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 mediÆval castle, from which some worthy knight, whose name is for gotten 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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'[16] 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.

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.

YPRES
Arcade under the Nieuwerk.

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.