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Title: A Short History of Belgium
Author: Leon van der Essen
Release date: September 9, 2024 [eBook #74395]
Language: English
Original publication: Chicago: University of Chicago, 1916
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A SHORT HISTORY OF BELGIUM
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
NEW YORK
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI
THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
SHANGHAI
A SHORT HISTORY OF BELGIUM
BY
LÉON VAN DER ESSEN, PH.D., LL.D.
_Professor of History in the University of Louvain Member of the
Royal Academy of Archaeology of Belgium_
Second Revised and Enlarged Edition with a Special Chapter on “Belgium
During the Great War”
[Illustration]
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
COPYRIGHT 1916 AND 1920 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
All Rights Reserved
Published January 1916
Second Impression April 1916
Second Edition January 1920
Second Impression July 1920
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
TO
ALBERT I
KING OF THE BELGIANS
THE KNIGHT WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 7
CHAPTER
I. THE PERIOD OF FORMATION 8
II. THE PERIOD OF FEUDALISM 17
III. THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE COMMUNES 36
IV. THE POLITICS AND STRUGGLES OF THE TIME OF THE
COMMUNES 55
V. THE UNION OF THE BELGIAN PRINCIPALITIES UNDER
THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY 74
VI. BELGIUM UNDER CHARLES V (1506-55) AND THE
BEGINNINGS OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG 94
VII. PHILIP II AND THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS
AGAINST SPANISH RULE (1555-96) 101
VIII. THE REIGN OF THE ARCHDUKE ALBERT AND ISABELLA
(1598-1633) 120
IX. THE LAST YEARS OF THE SPANISH RULE (1633-1715) 125
X. BELGIUM UNDER THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA (1713-89) 130
XI. BELGIUM UNDER FRENCH DOMINATION (1792-1814) 141
XII. THE DUTCH RULE AND THE BELGIAN REVOLT OF 1830 145
XIII. INDEPENDENT BELGIUM 163
XIV. THE GREAT TRIAL 170
BIBLIOGRAPHY 183
INDEX 187
INTRODUCTION
There has been much discussion about the time at which Belgian
history should be said to begin. Belgium, as an entirely autonomous,
independent kingdom, has existed only since 1830. But the Belgium of
1830 was, in a certain way, a creation of European diplomacy and the
result of centuries of struggle for personal and political freedom.
Belgium, as a country, and the Belgians, as a people, existed long
before. Since the time of Caesar (57 B.C.), history tells us of the
Belgians, “the bravest of all the people of Gaul,” and, although the
Germanic invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries have added a new
ethnical element to the old Belgian stock, it is from the time of the
Roman conqueror that the history of the Belgian people really begins.
As for Belgium as a united political body, one must go back to the
fifteenth century, when the dukes of Burgundy succeeded in unifying
all the Belgian duchies and counties under one dynasty. Before that
time, Belgium had practically consisted of two very distinct parts,
Lotharingia in the east, Flanders in the west, separated by the river
Scheldt. Lotharingia was, politically speaking, a part of the mediaeval
German empire; Flanders was in subjugation to the kingdom of France.
Each succeeded--Lotharingia first, then Flanders--in evading the
political domination of Germany and France, respectively, and drew
closer and closer together during the last centuries of the Middle
Ages. That work of union was achieved by the Burgundian dukes, who
inherited from the local Lotharingian and Flemish dynasties, in the
fifteenth century.
But in the Middle Ages not only did the increasing tendency of union
between Lotharingia and Flanders exist, but there was also a strong
factor of national union, the common civilization, the common culture,
of Lotharingia and Flanders. The inhabitants of the different duchies
and counties were united by the same religion, the same artistic and
economic aims, the same political institutions, although there were,
of course, some local differences of minor importance. Since early in
the Middle Ages the Belgian people had possessed a distinctive though
mutually common civilization, and the local differences which existed
and which were more or less well defined at the outset disappeared
gradually as the different parts of the country drew closer together
politically.
The history of Belgium and the Belgian people does not begin to date
merely from 1830, not even from the fifteenth century. It dates in
fact from the time when, during the fifth century, Gallo-Romans and
Germanic invaders intermingled and laid the basis of that ethnical and
linguistic duality that has been for many centuries the characteristic
of the Belgian populace and has impressed its mark on the whole course
of Belgian history.
The real unity of the history of Belgium in ante-modern times has been
brought into notice by one of Belgium’s leading historians, Henri
Pirenne, professor in the University of Ghent, in his admirable work,
_Histoire de Belgique_. Before the publication of this work, few
scholars understood how to treat the history of Belgium during the
Middle Ages. Having in mind only the political aspect of that history,
they were lost in the particular history of the various duchies
and counties; they saw scarcely any link between the facts of these
different historical sections, and they forgot entirely to take account
of the unifying factor--the common culture and civilization.
Since historians have had their attention called to that unifying
factor, the history of Belgium has been looked upon in a different
manner. It is in the light of that method that I shall try to explain
the course of the historical development of the country.
The national culture of Belgium is a synthesis, if I may so call
it, where one finds the genius of two races--the Romance and the
Germanic--mingled, yet modified by the imprint of the distinctively
Belgian. It is in that very receptivity--the fact that it has absorbed
and unified the best elements of Latin and Teutonic civilization--that
the originality of the Belgian national culture resides.
These distinctive marks of national culture, denoting the unity of a
people, and serving, both in the Middle Ages and today, to distinguish
the Belgian nation from the other nations of Europe, may be described
as a common desire for independence and freedom, a jealous regard for
those popular rights which serve as a guaranty of the continuance of
independence and freedom, and a deeply religious spirit. In the course
of their history the Belgians have always cast off the yoke of those
princes who, like Philip II, Joseph II, and William I of Holland,
attacked their liberties and privileges, or who, like Joseph II and
William I of Holland, tried to impose their own religious beliefs on
them.
Those characteristics of the Belgian nation, as well as its common
civilization, were born during the Middle Ages. For that reason I
shall deal in a special manner with the different aspects of religious,
artistic, literary, and economic life during that period. After the
treatment of the political unity of the Belgian provinces achieved in
the fifteenth century, more attention will be given to the political
aspect of events, without, however, entirely neglecting the different
forms of popular life and social activity.
The history of Belgium may be divided into the following periods: (1)
the formative period, including the time of the Roman occupation, the
invasion of the Franks, and the reign of Charles the Great and his
immediate heirs (57 B.C. to 843 A.D.); (2) the period of feudalism;
(3) the rise of the communes (eleventh to fourteenth century); (4) the
political centralization of the dukes of Burgundy (fifteenth century);
(5) the Spanish rule (sixteenth to seventeenth century); (6) the
Austrian rule (eighteenth century); (7) the French régime (1792-1815);
(8) the Dutch rule and the revolution of 1830; (9) the period of
national independence.
During all these periods of history the names “Belgium” and “Belgians”
have not been uniformly those by which the country and its people have
been designated. The name “Belgae,” of Celtic origin, was given in
Caesar’s time to the confederation of Celtic tribes which occupied the
territory of Belgium, when for the first time the Roman legions came in
contact with them. The name Belgium, “Belgica,” disappeared with the
Roman occupation and does not reappear until the sixteenth century.
During the sixteenth century, and especially at the beginning of the
seventeenth, the name “Belgium” is to be found in books, but seems not
to have been used as a common designation. As a distinctive name for
a race or people, the term “Belges” became generally used at the end
of the eighteenth century, its adjectival form being then “belgique”
(_les provinces belgiques_, “the Belgian provinces”). Between the
end of the Roman occupation and the end of the eighteenth century
the Belgians were successively known as “Franks,” “Lotharingi,” and
“Flemings.” Since the thirteenth century, the country itself has been
called “Netherlands” (_partes advallenses_), when the name Lotharingia
disappeared as a political term. The term “Burgundian provinces” was
sometimes used in the fifteenth century, while the name “Flanders,”
“Fiandra,” “Flandes,” was mainly applied during the Spanish rule.
During the Austrian rule the name “Austrian Netherlands” was the
prevailing designation.[1] The term “Netherlands” was applied, not only
to the actual territory of Belgium, but to the countries which today
correspond to the territories included in the kingdoms of Belgium and
Holland. From the time of the Roman occupation until 1588 Belgium and
Holland have, indeed, a somewhat common history. Since 1588, when the
provinces of the north separated from the south as the United Provinces
of the Netherlands, Belgium and Holland have existed as separate
states, and have no longer a common history.
We shall not attempt to deal here with the history of the northern
provinces from the early Middle Ages down to 1588, for that is the
task of the historian of Holland, and although, politically speaking,
the provinces of Belgium and Holland both shared the same vicissitudes
until 1588, yet, as has been pointed out by Professor Colenbrander,[2]
from the point of view of artistic, literary, and economic life the
national culture of the two was quite distinct.
On the other hand, included in this history is that of the principality
of Liège. Liège was never a part of the Netherlands; until 1795 it
was an ecclesiastical state with a separate entity, ruled by bishops,
princes of the Holy Roman Empire. But Liège had a civilization,
and especially institutions, common to those of the other Belgian
provinces, and, geographically and historically speaking, it was really
a part of Belgium.
Having thus indicated what is to be dealt with in this _Short History
of Belgium_, it remains only to mention the bibliographical list
appended at the close of the work, which includes the most important
books on general Belgian history. A reference to these will facilitate
a deeper study of the subject and will enable the student to enter more
in detail into the history of the country.[3]
LÉON VAN DER ESSEN
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The editors have urged me to add in this edition a final chapter on
the history of Belgium during the Great War. These events, of course,
do not yet belong to history, but it seems possible to give at least a
brief sketch of what happened in Belgium during the invasion and the
German occupation. The knowledge which we have acquired in the year
that has elapsed since the armistice has enabled us to establish the
facts.
CHAPTER I
THE PERIOD OF FORMATION
When, in 57 B.C., the Roman Republic, then in control of most of the
Mediterranean countries, the south of Gaul included, determined to
conquer also the rest of that country, Belgium was occupied by a people
of Celtic origin, called the Belgians, “Belgae.” They were a part of
the larger group of the Gauls who possessed the country between the
Pyrennees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the sea. The Belgians occupied,
not only the actual territory of Belgium, but also a part of Northern
France and of Rhenish Prussia. They formed a confederation of several
tribes, among which the Nervians, dwelling in the provinces of Hainaut,
Brabant, and Flanders, were the most important.
The Roman general, Julius Caesar, intrusted with the task of subduing
the north of Gaul, attacked the Belgians in 57 B.C. The Roman army
would have been routed by the Nervians in the first attack but for
Caesar, who himself led the troops and saved the day. Notwithstanding a
fierce guerrilla warfare that lasted four years, all the Belgian tribes
were successively subdued and some of them exterminated. Their heroic
resistance made Caesar say of them: “Among all the Gauls, the bravest
are the Belgians.”
Once subdued, Belgium accepted the Roman rule and remained loyal to the
Empire. Civilization was rapidly introduced; great military roads were
constructed through the Belgian forests and marshes, connecting the
different towns, and along their course villages were built and farms
developed. Tongres and Tournai became entirely Romanized cities, where
splendid monuments were built; remains of these are still to be found
today. Farms were laid out and country houses were erected according
to Roman pattern, with such changes as were imposed by the rigors of
the northern climate. The Belgians adopted Roman manners and customs
and the Latin language: they became Gallo-Romans, and even the national
gods were renamed with Roman names.
If Belgium shared the splendor and the civilization of the Roman
Empire, it shared also the disastrous days of its decline. There came
a time when the Empire, once so strong, but now growing weaker and
weaker, was quite unable to resist the hordes of barbarians, which,
coming from the dark forests of Germany, threatened the rich provinces
of Gaul, and Italy itself, with invasion. From the third century on,
Franks and Alamans devastated Gaul and left the wealthy territories
covered with ruins. The emperors did not succeed in expelling the
Franks from the country: those tribes of Teutonic race were allowed
to remain in the northern parts of Belgium, Flanders and Campine,[4]
and became soldiers of the Empire. They early became dissatisfied with
the territory allotted to them and resumed their march southward,
conquering the whole of Belgium. The year 406 witnessed a terrible
catastrophe. The Teutons, driven out of their country by the invasion
of the Huns, burst like a hurricane upon the unfortunate provinces of
Belgium, burned and devastated everything on their march, destroyed
Tongres and Tournai, and finally, swarming over the Alps and the
Pyrennees, invaded both Italy and Spain. After their passage, Belgium
was left undefended by the Roman legions, recalled to defend Italy
itself, and the Franks of Flanders and Campine occupied the abandoned
territory without difficulty.
The conquest by the Franks is an important event in Belgian history.
Indeed, it is from the fifth century that the bilingualism and the
ethnographical dualism of Belgium may be said to date. The Franks,
composed of two tribes, the Salians and the Ripuarians, advanced from
the north and the east into Belgium and occupied the country in such a
way that the actual provinces of Flanders, Antwerp, Limburg, the larger
part of Brabant, and Liège fell into their power. Farther south they
did not enter Belgium: their march was stopped by a dense and extended
forest which, in Southwestern and Central Belgium, constituted the
continuation of the forests of the Ardennes. The forest in question
was called Sylva Carbonaria, “Coal Wood,” and covered the largest part
of the actual province of Hainaut, the seat of the modern Belgian coal
industry. Behind the curtain of that forest the oldest inhabitants of
the country, the Gallo-Romans, remained free from oppression by the
invaders and retained their Latin culture and civilization. So Belgium
was separated by the Sylva Carbonaria into two quite distinct parts:
the northern part, occupied by the Franks, with their Teutonic culture
and civilization; the southern part, occupied by the Gallo-Romans.
A line was thus drawn dividing the Belgian people, and an ethnical
and linguistic duality, destined to remain for centuries one of the
main characteristics of the country, was established. Indeed, the
Walloons[5] of today are the descendants of the old Gallo-Romans from
behind the limits of the Sylva Carbonaria, and the Flemings of Northern
Belgium are the descendants of the Franks. This line drawn in the fifth
century has undergone little change in the course of ages and, although
the famous coal wood disappeared many centuries ago, the separation
between Walloons and Flemings has remained more or less apparent down
to the present. In this case the Sylva Carbonaria played a part like
that of the Alps in the case of the Romanches and the Italians of the
Tessino, and that of the hills of Wales and Cornwall in the case of the
Britons of England.
The first king of the Franks known in history is Clodion, who conquered
the countries of Tournai and Cambrai and established the seat of his
realm in Tournai. It is in this town that his grave was discovered
in 1653; the King was found buried, according to the customs of his
people, together with his arms and royal ornaments; he was identified
by the presence of a ring on which his likeness and his name were
engraved.
It was from Tournai that the famous descendant of Clodion, King
Clodovech, started his campaign of further conquest that gave
him possession of Northern France and, after the war against the
Burgundians and the West-goths (506), the control of nearly the whole
of their country. From this time on, the Frankish kings established
their capital at Paris. Belgium is no longer associated with the
recollection of their glorious deeds.
Clodion and his successors, so far as we know by the general history
of Europe, belonged to the so-called dynasty of the Merovingians. The
kings of that dynasty, in the course of the seventh century, were
weaklings, actually dominated by their powerful ministers, the mayors
of the palace. One of these, Peppin, in 751, succeeded in becoming
himself a king and was the founder of a new royal dynasty, the
Carolingians.
The new dynasty was, geographically speaking, essentially a Belgian
dynasty, for it had many possessions in Eastern Belgium and all its
members had occupied influential offices at the court of the Austrasian
kings, who, in the sixth and seventh centuries, ruled over that part of
the country.
The most famous of the Carolingians is Charles the Great, who
re-established the old Roman Empire (800) and who, by successful
campaigns, succeeded in extending his domination over the territory
lying between the river Elbe, the Bohemian mountains, and the Raab on
the east, the sea on the west, the North Sea, and the Garigliano River
in Italy and the Ebro River in Spain on the south.
The favorite residence of the great Emperor was at Aix, and this
contributed largely to the development of Belgian trade and industry
at the beginning of the ninth century. Politically abandoned by the
Frankish kings when they moved to Paris, Belgium again became important
in the time of Charles the Great as the most favorably located portion
of the Frankish Empire.
Belgium is, indeed, for trade purposes, the natural meeting-ground of
the West-European nations. Lying between England, France, Germany, and
Holland, it has good water communications with each. Though not quite
so near the English coast as a corner of France is, it has the great
advantage of exactly fronting the mouth of the Thames. With France it
is connected by the upper courses of the Lys, the Scheldt, the Sambre,
and the Meuse, the last named being navigable by deep-draught vessels
far into Lorraine. With Germany its connection is less direct, the
outlet of the Rhine running of course through Holland.[6]
These geographical conditions played a large part in the development
of Belgian trade in the time of Charles the Great. The presence of the
imperial palace at Aix attracted a great deal of traffic: from every
part of the empire merchants, soldiers, priests, in short all classes
of people, came through Belgium in order to reach the residence of the
Emperor, and their presence resulted in unparalleled prosperity in
that part of the Carolingian empire. Charles the Great was not only a
great soldier and legislator, but also a man who knew the importance
of the Christian religion in cultural matters. During his reign the
development of religious life in the different parts of the empire grew
rapidly.
Something ought to be said concerning the introduction of the Christian
religion into Belgium. The preaching of the gospel in Belgium goes
back as far as the Roman occupation of the time of the Empire,
but the religious organization of the church in the country dates
from the middle of the fourth century. At that time we find in the
city of Tongres the oldest historically known bishop of Belgium,
St. Servatius. The historical origin of the bishoprics of Arras,
Tournai, Boulogne, Cambrai--all of them at that time in Belgian
territory--remains a matter of conjecture. The baptism of King
Clodovech in 496 made the development of the Christian religion easier,
although the conversion of the King to the Catholic faith did not at
all mean the conversion of the whole people. Large parts of Belgium,
especially the eastern part, remained heathen until the eighth century,
and the introduction of the Christian religion in these sections of
the country is mainly the work of missionaries. These missionaries
worked on their own initiative, without any such prearranged plan
as, for instance, existed for the introduction of Catholicism into
England. It was mainly by Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries that the
gospel was made known, and the most famous of those heralds of the
Catholic religion was the Anglo-Saxon missionary Willibrord. The work
of the missionaries was completed by the bishops, who visited large
portions of their very extensive dioceses. Bishops Eligius, Amandus,
Lambert, and Hubert are closely connected with the religious history
of Belgium in the seventh and eighth centuries. The boundaries of the
dioceses corresponded exactly with the limits of the old administrative
circles of the Roman Empire, the provinces. In the eighth century,
Belgium was divided into the dioceses of Noyon-Tournai, Térouanne
(later Saint-Omer), Arras, Cambrai, Liège, and Utrecht. The dioceses of
Utrecht and Liège were subject to the metropolitan church of Cologne,
the others to the metropolitan church of Rheims.
These dioceses had been established without taking into account
the racial differences existing between the inhabitants of the
ecclesiastical territory. Including in the same diocese Gallo-Romans
and Franks, the church, unconsciously of course, prepared the
inhabitants of Belgium for the task of being intermediaries between the
Latin and the Teutonic civilization. The seats of the bishoprics being
mostly located in the Romance section of the country, the inhabitants
of the Teutonic section were obliged to meet the Walloons: they had
the same religious center. As a result of this action of the church,
the national or racial differences were diminished and the linguistic
frontier no more operated as a barrier in any real sense between the
people it separated.
If the conversion to the Catholic faith was mainly the task of the
missionaries, the introduction of civilization was mainly the task
of the monasteries. Here the Benedictine monks played a very large
part, both as civilizers and as colonizers. Their monasteries were,
from the sixth century on, centers of economic and intellectual life.
While some of their monks attacked the thick forests of Southern and
Central Belgium with axes, others engaged in literary labors in the
monasteries’ libraries, transcribing the ancient Greek and Latin
manuscripts, composing hymns and Lives of Saints, and opening schools
for the education of the people. They planted in the very hearts of the
people the roots of that strong religious spirit, which has steadily
developed, and which has become one of the characteristics of the
national spirit of Belgium.
Each monastery became a kind of model farm, where the population of
the neighborhood could learn the best agricultural methods. In the
monastery, too, they could find physicians who knew how to take care
of the sick. The monastery, being protected by the respect that was
inspired by the saint to whom it was dedicated, was also a place of
safety in time of danger. Consequently, dwellings became more and more
numerous around the monasteries, and villages developed under their
influence and protection.
It is not, then, surprising that in the course of time tales and
legends developed wherein the founders of those monasteries became the
heroes of poetical and sometimes extraordinary adventures. In this
manner did the people of mediaeval times express their gratitude for
all they owed to those early pioneers of culture and civilization.
CHAPTER II
THE PERIOD OF FEUDALISM
Charles the Great died in 814. His son, Emperor Louis, was a weakling,
and after his death the mighty empire of Charles was destroyed by
internal troubles and civil war (840). Lotharius, the eldest son of
Emperor Louis, endeavored to seize the empire for himself. To prevent
this, both his brothers, Louis and Charles, leagued themselves against
him and defeated him in the terrible battle of Fontanet, which has been
characterized by contemporaries as a “judgment of God.” The peace that
was later concluded between the three brothers led to the famous Treaty
of Verdun (843), an event of the utmost importance in the history of
Belgium.
The empire created by Charles the Great was divided into three parts:
the central part, including the largest portion of Belgium, Holland,
Italy, and the eastern part of France, was allotted to Lotharius,
together with the title of Emperor; the western part of the empire,
embracing the largest part of France, and Flanders to the west of the
Scheldt, became the share of Charles; the eastern part, which included
nearly the whole of Germany and certain parts of Austria-Hungary, was
given to Louis. The Treaty of Verdun practically cut the territory of
Belgium into two parts, separated by the Scheldt, and gave each of them
to a different ruler. These two sections of Belgium remained separated
during the Middle Ages, and were not reunited until six centuries
later.
After the death of Emperor Lotharius (855) the northern part of
his central territory, located between the North Sea and the Jura
Mountains, was given to one of his sons, Lotharius II. That section
which included the entire eastern part of Belgium to the Scheldt
embraced peoples of very different race and origin: Frisians, Franks,
Alamans, Walloons. As it was impossible to name the territory after
its inhabitants--they were of too many different origins--it was named
after its sovereign: _regnum Lotharii_, “Lotharingia,” “the realm of
Lotharius.”
In 870 the Treaty of Meerssen, whereby Charles, King of France, and
Louis, King of Germany, divided between them the realm of Lotharius
II, ended the existence of that state. The second Treaty of Verdun in
879 finally settled the status of Lotharingia: the boundary between
France and Germany was declared to be the river Scheldt, and the whole
of Lotharingia was incorporated in Germany. Of course, all the parts of
the former empire of Charles the Great were once again united by the
Emperor Charles the Stout, but after all kinds of internal struggles,
Lotharingia was again--and this time for many centuries--annexed to
Germany in 925.
Belgium is thus divided into two tracts by the Scheldt: the western
part, Flanders, belonging to France and politically influenced by
that country; the eastern part, Lotharingia, which was a dependency
of Germany. As in the establishment of the bishoprics, so here, no
attention was paid to the racial differences of the inhabitants. Both
Lotharingia and Flanders included peoples of different origin: Flanders
had inhabitants of Teutonic origin in the north and inhabitants of
Romance origin in the south; Lotharingia included Flemings in the
east, the center, and the north, and Walloons in the south.
Thus, at the beginning of the feudal system, there existed no political
and no linguistic unity in Belgium. Moreover, although Flanders formed
a politically united body, Lotharingia was subdivided into several
small principalities: the duchy of Brabant, including the actual
provinces of Brabant and Antwerp, the county of Limburg, the county
of Namur, the duchy of Luxemburg, the county of Hainaut, and two
ecclesiastical principalities, Cambrai and Liège.
The absence of political unity was a consequence of the new political
constitution of most of the countries of Western Europe in the tenth
century--of feudalism, so called. In place of the former despotic and
centralized power of the King there was now to be found the locally
asserted rule of dukes, counts, viscounts, etc. These public officers
who, in the ninth century, were still subordinate agents of the King,
without any other power than that delegated to them by their master,
had succeeded, partly through the weakness of the heirs of Charles
the Great and partly on account of the invasions of the Normans in
the ninth century and the incursion of the Hungarians in the tenth,
in grasping more firmly their delegated powers and in making their
military, political, and financial perquisites hereditary. Thanks to
the custom whereby the King granted them a domain, called _beneficium_,
as a reward for their services or to insure their loyalty, they had
succeeded in getting a strong political foothold in their respective
provinces, and had continuously developed their possessions and
their influence. In the tenth century the dukes and counts, formerly
officers of the King, had won for themselves an independent and
hereditary position. The kingdom was now everywhere broken up into
small principalities, practically autonomous, where the King no longer
exercised his power and where the people were now dominated by local
dynasties. The new political organization, called feudalism, existed,
of course, in Belgium also, and contributed in a large measure to the
complete absence of political and national unity throughout the country.
Each county, each duchy, became a world apart, had its own politics
and made war on the neighboring principality, or aided it in case of
attack from others. So Flanders enjoyed friendly relations with Cambrai
and Hainaut; Hainaut was on good terms with Namur and Luxemburg.
Sometimes they fought one another: Brabant and Limburg were enemies for
a long time. Later they became united under the same princes. The same
phenomenon existed in the Northern Netherlands: Holland was friendly
toward Cleves, but fought against Gueldre on account of Utrecht,
against Flanders on account of Zealand, against Utrecht on account of
Friesland, etc.
For the most part, Flanders or the western part of Belgium was a vassal
of the French King; Lotharingia or the eastern part of Belgium was a
vassal of the German Empire. The dependency of Lotharingia, however,
was less definite than was that of Flanders to France, for the numerous
principalities into which the former was broken up introduced more
autonomy for the local dynasties and rendered intervention on the part
of the Emperor more difficult. Flanders, on the other hand, as a more
homogeneous territory, was more closely united with its feudal lord.
The ultimate fate of Flanders and Lotharingia depended, however, on
the degree of independence that their princes would be able to win.
In accordance with the general politics of all vassals, the counts of
Flanders and the dukes of Lotharingia dreamed of but one thing, namely,
of escape from the domination of their feudal lord. The result was
that, after some centuries, both parts of Belgium were brought more
and more closely together, and from this resulted that much-needed
political unity, the only hope of a real independent Belgium.
The political history of the country in feudal times (the tenth to the
twelfth century) must now be examined.
Annexed to the German Empire, Lotharingia became from 925 a sort of
German province, especially during the reign of Emperor Otto I (962),
a man of powerful personality. Otto clearly realized that no layman at
the head of Lotharingia would be loyal enough to submit entirely to his
own politics and he therefore appealed to the devotion and faithfulness
of the bishops. These were to be the agents of the German influence
and domination. In 953 Otto appointed his own brother, Bruno, as Duke
of Lotharingia and obtained for him at the same time the archbishopric
of Cologne. Having thus acquired control of both the political and
ecclesiastical power, Bruno became the intermediary by whom not only
the duchy but also the Lotharingian church was to be more and more
Germanized.
However, the domination of the imperial German church did not succeed
in breaking entirely the resistance of the local Lotharingian princes.
Those princes had no affection for the Emperor, their overlord; they
could not forget their old national dynasty, the Carolingians, who
belonged to the country and were not foreigners, as were the German
emperors. The people of Lotharingia supported those local dynasties
which claimed descent from the old Carolingian national stock;
the castles of the local counts of Hainaut, Louvain, and Limburg
became centers of political influence, whose object was to check the
domination of the feudal German lord. Since the tenth century the local
houses of Hainaut and Louvain, of Namur and Luxemburg, had attempted
to organize their political power. In the last quarter of the eleventh
century, the Germanization of Lotharingia broke down as a result of
the so-called “Struggle for the Investitures,” whereby the power of
the Emperor over the church in Germany was destroyed. The bishops of
the Empire, having to choose between loyalty to their feudal lord
and obedience to the pope, were no longer political servants of the
Emperor. The downfall of the imperial church meant the end of its
influence in Lotharingia. The local princes threw off the feudal yoke
and practically divided the whole of Lotharingia among themselves. And
thus was witnessed the end of that large imperial province that for
so long had covered the western frontier of Germany between the Rhine
and the Scheldt. We hear no more of Lotharingia: another name appears
in Belgian history, namely, Brabant. It was the Duke of Brabant, of
the local house of Louvain, who, from this time on, gradually extended
his political influence over the former Lotharingia, in that part of
Belgium lying east of the Scheldt.
The German Emperor was now no more the lord of the Lotharingian
princes: he was henceforth regarded as an ally or as an enemy,
according to the circumstances. The Lotharingian principalities no
longer played a part in events occurring on the other side of the
Rhine; they no longer sent soldiers to the feudal imperial army; they
followed the emperors no more in their expeditions against Italy;
and, in the Lotharingian literature, there is to be found hardly a
suggestion of a recollection of the existence of the Emperor.
From the middle of the twelfth century on, the national life of
the eastern part of Belgium displayed more and more cohesion and
individuality; little by little it broke down the geographical
barrier of the Scheldt that the Treaty of Verdun had erected between
Lotharingia and Flanders.
Meanwhile the western part of Belgium, the county of Flanders, had
developed also in its own way. Assigned by the Treaty of Verdun to the
kingdom of France, Flanders did not seek a separation from a country
to which it was geographically attached and on whose territory were to
be found the seats of its bishoprics and most of its monasteries. The
political power of the house of Flanders dates from the time of Count
Baldwin I, called Baldwin of the Iron Arm (879), an adventurous ruler,
who violently took the daughter of the King of France, his lord, and
made her his wife, notwithstanding the vehement protest of her royal
father. That marriage brought to the count the rich possessions of
his wife and furnished to his heirs an excellent pretext for meddling
in the politics of France. The kings of France at the time of the
first counts of Flanders were weaklings; moreover, the bishops of
Noyon-Tournai, Arras, and Térouanne were not as loyal to their lord as
those of Lotharingia were to the Emperor. The political conditions were
thus quite different in Flanders, and at a time when the iron policy
of Otto I and his heirs subdued the Lotharingian princes, the counts
of Flanders succeeded in developing their independence and political
influence without much opposition. Baldwin II (910) enlarged his domain
by conquering the wealthy regions of Walloon-Flanders[7] and Artois and
formed an alliance with England by marrying an Anglo-Saxon princess.
Count Arnulf (918) took the title of marquess and tried--though
vainly--to overpower the Duke of Normandy, who checked his advance in
the south and with it the extension of Flemish conquest beyond the
river Canche. Effectively blocked in their efforts to extend their
power in the south, the Flemish counts next turned their attention to
the north and the east. Successively the islands of Zeeland, the “Four
Métiers,” and the county of Alost were subjugated, although already
under the feudal authority of the German Empire. The result was that
the Count of Flanders became at once a vassal of the King of France and
of the German Emperor.
By the conquest of the county of Alost, Count Baldwin V was enabled
to cross the Scheldt and to advance into Lotharingian territory. The
marriage of his son with a princess of Hainaut resulted in uniting both
Flanders and Hainaut under the same dynasty. Here again the barrier
erected by the Treaty of Verdun was broken down, and for the first time
political ties were established on both sides of the Scheldt, between
the two parts of Belgium.
Coincident with the first signs of a tendency to union between Eastern
and Western Belgium, Flanders began to come into closer contact
with foreign countries and powers. As the daughter of Baldwin V was
married to William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, many Flemish
troops took part in the conquest of England by the Normans (1066),
and these remained in the British Isles for purposes of colonization.
