival there he had been secretly reinforced by troops from Lille and from Holland, they knew that they had been duped, and at once made ready for battle. Soon the market-place was again filled with armed guildsmen, and auxiliaries from sixty-two neighbouring communes to boot.

OLD HOUSES AT DAMME
OLD HOUSES AT DAMME

Far from precipitating hostilities, these war-like preparations had the effect of deferring them. Philippe had not sufficient soldiers to risk an engagement, and when three days later the foreign merchants resident in Bruges volunteered their good offices, he consented to resume negotiations. By the end of the month terms were agreed upon. The burghers once more disarmed, Philippe confirmed their rights and privileges, and when he had done this, they in their turn sent deputies to Damme to make humble apology for the disturbances which had recently taken place in their city. But so little confidence did they place in the Duke’s good faith that they detained his ambassadors at Bruges until their own had returned from Damme.

Thus was peace for the moment established. Neither party was satisfied at the issue of the negotiations, but neither party was at present strong enough to re-open the contest, and the winter passed on amid much grumbling and no little display of sulkiness on each side.

Meanwhile, Philippe was watching the course of events. Early in the spring (February 11, 1437), with a view to weakening the three bonnes villes, he granted a charter to the Franc, by which he recognized that corporation as fourth member of the Estates of Flanders, and forbade any freeholder submitted to its jurisdiction to become a burgher of the city. Whereat riot ensued, and blood again flowed in the streets. Burgomaster Maurice van Varsenare who endeavoured to quell the tumult, was slain for his pains in front of the Belfry, and beside him too fell his brother Jacob, who essayed to defend him. Presently the storm ceased, and the burghers began to tremble for the consequences of their hot-headedness. They sent an embassy to Philippe with excuses and explanations, and Philippe gave them a curt reply. Business in Holland demanded his attention, but on his way there he would pass through Bruges. Three months later, on May 22, he reached St. Michel, a stone’s throw from the city. With him was a numerous retinue of knights, and four thousand Picard footmen—men hated of Flemings—but in order to disarm public opinion, he had sent word to Burgomaster van de Walle that he alone would enter Bruges with a handful of attendants, and that the soldiers should camp at Maele.

Great then was the astonishment of that magistrate when next morning he went out to welcome the Duke, and found all his Picards with him, and recrimination and confabulation ensued, which lasted two hours, during which time, unperceived by the angry burgomaster, the soldiers were preparing to march.

At length, turning to his men-at-arms, and at the same time pointing to the city, Philippe dropped the mask. ‘That,’ he cried, ‘is the Holland that we have come to conquer,’ and, without waiting for further parley, made for the city. Some of the foremost knights had already reached the market-place ere the tocsin gave the alarm, but hardly had it sounded than armed burghers seemed to spring up from the pavement; they were swarming through the crooked streets and narrow lanes like angry ants whose home had been disturbed, and so threatening was their attitude that Philippe, when he reached the Church of St. Sauveur, bade his men withdraw by the way they had entered. Covering their retreat with arrows, they made for the Bouverie gate, but only to find it shut; and thus Philippe, cut off from the bulk of his army, was at length in the power of the guildsmen, who, raging about him like rabid hounds, had already struck down not a few of his bodyguard. In another instant the Duke himself would have been slain and Flanders saved from long years of misery. If it had not been for the tenderness of heart and misplaced loyalty of Burgomaster van de

THE CHURCH OF ST. SAUVEUR
THE CHURCH OF ST. SAUVEUR

Walle, the whole course of European history would have been altered, less blood and fewer tears would have been shed, and perhaps to this day Bruges would have remained a great and flourishing city. This intrepid old man, when he found that all his efforts to calm the mob were unavailing, somehow or other procured a smith, and at the risk of his life stood over him whilst he broke open the lock of the Bouverie gate. Philippe rushed out, and with a handful of knights escaped to Courtrai.

As for his Picards, they fled in dismay. Twenty of them were taken prisoners, and they paid the penalty of their would-be depredation with their heads. A hundred and sixty of the Duke’s own retainers likewise fell into the hands of the guildsmen, but at the intercession of the clergy and the foreign merchants their lives were spared, and they even received honourable treatment.

Then followed nine months of dire warfare, and at each successive step the men of Bruges suffered themselves to be hoodwinked. At the very outset, as we have seen, they had lost a grand opportunity by allowing Philippe to slip through their fingers. Then came the raising of the siege of Sluys, almost in the hour of victory (one of the town gates had been actually demolished) at the instigation of the Ghenters, who averred that the Duke was prepared to treat for peace, a matter of the highest moment, as foreign merchants were on all sides fleeing the country.

The accomplishment of the task in hand was a matter of life and death to Bruges, for with Sluys in the hands of the Burgundians, the way of the Zwyn was barred, and Bruges cut off from the sea, and yet the burghers had not sufficient backbone to withstand the entreaties of their so-called friends, and presently they regretted their pusillanimity. No sooner was the siege raised than the Burgundians poured out of Sluys, and harried all the country round, and a band of a hundred and thirty of them ventured even to the very walls of Bruges, and were on the point of driving off a large herd of cattle intended for the provisionment of the city when a thousand guildsmen swooped down on the marauders, took not a few of them prisoners, and put the rest to flight.