Diplomatic and commercial relations between Flanders and England
were the happy result. Under Count Robert (1070), Flanders came into
contact with Denmark and with the court of Rome; a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem undertaken by Robert brought him into touch with the Emperor
of Constantinople, and the Count of Flanders happened to be the first
prince of Europe to consider a crusade against the Turks.
In the twelfth century, however, the political expansion of Flanders
came to a standstill. To the weaklings of the former period in France
there had now succeeded kings of stronger character, whose policy led
them to subdue their restless vassals and to centralize their own
power. They sought, therefore, to check the expansion of Flanders
and to dominate the powerful county, attaching it more closely to
the French domain. The road to the south was thus no longer open
for eventual conquest; the road to the east also was barred by
the Lotharingian princes. The influence of the German Empire had
practically disappeared in Lotharingia. Brabant and Hainaut now became
the centers of a strong political life. It is a curious phenomenon of
history that, when Flanders was threatened by the growing strength of
France, Lotharingia became practically independent of the influence of
the German Empire.
There was, therefore, as has been seen, no political unity in Belgium
during the feudal period: east and west each developed in its own way
and political conditions in each section were very strongly influenced
by their powerful neighbors. There did exist, however, a common
tendency toward autonomy and freedom, Flanders trying to escape from
the influence of France and, to some extent, that of England;[8]
Lotharingia struggling against the hegemony of Germany. That tendency,
it must be admitted, is not a purely characteristic Belgian movement.
At this period the feudalists were everywhere to be found fighting
against the supremacy of the King and trying to win complete political
independence for themselves.
The one essentially Belgian factor in the diverging existence of the
east and the west, and which exerted a strong influence in favor of
unification, was the common social, economic, and religious life.
A study of religious conditions in Belgium during the tenth and
eleventh centuries reveals, even more clearly than a study of political
events, the part played by both Germany and France in imposing their
respective practices, and the ability of Belgium to incorporate and to
modify the best elements of Teutonic and Latin civilization.
After the Norman invasions of the ninth century, which left Belgium
covered with ruins and with many churches and monasteries burned, or
abandoned by their terrified occupants, the ecclesiastical discipline
suffered severely. The old prescriptions of the Benedictine rule were
no longer observed and most of the monasteries became dependents of
powerful laymen.
In the tenth century a revival of the discipline followed, thanks to
the efforts of St. Gerard of Brogne, founder of the little monastery
of Brogne, near Namur (923). Gerard excited so much enthusiasm by the
sanctity of his life and the rigor of his discipline that princes and
bishops united in asking him to restore the practice of ascetic life
both in Lotharingia and in Flanders. The number of the monasteries
to the north of the linguistic barrier, especially in Flanders, soon
increased, whereas before they were mainly to be found in Southern
Belgium. Belgium became a country of monasteries in the eleventh
century, and ever since that time the people have shown that deep
religious spirit that is one of the distinctive traits of the national
character. The monks exerted a very strong influence on the minds of
the rough feudalists, who thought mainly of war and robbery: one of
the most powerful dukes of Lotharingia, Godefrid the Bearded, desired
to be buried in the dress of a monk. The robber-knights, pursuing an
enemy or a convoy of merchants, thought only of plunder; once in sight
of the walls of a monastery, however, they would cease their pursuit
and turn back. Carrying through the country the relics of their saints,
the monks would often succeed in stopping private wars and murder. An
example of the religious spirit is the great “procession” of Tournai,
that attracted every year thousands of pilgrims and visitors, Flemish
and Walloon together, and that acted as a unifying factor for both
races of Belgium.
The Reform of Cluny found the French and German influence in serious
conflict. The reform in question, by which it was hoped to reintroduce
a very severe discipline in the monastic world, originated in French
Burgundy (1004) and soon spread through the northern countries,
especially in Flanders and Lotharingia. The monks of Cluny resolutely
resented any interference of the temporal power in religious affairs.
As a result they found themselves practically opposed to the system of
the imperial and feudal church of Germany, dominated by the Emperor.
The destruction of that system thus meant indirectly the destruction of
German influence in Lotharingia. When the Struggle for the Investitures
broke out, the Lotharingian bishops hesitated at first, but after a
while nearly all of them took sides with the papal cause against the
Emperor. Both in matters of politics and religion Lotharingia tended
more and more to break away from Germany.
Hitherto only one monastic order had influenced religious life in
Belgium, namely, the Benedictines. In the twelfth century other
orders were born--the Cistercians and the Norbertins or Premontrés.
The Cistercians, founded by St. Bernard in France, played the part,
mainly, of clearers of wild land and of colonizers; they introduced
new economic and agricultural methods and exerted a deep influence
in economic life. The Premontrés were canons, rather than monks, who
passed their time in study and in administering the parishes. But they,
too, did much for the colonization of the country, and they transformed
into fruit-bearing land the barren soil of the Antwerp Campine.
The number of parishes increased in the course of the tenth and
eleventh centuries. New chapels were founded in cases where the
nearest parish church was too far removed, or where a number of people
sufficient for the formation of a new parish were to be found dwelling
close together. Sometimes the establishment of a new parish was ordered
at the instance of a wealthy landlord, and a chapel constructed on
the domain of his manor, in order to gratify his desire for better
opportunities for attending church. Each chapel was ordinarily granted
the right to have its own parish priest, to whom was granted permission
to baptize infants and bury the dead in the parish cemetery.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF TOURNAI]
As for the economic organization, in ante-feudal times there existed an
important difference between the country south and that lying north of
a line drawn through Boulogne, Saint-Omer, Douai, Mons, and Maestricht.
North of this line we find the system of isolated farms; south of the
line the system of villages. But during the tenth century the landlords
extended their possessions in farm lands as well as in the villages,
and the same economic organization, directed by the same principles,
prevailed throughout the country. Each domain was divided into two
parts: a central part, including the manor of the landlord and that
portion of the land exploited by himself by means of unfree “serfs”
or agricultural laborers; and another part, surrounding the central
domain, divided into small lots, given to free farmers.
The domain of the ecclesiastical landlords, bishops or abbots, was
exceedingly well administered and the conditions of life of the people
depending upon these landlords were very favorable; the ecclesiastical
“serfs” frequently asserted that they preferred their servitude to
freedom, as less burdensome than freedom itself. The ecclesiastical
“serfs” were grouped in families, _familiae_, within whose limits
justice was administered by the mayor of the community in the name of
the abbot.
The lay landlords, on the other hand, were bad administrators. Dealing
only with politics and war, they ignored agricultural problems; they
did not come into contact with their laborers, and they left with
their officers, _ministeriales_, the care of ruling and judging their
servants. They preferred attendance at “tournaments,” which might be
regarded as a sort of military training and as a means of learning the
profession of bearer of arms. They undertook long and distant journeys
in order to fight the knights of Vermandois, Champagne, and Picardy in
France. And as a result both Walloons and Flemings came in contact with
their French brethren in arms.
The upper landlords, the dukes and counts, gave much attention,
however, to the colonization and the economic improvement of the
country. Northern and Western Flanders and Northern Brabant were
covered with sandy soil and marshes, and thick woods were to be found
in some parts as late as the end of the eleventh century. In the early
part of that century, the counts of Flanders began to engage the
unemployed for agricultural purposes. They turned the unproductive
parts of the country into fertile meadows, suitable for pasturing
cattle. Canals and dykes were constructed in order to increase the
productivity of the soil. In the course of the twelfth century a sturdy
populace of land laborers was attracted into Germany by the landlords
of the countries of Bremen, Holstein, Thuringia, and Silesia. It was
the Flemings and the people of Brabant who colonized the right bank
of the river Elbe and who turned the marshes of Eastern Germany into
fertile soil. Many villages still remind us today of those Flemings,
and are still known as _Flämingdörfer_.
On the Flemish seacoast the people were engaged in raising cattle,
especially sheep and cows; another large element was employed in
herring and cod fishing in the North Sea. These people were mostly of
Frisian or Saxon origin; they were not descendants of the Franks. They
spoke another language; they had other customs and laws; they were
socially free men. When the French influence increased in Flanders,
they alone retained their Germanic characteristics, and it was among
them, in the fourteenth century, that were found the fiercest opponents
of France.
As affecting the artistic life of Belgium in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, we find the same influences at work which have been
mentioned as operative in political and religious spheres. The Romance
and Germanic ideas were absorbed, mixed, and transformed by the Belgian
artists of that time.
Lotharingia, the eastern part of Belgium, possessed, of course, no
cathedrals comparable with those of Worms, Speyer, and Mainz. However,
the literary movement developed by the Lotharingian bishops was
accompanied by an artistic revival. As most of the Lotharingian bishops
were of German descent, the direction of the work was intrusted to
German architects. The oldest examples of romantic architecture in the
regions of the Meuse reveal German influence. Not only the architects,
but also the sculptors, the painters, etc., were Germans, though
sometimes recourse was had to Italian artists, who came over the Alps
to seek their fortunes. The frescoes on the walls of St. James’s Church
at Liège are the work of a painter called Giovanni.
The Lotharingian artists soon began to imitate the German methods and
to use material native to the country. Supplies for walls and columns
were no longer brought from Germany, but from the valley of the Meuse.
Until the twelfth century, German traditions, however, prevailed in
architecture, and at no time prior to the beginning of that period can
there be said to have been any Lotharingian style.
If the valley of the Meuse was the artistic center of Eastern Belgium,
in the western part of the country--in Flanders--it was the city of
Tournai which dominated artistic development. The cathedral of Tournai,
the only large Romance basilica of Belgium, rivals the cathedrals of
the Rhine in majesty and harmony of form. The plan reveals the work of
an architect influenced by the German school. But in the architectural
details are to be found motifs inspired by the large French cathedrals
of Normandy. The double German and French influence resulted in the
founding of a local school of architecture at Tournai, which exhibited
great activity throughout Flanders. Tournai, the religious capital of
Flanders, became also the artistic capital. The stone of Tournai was
famous. Thanks to the Scheldt, material was easily transported, and in
the locality where it was used it was, of course, architects of Tournai
who drew the plans of the buildings. There existed also at Tournai a
local school of sculptors, whose members were very active and who may
be regarded as true artists.
There remains only the literary life in both parts of Belgium during
the feudal period to be considered.
Dating from the ninth century, there were many to be found among the
ecclesiastics and the upper classes who spoke both languages, Romance
and Teutonic, equally well. In the monasteries Flemish and Walloon
monks lived together, and in the Abbey of St. Amand, in Southern
Belgium, there has been found, written by the same hand, the oldest
poem of French literature, the _Cantilène de Ste. Eulalie_, and also
one of the oldest products of Teutonic literature, the _Ludwigslied_.
The bishops and abbots knew both languages; the abbots of Lobbes, a
Walloon monastery in the tenth century, spoke both Flemish and French.
In the diocese of Térouanne (later Saint-Omer) the bishops were
obliged to know “barbarian,” i.e., the Teutonic language. During the
eleventh century, many preachers were able to address the people of the
Walloon and Flemish sections, and abbots who knew both languages were
preferred. The lay princes were obliged at least to understand Walloon
and Flemish, for Flanders, Brabant, and Limburg included people of both
races. When the army of the crusaders started for the Holy Land, the
Lotharingian prince Godfrid of Bouillon was appointed as their leader,
because, according to the chronicle of Otto von Freising, “brought up
on the frontier of the Romance and the Teutonic people, he knew both
languages equally well.” During the twelfth century, the knowledge of
French was regarded as a necessary element of perfect culture. On the
common people, however, French civilization had no influence at all;
they knew and spoke only Flemish.
The French influence was especially strong from a linguistic point of
view; the German influence was overwhelming in the literary domain,
especially in Lotharingia. The bishops were, generally speaking, the
sole possessors of literary and scientific culture, and in Lotharingia
most of them were strongly Germanized. The center of literary life
in Lotharingia was the school of Liège, founded by the Saxon bishop
Everachar. It became a center of study, where not only Germans,
but also French, English, and Slav students were to be found. The
curriculum of the school, known as the school of St. Lambert, included
grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, and theology. This
institution was the means by which many new ideas were circulated
through France and Germany, as its teachers were in close touch with
all the scientific tendencies of the time. In Western and Southern
Belgium we find the influence of the school of Cambrai as paramount.
Although a Romance region, Cambrai belonged to the German Empire, and
was therefore a center of German influence. The dominating _genre_
in literature is history, and that is an especially Belgian _genre_;
history has always been much cultivated in Belgium. The historical work
of a monk, Sigebert of Gembloux, is recognized as the center of that
activity.
The Struggle for the Investitures, which destroyed the power and the
influence of the German imperial and feudal church from a political and
religious point of view, destroyed also its influence in literary life.
The schools of Liège were abandoned and, from the first quarter of the
twelfth century on, students turned their eyes toward Paris.
In Flanders, literary influence, as was the case with artistic
movements, was French rather than German. Tournai, the artistic
capital, was also the intellectual center, and Tournai was a Romance
bishopric. The school of St. Mary had only French teachers and
contributed in spreading a knowledge of the French language among the
Flemish clergy. Essentially theological and dialectical, however,
the teaching of St. Mary was less important than the teaching of St.
Lambert of Liège.
Thus, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the civilization of
Belgium was influenced by the culture of its powerful neighbors.
Nevertheless, the elements of German and French civilization were not
simply absorbed; they were transformed, adapted, and nationalized, and
became a real part of the life of the nation.
CHAPTER III
THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE COMMUNES
A new epoch opens with the twelfth century in the history of Belgium.
The era is frequently called the “Time of the Communes,” because the
internal political life of the country, from then on, was dominated by
the development of the free cities (communes) and of their municipal
institutions. And it has been said that “in the part played by the
cities since the twelfth century lies the best of the history of the
Netherlands.”
Until the rise of the communes, only two classes of people, the
noblemen and the priests, were given any recognition. There remained,
of course, the peasant farmers, but they had no political or
social power. After the twelfth century, a new class sprang into
existence--the burgesses (_bourgeois, burgers_), the citizens of the
free cities--and the rise of that class exerted a tremendous influence
on the political and social development of the nation. To the tyranny
of feudalism it opposed the spirit of personal and collective freedom,
and the social construction of the nation was materially influenced by
the introduction of the new elements it represented.
The origin and development of the communes was mainly due to economic
conditions: the Belgian cities of the Middle Ages were the daughters of
trade and industry.
[Illustration: THE BELFRY OF GHENT On the right the Town Hall]
Beginning with the eleventh century many signs indicated a complete
revival of trade, which had been nearly annihilated by the
internecine struggles and the invasion of the Normans during the ninth
century. At the end of the tenth century Flanders was already in touch
with the Arab merchants trading in the Baltic; coins of the counts of
Flanders are to be found in Denmark, Prussia, and Russia. The merchants
of that time were traveling merchants, going from one town to another,
and never remaining permanently in any one spot. All along the rivers
wharves were established for discharging goods and wares, as well as
winter quarters for the traders for the period during which the rivers
were frozen. These were to be found at Valenciennes, Cambrai, Ghent on
the Scheldt, Dinant, Huy, Liège, and Maestricht on the Meuse. Bruges
became a central meeting-place for Flemish, Walloon, German, Frisian,
and Anglo-Saxon merchants, and between the Scheldt and the Thames
commercial intercourse was frequent. Little by little there grew up a
special class who depended for a living on sale and purchase. A man
became a merchant just as another became a knight, a priest, or a
farmer. All those without land, the discontented “serfs” who succeeded
in escaping from the domain to which they were attached, steadily
augmented this early nucleus of the merchant class.
The invasion of England by William the Conqueror (1066) and the large
numbers of the Flemings who participated in it strengthened the
economic ties between that country and Flanders, between London and
Bruges. In Bruges[9] vessels from all parts of Europe were loaded with
cargoes for London: wine from France and Germany, stone from Tournai,
cloth of gold and groceries sent by the merchants of Lombardy, wool and
linen cloths manufactured in Flanders. The prosperity of the Flemish
trade attracted the representatives of European commerce; fairs and
yearly markets were established at Thourout, Messines, Lille, Ypres,
and Douai.
Along with trade came the development of industry. On the Belgian coast
the sheep-raising industry goes back as far as the early days of Roman
occupation; woolen cloths were a special manufacture of the region. The
more extensive the “polders”--the meadows wrested from the sea--became,
the more the number of sheep raised on them increased, and consequently
also the number of people connected with the wool industry. As trade
developed the conditions of that industry, more and more people found
occupation in the manufacture of woolen cloths. A special class of
craftsmen was born. They deserted the countryside and settled down in
the neighborhood of the merchants; trade and industry attracted each
other. Flanders then became the seat of the cloth industry.
Another kind of industry was in process of development in Eastern
Belgium, in the valley of the Upper Meuse. This was a mountainous
region, filled with copper and tin mines along the banks of the river
between Huy and Dinant. Here was developed a metal industry, whose
products were shipped out on the river Meuse. After the tenth century
the native mines were no longer sufficient for the needs of the
country; the population of Huy and Dinant supplied its needs from the
mines of Goslar in Germany. The products of the copper and tin industry
were exported to France and England.
Brabant, the central part of Belgium, remained for a long time purely
agricultural. In the middle of the twelfth century, however, a highroad
was constructed between Cologne and Bruges, passing through Maestricht,
Saint-Trond, Léau, Louvain, Brussels, Alost, and Ghent. Trade now
flowed, not only from south to north by the Scheldt and the Meuse, but
also from east to west along the new commercial road.
This remarkable development of trade and industry was mainly
responsible for the origin and growth of the communes. Of course, for
many centuries episcopal residences (_civitates_), castles and manors
(_castra_), churches and monasteries had been centers of civilization
and an attraction for the population of the neighborhood. And under
the protection of their walls were grouped many wealthy villages.
The latter, however, would probably never have developed into cities
except for the presence of a colony of merchants and craftsmen. These
colonies established themselves in neighborhoods where they could
find favorable conditions for trading as well as protection for their
commerce. Naturally, therefore, they settled in the vicinity of
castles and convents (the castles affording military and the convents
moral protection), at the confluence of two or more rivers, along a
commercial highroad, in the curve of a gulf, or at the mouth of a
stream. In this manner the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Louvain,
Liège, Malines, etc., were born, for it is an interesting point of
Belgian history that nearly all the cities originated during the
Middle Ages, very few of them dating back to the Roman times. Those
colonies of merchants and craftsmen grouped together in professional
and religious associations were called “guilds,” and introduced an
entirely new spirit among the people of the growing town. The unfree
population dependent upon the convent, the church, or the castle had
no means of changing its conditions of life, bound as it was by the
numerous ties of feudal and other obligations. But the traders had
to secure for themselves a certain degree of liberty, safety, and
autonomy. The feudal régime or the rules of the manor were intolerable
to them. The operation of the system was too tyrannous; it acted too
much as a restraint on private liberty and would have rendered the free
development of commercial and industrial enterprises impossible.
The guilds, therefore, formerly purely professional associations, soon
began to meddle in politics and to become political organizations
as well. Their members discussed in their guild-halls, built for
their business meetings, the changes desired in the existing social,
economic, and political conditions of the community, and carried on
propaganda in support of their demands.
At the same time the members of the guilds began to build walls around
the settlement, in order to protect the new city against attack from
the outside. Such a fortified town was called _burgus_, _bourg_,
“borough,” and the inhabitants were called _burgenses, bourgeois_,
“burgesses.”
When the burgesses began to work for changes in the existing régime
of the territory in which the town had developed, the princes and
landlords to which that territory belonged naturally showed opposition.
In some cases they resisted the demands of the guild, but the people
were frequently induced to rebel and, by a revolutionary method, to
wrest from their overlords the rights they demanded. In most cases the
princes recognized the justice of the claims and granted the burgesses
a new law, better suited to the needs of commerce and industry. This
new law, the city law, different from the feudal law and the law of the
manor, was called _Keure_ in Flemish, _charte de commune_ in French.
It contained the political, social, and financial privileges granted
by the landlord and the prince to the burgesses. When the city law was
granted, the commune came into existence. One of the most important
privileges of the commune was a special tribunal, called _échevinage,
schepenhank_, composed of citizens and presided over by an officer
appointed by the lord.
The commune possessed political and judicial autonomy and its
inhabitants were personally free. A man from a neighboring country or
a foreigner who had dwelt in the city for one year and one day became
a burgess and enjoyed all the privileges of citizenship. Although
politically autonomous, the commune still owed certain obligations
to its lord. These were mainly an oath of allegiance and the duty
of assisting the lord with its army of citizens. This latter duty
sometimes created curious situations. At the battle of the Golden Spurs
in 1302, when King Philip IV of France was defeated by the Flemish
communists, the inhabitants of Louvain fought on the side of the French
King against their Flemish brethren, because their lord, the Duke of
Brabant, was a partisan of Philip.
Although the commune owed certain duties to the lord, it had also, as
a politically autonomous body, some important rights: the right to
have a special seal to be appended to the official documents issued by
the commune; the right to build a city hall and a belfry, the belfry
being a tower, usually erected in the market-place, where the bell that
called the burgesses to arms was hung, and where the archives of the
city were carefully kept in iron safes. As the commune exercised the
right of life and death over its members, it erected as symbols of that
right the pillory and the gallows, generally at the gate or outside the
city wall.
The development of the communes was not quite the same in the various
sections of Belgium. In the principality of Liège, the cities of
Dinant, Huy, and Saint-Trond obtained their privileges sooner than
Liège itself. The charter of freedom for Huy dates from 1066. In the
ecclesiastical principality of Cambrai the commune was established
by violently revolutionary means in 1077. The merchants of Cambrai
suffered from the tyranny of the officers appointed by the bishops,
and a conspiracy was organized. On a certain day when Bishop Gerard
left the town, the citizens ran to arms, under the leadership of
the prominent merchants, and proclaimed the commune. But the bishop
returned unexpectedly and his knights killed many of the people and
pillaged the houses of the leaders. The supremacy of the bishop was
restored for a long period.
In Flanders, the counts were sincere protectors of the communes;
they regarded them as a mighty resource of their treasury and early
recognized the claims of the _mercatores_. From the end of the eleventh
century the main demands contained in the propaganda of the guilds
were accepted and special privileges were granted to the cities. From
the time of Count Charles the Good (1119-27), each city had its own
_échevins_ (sheriffs), chosen from among the burgesses; the president
alone, the _bailli_, was an officer of the lord, and responsible only
to him. The house of the counts of Alsace (1128) owed its accession to
the communes and therefore protected the cities in a special manner.
They gave to all of them the same municipal charter, a copy of the
charter of Arras, and both the Flemish and the Walloon communes of
Flanders enjoyed identically the same privileges.
In the duchy of Brabant, the communes developed more slowly, owing to
the fact that conditions for the development of trade and industry were
not so much advanced here. From the time when the commercial highroad
between Cologne and Bruges was constructed the municipal movement was
participated in more actively by the princes. Here, also, the princes
came to assume the same sympathetic attitude as in Flanders, but there
was no general organization granting the same type of constitution for
all the cities. The privileges of each city were recognized and granted
separately.
The existence of the communes exerted a powerful influence on the
internal politics of the feudal lords of Belgium. The latter were
forced to take the communes more and more into account and to change
their political attitude in accordance with the wishes of the
burgesses. The knights, almost ruined by the decline of the value
of the land, rendered military service only when paid for it. The
feudal troops were no longer sufficient in numbers. The princes were
obliged to seek the aid of the cities, to beg for taxes in order to
pay the loans they were now obliged to contract for the allowances of
the mercenary troops which they were compelled to hire. The princes
no longer governed alone; they had to respect and cultivate the
friendship of the cities. Their subjects began to take part in the
political combinations of the feudalists. As a matter of fact, war
was no longer possible without the consent of the communes, and it
resulted, therefore, that the burgesses, if in disagreement with their
lord, instead of assisting him, appealed to foreign rulers and fought
against their own prince. It may be said that, owing to these changes
in political life, the communes had succeeded in breaking the régime of
feudalism. This may be cited as a supreme instance of their importance
in Belgian history.
No less important was the influence they exerted--mainly during the
thirteenth century--in the development of the economic, industrial,
social, intellectual, and artistic life of the country. During that
period trade and industry were essentially prominent in the life
of the people. On account of their excellent location, the Belgian
seaports became the meeting-places of vessels from the North Sea, the
Baltic, the Mediterranean, the Orient. Ever since the existence of
the commercial highroad between Cologne and Bruges the trade of the
former had declined more and more. Given a shorter route by land, it
is, generally speaking, that which is selected by merchants by which to
forward their goods. Ghent became the center of commercial relations
between Flanders and Germany, and many privileges were granted to
Ghent tradesmen. Antwerp also grew little by little into an important
commercial center, being connected with the Cologne-Bruges road by
means of the Scheldt, that joins that road at Ghent.
Bruges, however, remained the commercial metropolis. It was in direct
contact with the sea. Located midway between the Sunt and the straits
of Gibraltar, it stored goods arriving from the north and from the
south. A new harbor was constructed at Damme and connected with Bruges
by a canal, whose powerful moles have been immortalized by Dante in
his _Divina Commedia_.[10] The market-place at Bruges was crowded as
much as was the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Toward the middle of the
thirteenth century Bruges was enjoying trade relations with England,
Normandy, Gascony, Spain, Provence, and the Hanseatic cities. In the
fourteenth century the development of the harbor reached its climax by
the organization of a regular transport service between the Flemish
port and Genoa and Venice.
The growth of Flemish commerce was increased by the liberal free
exchange policy of the counts of Flanders, especially since the time of
Baldwin IX (1202). There was no taking advantage of foreign trade, no
heavy taxes, no stringent customs. Many privileges were granted to the
“Osterlings,” the merchants from Germany. If a war broke out between
Flanders and a Hanseatic city, the Osterlings were allowed a period of
three months in which to leave the country and to put their belongings
in safety. The same privileges were granted to merchants from Poitou,
Gascony, and Spain.
Necessarily, also, Bruges became a center of financial operations:
pawnbrokers from Cahors, Lombardy, Florence, and Sienna flocked to the
city in large numbers and soon monopolized all credit operations. The
Lombardic pawnbrokers, especially, invaded the whole country between
the Meuse and the sea, and it is an astonishing fact that in small
cities like Léau (in the neighborhood of Louvain) branch offices of
the mighty banking houses of Paris were to be found. The important
part played by the circulation of money is also proved by the many coin
reforms of that time. The Belgian coins, owing to their excellence and
high standard, were imitated in Germany by the Hanseatic cities.
At the time of the communes manufacture was even more important
than trade. The Belgian provinces became essentially an industrial
country: from Douai to Saint-Trond there is not a city which was not
connected with the cloth industry. Belgian textures became unequaled
in suppleness, delicacy, and beauty of color; they were to be found
everywhere throughout Europe, and were exported even to the bazaars of
the Orient by vessels from Venice, Marseilles, and Barcelona. It is
in the south of Flanders that the art of dyeing seems to have reached
the highest perfection. Ypres, Douai, with its famous _écarlate_, and
Arras are especially entitled to mention in this particular. The cloth
industry was soon introduced farther north, in Ghent and Bruges, and
also in Brabant. Brussels, Malines, and Louvain early rivaled the
Flemish cities.
The annexation of Walloon Flanders by France deprived the Flemish cloth
industry of one of its sources of raw material, and it became necessary
to obtain it from England. Since that time Flanders and England have
been naturally dependent on each other and in this fact is to be found
the reason for the close alliance between these countries, from a
political point of view, especially in the fourteenth century. The
commercial relations between Flanders and England were monopolized by a
powerful association of wool importers, the Hansa of London, composed
of Flemish tradesmen. After a while the cloth industry developed
to such an extent that the supply of English wool was no longer
sufficient: wool from Spain and Navarre was also employed.
[Illustration: THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF SAINT GUDULA, BRUSSELS]
Aside from the territory in which the cloth industry flourished,
Belgium possessed also an agricultural region, far less developed,
of which Hainaut was the center. Here the cities were merely large
villages: Mons, Binche, and Ath cannot be compared with the cities of
Flanders and Brabant. Namur and Luxemburg also were merely agricultural
regions with no more than 8,000 and 5,000 population, respectively;
whereas Ghent and Bruges had a populace of no less than 80,000, at
least at the climax of their development.
In the valley of the Meuse, cities like Saint-Trond and Huy, where the
cloth industry flourished in smaller degree, were unable to rival those
of Flanders. The city of Dinant, on the Meuse, which, as stated before,
was, from the end of the tenth century, engaged in the copper industry,
may be singled out. The products of Dinant, called _dinanderie_, were
exported throughout Europe. The merchants of Dinant had a storehouse in
London and were members of the Hanseatic Association.
Finally, there remains the city of Liège in Eastern Belgium. This was
a city of priests, the residence of the bishop-prince. It was filled
with churches, convents, and chapels. The land was owned largely by
religious communities. But the priests were more numerous than the
burgesses.[11] There was no thought here of industry until the end
of the Middle Ages, when this part of the country became the seat of
collieries and ironworks.
Under the influence of such commercial and industrial conditions
as we have recited, the life of the country people and the control
of the soil were entirely transformed. After the twelfth century
the old agricultural régime broke down and servitude became an
exception; generally speaking, the peasant was thenceforward a free
man, like the burgess. This important change came in connection with
the crisis introduced by the new economic conditions of the twelfth
century. At this time the value of money decreased rapidly and both
the ecclesiastical and lay landlords found themselves threatened
with bankruptcy. The methods of the old economic organization had
to be changed if ruin was to be averted. New methods, therefore,
were introduced by the Cistercian monks. The houses of this monastic
order were very numerous at the beginning of the twelfth century;
they constituted a class of an entirely new type. Most of their
establishments were located among the marshes and heaths, which
they were obliged to convert into fertile soil. For that work the
monks alone were insufficient; they needed the help of so-called
lay-brethren, who cultivated and fertilized the land. Round the
monasteries themselves they established large farms, which became
centers of new agricultural methods. The raising of cattle and the
culture of corn were now their main business, and the crops were not
merely intended for the consumption of the convent but a large part was
sent to market to be sold. The peasants employed for this work were no
longer “serfs,” but free workers coming from outside. Servitude did
not exist on the territory owned by the Cistercians. The monks soon
became wealthy capitalists, but they utilized their means in clearing
the heaths of the Campine, the forests of Hainaut, and in creating the
“polders” of the Flemish coast. At the end of the thirteenth century
the clearing of the land was finished and the farms and “polders” were
rented out to free farmers. That system was likewise followed by the
other monastic orders, and the class of free farmers soon grew more
and more numerous. The example given by the Cistercians was followed
by laymen. A large part of Brabant, Hainaut, Flanders, and Namur
was covered with heaths, woods, and marshes. The dukes and counts,
seeing what had been accomplished, began to order this wild land to be
cleared. Along with the clearing of the soil came the foundation of
new cities. The Belgian cities whose names contain the suffix _-sart_,
_-rode_, or _-kerke_[12] date from this time. In order to get workers
enough for clearing the land, the princes sought to attract them by
granting special privileges, such as complete personal freedom and
cession of land subject to a very small payment. A new type of peasant
was born in Flanders--the peasant who was a freeman and who also owned
his land. The peasants of Hainaut, Namur, and Ardennes were, of course,
less in touch with the modern spirit; the different commercial and
industrial conditions operated to keep them longer in servitude. Since
the thirteenth century most of the Belgian peasants have been free,
whereas in Germany servitude appeared even at the end of the Middle
Ages.
As to the literary life and the respective positions of the French and
Flemish languages at this time, the next chapter, which deals with
the political conditions of Belgium in the period of the communes,
will show the increasing influence of France, both in Flanders and
in Brabant. It will not be surprising, therefore, to find that France
exercised an influence upon Belgium from a literary and artistic point
of view also. Flanders, a fief of France, was the first to feel that
influence, and to feel it in a greater degree than any other Belgian
principality. As a spoken language, French made a strong advance in the
thirteenth century, albeit the conquest was a peaceful one. The wealthy
communes of French or Walloon Flanders, like Arras, became real centers
of French literature and culture. The Cistercians spread the knowledge
of French in the monasteries, their order being originally French.
The aristocracy also took part in the movement, following the example
of the princes. The counts were all of Romance descent. The house of
Alsace came from France; Baldwin VIII and Baldwin IX were Walloons; the
countesses Jeanne and Marguerite were educated in Paris; the counts of
the house of Dampierre came originally from Champagne. The language
of the court as well as the language officially used was French. The
wealthy burgesses sought to imitate the noblemen, and it was necessary
for the merchants to know French to enable them to visit the fairs of
Champagne.
However, we know that some of the commercial acts were written in
Flemish. Flemish was overwhelmingly the popular tongue in Ghent and
Bruges, and public officers were obliged to know and speak it, as well
as French and Latin. As before, the common people remained faithful
to the Flemish language; it was the only one they spoke. Flemish was
also the principal language spoken in Brabant. Here the dukes strongly
resisted French political hegemony, and Brabant remained the most
independent Belgian province. French was, of course, made use of by
the dukes in their private and domestic affairs, but Flemish prevailed
in all their relations with their subjects; it was the language used
by public officers. If the aristocracy was Gallicized, it was merely a
matter of custom and _bon ton_.
As to the Romance literary movement, its productions were to be found
in those regions where trade and industry tended to the increase of
wealth. Luxemburg did not produce anything and Liège very little; in
the latter city, moreover, the persons in the entourage of the bishop
were largely German or Flemish. Romance literature flourished in
Flanders, Brabant, and Hainaut; it was written in Picard, the original
dialect that the writers themselves preferred, in opposition, so to
speak, to French. The literature in question consisted partly of
translations into the vernacular of Latin works written on science,
partly of historical productions, and partly of poetry. The historical
_genre_ was much cultivated, but was more and more limited to castles
and convents. Although the burgesses of the communes, eager to know as
much as possible, found interest and pleasure in the historical writers
(and it may be pointed out that the valuable chronicle of Philip
Mousket was composed, about 1240, for the townspeople of Tournai),
the citizens of the communes preferred the new _genre_ introduced in
literature, the _poésie bourgeoise_, wherein animals played a large
part as personages; the _épopée_ of _Rinehart the Fox_ is particularly
famous.
The rich development of Romance literature in Flanders and Hainaut
prevented to some extent the early birth of an original and independent
Flemish literature. Flemish literature had modest origins: it
consisted at first merely of translations from the French, but it
is highly interesting to note that it was through the intermediary
of Flemish translations that French productions were introduced into
Germany. The _Legend of Saint Servais_ and the _Enéide_, composed by
the Flemish knight, Hendrik Van Veldeke, following Latin sources,
enjoyed an immense success and were promptly imitated in Germany.
The French version of _Rinehart the Fox_ was adapted in Flemish by a
certain William, who surpassed his model, localized the story to the
neighborhood of Ghent and the country of Waes, and gave to his work a
real Flemish color.
The spirit of the Flemish burgesses, ordinarily inclined to be
jeering and satirical, nevertheless inspired the greatest poet of
thirteenth-century Flemish literature, Jacob Van Maerlandt, called
“the father of all the Flemish poets.” He founded in Flanders the
didactical _genre_, adapted to the practical and sensible character of
the nation. His object was to give to laymen access to the knowledge
hitherto monopolized by the clergymen. His writings were in the field
of natural history, politics and ethics, and sacred and profane
history. He enjoyed great success and achieved the honor of seeing his
works translated into French. Maerlandt, although he seemed to despise
the French poets because he found their work too frivolous, was not a
political writer. His greatness lay in the fact that he exercised a
decisive influence on Flemish culture. He brought the Flemish language
to the rank of a really literary language and developed it into an
instrument capable of expressing the national genius. The soul of
Flanders lives in Maerlandt’s poems.
There yet remains to be considered the artistic development during the
early period of the communes. French influence was prominent in the
thirteenth century in the southern and western parts of the country.
Tournai, of course, remained the artistic center of Flanders, and it
was through Tournai that Gothic art was introduced into Belgium, just
as Romantic art had earlier been introduced through Liège. The new
choir of the cathedral of Tournai (_ca._ 1250) is remarkably French in
its plan and methods of construction. But, on the whole, the school of
Tournai does not merely copy the French style. It possesses its own
originality; its type is full of charm and elegance. Its influence,
thanks to the use so frequently made of the stone of Tournai, is
overwhelming in Flanders, especially in Ghent and Bruges and in Hainaut.
Brabant, on the other hand, has a style of its own, owing to the fact
that it uses its own local materials, found in its numerous quarries.
There is a wide difference between the style of St. John’s Church at
Ghent and St. Gudula’s Church at Brussels, although their choirs are
nearly contemporaneous. In the course of the fifteenth century the
school of Brabant became dominant.
In another region--that part of Flanders near the sea and known as
“maritime Flanders”--stone from Tournai was not used because of
the difficulty of access, and here there is also to be found an
independence of style. There brick was made use of in place of stone,
and, although the inspiration of the architecture came from Tournai,
the style of that school underwent some change, owing to the difference
in the materials employed. The houses of Bruges reveal the ornaments in
brick peculiar to that style.
An entirely rich and original style, a sign of the power and the
wealth of the communes, is to be found in the civic monuments,
particularly the town halls. Everyone is familiar with the hall of
Bruges and the magnificent hall of Ypres, a gem of beauty. With their
wonderful belfries, their wide rooms, and the vast proportions of the
edifices themselves, they symbolize in a wonderful manner the strength,
the pride, and the glory of the Belgian cities in the Middle Ages.
[Illustration: THE SPLENDOR THAT WAS YPRES Now destroyed by the German
bombardments (Cloth Hall, Hôtel de Ville, and Cathedral)]
CHAPTER IV
THE POLITICS AND STRUGGLES OF THE TIME OF THE COMMUNES
A consideration of the politics of the Belgian dukes and counts during
the course of the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries leads to a
division of this epoch into two periods. During the twelfth century
a policy of maintaining a balance between their mighty neighbors,
France, England, and the Empire, was pursued. At the beginning of
the thirteenth century France gained the hegemony in Europe, and the
Belgian princes were forced to submit to the strong influence of that
country.
In the first quarter of the twelfth century the Struggle for the
Investitures had destroyed German influence in the eastern part of
Belgium. The influence of the emperors was on the wane. One of the
most loyal of the partisans of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the Count
of Hainaut, succeeded in remaining neutral during the war between
Germany and France. The Count declared that “he was not obliged to put
his fortresses in the hands of the imperial troops and to grant them
passage through his territory, as that would bring devastation to his
country. His country being located between Germany and France, he ought
to remain neutral during this war.”
The unsympathetic attitude of the Lotharingian princes toward Germany,
however, was not dictated by anything like national hostility or racial
prejudice, for the Flemish principalities, with their inhabitants of
Germanic descent, were as unfriendly as the Walloon principalities.
It was indifference, rather, for the Lotharingian princes had no
interests in common with the Empire. They went their own way and had
little regard for the Emperor. The social and economic development of
the country between the Scheldt and the Meuse likewise prevented the
people of that region from sympathizing with Germany. The culture of
Germany, at this time a purely agricultural country, was far behind
the culture of the Belgian principalities. The Lotharingian princes
turned their eyes toward Flanders, with which they enjoyed important
commercial relations. On the other hand, the counts of Flanders had
sought, ever since the reign of Thierry of Alsace (1168), to interfere
with the countries across the Scheldt and to meddle in the politics of
Holland, Brabant, Hainaut, Namur, Gueldre, and even Liège. Henceforth
the Belgian principalities, having common political and economic
interests, will be found to have an increasingly common history. Thanks
to its relations with Flanders, Lotharingia now began to come into
contact with France and England.
Flanders, at this time, was very powerful. In 1163 Count Philip of
Alsace had occupied, in the name of his wife, the French counties of
Vermandois, Amiénois, and Valois, and had become the first vassal
of the French crown. But at that moment the throne of France was
occupied by a king of very strong personality, who himself directed the
government of France and who had decided to destroy the power of his
restless vassals. That king was Philip August. He directed his efforts
especially against Flanders. He is quoted as having once said: “France
will absorb Flanders or will be destroyed by it.”
It was in vain that Count Philip of Alsace sought to win the support of
the German Emperor. Having failed on this side, he turned to England
for help against the threatening policy of his overlord. This was a
highly important event (1187), for from that time on it became the
constant policy of Flanders to keep England as an ally against France.
When Philip of Alsace died suddenly during the siege of Saint Jean
d’Acre by the Crusaders, June 1, 1191, Philip August regarded this as
a favorable opportunity to annex the county. He was prevented from
doing so, however, by the action of the Count of Hainaut, Baldwin V,
brother-in-law of the late Flemish count, who invaded Flanders and
succeeded in bringing about the political union of the two counties.
The county of Artois, however, refused to enter the union, and returned
to Philip August. The latter hoped that, as Baldwin V (IX in Flanders)
had only two daughters as his heirs, it would be easy to dispose of a
strong political influence in the country after the death of Baldwin.
Accordingly he brought about the marriage of Jeanne of Flanders, the
eldest daughter of Baldwin,[13] to one of his creatures, Ferrand of
Portugal. Henceforth he considered that Flanders would be in his hands.
Subsequent events, however, were to prove his mistake.
When Count Ferrand arrived in Flanders he was met by the action of a
strong feudal party, secretly supported by the subsidies of Philip
August. He tried to escape the threatening French influence and,
following the policy of his predecessors, appealed to England for
help. Now began a fierce struggle between French and English gold for
influence in the country. Moderately financed by England, the partisans
of the latter became stronger every day. Finally Count Ferrand took a
decided stand, repudiated his allegiance to his overlord, and openly
accepted the English alliance. Just at this time a vast coalition had
been organized against the French king by John I of England, Emperor
Otto of Brunswick, and Henry I, Duke of Brabant, with whom Ferrand of
Flanders joined. On July 27, 1214, the battle of Bouvines was fought.
The allies were defeated by Philip August; Count Ferrand of Flanders
fell into the hands of his feudal lord, and was imprisoned at Paris.
The victory of Bouvines established the political hegemony of France in
Europe and the subjection of Flanders. The former policy of balance was
no longer possible for the Belgian princes. In face of the overwhelming
power of the French King, there remained nothing but submission. From
the date of the battle of Bouvines to the beginning of the fourteenth
century Flanders was subject to the political and intellectual
domination of its strong neighbor.
The other Belgian principalities likewise shared the ambition to win
the friendship of the French King. From now on the French monarchs
found no occasion for armed interference with the Belgian princes.
Diplomacy met all needs, and agents from Paris, often shrewd Italians,
brought to the heads of the Belgian principalities the wishes--and
orders--of their master.
Only one Belgian prince, the Duke of Brabant, resisted the French
influence. Since the former duchy of Lotharingia, at the beginning
of the twelfth century, had been broken up into many parts, Brabant
became the leading power in the central part of Belgium. The house of
the dukes of Brabant was indeed the only dynasty that could boast of
its national origin; the other Belgian principalities all fell, during
the thirteenth century, into the hands of new and foreign families. The
dynasty of Brabant was thus exceedingly popular; it won the affection
of the noblemen and of the communes, and the person of the duke was the
object of real national affection. Moreover, the policy of the dukes
was positive and practical, and, above all, paid due regard to the
interests of their subjects. One of the main principles of this policy
was the conquest of the commercial highroad between the Rhine and the
sea, upon which the economic prosperity of Brabant depended.
As the principality of Liège and the county of Limburg blocked the road
to the east, controlling all traffic between the Rhine and Bruges,
after the reign of Henry I (1190) the dukes of Brabant turned their
eyes in this direction. The war with Liège in Henry’s time was not very
successful. During the thirteenth century, therefore, the dukes sought
to overpower Liège by a resort to diplomacy. As the bishop-prince of
Liège was engaged in a continuous struggle against the communes, the
dukes of Brabant sometimes supported the bishop against the burgesses,
sometimes helped the latter against their lord, according to the needs
of the moment.
Ever since 1283, when the Countess Ermengard of Limburg died without
heirs, the dukes had cast covetous eyes on Limburg. Many pretenders,
including several princes from the left bank of the Rhine, had sprung
up. Duke John I of Brabant decided to strike the final blow against
the coalition formed against him by the lords of Fauquemont, the Count
of Luxemburg, Renaud of Gueldre, and the mighty Archbishop of Cologne.
The coming battle would decide to whom should belong the supremacy
between the Rhine and the Meuse. By skilful diplomacy, Duke John
succeeded in preventing the Count of Flanders and the Bishop of Liège
from allying themselves with his enemies. On June 5, 1288, the armies
met at Worringen, on the Rhine. The battle lasted a whole day with
terrific onslaughts. The army of Brabant, composed of the knights of
the duchy, and the communal infantry from Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp,
Tirlemont, Jodoigne, and Nivelles, although inferior in numbers to
the foe, won a complete victory by the superiority of its tactics. It
was a rout for Duke John’s enemies. Twelve hundred of them fell on
the battlefield, and both the Archbishop of Cologne and the Count of
Gueldre were made prisoners, the Count of Luxemburg and his brothers
being numbered among the slain. By sunset, the remainder of the enemy
was in full flight and the trumpets of Brabant gaily proclaimed the
victory.
The victory of Worringen had far-reaching consequences. It sealed
the political decline of the archbishops of Cologne, who thenceforth
interfered no more in Belgian affairs; Limburg was annexed by Brabant,
and the latter extended its authority over the east of Lotharingia. The
dukes now controlled the commercial road between Germany and the sea,
and commanded the course of the Meuse, and since their sway encircled
the principality of Liège, no further danger was to be feared in this
quarter. The German Emperor made no protest against the annexation of
Limburg, although it was actually territory of the Empire. It was now
perfectly clear that the influence of Germany in Eastern Belgium had
come to an end.
This fact encouraged the kings of France to seek to occupy in Belgian
affairs the place formerly occupied by Germany. But although the dukes
of Brabant maintained peaceful relations with France, they had no wish
to become simply the instruments of French politics. They resisted
every attempt at domination. Henceforth Brabant, thanks to its spirit
of independence, the strong and able diplomacy of its rulers, and the
growing spirit of patriotism that characterized its people, became more
and more the bulwark of Belgian liberty. It will be found hereafter as
the very center of resistance to every attempt at foreign domination,
and, in the sixteenth century, it was the States of Brabant which led
the struggle against the tyranny of Spain.
At the time that the battle of Worringen strengthened the position of
Brabant in Central and Eastern Belgium, a new king, Philip IV, called
Philip the Fair, ascended the throne of France. His policy was to
continue and complete the plans of Philip August, the strengthening
of the central power at the expense of the grand vassals, and the
subjection of Flanders to the crown.
The ruling count in Flanders at this time was Guy de Dampierre, whose
family came originally from Champagne. Guy had become one of the most
powerful princes of Belgium. Supported by the French King, he had
successfully brought to an end a struggle with the hostile dynasty of
the D’Avesnes in Hainaut, had annexed the county of Namur, and had won
real influence in Liège, Luxemburg, and Gueldre. Philip the Fair soon
began to fear the growing might of his vassal and decided to crush it.
The internal struggles in Flanders offered him an opportune pretext.
In the beginning, it was only the wealthy, the merchants and owners
of property, who exercised political power in the commune and who
controlled the offices. Later on, the laboring classes, forming
themselves into corporations, became powerful and claimed the right
to control the administration of the communal finances and a share in
the public offices. The wealthy--the patricians--resisted, endeavoring
to maintain their preponderance. The result was a violent civil war
between patricians and craftsmen, between rich and poor. Everywhere
leaders appeared in support of the poor: at Liège, Henry of Dinant;
at Louvain, Peter Coutereel; in Flanders, Yoens, Ackerman, Artevelde.
Generally speaking, after the fourteenth century the craftsmen
triumphed, but everywhere only after bloody revolts. Once victorious,
the laboring classes in many cities expelled the patricians from all
public offices and admitted them only when enlisted in some corporation
of craftsmen. In this manner the democratic régime was established in
place of the former aristocracy.
Nowhere were those democratic struggles so violent as in Flanders.
There the three powerful communes of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres
tyrannized over the smaller cities and the country. In order to crush
the supremacy of the patricians, who were the masters in these three
cities, Count Guy de Dampierre supported the claims of the craftsmen.
In their turn, the patricians appealed for help to the King of France,
feudal lord of their count. Thus two parties sprang into existence: the
party of the poor, who, faithful to the Count, adopted his banner with
the device of the Lion of Flanders, and took the name of _Clauwaerts_
(“men of the [lion’s] claw”); and the party of the wealthy patricians,
protected by King Philip, who, owing to the presence of a fleur-de-lis
in the royal French banner, were called _Leliaerts_ (“men of the lily”).
On the cry for help by the latter, King Philip invaded Flanders,
defeated the army of the Count, took his vassal prisoner, and treated
the country as a conquered land.
But the arrogance of the French and especially of the governor, Jacques
de Chatillon, excited the anger of the craftsmen. Those of Bruges
secretly recalled the _Clauwaerts_ who had been expelled from the
city. Under the leadership of a weaver, Peter de Coninck, a revolt was
planned. On a summer day of 1302, in the early hours of the morning,
the conspirators entered Bruges, surprised the French and their
sympathizers, and killed them. This event is spoken of as _Matines
brugeoises_, “The Matins of Bruges.”
Exasperated, King Philip decided to avenge the revolt and the offense
against his authority. A mighty army again invaded the country.
Immediately the sons of the Count, John of Namur and William of Gulick,
together with Peter de Coninck, organized resistance. The struggle was
no longer a merely economic one between patricians and their French
protectors on one side and the poor, as partisans of the Count, on the
other. It was now a really national struggle, for defeat of the Flemish
communes would mean the annexation of Flanders by France.
Under the walls of Courtrai, in the meadows of Groeninghe, the
soldier-citizens of Bruges, assisted by many contingents of craftsmen
from other parts of the country, met the flower of the French
knighthood. The apparently impossible happened. The communes, fighting
for the very existence of their country, defeated the army of the most
powerful king in Christendom.
That victory is called the “battle of the Golden Spurs,” because nearly
six hundred golden spurs, belonging to the French knights, were found
on the battlefield and suspended, as a token of thanks to God, in the
vault of the basilica of Courtrai.
The consequences of the battle of the Golden Spurs cannot be
overestimated. From a political point of view it presents the same
importance as the battle of Bouvines. It liberated Flanders from French
influence and gave the first blow to the hegemony of France in Europe.
In Rome, Pope Boniface VIII, a fierce enemy of King Philip, arose in
the middle of the night in order to receive and rejoice over the news.
Because the victory saved the national independence of Flanders and
practically prevented the political absorption of the other Belgian
principalities by Philip the Fair, the Flemings, on July 11 of each
year, celebrate the anniversary of the battle of the Golden Spurs as a
great event in Belgian history.
The victory of Courtrai gave impetus to real national feeling: all
classes, and not least the priests, contributed with all their power to
organizing further resistance to the French armies. During the first
twenty years of the fourteenth century Flanders, by its own forces,
without foreign assistance, resisted the onslaughts of three successive
French kings. After the battle of Mons-en-Pevèle (1303), which brought
neither victory nor defeat for either side, the Flemings arrived with a
new army, and Philip the Fair is quoted as having shouted in despair:
“It rains Flemings!”
Finally peace was concluded in 1305 at Athis-sur-Orge. As a result of
the intrigues of the French agents and the treachery of the Flemish
delegates the conditions were very unfavorable for Flanders. The
new count, Robert of Béthune, wanted peace; he did not care for the
interests of the cities and the victory of the democratic party. The
country was obliged to yield and, in 1319, after a new war, caused
by the intrigues of the French King, was forced to abandon Walloon
Flanders, including the cities of Lille, Douai, and Béthune. As the
county of Artois had already been ceded to France in the time of Philip
August, Flanders possessed no more Walloon territory. It retained only
the old Germanic portions. It was a severe loss, but by that loss
Flanders escaped forever absorption by the French monarchy.
The battle of the Golden Spurs not only had far-reaching results from a
national point of view; it also confirmed the victory of the democratic
elements over the patricians in Flanders. In those Flemish cities where
the latter were masters at the time of the battle they were overthrown
by the craftsmen after the victory. Moreover, the craftsmen of Liège,
in the same year, and under the influence of the defeat of the Flemish
patricians at Courtrai, which taught them that they could win if they
were organized, inaugurated a revolt against the patricians of their
own city. After many years of bloody struggle, they succeeded in
wresting from the bishop-prince, Adolf de la Marck, the Peace of Fexhe,
that practically founded the liberties of Liège. In Brabant, some years
after the battle of Courtrai, in 1306, the craftsmen tried also to
imitate their Flemish brethren but here they were severely defeated.
The movement, however, was now everywhere in full swing. The rights of
the princes were more and more curtailed by the successful revolts of
the craftsmen, and assurances were required that the privileges of the
communes would be respected for all time. These demands resulted in
the appointment of committees, composed of members of the nobility and
members of the cities, the latter preponderating in number, in order
to guarantee the privileges granted the commune at its inception and
those won during the democratic struggles. We find such a committee in
Brabant, where it was called the Council of Cortemberg (1312), and in
the principality of Liège, under the name of Tribunal of the XXII.
One of the most famous privileges won by the people during the communal
struggles of the fourteenth century is that called the Joyeuse Entrée
of Brabant (1354-56). According to the stipulations of that charter
of liberty, the territory of the duchy was to remain undivided and
undiminished; the seven important cities of Brabant were to keep
in their common possession the documents containing the municipal
liberties; no offensive war was to be waged, no treaty concluded, no
inch of territory ceded, no coin made, without the consent of the
subjects. Commerce was to be free, and only legal taxes were to be
imposed. The Duke undertook to care for the safety of the roads, to
protect his people from arrest in foreign countries, to keep peace
between the Rhine and the Meuse, and to respect the treaties concluded
with Flanders and Liège. No native of Brabant might prosecute a
fellow-countryman before a foreign court. The Duke himself was to be
subject to the laws of the duchy.
A comparison of the political situation, as revealed by privileges like
these, with the tyranny of the princes in feudal times, brings into a
strong light all that was achieved, in point of view of freedom and
liberty, by the communes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The development of civic freedom and the spirit of democracy, such as
we have described, in Flanders, Brabant, and Liège, did not exist,
however, in the same measure in all the principalities of Belgium. They
were the pride only of those regions where industrial and economic
conditions had created the necessary basis for such developments. In
the more agricultural regions of the country they were less in evidence
or were introduced much later, and they did not make so deep an
impression on the life of the people.
Luxemburg, for example, was a very large province, but not thickly
populated. It was far removed from the large rivers, while the hills
and forests made communication very difficult. In the rocky lines the
manors of the robber barons were built, and those watched the passing
convoys of merchantmen and attacked them frequently. The historian
Froissart depicts very realistically the aspect of the country.
Speaking of the passing of the French troops through Luxemburg in 1388,
he says:
Two thousand workmen were sent ahead through the forests of Chimay
and Neufchateau, in order to clear the way for the troops and to
construct a road for the passage of the 1,200 carts of the army. When
it had passed the picturesque convent of Orval, the army encountered
severe difficulties: it advanced only two miles a day toward
Bastogne, through the passes of the Ardennes, infested by savage
animals and inhabited only by some colliers. The passage became even
more difficult in October, when the rivers overflowed from the rain,
when the rocks were slippery and the roads impassable. The barons
of the Ardennes took advantage of it for attacking the convoys and
pillaging the train.
In such a country there could be no question of democratic movements,
of freedom and the privileges of cities. During the fourteenth century
Luxemburg was famous, not for its communes, but for its princes. A most
sympathetic figure among them is Duke John, who married Elizabeth of
Bohemia and became king of that country. He was the perfect type of
mediaeval chivalry. He went through Italy, Poland, France, and Germany
as a knight errant, fighting for all good causes. Although he became
blind he assisted at the battle of Crécy (1346) and was killed in the
ranks of the French army.
The county of Namur was far more receptive of the ideas of liberty and
democracy than was Luxemburg. The Meuse and the Sambre flowed through
its hills and fields; it possessed commercial roads and copper and
iron mines. Here then we find commerce and industry. The craftsmen of
Namur won, little by little and but very slowly, a certain share in the
government of the cities, and after some serious troubles in 1351 the
deans of the craft-guilds were admitted to public office together with
the appointees of the Count and the patricians. In the circumstances
which attended this struggle and in the acquisition of office by the
guilds we have indications of the lines of cleavage between the classes
and of current political tendencies.
There remains the county of Hainaut to be considered. From 1299
Hainaut and Holland, although situated far apart, were united under
one dynasty, the family of the D’Avesnes. Holland was mainly inhabited
by burgesses and farmers; Hainaut was the last refuge of feudalism.
The hills of the Ardennes, extending into the country, permitted small
opportunity for agriculture: the rocks were crowned by castles, and
the forests offered splendid hunting. There was no trade; the existing
mines were abandoned. Of course there was the cloth industry at Mons,
Ath, Binche, and Chièvres. But the weavers did not possess the same
spirit of freedom as their Flemish comrades. A timid attempt at revolt
at Valenciennes was quickly repressed. Feudalism continued to prevail.
The knights of Hainaut spent their time in fighting, especially during
the reign of Count William (1337-45), who organized expeditions against
the Prussians and the Moors. At length the noblemen of Hainaut were
nearly all exterminated on the various battlefields of Europe, and the
cities began to add to their importance. Count Albert of Bavaria, in
the middle of the fourteenth century, favored manufactures, and granted
control over the affairs of the cities to the craftsmen.
On the whole, it was Flanders which played the largest part in the
history of Belgium in the fourteenth century. The burgesses of
Flanders had saved the country from French domination. But with the
foe once defeated, they began to fight each other, and the main events
in Flemish history at this time are bloody internal struggles and
continuous revolts against the national princes. Ghent and Bruges,
the two most powerful cities of the county, were continuously in
disagreement, and eventually took up arms against each other. Since the
battle of the Golden Spurs Bruges had retained its democratic spirit
and Ghent remained, as in the time of Philip the Fair, the bulwark and
the refuge of the patricians. The craftsmen of Ghent did not succeed
in overthrowing their enemies because they were themselves divided. The
tyranny of the weavers was often opposed by the other guilds.
It was a question of foreign policy, however, which finally subjected
Flanders to a severe trial. In France the dynasty of the Capetians was
extinct, and a new family, the Valois, ascended the throne. Edward III,
King of England, claimed to have rights to the French crown and decided
to inaugurate a war in order to enforce his demands. He sought allies
on the Continent and succeeded in obtaining the support of Emperor
Louis of Bavaria (1337), to whom he paid a large sum of English gold.
What was to be the attitude of Flanders in the forthcoming conflict?
Count Louis of Flanders was a French sympathizer and took the side of
King Philip of Valois. The Flemish cities, however, did not desire a
rupture with England; their economic interest depended entirely on
friendly relations with that country, owing to the fact that they
needed English wool for their cloth industry.
At this juncture appeared Jacques Van Artevelde, a man great in Belgian
history. He was a member of one of the patrician families, wealthy,
and much respected. In 1338 he became captain of the municipal army of
Flanders and soon found himself even more powerful than the Count. When
the English delegates, sent by Edward III to win Flanders to his cause,
arrived in the country, they visited Artevelde as the real leader of
public opinion.
Although sympathetic to the English cause, Artevelde, partly fearing
the resentment of the French King and partly wishing to prevent his
country from becoming the battlefield of the hostile armies, first
tried the policy of neutrality. He confined himself to assuring England
of his friendship, thinking that this would suffice to win for Flanders
the commercial advantages it needed.
Unfortunately, the conception of neutrality was premature at this
moment of Belgian history. The increasing pressure of Edward III on the
one hand and the persistent distrust of France on the other convinced
Artevelde that he had to choose between the belligerents. That was a
delicate and dangerous task, for the Flemings faced a conflict between
their commercial interest and their duty toward their feudal lord, the
King of France. Artevelde, “the wise man of Ghent,” acted cleverly.
On his suggestion, Edward III declared himself to be the true king of
France, for he was the grandson of Philip the Fair through his mother,
whereas Philip of Valois was only the nephew of the former ruler. The
Flemings, easily convinced by these claims, put their scruples aside,
and accepted the idea of the Anglo-Flemish alliance. The French fleet
was destroyed by the English at L’Ecluse (1340), but Tournai was vainly
besieged by the Anglo-Flemish forces. Artevelde became more and more
the confidant of the English King, who called him “his fellow” and
highly appreciated his shrewd diplomacy.
The power of the “wise man of Ghent” soon aroused the jealousy of
many, and was greatly endangered when the English King, annoyed by
the reluctance of the Flemings to conclude with him a complete treaty
of alliance, suddenly abandoned his claims and left his allies in the
lurch. A sudden outburst of hostility put an end to Artevelde’s career.
His enemies informed the people that he had favored England too much,
that he had given the treasure of Flanders to the English King, and
that he intended to offer the crown to the Prince of Wales. Only the
last charge was true. But the people, stirred up by demagogues who
had planned the fall of the “wise man,” believed what they were told.
A furious mob attacked the house of Artevelde. While he was trying
to persuade them that he was falsely accused, he was overpowered
and ignominiously slain (1345). “The poor exalted him, the wicked
killed him,” that is the epitaph written by Froissart, his political
adversary, in honor of the greatest Fleming of all times.
The assassination of Artevelde was followed a short time after by the
death of his enemy, the Count of Flanders himself. Louis of Nevers
fell among the French knights on the battlefield of Crécy, where the
English King won a decisive victory. The new count, Louis of Male, was
an enemy of democracy. He had to meet a serious revolt of the craftsmen
of Ghent, under the leadership of Philip, the son of Artevelde. The son
of the “wise man” had no particular military or political talents; his
extraction alone had commended him to the restless people of Ghent. He
tried to renew the alliance with England, but failed. A French army was
sent to Flanders in order to assist the Count against his subjects.
In the battle of Roosebeke, near Courtrai (1382), the Flemings were
defeated and Philip Van Artevelde was killed. The whole of Flanders
fell into the hands of the victors, except the commune of Ghent. That
mighty city, thanks to the courage of Peter Vanden Bossche and his
troops, resisted the kingdom of France for two years.
Finally, Louis of Male, the last of the family of the Dampierre, died
in 1384. His death opens the rule of the Burgundian dukes in the
history of Flanders.
The many years of internal struggle had seriously injured the
prosperity of Flemish trade and industry. The finances of the communes
were ruined; poverty was on the increase; the income from licenses had
diminished; foreign merchants complained of the insecurity of their
goods. Edward III invited many Flemish to emigrate to England, which
they did, and the Flemish counts, by punishing the rebellious cities,
had themselves cut off many sources of production and wealth. From 1350
on, the German Hansa, whose members resided at Bruges, complained of
the heavy taxes, and of the complete lack of peace and safety. In 1380
the Count banished the merchants, charging them with having plotted
against his authority and with having assisted the Flemish rebels. This
was a serious blow to the prosperity of the country. The Hansa left
Bruges for Antwerp. Here began the decline and fall of the once famous
seaport.