The final catastrophe was brought about by the open defection of Ghent. For some time past she had been halting between two opinions, but the success which the men of Bruges had obtained over the marauding knights, at the gates of their city, had emboldened her to make a definite engagement to fight shoulder to shoulder with Bruges until peace were established in Flanders, and even to despatch to her assistance a small band of fighting men; but presently one of her leaders, Rasse Onredene, a man who passed for an ardent patriot, but was in reality in Philippe’s pay, pointed out that it would be more to the advantage of Ghent to act the part of peacemaker, with a view to arranging honourable terms than to openly side with either of the belligerents; and when a deputation of Bruges men went out, as they thought, to confer with their allies at Eecloo, they found them posing as neutral mediators. Soon they discovered that they were not even neutral, but open supporters of the Duke, and that they would compel them even by threats to absolute submission. Bruges refused the terms offered with disdain, Ghent retaliated by declaring her an enemy of the state, and if it had not been for the inclemency of the season—it was now December—she would have forthwith commenced a campaign against her rival.

Bruges was thus left alone to brave Philippe’s fury, and in what plight! Cold, starving, plague-stricken, eaten up with leprosy. The absence of supplies from foreign ports—she had long been cut off from the sea—and the devastation of the surrounding country had produced famine; then came that other handmaid of war, Pestilence, and on her heels, Winter, before his time. Added to this, the prevailing misery had favoured the spread of a disease always lurking in the insanitary cities of the period, and the weird cry of the lazar and the clang of his doleful bell were now heard in every street.

‘From the wretched hovel of the working man writhing in the clutches of famine, from the burning couch of the plague-stricken, and from the barred cell of the leper, there rose up one cry, poignant as the necessity which dictated it: Peace, peace.’ Thus Kervyn, in his usual high-flown way.[35]

In face of evils such as these, and with the entire population clamouring for peace at any price, what could a handful of burghers do, however brave and resolute? There was but one course open to them, and early in February (1438) Bruges threw herself on the Duke’s mercy; but Philippe was deaf to the prayers of her representatives, prostrate and trembling before him, nor was it until Isabelle of Portugal had thrown herself at his feet that he at length vouchsafed to hear them, and even then the declaration which he made on March 4, 1438, breathed a spirit of cynicism, in which generosity had no part. He was mighty enough, he said, to destroy the town of Bruges et le mettre À toute misÈre et povretÉ, but, at the same time, it did not suit his convenience to utterly crush the chief purveyor of food stuffs in his domains.

For the rest, the conditions which Philippe exacted were sufficiently burthensome. Bare-headed and bare-footed the burgomaster, sheriffs and other officials must meet him a league from the city upon the next occasion he should come there, and after having sued on their knees for mercy, and made him an offering of their persons and their goods, present to him the keys of the city, which he should be free to keep or return according to his good pleasure.

All this, though sufficiently galling to the burghers, inflicted on them no real or, at all events, no material injury, but the remaining conditions threatened alike their pride, their persons and their pockets—a fine of two hundred thousand golden Philippes (afterwards reduced to thirty thousand), the re-establishment of the hated Kalfvel of 1407, and forty-two noble citizens, whom Philippe mentioned by name, excluded from the general amnesty which, if these terms were accepted, he professed himself ready to accord. Needless to say that Bruges acquiesced, and soon the headsman was plying his bloody trade in the market-place.

Note amongst those who were condemned to death the chivalrous burgomaster, Louis van de Walle, who had saved the Duke’s life at the risk of his own, during the riot of 1437, and likewise his wife and his son. Philippe showed his gratitude by commuting the death sentences of the two former to one of life-long imprisonment in Winendael Castle. But the son was executed before his parents’ eyes, and Louis himself, ere he was reprieved, was put to torture. Did he wish that he had let the guildsmen have their way on that memorable occasion before the Bouverie gate?

The standard-bearer of Oostcamp was another of Philippe’s victims. His bloody head, adorned with that wreath of roses which Bruges had awarded to his commune for having been the first to come to her assistance when Philippe was plotting against her in 1436, was impaled on an iron spike, and set up on the parapets of the Halles.

To the Franc, too, was meted out punishment—twenty-two of her freemen excluded from amnesty, and a fine so heavy—twenty thousand golden Philippes—that many of her most opulent landowners were reduced to want.