If we look back at this stage of the political development of the
Belgian principalities during the time of the communes we note a
growing tendency to consolidation on the part of most of the duchies
and counties. At the end of the fourteenth century, Flanders,
Brabant, and Limburg were united under one dynasty; the same thing
occurred in the case of Hainaut and Holland. Little by little the
separation resulting from the treaty of Verdun in the ninth century
had disappeared, and all parts of Belgium had gradually experienced
the imperceptible drawing together which time had effected. They were
ultimately to be united, as a political body, by the dukes of Burgundy.
To explain that result is the task of the next chapter.
CHAPTER V
THE UNION OF THE BELGIAN PRINCIPALITIES UNDER THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY
At the very moment when all the Belgian principalities had won their
complete political autonomy and rejected the French, the English, and
the German influence, they were brought together under the scepter
of one dynasty, and became united in a solid monarchic federation.
As such, they constitute, between Germany and France, that buffer
state represented on the map of Europe by the kingdoms of Belgium
and Holland. The unconscious tendency of the preceding centuries was
brought to a head in the fifteenth century by the dukes of Burgundy.
They were aided in large part by the political circumstances of the
time. France was exhausted after the Hundred Years’ War and Germany had
lost the prestige and the strength of its monarchic power. In favoring
the desire for a union of the Belgian principalities, the dukes saved
Belgium from conquest or absorption by France. They continued and
completed the work of the warriors of the battle of the Golden Spurs.
The Scheldt was no longer a political barrier between the east and the
west of the country. Belgium, as a united political body, was now for
the first time a reality.
The achievements of the Burgundian dukes may be considered from two
points of view. We may consider the territorial and geographical
consolidation and the political reform.
As for the territorial consolidation, there existed, at the end of
the fourteenth century, three ruling houses in Belgium, each of them
dominating many provinces, and each hoping to bring the whole country
under its scepter. These houses were those of Luxemburg, Bavaria, and
Burgundy. The house of Luxemburg had annexed to its hereditary duchy
the duchies of Brabant and Limburg; that of Bavaria ruled Hainaut,
Holland, and Zeeland; that of Burgundy possessed the duchy of the same
name with the counties of Flanders and Artois. It was the Duchess
Jeanne of Brabant who turned the scale in favor of Burgundy. Although
she had promised the duchy of Brabant to the house of Luxemburg, she
gave it to her niece, wife of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and
Count of Flanders. So, in 1404, according to the testamentary devises
of the late Jeanne of Brabant, Brabant and Limburg went to Antoine,
youngest son of Philip the Bold, while to John without Fear, the eldest
son, were given Flanders and Artois. There were thus a Flemish and
a Brabantine branch of Burgundy. Antoine, Duke of Brabant, married
Elizabeth of Gorlitz, heiress of the duchy of Luxemburg, and annexed
that vast territory to his two other duchies (1409). His son John
IV, by his marriage with Jacqueline of Bavaria, added to the duchies
transmitted by his father the counties of Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland,
and the seigneurie of Friesland. John IV was an insignificant prince.
History remembers him for having, in 1425, founded the University
of Louvain. His brother, Philip de Saint-Pol, died without issue,
and thereupon the states of Brabant offered the possessions of the
Brabantine branch of Burgundy to the head of the Flemish branch, Philip
the Good, Count of Flanders (1430). As Philip the Good had purchased
in 1429 the county of Namur, practically all the Belgian principalities
came under the same rule. At this moment the unity of Belgium was born.
Only the three ecclesiastical principalities of Cambrai, Liège, and
Utrecht failed to become united with the other provinces, and in these
the Burgundian dukes exerted their influence by appointing members of
their family as bishops or by supporting candidates in the episcopal
elections who were devoted to their interests.
Philip the Good, whom the historian Juste Lipse called, in the
seventeenth century, _conditor Belgii_ (“the founder of Belgium”),
was known in his own times as the Grand Duke of the West. The fame of
his power was carried to the Mediterranean, where his vessels fought
the Turkish pirates. He lacked only the title of king. He instituted
negotiations with the Emperor for restoring in his favor the former
kingdom of Lotharingia. These negotiations did not succeed because he
refused to pay to Frederick III, the German Emperor, the sum the latter
demanded, and to give the oath of allegiance and vassalage for those
parts of his possessions which were fiefs of the Empire. He boasted to
an envoy of Louis XI, King of France, that “he wanted them to know he
could have been king, if he had only willed it.”
His work was nearly destroyed by the extravagant plans and the ambition
of his son, Charles the Bold, who succeeded him in 1467. The reign of
Charles was dominated by the struggle with the shrewd King of France,
Louis XI. This king watched with anxiety the increasing power of one of
his vassals, and tried to circumvent his plans in all possible ways.
The schemes of Charles the Bold were fantastically extensive, and the
historian Philip de Comines said of him: “He tried so many things that
he could not live long enough to carry them out, and they were indeed
almost impossible enterprises.”
As the house of Burgundy tried to dominate the principality of Liège,
Charles followed that policy by imposing upon the citizens of Liège
the candidacy of Louis of Bourbon as bishop-prince. The people of the
principality, stirred up by the French King, rose against the mighty
duke. They paid a heavy price. In 1466 the town of Dinant was sacked by
the troups of Charles the Bold, and in 1468 Liège shared the same fate.
Unspeakable atrocities were committed by the Burgundian army, and fire
and sword nearly decimated the populace. These disasters placed the
principality for at least ten years under the domination of Charles.
The states of the Burgundian dukes were composed of two sections,
separated from each other by independent principalities. In the south,
they possessed the duchy of Burgundy and the county of the same name,
also called Franche-Comté; in the north, Belgium and a large part of
the Dutch provinces were in their hands. From 1469 on, Charles tried
patiently but relentlessly to bring together both parts of his state.
He took Lorraine by force and got in _engagère_ Alsace, Brisgau, and
other minor principalities. In the north he succeeded, in 1472, in
winning, by the testament of the late Arnold of Gueldre, the duchy of
that name and the county of Zutphen.
Adopting the plan which his father had devised, but enlarging
it considerably, he began negotiations with the Emperor for the
reconstitution of the former mediaeval kingdom of Burgundy, and for
his appointment as King of the Romans and successor to the Empire. He
failed where Philip the Good had failed.
He intended next to conquer the country of his enemy, Louis XI.
After the conquest he planned to divide France between himself and
his brother-in-law, Edward of England. In order to avoid the danger,
the French King cleverly entangled his vassal in a war with the
Swiss. Charles fought the battle of Nancy under very unfavorable
circumstances. His army was severely defeated and he himself killed.
His body was discovered in the ice of a frozen pool, pierced by three
deadly wounds and half devoured by wolves.
His young daughter Mary took on her shoulders the heavy burden entailed
upon her as his successor.
The territorial federation of all the Belgian principalities by the
Burgundian dukes involved as a consequence the political unification
of these provinces. Having but one prince, they also had but one
government. It was necessary, of course, that the individual
institutions of each principality should disappear, and the political
life of the country was subjected to the centralizing tendency of a
common monarchy. Above the local institutions were established central
institutions, common to all the territories: the council of the duke,
an advisory body; the chancellor of Burgundy, a kind of prime minister;
the Grand Council, a governmental body, which Charles the Bold, more
autocratic than his father, divided into two new colleges, with
distinct functions--the Council of State, a political college, and the
Parliament of Malines, a supreme court of justice (1473).
Such a centralization of the national institutions was quite necessary
if the danger of being dominated by France was to be avoided. France
was rapidly becoming united under the leadership of its kings, who
possessed a permanent army, the right to impose a perpetual _taille_,
and the exercise of sovereign justice. In the face of this united and
powerful monarchy, the Burgundian state could not remain separated. The
Belgian provinces could no longer remain isolated from each other and
limit themselves to an individualistic and egotistic policy. It was
seen that everything ought to be concentrated in the hands of a strong
prince. That was the new idea that was introduced into the constitution
of the Belgian principalities, an idea that had never appeared prior to
the fifteenth century. Throughout the Middle Ages the antiquated idea
of the state as a collective person distinct from its members never
clearly appears. The concept of sovereignty--absolute power subject to
no control--was also lacking. The individual life dominated the life of
the community. Little by little the renascence of the study of Roman
law introduced other concepts, namely, those of state and sovereignty.
The students of Roman law, the “legists,” stood for a government that
would be one, indivisible, strong, absolute, and active. They believed
that all that tended to limit the complete exercise of public authority
should be discarded: the state was held to be impersonal and almighty.
That new concept of the state was embodied in the politics of the
Burgundian dukes during the fifteenth century. Centralization and the
absolute power of the prince took the place of the former personal
and collective privileges. This idea triumphed, not only because the
Burgundian dukes were strong, but also because it was in accordance
with the needs of the time and the wishes of the majority of the people.
Of course, the dukes, when they tried to realize their political
centralization, met with some resistance on the part of the powerful
communes. But Philip the Good cleverly avoided any open fight. He
simply tried to subject the cities to his control--to prevent them from
being a state within the state. He took part in the appointment of the
magistrates, ordered their accounts to be examined by his officers,
forbade advantage to be taken of the small cities and the peasantry,
and made the judgments of their tribunals subject to review by his own
councils of justice. Flanders endeavored to evade the results of that
policy. There were serious revolts in Bruges (1436-47) and in Ghent
(1450-53), and the cities of Brabant, particularly Malines, seemed
unwilling to adapt themselves to the new situation.
All this local resistance was ruthlessly broken by Charles the Bold
when he became duke. The autonomy of the cities was completely
disregarded, the traditions were changed without consideration, the
privileges remained unrecognized. Charles kept the appointment of
all the municipal charges in his own hands. The omnipotence of the
sovereign was, according to him, the only warrant for order and
justice, such as he himself desired for his possessions.
Political centralization would, however, never have been achieved by
the dukes if they had not enjoyed the support of certain classes of the
people. They had, indeed, the help of the noblemen, who were despised
and ignored by the communes, and were therefore ready to help all the
enemies of the cities. Moreover, the dukes succeeded in destroying the
feudal character of the nobility, in softening it, and in converting it
into a body of courtiers. They attracted the noblemen by making them
royal allowances, by granting them gifts of land or money, offices
at court, etc. A golden chain soon bound all the feudalists, once so
independent; and life at court soon robbed them of their former spirit
of freedom. Before long, the favor of the prince constituted the only
chance of success in political and social life. In order to keep the
nobles loyal to his person, Philip the Good founded at Bruges, in 1480,
the famous and privileged order of the Golden Fleece.
Only the Burgundian and Picardian nobles, however, were to be found at
court, occupying the public offices, and entirely submissive to their
sovereign. The Belgian nobles could not forget that the rights of the
prince, according to national tradition, were not without limits; they
desired a guaranty against the dangers of personal government. They
desired a government in which the duke would not be able to declare
war without the consent of the states, in which he would regulate his
expenses in accordance with the income of his domain, and in which he
would act only after having taken the advice of his council.
The dukes were also supported in their efforts toward centralization
by the clergy. Philip the Good had abolished exemption from taxation
till that time enjoyed by the clergy, asserting that the common law
was opposed to such privileges. Following the example of the King of
France, the Duke limited the temporal power of the clergy, narrowed
their jurisdiction, and imposed upon the church his candidates for
bishoprics and monasteries. On the other hand, the Duke extended the
political power of the clergy, giving them the first place in the
States-General and in the councils. The States-General was a new
institution, also introduced by the Burgundian dukes. Before the
existence of the States-General, the prince was compelled, whenever
a levy of taxes was desired, to deliberate separately with the
delegates of each Belgian province and to obtain their consent. Philip
the Good thought it more expedient to gather them all together in
his presence at the same time. That meeting was called the meeting
of the States-General. As the States-General did not meet except
at the express order of the sovereign, and for his own advantage,
this institution served as an instrument for weakening provincial
individualism and strengthening the central government.
In the States-General the clergy were granted the first place; they, as
well as the nobles, therefore became supporters of the policy of the
dukes. By such methods, by persuasion, by distribution of money, and
even by violence, the Burgundian dukes succeeded in transforming the
institutions of the Belgian principalities into a monarchical rule.
Most of the new institutions were modeled after those existing in
France, but adapted to the local situation and needs of Belgium. No
principality lost its own autonomy, its own constitution, or its
privileges. The Burgundian state was an agglomeration of states, a
juxtaposition of territories. There was no universal power; the dukes
were not “princes of Belgium” or “princes of the Netherlands”; they
ruled every principality separately and were dukes of Brabant, counts
of Flanders, dukes of Luxemburg, counts of Hainaut, Namur, etc. But
their power was as vast as their wealth. When Philip the Good died in
1467, he left a personal fortune whose annual income nearly equaled
that of the republic of Venice and was as much as four times that of
the republic of Florence, three times that of the King of Naples, twice
that of the Pope and of the Duke of Milan. No wonder that he was called
“the Grand Duke of the West.”
[Illustration: THE MASTERPIECE OF MATHIEU DE LAYENS: TOWN HALL OF
LOUVAIN (It escaped destruction during the conflagration of August 26,
1914)]
What about the Belgian civilization in the time of the Burgundian dukes?
We know that, toward the end of the fourteenth century, Flanders
suffered a decline after the bloody civil war: the German merchants
left Bruges, Ghent lost a part of its population, Ypres was half
destroyed, Ostend became a sandy waste. The “polders” were inundated;
wolves and wild boars infested the country.
Fifty years later, during the reign of the Burgundian dukes, Belgium
had again become the richest country in Europe. That revival was, of
course, not attributable to the dukes alone. It must be remembered
that the Belgians are an industrious people and that the geographical
position of the country is highly favorable. But the political union of
all the provinces, peace, and a good administration contributed largely
to the revival of the nation. The political work of the Burgundian
dukes brought about the unification of coinage, the free relations
between the different principalities, the order and safety necessary
for the development of trade and industry. From an economic point of
view, the dukes endeavored to conserve and to enlarge the resources
of the country. They took prohibitive measures against the English
cloth industry in favor of the Flemish manufacture. Charles the Bold
endeavored to dredge the sand out of the harbor of Bruges and to save
that city from disaster. In the fifteenth century Antwerp, supported
by the dukes, became the largest market of the north. In Luxemburg the
gold and silver mines began to be operated, employing the mine-workers
of the region of Liège.
Although the economic policy of the dukes may be described as still
somewhat incoherent, it may yet be said to have embraced excellent
principles. A declaration is preserved to the effect that “one of the
main points of all good policy, upon which the public welfare is based,
is to get and to keep good and lasting money, as well golden as silver
coin.”
Notwithstanding these principles and the various measures taken for the
protection of trade, a crisis in the cloth industry was soon apparent.
This was due to the transformation in the wool trade. Bruges was the
big wool market of the Continent, but, since the development of the
English cloth industry, the English producers had kept the raw material
at home, thereby diminishing the stock of wool in Flanders. The price
had greatly increased, and Flemish manufacturers were obliged to use
Spanish wool of inferior quality. This, of course, spelled the decline
of the Belgian cloth industry. The decline of Louvain’s prosperity was
somewhat mitigated by the foundation there of the University in 1425.
Nothing, however, could save Ypres. Its craftsmen, threatened with
starvation, migrated to England; houses were abandoned and fell into
ruin; in 1456 a third of the population was begging for bread along the
roads.
Other parts of the country were less affected by the crisis in the
cloth industry. Ghent had its grain staple; Brussels, where the dukes
resided, imported articles of luxury; Malines had its Parliament;
Antwerp took the place of Bruges as a seaport. Since 1442, English
merchants had settled in Antwerp, and this meant the end of Bruges and
of the part played by Flanders in the economic life of Belgium. It was
now the turn of Brabant. At the same time, a new industry was being
introduced into Flanders and Brabant, the technical features of which
were much the same as those of the cloth industry. Wool was replaced
by flax, and instead of cloth manufacture we hear next of the linen
industry. As manufacture on a large scale, mediaeval in its forms and
restrictive and exclusive in its spirit of corporation, could no longer
support itself, the new linen industry soon came to be carried on in
the homes of the operatives, mainly in the country. Driven out of
Flanders by circumstances, the cloth industry now sought to prolong its
life in a little town of the Ardennes--Verviers, near Liège (1480).
The conditions of trade likewise experienced decline and revival at the
same time. In this particular the outstanding feature is the decline of
Bruges. As is well known, credit operations on a large scale sometimes
bring about big bankruptcies. Until the death of Charles the Bold
(1477), Bruges remained the financial and banking center of Europe.
It was filled with Italian bankers, among them agents of the Medici,
the Portinari, and the Guidetti. A large number of foreign merchants
resided at Bruges, grouped in colonies known as “nations.” Among them
were the “nations” of Florence, of Spain, and of the Osterlings. In
1457 the shipping in the harbor was represented by three vessels
from Venice, one from Portugal, two from Spain, six from Scotland,
forty-two from Bretagne, twelve from Hamburg, four whale-boats, and
thirty-six to forty fishing smacks. The vessels came mainly from Spain
and Portugal. They brought merchandise hitherto unknown to the people
of Belgium: oranges, lemons, rose-water, candy, jam, oriental tapestry,
etc. From the Portuguese warehouses in Africa came monkeys, lions,
parrots.
In the course of the fifteenth century, however, for reasons already
indicated, the merchants of the German Hansa left Bruges. As a result
of the fall of the Flemish cloth industry and the prohibitive measures
taken against England in favor of Flanders, the shipping company of the
English Merchant Adventurers sent large numbers to settle at Antwerp
in 1442-44. They were joined by the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese
merchants. The bankers soon followed. At the end of the fifteenth
century the glorious old Flemish city showed 4,000 to 5,000 empty
houses. From then on it became known as “Bruges la morte.” Its rival,
Antwerp, had become the center of the cloth-weaving industry.
The inundations in Zeeland at the beginning of the fifteenth century
had considerably enlarged the western Scheldt and afforded a direct
route to the sea. Taking advantage of this circumstance, Antwerp,
from the very beginning, showed a highly modern and liberal spirit.
It reduced the taxes on foreign merchants, whereas Bruges, in order
to save the situation, maintained its restrictive and drastic
legislation and tried to uphold its economic privileges and its
highly protectionist measures. Moreover, Antwerp did not share the
revolutionary spirit of the Flemish communes. There were no bloody
struggles against the dukes, and there was the best of understanding
with the central power.
The new spirit of Antwerp is shown in its commercial organization.
There were two fairs yearly, held on the principle of commercial
liberty. Those visiting the fairs were protected by a special
passport. Whereas a monopoly existed in the professions of broker and
money-changer in Bruges, at Antwerp they were open to all. The right of
citizenship was easily acquired. In 1460, Antwerp established the first
exchange that existed in Europe. At the end of the fifteenth century
the city had become the great commercial center of the north. But, as
earlier in the case of Bruges, the more important commerce was in the
hands of foreigners. The people of Antwerp were but auxiliaries and
intermediaries, brokers, forwarding agents, charterers of vessels, etc.
The same phenomenon is observable in the Antwerp of today.
On the other hand, the political and economic transformations which
resulted in such crises in city life proved advantageous for the
peasantry, for the people of the countryside. The decline of the
tyranny of the big cities tended to bring to the peasant more and more
of freedom. He was now free to engage in industry at home and to become
a paid workman in the service of the capitalist. The old restrictions
of the feudal law and the law of the manor were gone.
Even in the realm of charity the changing order was manifest. It was
now taken in hand by the state. Special ordinances against beggars
were issued in 1461 for Flanders and Brabant. Heretofore, the beggar
had been abandoned to the tender mercies of the church and of private
charity. Thenceforth he was taken in hand by the government. The
state refused to encourage beggars; it controlled them and forced
them to work. A special license for begging was granted to children
under twelve years and to persons over sixty years, and to mothers
with numerous children and without work. Those found begging without
a license were imprisoned. The institutions for charity, heretofore
exclusively religious, were taken over by the local governments. Boards
of trustees were appointed by the municipalities and the finances were
controlled by the _échevins_.
As for literary and artistic conditions in the Burgundian period, it
is to be noted that French influence gradually disappeared after the
battle of the Golden Spurs. French of course remained the language of
the court, of the nobility, of the wealthy citizens. French, together
with Latin, also remained as the language of diplomacy. But it made
no more gains. At this time Flemish began to take its place in civic
life. As a result of the victory of democracy in most of the cities,
Flemish became the language of the administration and was used for
the registration of real estate and for accounts. Through existing
relations with the merchants of the Hansa it became also the language
of commercial affairs. Primary schools were established in all the
cities, and instruction was given in the language of the people. The
literary works of Van Maerlandt, whose influence has already been
described, came freely into the possession of, and were read by, the
humblest craftsmen.
When Charles the Bold tried to impose French as the only official
language, vigorous discontent was the result, and in 1477 the so-called
“Grand Privilege” of Mary of Burgundy resulted in the re-establishment
of Flemish. The knowledge of Flemish also spread through the Walloon
country. Walloon merchants settled in Antwerp and Flemish merchants
went to Namur and Dinant.
Under these favorable conditions, Flemish literature developed rapidly;
but the development mainly affected Brabant. Brabant now took the place
formerly occupied by Flanders. The Brabantine dialect, instead of
the Flemish one, soon became dominant in literature. One of the best
writers of this time was Jan Boendale (†1365), the famous author of the
_Brabantsche Yeesten_ (“Deeds of Brabant”). Boendale was serious and
practical, and had no sympathy for France, like Van Maerlandt. He was
an enemy both of the democracy and of the nobility; the merchants and
the peasants were the classes with which he showed the most sympathy.
Another Flemish author of great fame was Jan Van Ruysbroeck (†1381),
also a native of Brabant. He was the herald of mysticism and of divine
love, and occupies the first rank among all the religious writers of
the Middle Ages. He wrote in a wonderful prose and surpassed everyone
in inspiration of thought. The Flemish literature owes also much to
another mystic, Gerard de Groote (†1384), of Deventer, founder of the
“Brethren of Common Life.” The members of that community issued a
large number of religious tracts, all of them written in Flemish. They
founded excellent schools, where instruction was given by teachers
from the University of Paris, and they were the first to introduce
the art of printing into the Netherlands. The most famous printer of
the Netherlands, Thierry Martens, of Alost, was one of their pupils.
Wherever they founded communities and schools they introduced the
art of printing, e.g., in Alost, Bruges, Brussels, Deventer, Gouda,
Louvain, and Utrecht.
As for French literature in Belgium during the Burgundian period, its
output was mainly devoted to the aristocracy, and consisted chiefly
of historical material. The names of the historians Jean le Bel, Jean
Froissart, Monstrelet, and Chastelain are well known. Froissart was a
cosmopolitan writer, and most of the historians of this school showed
only a dynastic learning. There was no question of patriotism. They
praised the Burgundian dukes because these dukes were their protectors
and benefactors.
Artistic life, on the other hand, was not divided into two separate
currents, as was the literary life. In matters of art, Flemish and
Walloon collaborated during the fifteenth century and together produced
a real Belgian art. The masters of this period were the Flemings Jan
and Hubert Van Eyck and the Walloon Roger de la Pasture or Van der
Weyden.
Since the end of the thirteenth century Belgian art had become
completely original. It was the wealth of city life that rendered that
phenomenon possible. The wealth of the burgesses served to found many
art industries. Sculpture, painting, and the goldsmith’s art were
no longer exclusively religious; they became more and more secular.
The erection of large churches ceased. Painters were busy decorating
guild halls and city halls, banners and tents, and painting for craft
guilds and for dramatic societies. The oldest products of Belgian
art are to be found in sculpture, especially monuments in stone or
yellow copper. The cleverness of technique and the realism of outline
compel admiration. The artists copied with exactness what they noted
in their surroundings. For the stiff meagerness of the Gothic style
they substituted a more rounded form, and produced a truer art as a
result. One of the most famous sculptors of this period was Claus
Sluter, native of Zeeland, creator of the celebrated sculptures of
Dijon. Those masterpieces, made when Ghiberti and Donatello flourished
in Italy, enable the Netherlands to share with that country the first
place in art of this period.
The painters forsook more slowly than did the sculptors the traditions
of the preceding period, but during the period of the Burgundian
dukes they made rapid strides. The painters are to be found among the
Flemings and the Walloons; they were not influenced by the foreign
schools, and they dwelt in the cities of Flanders and Brabant, where
the presence of wealthy merchants and the residence of the court
afforded them the opportunities for the exercise of their art. Hubert
Van Eyck, of Limburg, came to Ghent about 1430; his brother Jan settled
in Bruges in 1425; Roger Van der Weyden left Tournai and located in
Brussels in 1435. Other famous names are those of Peter Christus, of
Brabant; Simon Marmion, of Valenciennes; Juste Van Wassenhove, of
Ghent; Hugo Van der Goes, of Ghent; Thierry Bouts, of Haerlem; and
the anonymous “Master of Flémalle.” This is a period in which art and
craftsmanship meant quite different things; the personality of the
painter was now in free course of development.
Music also now began to be recognized as the expression of the genius
of both Belgian races, although musicians were chiefly found among
the Walloons, whereas the painters were mainly Flemings. The names
of the musicians Jan Ockeghem (1494-96), a Fleming, and Josquin des
Prés (1450), a Walloon, may be mentioned as having substituted the
choir with many voices for the choir with one voice, and as having
introduced counterpoint in musical composition. Architecture now came
to be regarded as of less importance than sculpture. Its tendency was
to a profusion of ornaments; the simplicity of lines and the severe
majesty of the Gothic style of the thirteenth century disappeared.
The prominence of sculptural decoration was especially noticeable
in the city halls of Brussels and Louvain (1444-48), the latter the
masterpiece of Mathieu de Layens and one of the richest examples of
sculpture in the fifteenth century. Louvain was fortunate also in
possessing its no less famous university (1425). That seat of learning
was founded at the request of Duke John IV of Brabant by Pope Martin
V. The faculty of theology was added to the three other faculties
(arts, law, and medicine) by Pope Eugen IV in 1432. During the first
quarter of the sixteenth century the University of Louvain played an
unparalleled part in the intellectual life of Belgium.
Such was the splendid achievement of Belgian culture in the times of
the Burgundian dukes. The untimely death of Charles the Bold on the
battlefield of Nancy threatened ruin to the marvelous results of their
policy. The news of his death was scarcely made public when the strong
Burgundian state he dreamed of collapsed. Lorraine, Alsace, and the
neighboring countries regained their independence, Liège threw off the
yoke, and the shrewd Louis XI, notwithstanding the treaties, annexed
the cities of the Somme and of Picardy to France, conquered Artois, and
took possession of the duchy of Burgundy and of the Franche-Comté.
This was a disastrous beginning for the young daughter of Charles the
Bold, Mary of Burgundy. It was necessary that she be married and so
obtain a protector as promptly as possible. The States-General accepted
the candidacy of Maximilian of Hapsburg, son of the Emperor Frederick
III of Germany. That marriage laid the foundation for the European
supremacy of the house of Hapsburg, and gave to Belgium a dynasty which
remained in power until the French Revolution.
Prior to the marriage of Mary, the States-General had taken advantage
of the disastrous situation in which the young princess found herself,
and wrested from her the so-called “Grand Privilege” (February
11, 1477), whereby the Parliament of Malines was abolished and a
“Grand Council” was established, with limited power and including
representatives of all the Belgian provinces. At the same time,
each principality succeeded in obtaining collective provincial
privileges. Thus most of the new institutions and rules introduced
by the Burgundian dukes were abolished, and the former privileges of
the communes were again recognized. After the death of Princess Mary
(1482), the reaction of the communes became even more violent. A son
named Philip had been born to Mary and Maximilian; history knows him
as Philip the Fair. The Belgians immediately recognized the infant
archduke, but they continued the fight against his father Maximilian.
After a bloody struggle in which both France (assisting Flanders) and
Germany (assisting Maximilian) interfered, victory remained in the
hands of the Hapsburgs (1492).
The resistance of the Flemish communes to autocracy and centralization
was henceforth shattered. Broken and impoverished, they no longer
questioned the authority of the prince. Philip the Fair and Charles V
continued at peace and achieved the work of monarchic centralization
initiated by the Burgundian dukes.
CHAPTER VI
BELGIUM UNDER CHARLES V (1506-55) AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE HOUSE OF
HAPSBURG
Philip the Fair was made duke and count of the different Belgian
principalities in 1494. Meanwhile the international situation in Europe
had become dangerous for Spain and the Empire. Charles VIII of France
had conquered the countries of Milan and Naples. The Hapsburgs and the
King of Spain, threatened by the common danger, united against the
policy of France and strengthened the coalition by the marriage of Don
Juan, heir to the Spanish throne, to the daughter of Maximilian of
Hapsburg, and the union of the latter’s son, Philip the Fair, with the
Spanish infanta, Jeanne. As all the heirs to the Spanish throne died in
a short space of time, Jeanne inherited all the rights, and Philip the
Fair, sovereign of the Netherlands, became King of Spain.
This event proved of the utmost importance in the history of Belgium.
Although regarded as a separate territory, the Netherlands--both
Belgium and Holland--became a mere annex of the Spanish branch of the
Hapsburg monarchy. For more than two centuries Belgium was ruled from
Madrid by sovereigns who were first of all kings of Spain.
This was not yet, however, the case in the time of Charles V, the great
emperor of the sixteenth century. Archduke Charles, son of Philip the
Fair, known as Charles V at the time of his accession as Emperor in
1519, assumed control of the Netherlands in 1515. The latter included
Belgium and Holland, in addition to the county of Artois, and was
commonly spoken of as the Seventeen Provinces. The following year
(1516) Charles also became King of Spain. His reign was occupied by
protracted wars with France, constituting a continuous strife with
the powerful sovereign for the hegemony of Europe. In the course of
this struggle the Netherlands were continually attacked by Francis
I, the French King, and his allies, the Duke of Gueldre, and the La
Marcks, Lords of Sedan and Bouillon. The advantage was always with
Charles, however, and he was thus enabled to continue the territorial
concentration of all the provinces of the Netherlands which was begun
by the dukes of Burgundy.
Peacefully or by force, Charles successively annexed East Friesland,
Tournai and Tournaisis, the Overyssel, Groninge and Ommelanden, Gueldre
and Zutphen to his domains. In the ecclesiastical principalities, which
the Burgundian dukes had never been able to annex but only to control,
Charles succeeded in winning the temporal power in the bishopric of
Utrecht; destroyed Térouanne, the seat of the bishopric of the same
name; erected Cambrai and Cambrésis into a duchy in favor of the
bishop; and purchased part of the principality of Liège, where he built
strong fortresses.
After these achievements, Charles V could call himself the mightiest
sovereign in Europe. But a very intricate question yet remained to
be settled, namely, what the political relation of the Netherlands
should be toward the Empire. The feudal tie between the Empire and the
provinces, called into existence while Lotharingia was yet a fief, had
never, theoretically at least, been broken; and at the beginning of
the sixteenth century Germany still affected to recognize the union
(the feudal vassalage) of the provinces with the Empire, in order that
they might be the more easily compelled to share in the heavy financial
burdens of the latter. The Netherlands, on the other hand, maintained
that the union no longer existed. The question was a difficult one
for Charles, he being at the same time German Emperor and sovereign
of the Netherlands. It took him twenty-five years of negotiations.
In 1548, after his victory over the princes of the Protestant League
at Schmalkalden, he settled the question by the celebrated Augsburg
transaction.
By this provisional arrangement the Empire was divided into “circles.”
The episcopal duchy of Cambrai, Liège, and the small principality of
Stavelot-Malmedy became a part of the so-called circle of Westphalia;
the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands and the Franche-Comté
constituted a new circle, called the “circle of Bourgogne.” These
states were placed under the armed protection of the Empire, which
undertook to defend them as members of the whole. They were recognized,
however, as independent and free states, not subject to the laws of the
Empire. At the same time, fearing that, through the application of the
varying rules of succession existing in each Belgian principality, the
union might some day become imperiled, Charles V, by a special act,
ordained that the Netherlands or Seventeen Provinces should forever be
considered an indivisible whole, in which the first-born son should be
regarded as the heir to the throne. In case of deficiency of a male
heir, however, the female heir was to be recognized in the succession.
This was really a constitutional law sanctioned by the States-General,
officially gathered in solemn meeting in Brussels in 1549. The early
work of the dukes of Burgundy was now completed and firmly established.
Another task of tremendous importance now engaged the attention
of Charles. This was the fight against heresy. The new difficulty
presented an entirely novel problem.
When, by the revolt of Luther against the Roman Catholic church,
Protestantism began rapidly to spread all over Europe, it quickly
found a follower in the Netherlands, whose location facilitated its
expansion. In virtue of their historical development, the Netherlands
are an essentially Catholic state. Charles V and Philip II, as
sovereigns of that state, considered themselves the defenders of
orthodoxy, religious unity, and the union of church and state. In
opposing what they considered to be a political as well as a religious
crime, they invoked the penal laws and criminal institutions as their
weapons against what they regarded as a revolutionary movement.
The famous _placarts_, or penal laws, enacted under Charles V to the
number of a dozen between 1520 and 1530, were complementary to each
other. They were all the work of the government and were approved by
the States-General, the prominent members of the military aristocracy,
and the knights of the Golden Fleece. They were preventive and
repressive at the same time. From a repressive point of view, they
distinguished between the crime of heresy and the simple offense
against the prescriptions of the _placarts_.
The crime of heresy could be committed only by a man who had been
baptized, who from the point of view of the Catholic faith was guilty
of error, and who obstinately persisted in that error after having
been warned and enlightened. Obstinacy in error was the main point. If
there was no obstinacy, but retraction of the error, there was no more
crime; there remained only a sin. On the other hand, a simple offense
against the _placarts_ might be committed by anyone, be he a Catholic,
a Jew, or a heretic. Such offenses might be committed, for instance,
by _acts_, such as the circulation of heretic books and pamphlets, by
sheltering meetings of heretics, etc.
The crime of heresy was to be judged by an ecclesiastical judge,
the only one able to discuss those matters. The offense against the
_placarts_ was to be dealt with by a secular judge, a layman. The
jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical judge was limited by strict rules.
He might not impose a penalty prescribed by the _placarts_, or any
penalty involving the shedding of blood. If the heretic remained
obstinate, he was to be expelled from the church and given over to
the lay judge, who alone might impose the penalty prescribed by the
_placarts_.
The latter penalties were simple and drastic: death by fire, by
sword, or by burial alive, and the confiscation of property. The
system inaugurated by Charles was anti-judicial and cruel. It was
anti-judicial, inasmuch as the penalties were applied both to heretics
and to simple offenders against the _placarts_, and thus provided
similar punishment for offenses whose intrinsic criminality was wholly
different. It must not, however, be forgotten that in the sixteenth
century the object of every penal law was to instil terror first of
all, and that those guilty of heresy were considered as seditious
persons, disturbers of the state, and consequently to be punished by
the severe penalties applicable to acts of _lèse-majesté_.
Special officers were appointed for enforcing the _placarts_. These
were the so-called “Apostolic Inquisitors” whom Charles V requested
the Pope to appoint in 1524. They were only ecclesiastical judges,
receiving their instructions directly from the Holy See. Their mission
consisted in discovering the heretics, in reconciling them with the
church, and in imposing only a canon or ecclesiastical penalty. If
the heretic remained obstinate, they were obliged to turn him over to
the lay judge. For the first time, in 1546, they received detailed
instructions from the Emperor and after that were considered as agents
of the state.
Another measure designed to prevent the spread of heresy was the
establishment of the new dioceses, but as this was undertaken by Philip
II we shall deal with it in another chapter. It remains only to add
that throughout the reign of Charles V the system of the _placarts_ met
with no opposition. The Emperor was a Fleming, he was born at Ghent, he
knew his people, and the people accepted from him what they would not
accept from his son Philip some years later.
Owing to these circumstances, Charles V was able to complete the
work of the Burgundian dukes in another direction, namely, the
monarchic centralization of the Belgian provinces. The numerous wars
waged by him involved expenses, and, under the rights theretofore
granted the country, he was obliged to obtain the consent of the
States-General, called together for the purpose, whenever he required
the financial assistance of his subjects. In granting the subsidies,
the States-General invariably seized on the occasion for exacting some
privilege or concession in return. In order to free himself of this
restraint, the Emperor sought to introduce two innovations, which, in
France, had practically destroyed the power of the States-General,
namely, the permanent impost and the permanent army. To his sister,
Mary of Hungary, who in his name governed the Netherlands, he intrusted
the proposal of a clever scheme. All the provinces of the Netherlands
were to form a defensive union or confederation, in order to be ready
to repel the attacks from foreign princes. Should a province be
attacked, all the other provinces were immediately to join in assisting
it from a military and financial point of view. Such common action
would involve the existence of a permanent army and the introduction of
a permanent tax.
When the proposal was laid before them, the States-General immediately
discovered the trap. Some of them even dared to remark that they
did not want to be treated _à la mode de France_. The scheme was
unequivocally rejected. The Emperor was obliged to yield. He was far
too diplomatic openly and brutally to oppose the privileges of his
subjects.
In 1555 he abdicated and went to pass the rest of his life in the
Spanish monastery of Saint Just. His son, Philip II of Spain, succeeded
him as sovereign of the Netherlands.
CHAPTER VII
PHILIP II AND THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS AGAINST SPANISH RULE
(1555-96)
The revolt of the Netherlands against Spain is not merely an event of
local Belgian history; it belongs to the political history of Europe.
It is an episode of those long and cruel wars of religion which,
beginning in Scotland after the constitution of the first Presbyterian
Covenant, set aflame the whole of Western Europe. Of course, the
occasion for the wars differed in each country, but the cause was the
same in every case and the question which was to be supreme in Europe,
Catholicism or Protestantism, actuated them all. In this tremendous
struggle all questions were finally reduced to one, and as social
influences aligned themselves on one side or the other, the tide turned
in favor of or against the church. Catholics and Protestants supported
their brethren in the faith on the other side of the frontiers. Each
side sought a decisive victory; divided influence or co-ordinate
recognition was acceptable to neither. Timid persons and politicians
seeking to remain neutral were carried away by the current or submerged
by it. Neutrality was impossible; everyone was forced to take part in
the struggle.
The kings of France, lacking principles and decision, found their
own forces divided and were unable to carry out a real international
policy. On the other hand, Elizabeth, Queen of England, resolutely
ranged herself on the side of international Protestantism, assisting
and often directing its attacks. Against her, Philip II of Spain,
considering himself as the absolute defender of Catholicism in Europe,
set his nationality and his faith. Lacking decision in political
matters, he showed no indecision in matters of faith. Against him arose
the league of Protestants throughout Europe. They realized that, if
he was defeated and his country crushed, the church would be defeated
throughout the world. The Protestants therefore concentrated their
attack on him in the Netherlands. The geographical position of the
latter made interference with England, France, and Germany especially
feasible; but they were at the same time the weakest spots in Philip’s
dominions. Revolt blazed within their borders--such revolt as might
result in bringing his power to an end. This Philip realized full well,
and determined to go to any limit in order to keep the Netherlands.
Nothing was left undone which would serve to suppress every attempt at
revolt. This object it was which dictated his unhappy policy in the
Netherlands, a policy that resulted in the loss of the northern part,
and ultimately in the founding of the separate state of the United
Provinces (Holland).
The true meaning of the wars of religion in the Netherlands cannot be
properly understood without taking these considerations into account.
It will also be useful to consider the characters of those prominently
involved in the tragedy, before narrating the details of the tragedy
itself.
Philip II, King of Spain and sovereign of the Netherlands, was
above all a Spaniard. Educated in Spain, he found himself unable to
understand the Belgians as his father had. He did not appreciate
their pride, their deep love of liberty, and their respect for the
privileges granted them. An autocratic king, he was haughty as only a
Spaniard can be. Deeply convinced of the superiority of Catholicism,
and possessing principles absolutely rigid in character, he was
incapable of compromise--in short, a real bigot. In political affairs
he endeavored to arrange every detail himself, and personally to read
piles of dispatches by the light of a candle in his dark room in the
Escurial. He labored day and night, constantly immersed in thought, and
was remarkably slow in reaching a decision. When, however, his mind
was finally made up, it was usually too late. Events had progressed
in the meantime and when his orders reached the theater of war they
could not be carried out, since the situation had entirely changed.
That slowness of decision brought him many disasters. Nevertheless, he
was an excellent father to his children, and there are extant letters
written by him to his daughters, in which it is difficult to recognize
the lonely thinker of the Escurial.
He paid a short visit to his subjects in the Netherlands at the
beginning of his reign (1557), but left no sympathetic impression
behind. His sister, Duchess Margareta of Parma, remained in the country
to govern the people during his absence. He was absent to the end.
His Flemish subjects never saw him again. From Madrid he directed the
affairs of the Belgians, and studied the dispatches which reached him
every week.
Margareta, offspring of the amour of Emperor Charles V with the
daughter of a Flemish upholsterer from Audenaerde, had been educated
for a time in Brussels and had then gone to Italy, where she
successively married Alessandro de’ Medici and Ottavio Farnese,
the latter being Duke of Parma and Piacenza. Although of masculine
character, loving sport and exercises, Margareta possessed the feminine
characteristics of vanity and shrewdness. She had acquired in Italy a
disposition to engage in _combinazione_, and succeeded in playing the
game often under very difficult circumstances. Philip of Spain left
her as an assistant in her political councils a man of real diplomacy,
Cardinal de Granvelle.
Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, Burgundian in origin, was a loyal
servant of his master. He was the man of the _raison d’état_. Philip
II never had a more faithful minister. Granvelle desired only the
welfare of the King and of the state he represented, and was heroic
enough to assume the responsibility for the drastic measures taken by
his sovereign. He was a man of real political genius, clear-sighted,
absolutely unselfish. The main object of his political plans was that
Spain should rule the seas, and it was he who urged Philip II to send
the famous Armada against England.
When Philip II began his reign in the Netherlands, the financial
situation of the government was distressing. Charles V had left heavy
debts created by his numerous wars. Public opinion was defiant,
influenced as it was by ill will for the unsympathetic King and by the
baseless fear that the scheme of erecting new dioceses would be the
precursor of the terrible Spanish Inquisition.
The scheme of erecting new dioceses had been conceived by the King
in 1559, in order to counteract more strongly the propaganda of
Protestantism. The existing mediaeval dioceses were too large to
enable the bishops to carry out their mission as guardians of the
faith. It was necessary, therefore, that the old dioceses be broken
up and divided into smaller ones, so that the bishops would have more
opportunity for action in smaller areas. The Pope consented, and
permitted the erection of thirteen new dioceses. From an ecclesiastical
point of view the country was now divided as follows: the archbishopric
of Malines, with the suffragan dioceses, Antwerp, Bois-le-Duc, Ghent,
Ypres, Bruges, Ruremonde; the archbishopric of Cambrai, with the
suffragans, Arras, Tournai, Namur, Saint-Omer; the archbishopric
of Utrecht, with the suffragans, Haerlem, Deventer, Leeuwarden,
Middelburg, Groninge. The scheme stirred up violent opposition among
the Belgian nobles, the abbots, some of the bishops, and even among the
common people. The nobles feared the loss of their political influence
through the admission of so many bishops into the States-General, where
they would occupy leading positions. Many of the abbots were resentful
because their monasteries would be compelled to contribute to the new
bishops a part of their income, in support of the new dioceses. Some
of the bishops were angered over the division of their former dioceses
and the reduction of their spiritual power. The people, influenced by
political agents and Protestant propagandists, were led to believe
that each new bishop would simply be a representative of the Spanish
Inquisition.
The movement of opposition would have been easily repressed by the
Belgian nobles had they really been faithful to the King. But, on
the whole, they were not. They had the same feelings as the French
aristocracy at this time. They were horrified at the idea of the
supremacy of the sovereign power. Although not possessing any definite
aim, they tried to dominate the Prince and the state by means of the
political power they themselves controlled. They were members of
the Council of State, governors of the different Belgian provinces,
captains in the national army, the famous _bandes d’ordonnance_, and
they exercised a tremendous influence on all classes. The political
difficulties encountered by the government were for them but favorable
opportunities of which to take advantage. The King himself afforded
them a chance. With characteristic disregard for the national
privileges, he established at Brussels a council called the _Consulta_,
an institution of true Spanish type. Composed of a few individuals,
it was dominated by the influence of Cardinal de Granvelle, and
undertook to decide the most important questions of national policy.
The _Consulta_ stirred up an opposition of formidable character,
guided by the most influential Belgian nobles, the Prince of Orange
and the counts of Egmont and Horn. Cardinal de Granvelle became the
victim of the most violent attacks. Margareta of Parma first sought
to defend him, but, little by little, influenced by the nobles, she
finally ranged herself on their side and herself requested the King to
recall the unsympathetic minister. Partly through weariness, partly
through political miscalculation, Philip II yielded. Granvelle left the
Netherlands.
This was a triumph for the opposition. Margareta, who had been moved
by jealousy of Granvelle and who had hoped to add materially to her
power after his departure, fell more and more under the control of the
nobles, who flattered her and took advantage of her feminine vanity. A
reign of anarchy and favoritism followed, the friends of the nobles
being furnished with offices and perquisites. The political opponents
of the King now tried to consolidate and to perpetuate their success.
They asked that all affairs be subject to the control of the Council
of State, the real national body of which they themselves were the
masters; that he should convoke the States-General, and that he should
temper the _placarts_ against the heretics and abolish the power of
the Inquisitors. The granting of the first of these demands would have
made the nobles all-powerful in political affairs. From the second
measure--the meeting of the States-General--they expected ratification
of their conduct and popular support of the opposition they had
inaugurated. In dealing with the question of the _placarts_, they
played a sort of religious policy calculated to bring them the support
of the Lutherans and the Calvinists.
Philip II rejected their demands. Astonished by this resistance,
which they did not expect after the capitulation of the King on the
question of Granvelle, some of the Belgian nobles, and especially the
Prince of Orange, succeeded in embroiling the Protestant sectarians
in the struggle. The Calvinists, more warlike than the Lutherans,
were more than ready to join the movement, owing to their hatred of
the Catholic King of Spain. But, once begun, the movement became an
irresistible one. Stirred up by their preachers and assisted by the
worst elements of the populace, the Calvinists invaded the churches,
smashed the statues of the saints, carried away the treasures, attacked
the convents, and killed monks and priests (1566). The Belgian nobles,
surprised by the revolt they had so imprudently initiated, were unable
to stop it; rather they were submerged by the current. From this time
onward the political anti-Spanish movement became a part of the general
movement of the wars of religion. Many Catholics foresaw what would
happen and deserted the cause, separating themselves from a revolt that
was being directed as much against the church as against Spanish rule.
From the revolt of 1566 and the outrages of the sectarians resulted the
later policy of Philip II toward the Netherlands. Hitherto he had but
followed the traditional policy of his father, Emperor Charles. He had
showed respect for political institutions; he had avoided any cause
of rupture. He had tried, of course unwillingly and unskilfully, to
satisfy public opinion. His patience brought him nothing but a serious
check. He had recalled, in 1561, the Spanish garrisons which had been
quartered in Belgium during the war with France; he had sacrificed his
loyal minister Granvelle and had capitulated to the nobles. But the
more he showed himself to be conciliatory the more audacious became the
opposition. This was at first purely political and aimed only at the
reconstruction of the Burgundian state as against the Spanish state;
later, it had dared to claim liberty of conscience, an unheard-of thing
at this period; finally, it had favored the Calvinistic agitation and
had caused the desecration of convents and churches.
When the news of this outrage reached the King, he angrily exclaimed:
“By the soul of my father, for these crimes they shall pay a heavy
price.” In the eyes of Philip II, official protector of Catholicism,
both the royal and the divine majesty had been insulted, and the claim
for autonomy had but aggravated the triumph of heresy. His rebellious
subjects were to be chastised. He would impose political absolutism
upon them as well as the religious control that prevailed in Spain.
The iron rule he intended to introduce would preserve for the church
and for himself those countries which were the cornerstones of his
world-power.
From now on we may speak of the “Spanish rule.” The traditionally lax
policy of Emperor Charles was gone. The tyranny of Spain was destined
to crush the Belgians. That task was intrusted to the Duke of Alva, who
came to Belgium as governor in 1567. Don Luis Alvarez de Toledo, Duke
of Alva and Marquess of Soria, was a cold and implacable warrior. The
greatness of his king was for him the greatness of Spain. He hated the
Belgians, who had dared to ask for liberty of conscience, as much as he
hated the heretics. He accomplished his terrible mission unwaveringly
and remorselessly; his method of government was terror. Accustomed to
fight the Moslem Moors of Spain, he knew only two weapons with which
to crush the heretics--the sword and the stake. He wrote in one of his
letters: “It is infinitely better to keep, by means of war, for God and
for the King, an impoverished and even ruined country, than to keep it,
without war, undamaged, for the devil and his partisans, the heretics.”
Such was the terrible warrior to whom Philip II intrusted a double
task: to chastise the rebels and heretics and to subject the nation
to the rule of Madrid. Alva arrived in Belgium with a large number
of the best Spanish troops. Contrary to all customs in the free
Netherlands, they were billeted in the cities. A fortress was ordered
built at Antwerp. The counts of Egmont and Horn and the burgomaster
of Antwerp were treacherously arrested and imprisoned. But the real
leader of the opposition, the Prince of Orange, could not be taken.
More clear-sighted than his friends, he had fled to Holland before
the coming vengeance. In defiance of all national privileges, Alva
established an extraordinary tribunal, which the people soon called the
“Council of Blood”; that court of justice, established and conducted
in a thoroughly revolutionary manner, condemned scores of people
who were more or less guilty of revolt against the King. About two
thousand victims were sentenced to death and executed. Only political
crimes were taken into account, and the condemnation was followed by
the confiscation of property--a remarkably remunerative operation for
the Spanish treasure chest. Terror fell upon the Belgians. All who
had engaged in the slightest degree in the revolt of 1566 fled to
foreign countries; Lutherans and Calvinists, panic-stricken, left the
Netherlands in large numbers.
Meanwhile the Prince of Orange had sought for help among the German
Protestant princes; he gathered an army and invaded Belgium. He had
expected a general revolt of the people against Alva at the first news
of his campaign. But the soldiers of his army, merely hirelings, and
many of them fanatical Protestants, pillaged churches and convents on
their way; they disgusted the naturally religious populace of Belgium,
and the campaign of William the Silent proved a complete failure. The
prince was compelled to seek refuge in France, where he hoped to get
help from Coligny and the French Huguenots.
[Illustration: ANTWERP The oldest part of the city, the Scheldt, and
the Town Hall]
By way of reply to this misadventure of William the Silent came
the execution of the counts of Egmont and Horn. The “Council of
Blood” charged them with high treason and ordered them to be put to
death, on the Place du Sablon, in the heart of Brussels. Their death
stupefied the people and disheartened the nationalists. Both counts
fell victims to the hatred of the terrible duke, for they were guilty
only of weakness and imprudence--they never really were traitors to
their sovereign. The Belgians always regarded them as martyrs for
their country. Alva now proceeded to introduce into the Netherlands
the features of the Spanish régime, while his condemnations continued.
For the first time since 1561 the new bishops were able to occupy
their bishoprics, the Catholic faith was everywhere re-established,
the University of Louvain was visited in order to determine whether
it was sufficiently orthodox, the Council of State was no more called
together or given over to Spaniards. In order to secure supplies and
money for his administration and to crush the country economically,
Alva introduced unheard-of taxes, called the _centième, vingtième, et
dixième denier_. This meant a permanent impost, which the Belgians
had always stoutly resisted. A revolt broke out all over the country.
What the appeals of William the Silent did not effect, the attack upon
the people’s privileges and wealth did. The Prince of Orange cleverly
took advantage of it, and, needing the help of the heretics to fight
the enemy, gave the direction of the movement into the hands of the
Calvinists. Meanwhile a storm of recrimination and complaints, among
which the protests of the bishops and of the University of Louvain were
not the weakest, reached Philip II. The King understood that he had
gone to work the wrong way, and that the policy of terrorism had not
brought him any real success. He changed his mind and recalled Alva.
The terrible duke left Belgium pursued by the maledictions of the whole
people.
His successor, Don Luis de Requesens, was a better man. The change in
the King’s attitude was immediately revealed by the measures taken
by the new governor. Requesens abolished the “Council of Blood,”
proclaimed a general amnesty, and opened negotiations at Breda with
the rebellious provinces. These negotiations failed, however, and
the struggle continued on both sides with alternating successes and
reverses. Requesens died suddenly in 1575, at a moment when the
government was facing an appalling financial crisis. The Council of
State immediately took over the regency, till the King should send a
new governor.
The Prince of Orange, however, had decided that there should be no
peace and that the revolutionary movement should be agitated as much
as possible. He had completely gained the confidence of Holland and
Zeeland, where he was the real master, and he planned to extend his
control over the rest of the Seventeen Provinces. Deeply compromised
as he was, any agreement with the King would mean disaster and the end
of his plans, which aimed at the separation of the Belgian provinces
from the Spanish monarchy. Owing to personal circumstances he had
first endeavored to resist Philip II by legal means. During his
exile and under the government of Alva he had gone farther and had
planned a general revolt, and now that the milder attitude of the King
threatened to win back some sympathy in Belgium, especially among the
Catholics, he foresaw that only the most daring policy would save the
revolutionary movement. Agents were therefore sent to the southern
provinces to stir up the people against any attempt at conciliation.
As a result of their intrigues, the members of the Council of State
were arrested by a furious mob and imprisoned. By the time they were
liberated they had fallen completely under the influence of the
revolutionary leaders. The States-General were called together by the
friendly members of the Council of State, and for nine years exercised
the chief power in Belgium. It was during their government, which
proved on the whole to be Catholic and loyalist, that the Spanish
soldiers, deprived of their pay, arose and sacked the city of Antwerp,
killing nearly seven thousand people. This event is known as the
“Spanish Fury.”
This, of course, gave the anti-Spanish party an excellent chance.
Under the pressure of William the Silent, the States-General met at
Ghent in 1575, and out of their deliberations was born the famous
“Pacification of Ghent.” This act was the work of the Prince of Orange,
and was intended to reconcile Catholics and Protestants and to settle
their religious differences, in order that they might be united in
the political struggle against Spain. This attempt at establishing
a “peace of religion” was unfortunately premature and provisional.
The hostilities between Catholics and Protestants were suspended and
religious tolerance was proclaimed; but in Holland and Zeeland, the
political sphere of influence of the Prince of Orange, the Catholic
worship was provisionally forbidden. The States-General would, it
was promised, later on reconsider the whole problem and settle the
religious differences definitely. This agreement was, of course,
unfavorable to the Catholics, but union was temporarily restored.
Meanwhile Don Juan, the new Spanish governor, had been appointed by
Philip II and had arrived in Belgium. Don Juan was the son of Charles
V, and the celebrated victor over the Turks in the naval battle of
Lepanto (1571). He had no sympathy for the Belgians and did not like
the task which was intrusted to him. He attempted, of course, though
against his convictions, to negotiate with the rebels, but failed. As
we have seen, the Prince of Orange had determined that there should
be no peace until his plans had been carried out. By surprising and
occupying the fortress of Namur, contrary to the conventions but in
order to obtain a stronghold for his protection, Don Juan played, as a
matter of fact, into the hands of his enemies. Under the influence of
William the Silent the States-General declared the governor a traitor
to the country, and called upon Archduke Mathias, brother of Emperor
Rodolphe, to be their new governor. Mathias became practically an
instrument in the hands of the Prince of Orange, who was appointed as
his lieutenant-general.
Now followed a period of anarchy and misrule. Germany, England, and
France sent into Belgium a host of sectarians and adventurers; these
aided the Calvinists in taking Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent. Ghent
became the center of a Calvinistic republic, where the leaders ruled
by terror and began a rigorous persecution of the Catholics. It was
now quite clear that the Protestants had gained the upper hand in the
struggle and that the national revolt had turned into a war against
Catholicism. In the midst of these troubles, Don Juan of Austria died
at Bouges, near Namur (1578).
At this very moment, events of great importance took place. The Prince
of Orange, contrary to the provisions of the Pacification of Ghent,
had again endeavored to introduce a new “peace of religion,” which
had for its object the introduction of Protestantism into the Belgian
provinces other than Holland and Zeeland. The Protestant ministers
rejected his proposal. What they wanted was not co-ordinate recognition
of Catholicism and Protestantism, but the complete supremacy of their
own religion. Seeing that his attempts brought about only discontent
of both parties, Catholics and Protestants, William the Silent finally
declared himself openly as a Calvinist (1578). His rupture with the
Catholics was now complete.
This induced the southern provinces, where Catholicism was still in
control, to withdraw their support and to reconcile themselves with
the Spanish King. The sole motive of this decision was a religious
one. There could be no talk of hostility between the Walloons of the
south and the Flemings of the north. This was not a question of racial
or linguistic difference. The people of Artois, Hainaut, and French
Flanders were disgusted at the excesses committed by the Calvinists
of Ghent and the position taken by William the Silent in religious
matters. The Catholic spirit of Belgium, imposed on the country ever
since the Middle Ages, weighed more strongly in their minds than their
national hostility to the Spanish rule. Moreover, two other provinces
which joined them--Namur and Luxemburg--had never taken part in the
revolt. As we have seen, the province of Brabant, more independent
than any other, and, since the fourteenth century, determined in its
opposition to foreign interference, had taken the real leadership in
the struggle against Spain.
The movement in the south in favor of a reconciliation with Philip II
was an essentially popular movement. The nobles of Artois and Hainaut
still wavered in their sympathies.[14] The clever policy of the new
governor, Alexander Farnese, who succeeded Don Juan of Austria after
the death of the latter (1578), overcame their last hesitation.[15]
Alexander Farnese was the son of Margareta of Parma, who had formerly
governed the Netherlands. He was of a sympathetic nature, loyal,
honest, but firm. He was one of the greatest warriors of his age, but
at the same time, being an Italian prince, he distinguished himself as
a very shrewd diplomat. At last Philip II had found the right man to
govern the Netherlands. Alexander Farnese, highly approved by Cardinal
de Granvelle--who at this time resided in Madrid--inaugurated a policy
of mildness and conciliation that produced the happiest results. He
induced the nobles of the southern provinces, and especially the
Count of Lalaing, to abandon their scruples and to return to the
service of the King. Both clever diplomacy and gifts and promises of
large sums of money played a part in these achievements. From these
negotiations resulted the Treaty of Arras (1579), concluded between
the representatives of Artois, Hainaut, Luxemburg, Namur, and French
Flanders and the new governor, as a consequence of which the southern
provinces returned to the allegiance of Philip II. A concession made
by Farnese was that the foreign troops, which had for so many years
pillaged and ruined the country, should leave Belgium.
The Treaty of Arras resulted in the reconquest, without bloodshed, of
the southern part of Belgium; it provoked a rupture between Catholics
and Protestants, the separation of the Walloons and the Flemings,
and crushed the plans of the Prince of Orange. Henceforth it would
be no longer possible to unite the whole of Belgium against Spanish
rule. William the Silent replied to the Treaty of Arras by the
so-called Union of Utrecht (1579), whereby the northern provinces of
the Netherlands united themselves in the common struggle and decided
to carry on the revolt to ultimate victory. Slowly, but surely, the
secession of Belgium from Holland was in progress.
The Prince of Orange, infuriated by the blow inflicted on his policy,
now proclaimed the forfeiture by Philip II of the sovereignty of the
Netherlands and offered the crown to the Duke of Anjou, brother of the
French King Henry III (1584). He himself received the title of governor
of Holland and Zeeland and remained the real leader of the union.
Philip II replied by declaring the Prince an outlaw and putting a price
on his head. Such an appeal to murder was common in the sixteenth
century and was even supported by the teaching of many theorists;
today it seems cruel and opposed to every principle of civilization.
A man fanatical enough to fulfil the desire of the Spanish King was
soon found. Balthazar Gérard treacherously assassinated the Prince of
Orange at Delft, in 1584. So died the leader of the revolt of the
Netherlands against Spain. He did not succeed in uniting the whole of
Belgium against Philip II, but he initiated the United Provinces of
Holland. The Dutch are right, therefore, in calling him the “Father of
the Fatherland.”
Meanwhile, supported by the Catholic provinces, Alexander Farnese had
successively reconquered all the Belgian cities and won an imperishable
fame by the siege and conquest of Antwerp. Only Ostend resisted and
could not be taken. It seemed now to be the turn of the north, and
already the United Provinces were threatened with invasion, when the
unwise policy of Philip II suddenly stopped the advance. The lonely
autocrat of the Escurial had planned the invasion of England and the
conquest of the throne of France, where Henry IV, a Protestant but the
legitimate heir, was at war with the Catholic League. To these plans
he sacrificed all the resources of Spain from 1587 to 1592 and forced
Farnese to suspend his campaign in Flanders, to assist in the transport
of troops for the invasion of England, and to aid with his army the
League in France. Both enterprises failed utterly, the invasion of
England by the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the conquest of the French
throne by the final rally of the country to the support of Henry IV.
The obstinacy of Philip II caused the loss of the northern part of the
Netherlands, which Farnese would probably have conquered. Alexander
Farnese died in 1592 and at his death the Spanish King lost the best
governor he had ever had in Belgium. The last years of the sixteenth
century were unhappy years for the country. The long and bloody
struggle had utterly ruined the land. The population had been reduced
by at least 50 per cent; churches and civic buildings had been burned
or severely damaged; trade and industry were in large part gone;
Antwerp had lost its commerce, and thousands of people engaged in
trade had fled to England, Germany, or Holland. Artistic and literary
activity had come to a complete standstill; and the scientific center
of Belgium, the University of Louvain, barely escaped complete ruin.
But Belgium remained Catholic and subject to the Spanish branch of the
Hapsburgs, while the United Provinces (of Holland), overwhelmingly
Protestant, had in fact become an independent country. Henceforth
Belgium and Holland went each its own way, and their history no longer
records common interests, at least until the period of the United
Kingdom of the Netherlands (1814).
CHAPTER VIII
THE REIGN OF THE ARCHDUKE ALBERT AND ISABELLA (1598-1633)
Finally, convinced after a long and painful experience that peace was
to be restored to Belgium only by new means and other methods than
those heretofore employed, and that by waging war he would not be able
to win back the northern provinces, Philip II tried another plan. He
thought that by giving national sovereigns to the Catholic provinces
he might induce the Protestants of Holland to return to their former
allegiance and thus restore the lost unity of the Netherlands. In 1598
he decided, shortly before his death, that the Netherlands should be
erected into an independent state, whose crown he gave to his daughter
Isabella, after she had married Archduke Albert of Austria. If she and
her consort should have no children, the Belgian provinces were to
return to Spain. This was an important decision, although nobody in
Europe believed in the real independence of Belgium. The country was
practically under Spanish influence. But autonomy, at least, existed.