This was not the kind of peace which Bruges in her misery had prayed for. All kinds of rumours were afloat, a general spirit of disquietude was abroad, men on all sides were expecting some fresh and terrible act of vengeance. Not a few resolved to emigrate, and in order to hide their purpose from the Duke alleged that they were going on pilgrimages to our Lady of Walsingham, to the three Kings of Cologne, to St. Martin of Tours—to any popular shrine that was not within reach of his long fingers. But Philippe got wind of their real design, succeeded in arresting not a few of them ere they had crossed the frontier, and all who fell into his clutches he put to death. Whereupon the foreign merchants waxed wroth. How could trade flourish in face of the espionage, the persecution, the bloodshed with which Philippe had been so long harassing Flanders? and then, too, there was the war with England, which in itself was fatal to their interests. Unless peace were forthwith made, commercial intercourse with that country re-established, and Flanders tranquillised, they would in a body quit the realm, and indeed not a few of them packed up their chattels and went. Thereupon Philippe took fright, set bounds to his evil humour, opened negotiations with England, concluded a truce for three years, prolonged it next year to five, and thus little by little confidence was restored and peace once more established, and when two years later Philippe triumphantly entered Bruges amid flaming torches, and clashing bells, and the blare of silver trumpets, the people received the tyrant who had crushed them with enthusiastic ovations and every outward manifestation of goodwill.

Not content with performing the stipulated humiliation, the burghers did more than Philippe had prescribed. They erected triumphal arches, adorned their houses and their public buildings with rich drapery, and strewed flowers along his path; nor was this all—at intervals they set up allegorical groups, typical of repentance and submission. Thus, hard by the Porte de Ste. Croix stood St. John the Baptist, bearing in his hands a scroll on which was written: Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini. Further on stood four prophets, each with his parchment scroll, after the manner of the figures in the painted windows of the period. On the first was inscribed—‘Thy people shall rejoice in thee’; on the second—‘The prince of God is in the midst of us’; on the third—‘Come let us return to the Lord,’ and on the fourth—‘Let us do all that the Lord saith to us.’ Thus did these worthy merchants cringe—an edifying sight—before the blood-stained tyrant who twelve months before had tortured and slain their noblest fellows. For them he had become as the Saviour of the Gospel, aye and as the God of Abraham, for they chose the sacrifice of Isaac to typify the absolute obedience which they owed to him. And who shall blame them? The craven cur who licks the hand which has struck him is after all a more sagacious beast that the mettlesome hound who resents an unjust blow by springing at his master’s throat. The former is sometimes received back into favour, the latter is not unfrequently hanged. In the present case, as we shall see, the burghers had their reward.

Till the close of Philippe’s reign Bruges was at peace.

During ten years a great calm reigned throughout Flanders. ‘Remember Bruges,’ Philippe had said to the citizens of Ypres, who for a moment showed signs of being restive, and the warning was enough. But the men of Ghent were made of sterner fibre, and when in 1450 Philippe would have taxed their salt, they broke out in open rebellion. For three years the burghers did battle for liberty with heroism and fortitude, but with so redoubtable an opponent there could be but one issue to the conflict, and in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, the saddest year of the fifteenth century, Kervyn calls it, Ghent too was conquered.

All this time the prosperity of Bruges was seemingly increasing by leaps and bounds, but it was but the glow of the sunset which presaged eternal night, though the pomp and splendour of the Ducal Court—the most splendid Court of the richest sovereign in Europe—made the sunset a golden one.

Magnificent fÊtes and gorgeous tournaments were following one another in rapid succession, sumptuous palaces were springing up on all sides, sanctuaries were being everywhere enlarged and adorned with a countless array of art treasures. But there was another side to the picture. In spite of lotteries and the sale of annuities, in spite of direct taxation—a means of producing revenue hitherto unknown in Bruges—there was now a constantly recurring and constantly increasing deficit in the annual city budget, and the list of persons constrained to accept public relief, including as it now did not only obscure names, but alongside of them the names of clergymen, of merchants, and of men of honourable and ancient lineage, was each year growing longer and longer. Intrigue, and riot, and suppression, and the silting up of the Zwyn were driving trade from Bruges. A host of merchants had left for Antwerp, a city less subject to internal commotions; not a few, as we have seen, had emigrated to England, to Germany, to the South of France, whilst the shipping, which could no longer find its way into the harbours of Sluys and Damme, now sought shelter in other ports.

This was the state of affairs at Bruges during the time which elapsed between her humiliation in 1440 and the death of Philippe l’AsseurÉ in 1467—a time of peace and quietude after the long years of strife; a time of fÊtes and royal pageants; a time of much intellectual activity; a time of music, and poetry and art; but a time also of gradual commercial wane, and in the midst of it the stupendous intellect of the man who had accomplished all this became clouded, like the city which he had beautified and destroyed, by premature decay. The astute tyrant, who had been able to tame the burghers of Flanders, and, in spite of bloody deeds, to make himself beloved; the cultured patron of art who had known how to appreciate the works of the Van Eycks, and of Roger Van der Weyden; the clear-headed man of business who had received a heritage encumbered with debt, and, before his decease, was the richest prince in Europe, now passed all his time in a little workshop dyeing old fragments of cloth, fitting together pieces of broken glass, and sharpening needles. Early in 1466 he was struck down with apoplexy; though he rallied from the attack, his physicians knew that his days were numbered, and on Monday, the 15th of June, 1467, the end came. They buried him at Bruges in the Church of St. Donatian, and so great was the throng at the funeral, and the heat engendered by thousands of candles, that they shattered the gorgeous stained windows to let in the air.