Strange to say, the satisfaction felt by the Belgians was at first
mingled with some disappointment. As Albert and Isabella were obliged,
as sovereigns of “the Netherlands,” to continue the war against the
northern provinces in order to unite them with those in the south
already under their power, the Belgians feared that they would be
charged with the heavy burden of war, and this time without the aid
of the Spanish finances and of the Spanish army. But Philip II had
foreseen the difficulty. He sent the famous general Spinola to their
assistance, with an army of excellent Spanish troops.
At first Archduke Albert initiated negotiations with the United
Provinces, but his proposals were received with contempt. He was
forced to make war. A bloody battle was fought at Nieuport, where the
Archduke courageously led his troops against the Dutch under Maurice
of Nassau. Although not victorious, Albert decided to besiege Ostend,
the only Belgian city left in the hands of the rebels. The siege of
Ostend lasted three years, from 1601 to 1604. On both sides deeds of
heroism were numerous. Three rings of fortifications had to be taken
and every trench was stormed at the cost of many lives. At length
Ostend, continuously battered by artillery, could no longer resist the
energetic assaults of the soldiers of Spinola. It surrendered, but only
its ruins were left in the hands of the victor.
After the fall of Ostend, the Archduke, wishing to put an end to this
war of exhaustion, again opened negotiations with the United Provinces,
and succeeded in concluding a truce for twelve years (1609-21). During
that time Albert and Isabella did their best to heal the wounds of
their people. Their reign was one of peace and of reconstruction.
The sovereign power was even stronger than before the crisis of the
sixteenth century. No revolt troubled the happy years of the Archduke’s
rule. National institutions were not disturbed, the re-establishment
of order was attempted by law rather than by force. In 1611 a meeting
of magistrates and lawyers was called in order to codify the judicial
provisions and to inaugurate a reform of civil and criminal law. The
fruit of that attempt was the _Édit perpétuel_, a judicial monument of
great importance. At the same time the old customs, the unwritten law
of the Belgian principalities and cities, were reduced to writing and
published in definite form by order of the sovereign.
In addition to the respect they manifested for the customs of the
country, Albert and Isabella showed the utmost interest in the
restoration of every kind of social activity. Zealous for the welfare
of Catholicism, they undertook to restore the religious life of the
country. Three hundred churches and convents were rebuilt or founded.
The religious orders of the Jesuits, the Carmelites, etc., found in
the sovereigns hearty and generous protectors. The lost treasures
of the churches had to be replaced, and the restoration of worship
brought about the revival of the goldsmith’s art and of painting. The
Flemish school of painting again became as famous as in the time of
the Burgundian dukes. The head of this school was Peter Paul Rubens;
and among his pupils he counted artists like Van Dyck, Teniers,
and Jordaens. Public education was encouraged and many colleges
and academies were opened for the teaching of Greek and Latin. The
University of Louvain was accorded special protection. In 1607 Drusius,
abbot of the abbey of Parc, near Louvain, and Van Craesbeke, councilor
of Brabant, were appointed to inspect the University. Another delegate,
the Nuncio Caraffa, was sent by the Pope. The system of “visitation,”
as it was called, lasted, with interruptions, till 1617, when a
complete scheme of regulations was enacted. The jurisdiction of the
academic authorities, the privileges of the University, the interests
of teaching and of the various colleges, the rights and duties of
professors, the granting of degrees, the discipline and conduct of the
students--everything was carefully dealt with. The visitation of 1617
established the authority of the University of Louvain and gave it a
legal status.
The excellent results of the new rules were immediately apparent.
At this time seven or eight thousand students, among them Dutchmen,
Frisians, Flemings, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians, were
in attendance at the University. The faculty of law became especially
notable, and professors such as Peckius, Coursèle, Tulden, Perez, and
Gudelin were regarded as eminent authorities. In letters the humanists
Justus Lipsius and Erycius Puteanus, Valerius Andreas and Nicholas
Vernuleus were famous. Albert and Isabella showed clearly their lively
interest in the institution by attending one of the lectures of Justus
Lipsius.
Although artistic, literary, and scientific interests flourished
during the reign of Albert and Isabella, the trade and industry of
Belgium enjoyed no such revival. Antwerp was closed and had no access
to the sea, as the Dutch blocked the Scheldt, and all commerce with
the colonies of the New World was forbidden to the people of Belgium
by Spain. Moreover, the peace and safety necessary to the development
of trade were continually threatened by France in the south and by the
United Provinces in the north.
The private life of Albert and Isabelle was modest and simple. Their
court at Brussels was an example of morality and seriousness, although
they were not given over to bigotry. Isabella was a cheerful princess;
she liked to mingle sometimes with the people and to take part in
their rejoicings and their sports. Both sovereigns were very popular.
Sorrow filled the souls of the Belgians when the Archduke died in
1621, without issue. According to the testament of Philip II, Belgium
was held obliged to return to Spanish rule. Indeed, Spain immediately
took possession of the country and, although Isabella remained at
Brussels, she was no longer a sovereign, but a simple regent in the
name of the King. When she died in 1633, the universal mourning in town
and country proved how well she had succeeded in winning the sympathy
of the Belgians.[16]
CHAPTER IX
THE LAST YEARS OF THE SPANISH RULE (1633-1715)
The last eighty years of the seventeenth century were an unhappy
period for Belgium. France, under Richelieu and Louis XIV, continually
attacked the declining Spanish monarchy, and sought to wrest from it
the Belgian provinces piece by piece. From 1622 to 1648 France was
assisted in this policy of conquest by the United Provinces of Holland.
Each treaty of this period marks a territorial diminution of Belgium
and sometimes likewise a decisive blow at the elements of its material
prosperity. The Treaty of Munster, concluded in 1648 between Spain
and the United Provinces, remorselessly sacrificed the commercial
interests of Belgium. According to this treaty it was agreed that the
Dutch should have the right to control and to close the Scheldt, the
very source of Antwerp’s wealth. It was also agreed that henceforth the
United Provinces should definitely retain their independence, won by
William the Silent and his sons, should even remain in possession of
Northern Brabant and Northern Flanders, and should divide with Belgium
the sovereignty over Maestricht.
The act which established the final separation between Belgium and
Holland constituted also the first act of hostility of the latter. As a
consequence of the Treaty of Munster, Limburg was divided between both
countries in 1661. The Dutch obtained the larger part of the country of
Fauquemont and Daelhem and a portion of Rolduc.
Other territorial losses were forced upon Belgium some years later.
In 1659, France acquired nearly all the country of Artois, by the
Treaty of the Pyrennees; in 1668, French Flanders and Tournaisis, by
the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle; in 1678, Franche-Comté, Cambrai and
Cambrésis, and the rest of Artois, by the Treaty of Nimègue. On the
whole, the defeats suffered by the Spanish monarchy at the period
of its decline cost Belgium, hopelessly attached to the dying body,
the north of Flanders, and the south of Flanders, of Hainaut, and of
Luxemburg.
Each treaty terminated a war; and from the numerous negotiations
already mentioned it is not difficult to realize how many wars Belgium
was forced to endure on her own soil. Dutch, French, English, Spanish,
Germans, successively trampled over the rich fields of Flanders and the
industrious country of the Walloons. In fifty years, from 1642 to 1709,
no less than ten famous battles were fought on Belgian soil. Belgium
was already at that time “the cockpit of Christendom,” a designation
found in an old English book, _Instructions for Forreine Travell_;
written in 1642 by James Howell, a clerk in the diplomatic service.[17]
Howell says:
... For the Netherlands have been for many years, as one may say, the
very cockpit of Christendom, the school of arms and rendezvous of all
adventurous spirits and cadets; which makes most nations beholden to
them for soldiers. Therefore the history of the Belgic wars are very
worth the reading; for I know none fuller of stratagems, of reaches
of policy, ... nor a war which hath produced such deplorable effects,
directly or collaterally, all Christendom over, both by sea and land.
[Illustration: COURT-YARD OF THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP PRINCES IN LIÈGE]
What all these wars meant for the poor inhabitants of the country may
be imagined when the devastation wrought by huge armies in Poland today
is borne in mind. And it must be remembered that the armies of the
belligerent powers in the seventeenth century were, to a large extent,
composed of mercenaries without any feeling of patriotism, without
discipline, without morals, who saw in military occupation only an
opportunity for excesses and outrages of all kinds, who revolted when
not regularly paid, and who pillaged the friendly country they were
hired to defend as well as the enemy’s territory. Massacre, burning,
looting, awful tortures inflicted on the unhappy inhabitants in order
to force them to reveal the spot where their money was kept--all
this was daily work for those rough hirelings. In the village of
Meix-devant-Virton, in 1636, the whole populace was burned alive in the
church where it had taken refuge, not by the enemy, but by the Spanish
troops intrusted with their defense.[18] Ruin, disease, and poverty
were the terrible lot of Belgium during this sinister century.
What of the internal situation of the country? After the death of
Archduke Albert (1621), the Spaniards increasingly dominated the
destinies of Belgium. A Spanish army, paid by Spain and under a Spanish
commander, permanently occupied many fortresses and important cities.
Those members of the Belgian aristocracy who sought to obtain influence
with the intruders found themselves compelled to marry their daughters
to Spaniards. The Spanish government put the native nobles entirely
aside, and all important matters were discussed in _Juntas_--special
committees composed of Spaniards.
This unhappy state of things in 1622-33 provoked the so-called
“conspiracy of the Belgian nobility against Spain.” This was the work
of some prominent _seigneurs_ who failed to realize the historical
conditions and the times in which they lived. They fondly believed
that, with the help of France and of the United Provinces, they could
start another Belgian revolt, like that of the sixteenth century, and
that they could obtain support from the army and the people. They
found themselves seriously mistaken. The Belgians, wearied of their
misfortunes, refused to follow them. They had no confidence in the
movement. The attempt failed and the conspirators were obliged to
flee to foreign countries to avoid criminal prosecution. As for the
States-General, except in 1600 and 1632-34, they were never called
together; only when there was talk of peace negotiations with the
United Provinces were they allowed to meet.
The rule of the Hapsburg dynasty in Spain came to an end with the death
of the last heir, Charles II, in 1700. The latter had provided in his
will that Philip of Bourbon, grandson of Louis XIV, of France, should
be his successor and consequently sovereign of the Netherlands. As a
matter of fact, it was Louis XIV who governed in the name of Philip.
The absolutist system which existed in France was suddenly introduced
in Belgium, and organized by the Count of Bergeyck, with the help of
French generals. This régime did not last long; in 1702 the War of the
Spanish Succession broke out, in the course of which England and the
United Provinces concluded an alliance against Louis XIV.
Three treaties terminated the struggle--that of Utrecht, that of
Rastadt, and that of Bade (1713-14). The contracting powers decided
that the Netherlands--that is to say, Belgium--should be transferred to
the Austrian branch of the Hapsburgs. They would serve as a barrier for
the protection of the United Provinces against any menace from France,
and it was determined, therefore, that the Dutch should continue to
occupy Belgian territory provisionally till all questions had been
settled. A final agreement was reached by the Treaty of Antwerp, better
known as the “Treaty of the Barriers” (1715), somewhat modified by
the Hague Convention of 1718. These several conventions placed the
Hapsburgs of Austria in full possession of Belgium.
CHAPTER X
BELGIUM UNDER THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA (1713-89)
When the house of Austria came into possession of Belgium only ten
provinces out of the seventeen of the old Spanish Netherlands were
left: Brabant, Limburg, Luxemburg, Namur, Hainaut, the seigniory of
Tournai, the seigniory of Tournaisis, Flanders, the seigniory of
Malines, a part of Gueldre. West Flanders, including Ypres and some
adjoining districts, formed a separate department.
The Hapsburgs of Austria were not to be regarded as foreign conquerors
of Belgium. From the outset they had claimed to be the natural heirs
of the Hapsburgs of Spain, and that claim was admitted by France,
England, and Holland, and by the States-General of the Belgian
provinces. There could be no question of Austrian “domination.” In
their relation to Belgium the Hapsburgs assumed the title of natural
prince, as did Charles V at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Moreover, by the Treaty of the Barriers, Charles VI of Austria publicly
proclaimed that his house assumed the rule over Belgium, subject to
all the restrictions and guaranties to which the Hapsburgs of Spain
had been subject. According to the treaties, Belgium was ceded to the
Austrian Hapsburgs on condition that the predominance of the Catholic
church in the country as well as the rights of the states and cities
be recognized. The Catholic church and its position as the religion
of the state were to be respected on account of the desire of France
to erect a moral and religious barrier between herself and Protestant
Holland; the popular rights were to be respected because the theory
of the European balance of power required that the Emperor should be
permitted only a limited sway. A strong, universal monarchy was no
longer possible in Europe.
The theory of the European balance of power had found expression
through the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), whereby Europe ceased to be
exclusively and officially Catholic, and Protestantism was granted
recognition in law. Since the arbitration of the Pope in international
matters was no longer possible, owing to the refusal of the Protestant
powers to acknowledge his decisions, each country had to rely only upon
itself. The weaker states had only one protection, therefore, namely,
to unite against any power which might try to absorb them. Out of these
principles grew the idea of the European balance of power, according to
which no state was to be allowed to grow strong enough to menace the
peace of the world.
The external constitution of Belgium under Austrian rule having been
established, Charles VI proceeded to protect the rights of his family
in respect to internal conditions. As Charles V had established the
principle of the indivisibility of the Spanish Netherlands by the
Augsburg transaction, already mentioned, the new Emperor established
the same principle for the “Austrian Netherlands” by a similar act,
the “Pragmatic Sanction” of 1725. Belgium was forever to be kept as an
indivisible whole, the eldest son to be heir to the throne, and the
right of succession of the female descendants in case of the failure of
a male heir was again admitted.
Well-defined obligations to the United Provinces of Holland were
imposed upon Belgium by the Treaty of the Barriers. The Belgian
sovereign was required to permit the presence of Dutch garrisons on
Belgian soil, as a protection for Holland against France, in the cities
and fortresses of Namur, Tournai, Furnes, Warneton, Ypres, and Knocke.
A heavy yearly subsidy was to be paid by Belgium for the maintenance
of those garrisons. The sovereign was also required to recognize the
closing of the Scheldt, imposed by the Treaty of Munster (1648).
Holland even claimed the right to prevent the Belgians from trading
with the Indies.
Notwithstanding these claims, Charles VI had tried to restore Belgian
trade by the foundation of a shipping company, the “Compagnie
d’Ostende,” created under an imperial charter, for commercial dealings
with America. But the opposition offered by Holland, supported by
France and England, so influenced the weak Emperor as to induce him
to suspend and finally to disband the company--the only hope for the
restoration of national trade.
The obligation to maintain foreign garrisons in Belgium was both
drastic and humiliating. Empress Maria Theresa, who succeeded Charles
VI as the sovereign of the Austrian Netherlands in virtue of the
provision of the “Pragmatic Sanction,” tried to avoid the obligation of
the “Barrier” by withholding payment due to the foreign garrisons. The
final blow to this unjust system was given by her son, Emperor Joseph
II, who simply ordered the demolition of the fortresses still occupied
by the Dutch on Belgian soil.
Joseph II, who was greatly interested in the restoration of the
prosperity of the country, even attempted to secure the complete
opening of the Scheldt, still closed by the Dutch. After diplomatic
negotiations, begun in 1784, had failed, owing to the energetic
opposition of the United Provinces, once more supported by France, the
Emperor tried to settle the question in a practical but simple manner.
He ordered a vessel to leave Antwerp and follow the course of the river
down to the sea, and another vessel to start from Ostend and follow the
course of the river up to Antwerp. The Dutch, he hoped, would not fire
upon the vessels, and the Scheldt would be opened to shipping by this
stratagem. But the Dutch did fire, and forced the Belgian vessels to
withdraw. Any further move on the part of the Emperor would mean war,
and for this Joseph II was not prepared. The Scheldt remained closed.
What was the policy of the Austrian Hapsburgs toward the institutions
of the country? It was essentially Austrian, and tended toward
absolutism, influenced nevertheless by the teachings of the French
philosophical school. It aimed at the diminution of the liberty of the
clergy and the recognition of the state as superior to the church; at
strengthening the sovereign power, overriding the national institutions
and the ancient and well-established privileges; at conferring
political initiative on the Austrian governor-general of Belgium;
at depriving the Belgian nobility of any participation in political
affairs; at recruiting public officers from among the jurists only;
at avoiding any brutal attack upon the national institutions, but at
undermining them in a secret manner. It cannot be denied, however, that
the Austrian government did its best to restore the material welfare
of the country; and the manufacturing and agricultural interests were
fostered by two Austrian ministers, both of Italian nationality,
Antoniotto di Botta Adorno, under Maria Theresa, and Count Giovanni
Giacomo di Belgiojoso, during the reign of Joseph II.
This Emperor had a sincere desire to promote the material welfare of
the Belgian people, and it is a historical fact that at the beginning
of his reign he visited Belgium incognito, accompanied by one of
his ministers, in order to examine into everything himself and to
take such measures as he might find to be necessary. Unfortunately
he was somewhat of an idealist, imbued with the theories of the
French philosophy of the eighteenth century and the teachings of
“Febronianism.”
France was at this time the center of an intellectual and moral
current, which exerted a powerful influence on the courts and the
higher classes of all Europe. The social, philosophical, economical,
and governmental doctrines of the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats
attacked the basis of the existing society. They proposed the creation
of an entirely new social and political order, breaking with tradition,
and conceived of as independent of any Christian idea. On the other
hand, the doctrines of the superiority of the state over the church
were already promulgated, since Van Espen, a Belgian jurist of the
seventeenth century, had supported them. They were codified in 1763
by Febronius, the suffragan bishop of Treves, who developed them to
the extreme limit. He proposed breaking up the Catholic church into
national churches, under the supervision of the state. His book had an
immense success at the German courts, even those of the ecclesiastical
principalities.
Joseph II had been converted to the ideas of the French Encyclopaedists
and Physiocrats as well as to the teachings of Febronianism. An
absolutist by conviction, an enemy of the liberties of the church,
despising all things of the past, and lacking in the adroitness which
characterized Maria Theresa’s government, he sought to put in force
without delay the new concept of human society that he had conceived.
He tried to force upon Belgium a whole series of reforms, by means of
sovereign decrees, between the years 1781 and 1787. The fundamental
ideas at the basis of these reforms may be summarized as follows: the
secularization of political society; the incorporation of the Catholic
church in Belgium as a part of the national Austrian church; and the
recognition of the sovereign power as absolute and unlimited.
The political secularization of Belgium was attempted by the Edicts
of Tolerance, issued in 1781-82. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction was
suppressed; non-Catholics were put upon nearly the same level as
Catholics, and public worship was permitted to them under certain
restrictions. Subject to a dispensation from the sovereign, they were
admitted to public offices and could become burgesses and members of
craft-guilds. In 1784 another edict fixed new rules for marriages, and
prevented the ecclesiastical judge from dealing with the canonical
impediments declared by canon law.
As for the subordination of the church to the state, the religious
orders were no longer allowed to show obedience to their foreign
superiors; the jurisdiction of the Nuncio of Cologne over Belgium
was abolished; the Belgian bishops were forbidden to correspond with
Rome on the matter of dispensations for marriages; a large number
of convents were declared to be useless and were suppressed, their
properties being placed under the administration of the state;
parishes were delimited by the government; all the confraternities
of a religious nature were suppressed and replaced by a single one,
which the Emperor-Philosopher called the “Brotherhood of Love for
Fellow-Creatures.” All the seminaries for the education of priests
were closed, and in 1786 a General Seminary was established at Louvain
and in Luxemburg, at which theology was to be taught, subject to the
control of the state. A very drastic measure was the suppression of any
subsidy to the society of the Bollandists, the Belgian Jesuits who were
responsible for the criticism and the publication of the Lives of the
Saints, and who were known all over Europe for their scientific methods
and their superior culture.
In 1787 came the upheaval of the political institutions. The three
“collateral councils”--the Council of State, the Privy Council, and
the Council of Finances--were abolished. The Secretary of State, the
provincial states, the provincial councils of justice, the seigniorial
or manorial justice, the jurisdiction of the _échevinage_, the
ecclesiastical tribunals, the special tribunal of the University of
Louvain which had jurisdiction over offenses committed by students, and
all other courts of justice except the military tribunals, were at one
stroke suppressed. Joseph II, by a simple act of his sovereign will,
wiped out the old institutions and introduced the Austrian autocracy.
But the Belgians, who had always fought against the enemies of their
institutions and privileges, did not submit peacefully to this brutal
attack upon their liberties. Of course, many of the reforms of the
Emperor were not open to criticism, and his motives cannot be said
to have been wholly wrong. His efforts, however, were too general
in their nature, and were attended with too far-reaching results.
At first there was only passive resistance. The bishops had begun
by protesting against the religious reforms. The general edicts of
1787 called forth a storm of revolt among all classes of the people.
Declarations, petitions, manifestos poured in upon the Emperor’s court.
The edicts of 1787 were thereupon partly suspended. But the religious
reforms were not abated. The establishment of the General Seminary
and the order for the closing of the diocesan seminaries were not
rescinded, and force was resorted to against the Archbishop of Malines,
Frankenberg, and the University of Louvain in carrying them out. This
shocked the Belgian people, who at heart were Catholic, and the harsh
measures of the Austrian General D’Alton made the situation still more
critical. Two parties came into existence: that of the nationalists,
called “Patriots,” and that of the Austrian sympathizers, called by
the people “Figs.” In 1788, owing to the resistance of the states of
Brabant and Hainaut, the arrest of their members and the abolition of
the privileges of Brabant, among them the famous “Joyeuse Entrée,” were
ordered. General D’Alton became more and more dictatorial and cruel.
The result was a serious revolution, known in history as the Brabantine
Revolution (1789).
The revolt was the consequence of two elements among the people,
which though at heart directly opposed to each other were temporarily
united against the foreign tyranny. Each movement had its own leader,
Van der Noot and Vonck, and both were lawyers of Brabant. Van der
Noot proposed to deliver Belgium by the assistance of foreign powers,
especially Prussia--the enemy of Austria--and Holland. Vonck, on the
other hand, placed his confidence in the Belgians alone, and told the
people that the great powers would betray them. Both were forced to
flee the country in order to escape the anger of General D’Alton. Both
established committees for revolutionary propaganda, Van der Noot in
Holland, where he established connections in Prussia; Vonck in the
territory of the principality of Liège. Later both committees succeeded
in agreeing upon a common plan of action. Like William the Silent in
the sixteenth century, Van der Noot issued a manifesto proclaiming
the deposition of Joseph II as sovereign of the Austrian Netherlands.
A national army, recruited on foreign soil, invaded Belgium. The
Austrians were defeated and compelled to evacuate the country, except
Luxemburg, where they made a stand. The victors then proclaimed a
republic, known in history under the official title of the “République
des États Belgiques unis” (Republic of the United States of Belgium).
In each province the body of the states--delegates of the clergy, the
nobility, and the people--were given the exercise of sovereignty, and
the traditional institutions of the Burgundian times were restored.
In 1790 the provinces held a general meeting at Brussels, where the
federal pact between them and the central power was established by the
so-called Act of Union.
[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL OF BRUSSELS AND THE GREAT SQUARE]
According to this act, the provinces of the Catholic Netherlands
constituted themselves a confederation, under that name. The
confederation exercised sovereign power, and controlled the common
defense, the power of making war and peace, the recruiting and
maintaining of a national army, the making of alliances, the coinage
of a common currency. The power residing in the confederation was
exercised by a Congress composed of deputies from all the provinces,
who acted without referring back to the provincial states. Each
province had a certain number of votes in the Congress: Brabant 20
votes, Flanders 22, etc. The confederated provinces made a declaration
favoring the Roman Catholic faith and the maintenance of relations with
the church as before the reforms of Joseph II. Each province retained
its autonomy and sovereign rights, and all powers not delegated to
the Congress. In case of attack all provinces were to join in the
defense of the one attacked. This, we know, had been the dream of
Emperor Charles V in the sixteenth century. The great ruler must have
rejoiced in his grave! The Congress was presided over by a president,
who held office for a limited period, and three committees were created
within the Congress: one for political, one for military, and one for
financial affairs. The president was assisted by a prime minister and a
secretary of state.
It is hardly necessary to call attention to the fact that there is a
very close resemblance between the constitution of the Belgian Republic
and the first constitution of the American Republic, whose articles
were approved in 1777. The question whether the Belgian Patriots
were in any way inspired by the first American constitution remains
unsettled, as it has not yet been studied in this light.
Alas! the “République des États Belgiques unis” did not live long.
Internal struggles between partisans of Vonck, who fell more and more
under the influence of the French revolutionary clubs and talked much
about national assemblies and popular sovereignty, and the partisans
of the more conservative Van der Noot paved the way for the final
collapse. But the bitterest disappointment came from outside. The great
powers--England, Holland, and Prussia--which had liberally encouraged
the Patriots in their revolt because of its tendency to weaken Austria
and to prevent her policy of extension in the east of Europe toward
Constantinople, betrayed the young republic. Their support of the
Belgian claims had been inspired by the idea of the European balance
of power, but they cared little for the independence of the country.
The conference held at Reichenbach, in which England, Prussia, Holland,
and Austria participated merely resulted in a decision to restore
Austrian rule in Belgium, with guaranties for the maintenance of the
ancient institutions and an amnesty for the past. The Treaty of the
Hague (1790) definitely settled the question. Thus died the Belgian
republic after a year of existence, but it had not existed in vain. The
Treaty of the Hague gave constitutional value to facts and principles
which hitherto had depended only on the good will of the sovereign.
Emperor Leopold II again occupied the “Austrian Netherlands”; but the
new Austrian rule was to have as short an existence as had the Belgian
republic. The French Revolution was destined to drive the Austrians out
of Belgium.
CHAPTER XI
BELGIUM UNDER FRENCH DOMINATION
(1792-1814)
The French revolutionary clubs had exerted a powerful influence
on Vonck. The effect of their teachings had also been felt in the
independent principality of Liège and had provoked a rising of the
people against the bishop-prince. But the revolt of Liège, which
occurred at the same time as the revolt in Belgium against Joseph II
(1789), was quickly suppressed.
When France itself fell a victim to the revolutionary leaders, the
great Revolution broke loose. The French soon found themselves
confronted by a European coalition and were forced into war. Since
Austria was inimical to the Revolution, the French troops invaded the
Belgian possessions of the Hapsburgs in 1792 under the leadership of
General Dumouriez. They found not a few sympathizers in the country.
The partisans of Van der Noot looked to the French to deliver them from
the Austrian yoke; the partisans of Vonck had always been agents of
the French revolutionary leaders, and desired the annexation of their
country to France. After the victory of Jemappes (1792), the French
entered Belgium, loudly proclaiming that they came as liberators of the
people and desired only the destruction of Austrian tyranny. Although
the excesses of their troops seemed to contradict this statement,
the people believed them. Then came the second and final defeat of
the Austrians at the battle of Fleurus (1794). Both Belgium and the
principality of Liège were occupied by the victors.
A period of terrible excesses followed. The French National Convention
entirely abolished all the ancient institutions; a provisional
administration was established, and “clubs” with political aims were
introduced into all the cities. Taxes, requisitions, systematic
pillage, outrages on religious convictions rained upon the unhappy
inhabitants. General elections were forced upon the Belgians and
manipulated by the “Sans-culottes” and political agents so as to give
the impression of a referendum, through which the people should express
their desire to be annexed to France. This plan encountered general
hostility throughout the country. Thereupon the National Convention,
by a law voted and applied on October 1, 1795, simply annexed Belgium
and the principality of Liège. As Austria was too weak to defend her
possessions, it formally ceded the Austrian Netherlands to France and
recognized the annexation by the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797).
The French now treated the conquered territory with great harshness.
The followers of the Catholic religion were severely persecuted, the
churches were closed, the priests were sentenced to death or deported
to French Guiana and to the islands of Ré and Oléron, the Catholic
worship was suppressed and replaced by that of the “Goddess of Reason.”
For the first time in Belgian history military conscription was forced
upon the inhabitants, and the youth of the country was compelled to
shed its blood on foreign battlefields for a régime it abhorred.
This naturally stirred up bitter resentment; and, even as they had
risen against Joseph II, so a part at least of the Belgians rose
against the French. This revolt is known as the War of the Peasants
(1798-99), because it was mainly the people of the countryside in
Flanders, Campine, and Luxemburg who fought in defense of their hearths
and their religion. They fought heroically with old weapons, scythes,
pikes, and guns of old pattern, under the leadership of a few nobles
and burgesses. There is a close resemblance between their struggle
and that of the French peasants in the Vendée. But what could they
accomplish against the well-equipped armies of the Republic? The
egotism of the educated classes, which gave them no support at all,
and their lack of training and experience, soon brought their valiant
resistance to an inglorious end. One after another their bands were
exterminated, and those who did not fall on the battlefield died
against a wall by the bullets of a firing squad.
Their gallantry did not save the country. Belgium remained fifteen
years longer under French domination. The Concordat concluded in 1801
between Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte brought the religious
persecution to an end, and the Catholic worship was restored. When
Bonaparte had become Emperor Napoleon I, the glory which surrounded
his name made a profound impression on the Belgians, and the great
Emperor became very popular among them. Antwerp attracted all his
attention; and it is due to him that the Scheldt, after a century and
a half of being closed, was again opened to trade and was freed from
the tyrannous control of the Dutch. As military conscription still
prevailed, the Belgians filled the ranks of the imperial army, and
their blood was shed for the fame and the power of Napoleon all over
Europe. The conqueror left on the country, however, the impress of his
spirit of organization in the famous _Code Napoléon_, that monument
of civil law that still forms the basis of Belgian jurisprudence. The
spell of his name appeared from the fact that after the defeat of his
armies at Leipzig in 1813 there was no revolt against him in Belgium as
there was in Holland.
The fall of Napoleon ended the French domination of the Belgians
(1814). However, the diplomats who rearranged the map of Europe, while
the once mighty Emperor was sent to St. Helena, had determined that the
country was not to be restored to its former political status.
CHAPTER XII
THE DUTCH RULE AND THE BELGIAN REVOLT OF 1830
After the fall of Napoleon, the powers were called upon to decide the
political status of Belgium. The Belgians were not consulted in the
matter, vitally important as it was, and their country was considered
merely as the spoil of the Allies. The main idea that actuated the
Congress of Vienna (1814-15) in rearranging the map of Europe was
to prevent a new menace from the side of France. This country was
not allowed to hold more territory than it possessed in 1789, before
the outbreak of the Revolution; at the same time the Allies who had
defeated Napoleon sought to erect a bulwark against any new extension
of France in the North. They could have granted independence to
Belgium, but as the country was weak it seemed that independence would
mean reabsorption by France. The final settlement of this important
question resulted, therefore, in the formation of the new Kingdom of
the Netherlands, whereby both Belgium and Holland, united under the
same sovereign, would, it was expected, present a sufficiently strong
barrier against France. The new kingdom was declared also to be neutral
territory. This is the first time that the conception of neutrality
was realized with regard to a buffer-state in Western Europe, located
between England, France, and Germany. But the conception of neutrality,
as applied to the Netherlands, is much older than the Congress of
Vienna; and it seems worth while to trace the different schemes
dealing with Belgian neutrality before the years 1814-15.[19]
The idea of establishing the neutrality of the Netherlands goes back in
history as far as the government of Maria of Hungary, at the time of
Emperor Charles V. The former proposed the neutrality of the Belgian
provinces on February 8, 1536, in order that they might escape being
made the battlefield of Europe during the impending international
conflicts. Charles V refused to consider the scheme, as he himself was
planning to raise the Netherlands into an independent kingdom, to be
governed by the son of Francis I, King of France. This plan, of course,
was never carried out.
In 1634 France and Holland concluded a special treaty against Spain,
by which the Netherlands should either become an independent kingdom
or be divided between the contracting powers. Cardinal Richelieu, the
French minister, preferred the idea of an independent Belgium, and went
so far as to propose that this kingdom should be permanently neutral.
In that way the cornerstone of Spanish power in Europe would have
been destroyed. Although neutral, Belgium would have had the right
to conclude offensive alliances, but would not enjoy the benefit of
having the integrity of its territory guaranteed. If that scheme had
been carried out, the Belgians would have had to revolt against Spanish
rule. But the Belgians, owing to the presence of strong Spanish armies
within their borders, did not revolt. The plan of Richelieu failed.
His scheme was, however, taken over by Cardinal Mazarin, minister of
Louis XIV. Mazarin had first suggested the annexation of Belgium by
France, but he met with strong opposition on the part of Holland and
England, both interested in keeping the French menace from extending
right to their own doors. Changing his mind, Mazarin, in 1658, reverted
to Richelieu’s plan concerning the creation of an independent and
neutral Belgium. This proposal met with the strong opposition of the
Dutch “Staatspensionnaris” De Witt, who expressed the fear that such a
state would ruin Dutch trade--an independent Belgium would necessarily
be given a free Scheldt. He also made it clear that Holland could not
forego her right to meddle in the affairs of the Catholic Netherlands,
and that the idea of a common protectorate over them would be welcome.
Mazarin seems not to have been sincere when proposing his plan. It may
be inferred that his main object was to quiet the fear of Holland that
the French and the English would use Belgium as a base during their
operations against Spain.
When the Treaty of the Barriers (1715) threatened to impose upon
Belgium the Dutch garrisons which were maintained for protection
against France, the latter presented (February 17) a memoir to Holland,
again proposing the status of permanent neutrality for Belgium.
The egotism and ill-will of the Dutch defeated this proposal. They
would never have consented to the opening of the Scheldt, which was
a necessary condition for an independent Belgium. Their policy on
this point is made clear by the declaration of the States-General of
the United Provinces, when Emperor Joseph II, in 1756, endeavored to
obtain the opening of the Scheldt and free shipping on the river.
The States-General declared that “the salvation or the loss of the
Republic and its inhabitants depended upon this point.”
When the Revolution of the Belgians against Austrian rule broke out
in 1789, the Elector Frederick-William of Prussia tried in vain to
obtain from the other powers, England and Holland, the recognition
of the Belgian Republic. He proposed that they should recognize the
independence of Belgium and compel the Belgians “to establish a firm,
strong constitution, in conformity with the interests of the Allies...;
to create, subject to the advice of the Allies, a respectable military
state that would inspire confidence; to avoid alliances with powers,
enemies of the Allies, and also trade with them.”
As Prussia was ready to make war on Austria, her hereditary enemy,
Emperor Leopold II declared that he would, in case of war, cede
the “Austrian Netherlands” to France. This England could not have
permitted, and therefore that country withdrew support from Prussia,
causing the Elector Frederick-William to abandon his plan concerning
Belgium.
The French conquest of Belgium entirely changed the policy of the
European powers with regard to the Belgian problem. England now
saw the French menace facing her own shores, and, according to her
traditional policy, began to take measures to avoid the danger. On
November 13, 1813, Lord Castlereagh wrote to the English ambassador
in Vienna: “I must particularly recommend you to pay attention to
Antwerp.... Leaving Antwerp in the hands of France means, or almost
means, imposing on us the necessity of a continuous state of war.” It
was now England that was specially interested in the future status
of Belgium, and it is from that country that emanated the idea,
forcibly expressed, of establishing a strong bulwark against France
by the creation of the neutral kingdom of the Netherlands. The idea,
supported by Prussia, which, as we have seen, had advocated it some
years before, was, however, this time expressed by Lord Castlereagh;
and the aggrandizement of Holland by its union with Belgium was
strongly supported by the Duke of Wellington. Accordingly, on July 31,
1814, the Belgian provinces were formally handed over to the Prince
of Orange, whom the Dutch had made their sovereign the year before.
The arrangement was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna, and made to
include Liège and Luxemburg.
The union of Belgium and Holland was the work of diplomacy: the
Belgians had not even been consulted. It was an essentially bad
combination. Had the “complete and intimate fusion,” of which the
diplomats spoke, been possible between both countries, the projectors
would have accomplished an admirable work, offering the surest
guaranties for the maintenance of European peace and the durability of
their own fabric. But unfortunately the conception was utopian.
Independently of the fact that the Allies disdained to consult the
feelings of the Belgian people, they appeared to have lost sight of
the moral history of the Netherlands, and to have forgotten those
deep-rooted hatreds, jealousies, and dissensions, both religious
and political, that had divided the two peoples since the time
of their separation in the sixteenth century. Count Charles Van
Hoogendorp, a prominent member of the Dutch chamber, in a pamphlet
entitled _Séparation de la Hollande et de la Belgique_, October,
1830 (Amsterdam), himself acknowledged the lack of sympathy between
these peoples: “The difference of national character had engendered
grievances, and these grievances had excited universal discontent, and
national animosity. The division between the two countries existed
_de facto_. Instead of a fusion, all the means employed to amalgamate
the two people had only served to disunite them still further. This
discontent was not the birth of a day; it dates from the first union of
the two states.”
After peace had been restored in 1815, when Napoleon had suffered
defeat at Waterloo, difficulties began at once. In March, 1814, Holland
had adopted a constitution. Inspired by the old laws of the United
Provinces, it was in the main strongly Protestant. Eleven Dutch, eleven
Belgians, and two delegates representing Luxemburg were appointed to
transform this constitution into one that could be applied to the new
kingdom of the Netherlands. The commission proposed the introduction
of equality and toleration for all creeds throughout the kingdom, and
the creation of a two-chambered Parliament in which Holland and Belgium
were to have an equal number of representatives, although the Belgians
had 50 per cent more population. No national capital was specified,
but the King was to be invested both at Amsterdam and at some city in
Belgium. On these principles a fundamental constitution was drafted
and submitted contemporaneously to the Dutch States-General and to
the notables of the different Belgian provinces. The Dutch passed it
unanimously; the Belgians rejected it by a vote of 1,603 to 527. This
rejection was partly due to the unwillingness of the Belgian notables
to legalize religious equality. The Dutch King, William I, decided to
meet the difficulty in a simple manner. He announced that all who had
abstained from voting should be counted as voting for the act, and
that the 126 hostile votes still remaining as a majority against the
act after counting in its favor those refraining from voting should
not count, as the principle of religious liberty had been imposed by
the Congress of Vienna and had to be observed. This method, which the
Belgians called “Dutch arithmetic,” gave to the act 933 votes in its
favor as against 670 hostile votes, and it was declared passed.
It became more and more clear that William I was not “the right man in
the right place”: he was too Protestant, too Dutch, too autocratic for
the Belgians. The latter soon complained of new grievances, among which
the following were the most important: the imposition of the Dutch
language upon all functionaries, whether civil or military, without
granting time to learn it to those who could not speak it; the extreme
partiality shown in the distribution of all offices and emoluments;
and a financial system that bore heavily and unjustly on Belgium. The
Belgians were made to contribute to the payment of debts incurred by
Holland long prior to the union, and to pay for the defense of the
Dutch colonies, which yielded them no returns at all. The Haute Cour,
or supreme court of justice, and all other great public institutions
were established in Holland. The religious grievances were also
numerous: the government was ill disposed toward the Catholics, and it
was supposed that it desired to “Protestantize” the people. Since 1815,
the Belgian bishops, under the leadership of Monsignor de Broglie,
bishop of Ghent, had dissuaded their flocks from taking the oath to a
constitution that introduced liberty of worship. Moreover, in 1825,
William I, imitating the plan formerly developed by Joseph II, had
established a Philosophic College at Louvain where all priests would
receive their education; and, claiming the monopoly for the state in
educational matters, had suppressed the episcopal and other national
colleges and free schools. Sundry oppressive taxes, repugnant to the
habits and usages of the people, were imposed. The freedom of the press
was destroyed, and journalists were continually prosecuted before
the tribunals. The King even pressed into service ignominious French
pamphleteers, expelled from their own country, who daily insulted the
Belgians.
This was too much for the descendants of those who had fought the
tyrannies of Spain, Austria, and France. Public opinion became excited,
and in 1828 a union was concluded between the Catholics, partisans of
tradition, and the Liberals, who had adopted the ideas of the French
Revolution. Threatened in their common interests and privileges,
Catholics and Liberals worked together to obtain redress of their
grievances and to defend their liberties.
Like Joseph II, the Dutch King refused to hear their complaints, and
continued to offend the Belgian people. In 1830 an event of great
importance fanned the revolt into flame.[20] In July the people of
Paris overthrew the French legitimist monarchy and the government of
Charles X. Just as the Brabant Revolution of 1789 was inspired in the
first instance by events in Paris and by the fall of the Bastile, so
the “July days” gave the final impulse to the Belgians in August. On
the evening of August 25, the Brussels Opera House gave a performance
of Auber’s _La Muette de Portici_. When the hero of the piece sang the
famous air appealing for revolt and liberty, the effect on the emotions
of his hearers was such as to cause them to rush into the streets and
then and there inaugurate a revolt against the Dutch. They sacked the
house of Van Maenen, the unpopular minister of William I, and that of
Libri, the editor of the official governmental newspaper, and attacked
the homes of many against whom hatred had long been growing. A guard
of citizens was raised to maintain order and a Committee of Regency
was established in the Hôtel de Ville. The French tricolor, which
had first been hoisted--and this proves the interference of French
clubs at the beginning of the Revolution--was replaced by the old
Brabant tricolor (black, yellow, red), which is now the Belgian flag.
The other chief towns followed and confined their Dutch garrisons
within the citadels and forts. Meanwhile a deputation was sent to the
King, to petition for the administrative separation of Belgium and
Holland, retaining, however, their personal union. William I, unaware
of the gravity of the situation, paid scarcely any attention to the
delegates. He sent a Dutch army nearly 10,000 strong, with many guns,
under Prince Frederick, his younger son, to attack Brussels, where
the revolutionists held the lower town. The troops fought their way
to the very heart of the upper town, but were stopped at the Place
Royale by the stubborn resistance of the Belgian volunteers. These
were merely Brussels citizens, reinforced by 300 volunteers from
Liège under Charles Rogier, 200 from Louvain, with Jenneval, author
of the “Brabançonne,”[21] and others from various Walloon towns. For
three days there was terrible street fighting, and on the night of
September 26-27 Prince Frederick, with at least 1,500 killed and many
wounded, admitted his defeat and left Brussels. Meanwhile a provisional
government had been established, composed of Baron d’Hoogvorst, the
commander of the volunteers; Charles Rogier, who afterward became the
Belgian prime minister; Count Felix de Merode; Van de Weyer, afterward
Belgian minister in London; Gendebien, the leader of the French party
among the revolutionists, Joly, and De Potter. On October 4, 1830,
this provisional government declared Belgium an independent state,
and announced its intention of preparing a constitution which was to
be approved and adopted by a national congress. A special commission
decided, on October 12, in favor of a constitutional monarchy. The
final decree of the congress establishing this constitution as law was
voted on February 7, 1831.
The basis of the new Belgian constitution consisted of the charters and
privileges of the different Belgian provinces and cities, which dated
from the Middle Ages, and especially the “Joyeuse Entrée” of Brabant,
of which mention has already been made. Other liberties, required by
the spirit of modern times, were added: equality of all the Belgians
before the law; freedom of worship, of the press, of association,
of educational teaching, and the right to vote was accorded to all
Belgians who paid a certain amount in taxes.
Some time after the provisional government had declared Belgium an
independent state a conference of the powers was held, on November 4,
1830, in London, to consider the new situation created by the Belgian
revolt: Van der Weyer was sent to represent the Belgian interests. On
December 20, a motion made by the British delegate, Lord Palmerston,
was adopted, which declared Belgium an “independent power.” The victory
of the revolutionists was thus confirmed. At the same time, the plan of
a small but active party among them, who had attempted the reannexation
of the country to France, was defeated.
Another important question was now to be settled--the choice of
a monarch for the new kingdom. The Belgian congress excluded the
candidacy of the Prince of Orange, who was favored by England and
Prussia, since the accession of this prince would mean practically
reannexation by Holland. Under the influence of the French
sympathizers, led by Gendebien, of the provisional government, and
by its president, Surlet de Chokier, the Belgian congress decided to
offer the crown to the Duke of Nemours, younger son of the French King,
Louis-Philippe. This scheme could not be acceded to by England, since
Belgium would then have been under the direct influence of France. The
English ministry, on February 4, unanimously resolved to declare war
on France if Louis-Philippe accepted the offer. So the French King was
compelled to decline it on behalf of his son. Finally, on June 4, 1831,
the Belgian congress elected Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha,
widower of the Princess Charlotte of England. Leopold had fought
gallantly in the army of the Allies against Napoleon in 1813 and 1814,
and had just refused the crown of Greece. He was solemnly inaugurated
at Brussels on June 21 as King of the Belgians. He was considered
an English prince, and for the moment France resented his election;
but Leopold quieted the jealousy of Louis-Philippe by marrying the
daughter of the French King, Louise of Orléans.
Another question to be settled was the delimitation of the boundaries
of the new kingdom. On January 20 and 27, the Conference of London had
issued two protocols, proposing that Belgium be made a perpetually
neutral state; that Holland take all the territory that belonged to the
Dutch republic in 1790, and that the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg become
an appanage of the house of Orange; that Belgium should be charged
with 16/31 of the national debt of the former United Kingdom of the
Netherlands.
These protocols, favorable to Holland, were immediately accepted by
the Dutch King, but unequivocally rejected by the Belgians. The second
article of the London protocols robbed them of Dutch Flanders--the
north of the ancient county--of the towns of Maestricht and Venloo and
the strip of Limburg surrounding them, and also of the Grand Duchy,
a part of the old Belgian province of Luxemburg. The loss of this
territory seemed the more unjust as the inhabitants of those regions
had participated in the Belgian revolt and did not desire annexation by
Holland.
The negotiations between the powers and the Belgians would never have
reached a settlement but for King Leopold. The Belgian King persuaded
the Conference of London to supersede its protocols by a declaration
in eighteen articles, leaving the matter in dispute to be directly
negotiated between Leopold and William of Holland, with the good
offices of the great powers. The Dutch King refused to recognize the
eighteen articles and, on August 2, twelve days after the accession
to the throne of Leopold, invaded Belgium. King Leopold displayed
military skill and courage, but the Belgians had no strong army and
their ill-trained troops were badly defeated at Louvain and at Hasselt.
Impending disaster was prevented by the sudden arrival of a French
army, sent by Louis-Philippe, to whom the Belgian King had appealed
for help. The French repulsed the Dutch. This intervention of France
seriously alarmed the other powers, and especially England. Fearing
that French influence might regain a foothold in the new kingdom,
they precipitately drafted another protocol, called the Twenty-four
Articles, in place of the former eighteen, and took from Belgium
the whole of the area in dispute, except the district of Arlon, in
Luxemburg. Again the Belgians refused to be stripped; but the threat
of invasion by a German army finally compelled them to accede. On
November 15, 1831, Belgium, France, and England signed the Treaty of
the Twenty-four Articles, to which Russia, Prussia, and Austria soon
afterward assented.
This time Holland was unwilling to yield, and the Dutch refused to
evacuate the territory they occupied, especially the citadel of
Antwerp. A French army, under Gérard, marched for the second time into
Belgium, besieged the Antwerp stronghold, and forced the Dutch to
capitulate (1832). King William continued to refuse to subscribe to
any agreement until 1838. Then, suddenly, he gave his adherence to the
Twenty-four Articles. The Conference of London met again and, on April
18, 1839, the final Treaty of London was signed. The Belgians were
given a large reduction in what was agreed should be their contribution
to the debt of the Netherlands, but were forced to surrender the
territories agreed upon by the treaty of 1831. They did it very
reluctantly, but had no other choice.
This Treaty of London is the famous “scrap of paper” of which the
German chancellor spoke so disdainfully on August 14, 1914. It
settled the external relations of Belgium in Europe. By that treaty,
Belgium was declared to be an independent kingdom and was to remain
“a perpetually neutral state,” under the guaranty of the five great
powers. The neutrality of Belgium had been imposed upon the new kingdom
at the instance chiefly of England, who desired above all to maintain
it as a bulwark against France. As King Leopold I himself writes to
Queen Victoria on February 15, 1852, “this neutrality was in the real
interest of this country, but our good congress here did _not_ wish it:
it was _imposé_ upon them.”
Owing to the fact that so much has been said about the neutrality of
Belgium since the beginning of the European war, it seems worth while
to explain briefly what ought to be understood by the words “permanent
neutrality,” used by the Conference of London.[22]
Article VII of the Treaty of London declares: “Belgium, within the
limits specified in Articles I, II, and IV, shall form an independent
and _perpetually neutral_ state. It shall be bound to observe such
neutrality toward all other states.” A distinction must be made between
the neutrality imposed by this article on Belgium and the occasional
neutrality of a state, which during a war between other powers wishes
to avoid the conflict and, in a perfectly voluntary manner, proclaims
that decision to the world. In the recent European war, the United
States of America observed such an “occasional” neutrality.
Permanent neutrality is quite another thing. History shows that there
are certain countries, certain geographical zones, which, by virtue of
their situation, are in some way predestined to become periodically
the theater of struggles between nations. The subjection of such a
country to the exclusive influence of one great power has always
marked a breakdown of the European balance of power. The idea of
placing these zones by means of a treaty in the position of countries
outside the possible zone of international conflicts corresponds to
a general plan of establishing a régime of peace on the basis of
reciprocal and voluntary restriction of action. From this point of
view, neutralization is essentially a factor for peace. It follows that
the state which is perpetually neutral has not only its own individual
meaning and independent mission, but is an important “wheel” in the
general policy. This is the case with Belgium, as it was established by
the great powers after the revolt of 1830, and that is the true meaning
of the statement that it was to be “perpetually neutral.”
Between the neutralized state and the creators of its neutrality there
thus exist reciprocal obligations. The contracting powers between them
undertake engagements whereby they guarantee to the neutralized state
the privileged condition of enjoying permanent peace; while on the
other side, the neutralized state accepts the obligations which protect
the European balance of power. In that way, each of the contracting
powers is bound not to attack the neutral state; not to invite it
to abandon its peaceful attitude; to defend it against any power,
co-contracting or not, which would compel it to abandon its neutrality.
The inviolability of the neutralized territory is agreed upon by this
means, for violation would mean for such a state a breach of its own
neutrality. On the other hand, the neutralized state must itself defend
its neutrality, and adopt all the measures needed for such defense. For
this reason, international law holds that a neutralized state which
commits an act of defense is not to be considered as being in state of
war with the power which violates its neutrality.[23] Moreover, the
neutral state must prevent troops or convoys of a belligerent power
from passing through its territory.[24] Finally, such a state ought to
remain a truly independent state, for if it places or allows itself to
be placed in a position of dependence upon another power it destroys
the European balance of power, the origin of its international status.
Some authorities on international law[25] maintain that in case of
violation of the neutral territory by a belligerent, the contracting
powers have not only the right, but the duty, to interfere _ex
officio_, and to protect the neutral state by military power, even
without the consent of the latter. On this point, however, opinion is
divided.
Does the neutral possess the right to conclude alliances with a foreign
power? This question is a little more difficult to determine exactly,
but it may be settled in the following manner. Every alliance has
in view the possibility of an armed conflict. It follows logically
from this that the right of the neutral state to contract alliances
corresponds very closely to its right of making war. If it is
necessary to forbid such a state every alliance which would tend to
draw it into an armed conflict with third parties, it ought to be
granted without hesitation the right of concluding any understanding
which should have for its sole object the protection of the nation
against foreign aggression. And a defensive agreement tending to
facilitate for the neutral state the carrying out of the part it
is compelled to play in the maintenance of the European balance of
power--the very basis of its neutrality--is certainly permissible, and,
under certain circumstances, may even seem necessary; for example, when
the neutral state seems too weak to resist by its own force a possibly
powerful invasion. But it is obvious that the neutral state may never
conclude either an offensive or a defensive alliance which would impose
upon it the obligation of possible co-operation in the defense of a
foreign territory. That is the true meaning of the permanent neutrality
imposed on Belgium by the Treaty of London, and it will become clearer
when we look at the subsequent facts of history.
In 1870, on the eve of the Franco-German War, Bismarck, with the
object of alienating from France the sympathy of the neutral nations,
and especially that of England, published a draft treaty, three or
four years old, and in the handwriting of Napoleon III’s ambassador,
whereby France was to annex Belgium. This publication aroused public
opinion in England, and, giving expression to English feeling, Disraeli
told Parliament that “the treaties on which are based the independence
and neutrality of Belgium” had been concluded _in the general interest
of Europe_ and also with a very clear idea of their importance for
England. He added: “It is a fundamental principle of the policy of
this country, that the country situated along the coasts of Dunkirk
to the North Sea islands should be possessed by free and prosperous
states practising the arts of peace, in order that these countries
should not belong to a great military power.” In conformity with these
declarations the English government proposed to France and to Prussia
to observe the guaranty by way of co-operation between the English
forces and the forces of one of the belligerents against the other in
case of the violation by the latter of the neutrality of Belgium. This
arrangement was accepted on both sides, and laid down in the formal
treaties dated August 9 and 11, 1870. Those special treaties were to be
in force “during the war and for one year thereafter,” and the final
paragraph expressly stated that, after this period, the regulations of
the Treaty of London (1839) should be regarded as in force.[26] This
treaty it was that was thought to protect Belgium when the country’s
neutrality was violated by Germany on August 3, 1914.
CHAPTER XIII
INDEPENDENT BELGIUM
In 1832 King Leopold I married Louise-Marie, daughter of the French
King Louis-Philippe, who, through her womanly virtues, had made herself
greatly beloved. The first Queen of the Belgians died in 1850, leaving
three children: Leopold, Duke of Brabant, who afterward became King
Leopold II; Philippe, Count of Flanders; and Charlotte, who married
Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Under the patronage of Napoleon III,
Maximilian was for some years Emperor of Mexico, and 2,000 Belgian
volunteers followed him into that country. Napoleon III abandoned him
when political troubles broke out in Mexico, and, notwithstanding
the stubborn resistance he offered to the army of the Republicans,
Maximilian fell into the hands of his enemies and was shot at Queretaro
in 1867 by order of Juarez. As a result of this tragedy Empress
Charlotte became insane.
Meanwhile the first King of the Belgians had developed the economic
resources of Belgium. He was determined in his policy of maintaining
the permanent neutrality of the country, as imposed by the Treaty
of London. He preserved very friendly relations with Queen Victoria
of England, and the correspondence between the two sovereigns
shows that the first King of the Belgians would have found in her
a mighty protector in the hour of trial. In a letter dated from
Buckingham Palace in 1852, Queen Victoria, dealing with the fear
of a _coup d’état_ on the part of “such an extraordinary man” as
Louis-Napoleon--the future Napoleon III--asserted that any violation
of Belgian neutrality would mean a _casus belli_ for her government.
How strongly the throne of Leopold I was established among his own
people was shown by the fact that during the Revolution of 1848, which
nearly resulted in the overthrow of all the thrones of Europe, Belgium
alone kept herself aloof from the European turmoil, and some French
adventurers who had tried to cross the frontier and, with the help of
some unpatriotic Belgians, to proclaim a republic on Belgian soil,
were quickly disarmed in the skirmish at Risquons-Tout, near Mouscron,
in West Flanders. King Leopold consistently regarded himself as a
constitutional king, and won thereby the confidence and the respect of
the nation. During his reign Belgium gave many proofs of her spirit of
enterprise and economic vitality. In 1835 she constructed the first
railway that existed on the Continent, connecting Brussels and Malines.
The country likewise prepared itself for defense against foreign
invasion, and built the fortifications of Antwerp, making this city the
ultimate bulwark of national defense. In 1860, the octrois, a sort of
communal customs levied upon entering Belgian towns, were abolished;
and in 1863 the tolls of the Scheldt, paid to the Dutch by all vessels
coming from Antwerp, were discontinued.
From a political point of view the old union of 1828 between Catholics
and Liberals had disappeared. From 1847 the personnel of the
ministries was no longer composed of members of both parties, but of
representatives of one party only, to the exclusion of those of the
other. The Liberals were in power from 1847 to 1855; the Catholics
followed, and they in turn retired before a street riot in 1857; the
Liberals again held power throughout the reign of Leopold I. The first
King of the Belgians died on December 10, 1865.
The Duke of Brabant succeeded him under the name of Leopold II. Born
on April 9, 1835, in 1853 he married Marie-Henriette, archduchess of
Austria, who died in 1902. The only son of this marriage, the Count of
Hainaut, died at the age of ten years, in 1869.
The birth of the young prince Leopold gave occasion to many rejoicings
among the people, who were extremely happy to see the future of their
national dynasty assured. Leopold inherited from his father an acute
knowledge of men and things, unusual tact, sound common sense, and
respect for his mission as a constitutional sovereign.
On April 9, 1853, when he was already Duke of Brabant (the title given
to the Belgian crown prince) he was made a member of the Belgian
Senate. On this occasion the King, his father, presenting him to the
assembled senators, said of him: “I found in him much discretion and
common sense, so I taught him all that is essential and useful for the
conduct of political affairs.” On August 22, 1853, Leopold married
Henriette, archduchess of Austria; this marriage united again the new
Belgian dynasty with the heirs of Maria Theresa and Charles V.
Then began for Leopold a very interesting and important period. By
touring the world and visiting foreign countries, he prepared himself
for the principal task of his royal life--to teach the Belgians how to
take up commercial and colonial expansion. For, if Leopold I especially
consolidated the young Belgian kingdom, from an interior as well as
from an exterior point of view, King Leopold II was the pioneer of the
expansion which resulted in the commercial and industrial prosperity of
his country.
From 1854 to 1855, Leopold visited successively Egypt, Palestine,
Greece, Italy, and Switzerland; he met with a splendid reception at
Jerusalem. In 1860, he undertook a new journey in Turkey and Asia
Minor. In 1862-63 he went through Spain, Algeria, Tunisia, Malta, and
Egypt. Finally, he spent the years 1864 and 1865 visiting India.
It is then not surprising to hear him, when, in 1855, he made his
first speech in the Senate, saying: “We must show the Belgian flag all
over the world. A young nationality must be daring and always love
progress.” He showed henceforth great interest in science and arts
and public works and recommended many times the creation of Belgian
navigation lines.
In 1859 he began his great campaign for colonial expansion. He told
the Belgians they should create everywhere markets for their commerce
and exchanges for their industry. In connection with this scheme, he
enjoined them to make the port of Antwerp the best and greatest port
of the Continent. All this was done and said before Leopold himself
became a king. On December 17, 1865, he succeeded his father as king
of the Belgians. During his reign he kept pleasant relations with all
the countries of Europe, and this friendship was sealed by the visits
many kings paid to Brussels. The Belgian capital greeted successively
William I of Prussia, William III and Queen Emma of the Netherlands,
Alfonso XII of Spain, William II, the young German Emperor. Leopold
himself went, in 1872, to visit England and took part at a great dinner
where the celebrated Disraeli welcomed him and spoke with much respect
of the late King Leopold I, the wise man, “who was virtually a British
prince.” Peace and international friendship thus favored the first
years of Leopold’s reign, when suddenly, in 1870, the Franco-German War
broke out.
We have already mentioned Great Britain’s interventions in order
to preserve the neutrality of Belgium. But the Belgians themselves
took their part in the defense of that neutrality. On hearing of the
declaration of war, the Belgian government ordered general mobilization
of the army and sent troops to the frontiers, in order to prevent any
attempt by the belligerents to use the territory. On September 1, 1870,
great danger arose: the French, defeated at Sedan, seemed resolved to
try to escape capitulation by seeking a refuge and continuing the fight
on Belgian soil. But this event did not happen and the Belgian army
preserved the frontiers of the country untouched.
When peace returned, Leopold II interested himself in science and
created, in 1874, the “Prix du Roi” for scientific research, hoping
thereby, as he said himself, to stimulate the enterprises of the
Belgian scientists and to have the world devote its attention to
Belgian life and interests. In 1876 the King took advantage of the
Congress for Eugenics held in Brussels for promoting interest in the
social welfare of the poorer classes and for urging the construction of
cheap houses for workmen.
On September 12, 1876, a great event took place. The King presided
at the Brussels Geographical Conference, where representatives of
the various European countries assembled. Out of this conference
grew the _Association internationale africaine_, which undertook the
exploration of the Congo and the fight against the slave-drivers
in Africa. As a consequence of all this, in February, 1888, the
International Conference of Berlin took place, which created the
Independent Congo State, with the king of the Belgians as sovereign.
This state, by the will of the King, the consent of the powers, and the
vote of the Belgian Parliament, became a Belgian colony in 1908.
Another great task of the King’s life, was the defense of the country.
Leopold always proclaimed his faith in the treaties of 1839, but he
never neglected to advocate the reinforcement of the army and the
construction of fortresses, in order to repel any possible invasion.
In 1885, when international peace seemed to be in danger, the King,
after a vigorous campaign, obtained a vote from Parliament, resolving
to erect the fortresses of the Meuse--the forts at Liège and Namur,
which, in 1914, stopped for some time the German advance. Things did
not always go smoothly, and the King became very unpopular with many
people, who, absolutely confident in the treaties of 1839, termed the
King’s enterprise as “militarism.” Leopold once taunted a member of the
Belgian Parliament, who was opposed to the contemplated fortification,
saying: “Never go out without an umbrella, Sir!”
In 1905 the Belgians celebrated splendidly the seventy-fifth
anniversary of Belgian independence. The King went all over the
country, encouraging the feeling of patriotism which was then manifest
and taking advantage of that spirit for urging the enlargement of
the works of the port of Antwerp and the construction of a circle of
outer forts, which should defend the city. After a great fight, he
obtained the vote from Parliament, although the proposed system of
fortification was not entirely accepted by the politicians.
His last victory was the reinforcement of the Belgian army, the
suppression of the old Napoleonic system, called “le tirage au sort,”
and the establishment of personal service. The bill of the new law was
brought to him to be signed on his deathbed. Before leaving this world,
he confirmed with his royal signature the law which he had finally
obtained from his all-too-pacifist subjects. With a sigh of supreme
satisfaction, the great King died in December, 1909.
During his life he had many enemies. A constitutional king, he
sometimes went farther than the limits of his power, but he did it
with the greatness and the security of his country always in his mind.
Politicians more than once attacked him violently, but history will
avenge him, saying: “He made it possible for his country to defend
itself in the hour of great trial.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT TRIAL
When the nephew of King Leopold, Prince Albert, became king of the
Belgians under the name of Albert I, he certainly never imagined that a
day would come when the very existence of his country would be put at
stake by the felony of one of the powers which were pledged to defend
Belgian neutrality.
The first years of the new reign went on peacefully. Albert I devoted
his attention particularly to social and economic affairs, but he
did not forget the problems of Belgian’s defense. In 1912, thanks to
the efforts and the help of the Belgian Premier, Baron Charles de
Brogueville, he obtained a new army bill, which considerably reinforced
the strength of the Belgian army. Two years had hardly elapsed when the
Great Trial came! On August 2, 1914, the German Minister to Brussels
appeared at the Belgian Foreign Office, and presented on behalf of his
government a “very confidential” note, asking passage through Belgium
for the German troops on their way to France. Twelve hours were granted
to the Belgian government for a reply.
The night of August 2, 1914, was a terrible night for the King and
his ministers. They had to decide upon the future, on the existence
of their country. None wavered; they decided to remain loyal to their
pledge and to oppose to the German invaders “the force of arms.”
The Belgian army then hardly counted 115,000 men; they had no big guns,
hardly any machine guns and, as a consequence of the army bill of 1912,
everything was in full process of reorganization. Nevertheless, the
Belgian government did not hesitate.
On August 2, at 7 o’clock in the morning, a man calmly brought to the
German Minister at Brussels the answer to the German ultimatum: the
reply was a categorical refusal to let the German army pass through
Belgium. On August 4, the army of General von Emmich, some 80,000 men,
tried to take the fortified position of Liège by surprise. But the
30,000 Belgians of General Leman defended their hastily constructed
trenches so well that many German regiments beat a hasty retreat.
Panic already prevailed in the German town of Aix-la-Chapelle, where
the news spread that the Belgians were invading German soil! However,
in the midst of the confusion, a German column, under the command of
Ludendorff, who then won his first laurels of the war, succeeded in
breaking through the Belgian defenses. On the morning of August 7, the
city of Liège was occupied by the enemy.
The Belgian troops succeeded in escaping capture and went to rejoin the
Belgian field army, posted on the river Gette, covering both Brussels
and Antwerp. If the city of Liège was in the enemy’s hands, the forts
continued to resist, and it was only when the 30.5- and 42.0-centimeter
guns arrived from Germany, that one after another they were shattered
to bits. The fort of Loncin, where General Leman had continued to
resist, exploded, and was taken on the sixteenth of August. It had
stopped the advance of the First Army under von Kluck for a week.
And so it was that the army of von Kluck did not come in touch with
the Belgian field army near Louvain before August 10. The number of
the invading troops was so great and the danger of the Belgians being
cut off from their Antwerp base so imminent, that King Albert decided
to retire, after some combats at Haelen, Hauthem, and Aerschot, to the
entrenched position of Antwerp. This happened on August 19. The flood
of the invaders went over Louvain, Brussels, and then turned southward.
There, thanks to the delay procured by the resistance of Liège, stood,
on the Sambre, the Fifth French Army, and, on the canal from Mons to
Condé, the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French. Moreover,
the Belgian fortress of Namur, at the confluence of the Sambre and the
Meuse, offered a strong _point d’appui_ for the Allied forces in the
south of Belgium.
Events happened, however, very rapidly. Namur fell under the attack of
the Second German Army under von Bülow and the forts were destroyed by
the fire of the giant German guns. The Belgian garrison, under General
Michel, partly succeeded in escaping to France on August 23. The same
day, the French on the Sambre were forced back by von Bülow and von
Kluck maneuvering together, and the British at Mons were compelled to
fall back and to begin their glorious retreat on Le Cateau.
When the battles of the Sambre and Mons were raging, the Belgian field
army suddenly made a sortie from Antwerp, in order to menace the
Germans in the rear. They had a great fight on a line between Vilvorde
and Aerschot, but, having no large guns, did not succeed in breaking
through the German observation army which covered the line from Liège
to Brussels.
They made a second sortie on September 9. They succeeded in recapturing
Aerschot and were about to retake Louvain, when German reinforcements
stopped their advance. This sortie retained in Belgium important German
reinforcements, which were on their way to restore the German fortunes
on the Marne. The German General Staff frankly admits the importance of
this move on the part of the Belgian army.
A third sortie did not succeed, for, exactly at this time (September
27), the Germans began the siege of Antwerp. They wanted to put an end
to these continuous threats on their rear and their communication lines
with Germany. Just as Liège and Namur fell under the fire of the 30.5-
and 42.0-centimeter guns, Antwerp proved irremediably lost after two or
three days’ bombardment. The British marine fusiliers and men of the
Naval Reserve, sent by Churchill with the hope of delaying the fall of
the fortress, could merely support the morale of the Belgian defenders
by their presence, but that was all. On the evening of October 6
the Belgian field army, under the personal conduct of King Albert,
succeeded in leaving Antwerp without the Germans being aware of it. The
city continued to be defended by the garrison troops and the British.
After a terrible bombardment of thirty-six hours the last defenders
escaped in their turn, and on October 9 the civilian authorities
surrendered the town to General von Beseler. The Germans boasted of the
great war spoils found in the town, but they were extremely angry to
find the city empty of troops.
The Belgian field army, meanwhile, accomplished a very dangerous but
admirably conducted retreat through Flanders, and stopped on the Yser,
on October 14-15. The soldiers were exhausted. They had barely taken
up their position along the little river when a mighty German army,
composed partly of some corps of von Beseler’s army, partly of fresh
troops--mostly university men, volunteers--just arrived from Germany,
appeared, with the aim of breaking through in the direction of Dunkirk
and Calais.
During more than seven days, 48,000 Belgian infantrymen, “in the last
stage of exhaustion”--so said Sir John French in his dispatch to the
War Office--supported by a force of not more than 6,000 French marine
fusiliers defended the Yser positions against some 100,000 enemies,
provided with very heavy artillery and all the means of modern warfare.
On October 25, when at a certain point the Germans finally broke
through, French reinforcements arrived and the Belgian General Staff
decided to flood the positions in front of the last Belgian line.
This put an end to the struggle. The troops of the Duke of Würtemberg
suffered an ignominious defeat. They never reached either Dunkirk or
Calais.
The Germans were not more fortunate on the Ypres front: here the
British of Sir John French, supported by some French troops, also held
their line, and at the close of November, 1914, the struggle ended in
the south of Belgium and the long period of trench warfare began.
Except for that little slip of country including Dixmude, Nieuport, and
Ypres, Belgium was now under German occupation. Then began the “war of
the civilians.” Already during the invasion, in that fateful month of
August, many civilians had been killed by the invading troops. Under
pretext that there were _francs tireurs_--which should be categorically
denied, there never being an organized “_franc-tireur_” war in
Belgium--the invaders committed horrible atrocities in the region of
Liège, at Aerschot, Louvain, Tamines, Andennes, Namur, Termonde, and in
the south of Luxemburg, burning a large number of houses, pillaging,
and killing over 6,000 people, among them old men, women, and children.
Terrorization seemed the immediate aim of this peculiar system of
warfare.
When these troops had disappeared in the direction of Paris,
General von der Goltz was intrusted with the task of organizing the
administration of occupied Belgium. He arrived at Brussels on September
1, 1914, with some 25 military and civilian officials. Belgium was
now divided into two parts: the “General Government,” including the
whole of the occupied territory, except both East and West Flanders,
and the “Etappengebiet” or “army zone,” including these last two
provinces. The “General Government” was subject to the authority of
the Governor General, residing at Brussels; the “Etappengebiet” was
responsible to the army commanders. Along the coast was established
the “Marine-gebiet” or coast defense, under the command of Admiral von
Schroeder, residing at Bruges. At the head of each province was put
a military governor, and in every district a _Kreischef_. Every town
had a local “Kommandantur.” Besides these military officials were the
civilian officials of the “Zivilverwaltung.”
Between these two elements, the military and the civilians, there did
not always exist great cordiality, and, when they did not agree, the
military always had the last word. Also, at Brussels, the authority of
the Governor General was sometimes handicapped by the intervention
of the Quartermaster General, von Sauberzweig, representative of the
German General Staff, and it seems beyond doubt that the excesses and
crimes committed by the German government at Brussels were frequently
imposed by the military party. The murder of Edith Cavell and the
deportation of civilians to Germany and to the firing-line were
certainly acts of the military.
The situation of the Belgian civilian population became now very
peculiar. The Belgian government, which had left Antwerp together
with the King, had accepted the hospitality of the French government
at Havre; the King and Queen were with the troops on the Yser. There
remained in Belgium, as representatives of the national power, the
burgomasters or mayors of the various towns, the parish priests, and
the bishops. They were to be the leaders of the oppressed population.
Cardinal Mercier took up the fight against the crimes, the excesses,
and the illegalities of the occupying power, and the mayor of the
capital, Max, stirred the people by his patriotic and gallant attitude.
The Germans sent him to Germany for having been too outspoken in his
feelings; he remained there in confinement till the end of the war.
They did not dare to arrest Cardinal Mercier, but they tried by all
means to silence him and to prevent his encouraging, in his pastorals
and letters addressed to his flock, the sense of patriotism and the
endurance of the people. The Cardinal never missed any occasion to tell
the Belgians what was their duty in the face of the invader, or to
protest against atrocities committed, or to try to prevent brutalities
as, for instance, at the time of the awful deportations. The bishops
of Liège and Namur also took up the same energetic attitude. In many
towns and villages the burgomasters did their duty as calmly as the
priests.
Thanks to the attitude of their civilian and ecclesiastical leaders,
the Belgians found the necessary patience to endure the harshness, the
persecutions, and the privations of the new régime. It may be said
that, generally speaking, they offered, on “the interior front,” as
good a resistance as the soldiers on the Yser front.
Their cities were occupied by German garrisons; their houses sometimes
filled with German officers or requisitioned in order to serve as
a German _Casino_ or _Soldatenheim_. Every month, at the local
_Kommandantur_, the young men of age to bear arms, the former civic
guards, etc., must present themselves. A very severe control was
established in order to prevent the young men from escaping to Holland
and rejoining the Belgian army. In order to prevent this, the Belgian
frontier to the north was provided with three lines of electrified wire
and soldiers were constantly patrolling, ready to fire on those who
should succeed in cutting the wires and passing. These terrible threats
did not prevent thousands of young Belgians from facing the ordeal and
from getting through these wires, on their way to the Belgian army on
the Yser. From Holland, they went to England, then reached France where
they were received in Belgian instruction camps and prepared for “doing
their bit” in the Yser trenches.
The parents or relatives of these young Belgians were held responsible
for the escape of their sons and heavily fined or imprisoned. The
German administration applied, indeed, the principle of collective
responsibility. For the fault of one individual, the whole community
was punished. So, for instance, cutting of a telephone wire, singing a
patriotic song, distributing secret newspapers, all this was punished
by heavy fines imposed on a whole town or village.
Everywhere the German criminal or secret police, organized by Governor
General von Bissing, was at work, trying to get as many Belgians as
possible into prison. The German military penal code was applied to
Belgium for offenses termed as endangering the security of the German
army. These crimes were punished by military tribunals, where no
Belgian barrister was admitted, and where people were condemned to
death or to heavy penalties without appeal. In one year alone, 1915-16,
103,092 Belgians were thus condemned by these military tribunals, and
100 death penalties were pronounced, many of them being immediately
executed. The best-known cases were those of Edith Cavell, Gabrielle
Petit, Franck, Baekelmans, etc. This régime of terror did not curb the
courage of the people.
The Germans tried to create despair and dissension by spreading false
news, by announcing loudly and daily their victories, by creating
German or Germanized papers, such as _Le Bruxellois_, by exciting the
animosity against the Allies, especially against England, by boasting
that the Belgians had been left in the lurch by their influential
friends.
To counteract this poison propaganda, a secret press was created at
Brussels and in many other towns. The “Libre Belgique,” organized by
the editor of the former Belgian paper _Le Patriote_, Mr. Jourdain,
is the most celebrated of them. The Germans never succeeded in
discovering the writers or the printers, but many people, suspected of
taking part in the enterprise, were fined or imprisoned or deported.
The most cunning device of the Germans was the so-called “activism.”
They knew that, before the war, a party of Flemings, called
“Flamingants,” had asked for more influence of the Flemish tongue in
Belgian public life and advocated the creation of a Flemish university.
Governor von Bissing tried then to sow dissension between Flemings and
Walloons and to destroy the very basis of Belgian nationality itself.
He took over the program of the Flamingants and created, with the help
of a few traitors, a Flemish university of Ghent. Great privileges
were attached to the matriculation at this Flemish-German university.
The scheme did not succeed. Von Bissing went farther: he introduced
administrative separation between Flanders and Wallony, and created an
autonomous “Verwaltung” for Flanders at Brussels and for Wallony at
Namur, with separated ministries. In this he was helped by a score of
traitors, who called themselves “activists,” and who were particularly
attracted by bribes and high positions offered by the Germans. They
formed a so-called “Council for Flanders,” whose members went even to
visit the German Chancellor at Berlin.
A shudder of revolt passed through the country, and the great majority
of the Flemings formally condemned the “activists.” The Belgian
magistrates decided to arrest the leader of the activists, Borms, who
called himself the Flemish “Minister for War,” under the very nose of
the Germans. Borms was arrested at Brussels, but instantly liberated
by his German protectors. This clearly showed the relations of the
“activists” toward the enemy, but the courageous Belgian magistrates
were deported to Germany.
The resistance of the Belgians was never broken, but material life was
very difficult. Owing to the requisitions of horses, cattle, fruits,
etc., there came a day when starvation was near. Then was founded,
in October, 1914, the admirable Commission for Relief in Belgium,
with Herbert Hoover at its head, who undertook the great task of
revictualing Belgium during the occupation.
The Germans had not only requisitioned food; they also requisitioned
the very means of industrial life. According to a scheme
conceived and worked out by the president of the “Allgemeine
Elektrizitätsgesellschaft,” Walther Rathenau, Belgium was to be
stripped of all natural and manufactured products which could help the
German army in continuing and winning the war. Coal, metals, chemical
products, wood, wool, linen, cotton, copper, rubber, machines, machine
tools, oil, transport material, horses, etc., were put under “saisie”
by successive decrees of von Bissing and sent to Germany, with the help
of German business men, who visited the Belgian factories and marked
the things to be requisitioned.
A consequence of this was the closing of many factories and the
creation of an enormous number of forced strikers. These men, then,
were considered as idlers and, by order of the military, taken out of
their houses and sent by whole trains, in cattle-trucks, to Germany.
There they had to work for the German army, even making munitions to
kill their brethren. This was the origin of the awful deportations,
which stirred the conscience of the civilized world. About 150,000
Belgians, mostly workmen, but intellectuals, bourgeois, and even
schoolboys not excepted, were either sent to Germany or to the
firing-line in France and Belgium, where they were compelled to dig
trenches, construct roads, etc. A large number of them refused flatly
to work for the enemy. They were submitted in the camps to real
tortures, beaten, martyrized, and scores of them died. Others were
sent back, exhausted by their martyrdom, and died on arriving in their
native home.
The financial wealth of Belgium was also crippled by the heavy war
levies imposed on provinces, towns, and villages. In December, 1914,
von Bissing imposed on the Belgian provinces a collective war levy of
40,000,000 francs monthly; in November, 1916, this levy had reached
50,000,000 francs monthly. Von Falkenhausen, who succeeded von Bissing,
raised it to 60,000,000 francs. It would be impossible to estimate
exactly the total of the levies and fines imposed on Belgian towns and
villages during four years of war.
Four years, indeed, this terrible thing went on. Then, suddenly, came
“the day of revenge,” of which Cardinal Mercier had spoken in 1917
in his letter to General von Huehne. The mighty German war machine
collapsed under the combined effort of the Allied forces. At the end of
the battle front, near the sea, was constituted the “group of armies of
Flanders,” composed of French, British, Americans, and Belgians, under
the command of King Albert. In September, 1918, the great offensive
began on the Flanders front. The German positions were taken by storm,
and, after a short interruption, the drive went on again in October.
Soon the Flanders coast was evacuated, and everywhere, in Belgian towns
and villages, amidst cries of joy and tears, amidst Belgian flags kept
jealously hidden during four years, the sturdy troops of the Yser came
home again, as victors of the right over might.
At the beginning of November came the end: the armistice was signed and
the Germans compelled to evacuate the country which they once hoped to
dominate forever. On a wonderful day in that same month, King Albert
and his queen followed by his army and by British, French, and American
troops, entered Brussels and saw again rise before their eyes the tower
of the historic Hôtel de Ville. The nightmare was over, Belgium was
free again. And in ages to come, the children will learn the history of
that period, during which Belgium covered itself with glory, because
“it stood the test in the hour of the Great Trial.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The best work to be consulted on the history of Belgium is that by
H. Pirenne, professor in the University of Ghent, entitled _Histoire
de Belgique_, Vols. I-IV, Brussels, 1900-1911. The work is not yet
complete: the fourth volume carries us down to 1648. Those wishing to
study more in detail the various problems of Belgian history will find
the enumeration of original sources and modern books in H. Pirenne,
_Bibliographie de l’histoire de Belgiques_, 2d ed., Brussels, 1902.
For a list of books published since 1902 see the Belgian periodical
_Archives belges_, where the important books and articles on Belgian
history are reviewed and discussed.
Works written in English are the following: Demetrius C. Boulger, _A
History of Belgium_, 2 vols., London, 1902-9; J. de C. MacDonnell,
_Belgium, Her Kings, Kingdom and People_, London, 1914; R. C. K. Ensor,
_Belgium_, New York and London [1915]. The work by Boulger is mainly
based on the old work of Théodore Juste, _Histoire de Belgique_ (new
edition in 3 vols., Brussels, 1895), which is not up to date and cannot
be compared with Pirenne’s _Histoire_. The works by MacDonnell and
Ensor deal especially with the contemporary history of Belgium, the
former treating Belgian politics from the Catholic point of view, the
latter being frequently ill informed and unjust toward the Catholic
party. Both have their merits in dealing with the history of Belgium
in the nineteenth century. Modern Belgium has also been studied by H.
Charriaut, _la Belgique moderne_, Paris, 1910. This book offers much
information, but contains many mis-statements. For social problems, see
B. Seebohm Rowntree, _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium_, London,
1910. In French there exists an excellent survey of the most important
periods of Belgian history, written by G. Kurth, _la nationalité
belge_, Brussels, 1913.
A very readable book, well written and well illustrated, based on
accurate historical information, and dealing with the history of
Flanders in the largest sense of the word, is the work of Edward
Neville Vose, _The Spell of Flanders_, Boston, Page Co., 1915. The
author, describing the visit he made to various Flemish towns, gives a
good account of the most striking facts of their history.
INDEX
INDEX
Abbey of St. Armand, 32
Abbots, of Lobbes, 33
Ackerman, 62
Act of Union, 138
Activists, 179
Adorno, Antoniotto di Botta, 134
Aerschot, 172; recaptured, 173 ff.
Africa, 168
Aix, favorite residence of Charles the Great, 12
Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 126
Alamans, 9, 18
Albert, Archduke of Austria, 120
Albert, Count of Bavaria, 69
Albert, King of Belgium, 124
Albert I, 170 ff.; armies of Flanders under King, 181
Alfonso XII, of Spain, 166
Allies, 145 ff., 178
Alost, 24, 39
Alps, 31
Alsace: Count Philip of, 56, 57; house of, from France, 50;
principality of, 77; regained independence, 92; Thierry of, 56
Alva, Duke of, Don Luis Alvarez, the Toledo, 109; taxes of, 111
America, commercial dealings with, 132; neutral, 159
Amiénois, 56
Amsterdam, 150
Anarchy, 114
Andreas, Valerius, 123
Anglo-Saxon missionaries, 14
Anjou, Duke of, 117
Antwerp, 10, 44, 60, 110; army base, 172; center of cloth industry,
86; diocese of, 105; fortifications of, 164; largest market of north,
84; lost its commerce, 119; occupied by Dutch, 157; port of, 166, 168;
province of, 19, 114, 148; sacked, 113; siege of, 173; treaty of,
called “Treaty of the Barriers,” 129
Apostolic Inquisitors, 99
Arab merchants, 37
Architecture, 31 f., 53, 92
Ardennes, 175; hills, 69; peasants of, 49
Aristocracy, 62
Arlon, district of, 157
Armada, Spanish, 104, 118
Armistice, signed, 182
Army, 172 f.; permanent, 100; reinforcement of, 169; of 115,000 men,
171; zone, 175
Army bill, 171
Arnulf, Count, 24
Arras, 14; bishoprics of, 14; charter of, 43; cloth dyeing, 46; diocese
of, 105; treaty of, 116
Art: Belgian, 90, 166; and craftsmanship, 91; goldsmith’s, 122; Gothic,
53; Romantic, 53
Artevelde, assassination of Jacques Van, 72; and crafts, 62; Philip, 72
Artillery, heavy, 174
Artistic development, during communes, 53
Artists, Belgian and Italian, 31
Artois, 24, 57, 65, 115, 126
Association internationale africaine, 167
Ath, 47
Athis-sur-Orge, peace of, 65
Atrocities, 175
Auber’s _La Muette de Portici_, inaugurated Belgian revolt, 153
Austria, enemy of the revolution, 141
Austria-Hungary, 17
Austrian: defeat of, troops, 141; domination, 130, 140; Netherlands,
131, 142, 148; revolution against, 148; rule, 5; tyranny, 141
Autonomy, 74, 80
Bade, Treaty of, 128
Baekelmans, 178
Baesrode, 49
_Bailli_, 42
Balance of power, European, 131, 140, 159, 161
Baldwin I, Count, 23
Baldwin II, 24
Baldwin V, Count, 24, 57; daughter of, married to William the
Conqueror, 24
Baldwin VIII, 50
Baldwin IX, 45, 50
Baltic Sea, 44
Barbarossa, Emperor Frederick, 55
Barcelona, 46
Barriers, Treaty of the, 147
Bastile, fall of, influence on Belgians, 152
Battles, at Aerschot, Haelen, Hauthem, Mons, Sambre, Vilvorde, 172
Bavaria, Emperor Louis of, 70; house of, 75
Beggars, 87
Bel, Jean le, 90
Belgian: animosity against Netherlands, 150; artists, 31; cities, 36,
49; ethnical and linguistic duality of, people, 10; field army, 171;
frontiers preserved, 167; _genre_, 34; independence, 4, 152, 155;
nobles, 107; possessions invaded by French, 141; provinces became
industrial, 46; republic, 140, 148; revolt against Dutch, 152 f.;
seaports, 44; separation of, provinces from Spain, 112; trade and
industry, 12 f.; union, 26, 74
Belgians: “Belgae,” of Celtic origin, 4, 8; civilization of, 3;
defeated at Louvain and Hasselt, 157; first Queen of, 163; names of, 4,
5; national culture of, 3; parents of escaped, fined or imprisoned, 177
Belgiojoso, Count Giovanni Giacomo di, 134
Belgium: accepted Roman rule, 8; annexed by France, 142; _arena
militaire_ of Europe; artistic life of, 31; bilingualism of, 10; built
first railway on Continent, 164; development of communes in, 42;
founder of, 76; heathen until eighth century, 14; independent, 21,
145, 154 f., 163; invaded by Prince of Orange, 110; kept from European
turmoil, 164; map of, 164; no political unity in, 25; occupied by
French, 141; occupied by Germans, 175; passage through, asked, 170;
permanently neutral, 159; political secularization of, 135; reconquest
of, 117; religious life in, 28; ruled from Madrid, 94; secession from
Holland, 117; separate state since 1588, 5; separated during Middle
Ages, 17; stripped of products, 180; territorial losses, 125; united
with Holland under Kingdom of the Netherlands, 145, 149; unity of, 76
Benedictine rule, 26
Benedictines, 28
_Beneficium_, 19
Bergeyck, Count of, 128
Berlin, 179
von Beseler, 173 f.
Béthune, city of, 65; Count Robert of, 65
Bibliography, 183
Binche, 47
Bishoprics, of Arras, Boulogne, Cambrai, Tournai, 14, 34
Bishops: Amandus, Eligius, Hubert, Lambert, 14; of Ghent, 151;
guardians of the faith, 105; leaders, 176; literary movement developed
by Lotharingian, 31; of Noyon-Tournai, of Arras, and Terouanne, 23;
servants of empire no longer, 22; work of missionaries completed by, 14.
Bismarck, 161
von Bissing, 178
Boendale, Jan, 89
Bois-le-Duc, 105
Bollandists, Society of, 136
Boniface VIII, Pope, 64
Borms, 179
Bossche, Peter Vanden, 72
Bouillon, lord of, 95
Boulogne, 29
Bourgeois, 36
Bouts, Thierry, 91
Bouvines, victory of, 58
Brabançonne, the national anthem, 153
Brabant: Antoine, Duke of, 75; Duke of, 41, 66; Duke of, became Leopold
II, 165; Duke of resisted French influence, 58; leader in struggle
against Spain, 116; victory of, 60
Brabant, Duchess Jeanne of, 75
Brabant, duchy of, 8, 19, 33; agricultural, 39; under Austria, 130;
cloth industry in, 46; communes in, 43; enemy of Limburg, 20; Joyeuse
Entrée of, 66, 137; leading power, 58; led struggle against Spain, 61;
new name in history, 22; political center, 25; province of, 19, 50;
revolution of 1789, 152
Brabantine Revolution, 137
_Brabantsche Yeesten_, 89
Breda, 112
Bremen, 30
“Brethren of Common Life,” 89
Broglie, de, Monsignor, 151
Brogne, St. Gerard of, 27
Brogueville, Baron Charles de, 170
Bruges: cloth industry of, 46; commercial metropolis, 44; crowded
market-place, 45; diocese of, 105; financial center, 45, 85; la
“morte,” 86; meeting-place for merchants, 37; revolt in, 80; road
between Cologne and, 43 f.; town hall of, 54; wool market, 84
Bruno, duke of Lotharingia, 21
Brussels, 39, 46, 60, 138; attack on, by Prince Frederick, 152;
Geographical Conference, 167; German minister to, presented ultimatum,
170 f.; railway to Malines, 164
Buffer state, 145
von Bülow, 172
Burgers, 36
Burgesses, 36, 40, 47, 69, 135, 143
Burgomasters, 176 f.
Burgundians, 11
Burgundy: duchy of, 92; dukes of, 72-74 ff., 78, 92; house of, 75;
Philip the Bold, duke of, 75; religious reform originated in French, 27
Caesar, Julius: attacked the Belgians, 8
Cahors, 45
Calais, 174
Calvinists, 107, 110 f., 114
Cambrai, 14, 19, 95; archbishopric of, 105; and Cambrésis acquired by
France, 126; commune established in, 42; school of, 34; wharves at, 37
Campine, 9, 28, 49, 143
Campo Formio, treaty of, 142
Canal: connecting Bruges and Damme, 45; from Mons to Condé, 172
Canals, 30
Canche River, 24
_Cantilène de Ste. Eulalie_, oldest poem of French literature, 33
Capetians, 70
Carmelites, 122
Castlereagh, Lord, 148
Castles, 39
Castra, 39
_Casus, belli_, 164
Cathedrals, 31 f.
Catholic church, 97; faith, 15, 102; followers persecuted, 142; League,
118; worship restored, 143
Catholics and Liberals, in power, 164; union of, 152
Cattle-raising, 31
Cavell, Edith, murder of, 176
Centralization, political, 4
Champagne, 30, 50
Charles the Bold, 76; death of, 92
Charles the Great: at Aix, 12; death of, 17; heirs of, 19; most famous
of Carolingians, 12; reign of, 4; soldier and legislator, 13
Charles II, 128
Charles V, 94 ff., 131, 139, 146, 165
Charles VI, 131 f.
Charles VIII, of France, 94
Charles X, fall of, 152
Charlotte, Princess of England, 155
Charlotte, wife of Archduke Maximilian, 163
_Charte de Commune_, 41
Charter: of Arras, 43; municipal, 43
Chastelain, 90
Chatillon, Jacques de, 63
Chemical products, 180
Chokier, Surlet de, president of provisional government, 155
Christian religion, introduction of, 13, 14
Christus, Peter, of Brabant, 91
Church: of Cologne, 14; of Rheims, 14; feudal, 28
Churchill, 173
“Circles,” 96
Cistercians, 28, 50
Cities, free, 36; glory of Belgian, 54; originated in Middle Ages, 39;
special privileges granted, 42
Civil war, 17, 62
Civilians, deportation of, 176
Civilization, of Belgium, 35; centers of, 39; French, 33; and German, 35
Civitates, 39
_Clauwerts_, 63
Clergy, 81
Clodion: belonged to dynasty of Merovingians, 12; first king of Franks,
11
Clodovech: baptism of, 14
Cloth industry, 46, 69, 70, 83 f.
Clubs, political, 142; interference of French, 153
Cluny, monks of, 28; Reform of, 27
Coal, 180
Coalition, against French king, 58; European, 141
Cod fishing, 31
Code Napoléon, 144
Coins, Belgian imitated, 46; of Counts of Flanders, 37
Colenbrander, H., 6
Coligny, 110
Colleges, opened, 122
Collieries and ironworks, 47
Cologne, 14; archbishop of, 60; archbishopric of, 21; political decline
of archbishops of, 60; road from, to Bruges, 39, 43, 44
Comines, Philip de, historian, 77
Commerce, 45
Commercial, highroad between Rhine and sea, 59; relations between
Flanders and England, 46; road controlled by dukes, 60
Commission for Relief in Belgium, 180
Committee of Regency, 153
Communes, defeated French, 63 f.; Flemish and Walloon, 43; political
conditions under, 49; rights of, 42; rise of, 4, 36-41, 93; “Time of
the,” 36, 55
Compagnie d’Ostende, 132
Concordat, 143
Condé, 172
Conference, of London, 156; of the powers, 154
Congo, 168
Congress, Belgian, 155; of confederation, 139
Coninck, Peter de, 63
Conscription, military, 142
Conspiracy of nobles, 128
Constitution, of Belgian principalities, 79; for cities, 43; of
independent Belgium, 154; proposed of United Kingdom, 150
Constitutional monarchy, 154
_Consulta_, 106
Convents, 39
Copper, 38, 68, 180
Cortemberg, Council of, 66
Cotton, 180
Council of Blood, 110, 112
Council for Flanders, 179
Council of State, 106; members arrested, 113
Counts: of Alsace, 43; of Flanders, free exchange policy of, 45;
protectors of communes, 42
Coursèle, 123
Courtrai, 63; basilica of, 64; defeat of patricians at, 65
Coutereel, Peter, 62
Craft-guilds, 90, 135
Craftsmen, 39, 62, 65, 68
Crécy, battle of, 68
Crusaders, 33, 57
Culture, Belgian, 92; French, 50; literary and scientific, 33; of
Jesuits, 136; of neighbors, 35
Daelhem, 125
D’Alton, General, 137
Damme, 45
Dampierre, Guy de, 50, 61, 62; Louis of Male, last of family of, 72
Defense, national, 168
Dante, 45
D’Avesnes, dynasty of, 61, 68
“Day of revenge,” 181
Defenders, of Belgium, 173
Democratic régime, 62
Denmark, 25; coins of Flanders found in, 37; King of, 26
De Potter, 154
Deventer, 105
De Witt, 147
Dijon, sculptures of, 91
_Dinanderie_, 47
Dinant, city of, 47; communal privileges for, 42; mines near, 38; river
wharves at, 37; sacked by Charles the Bold, 77
Dinant, Henry of, 62
Disraeli, 161, 167
Dissension, between Flemings and Walloons, 179
_Divina Commedia_, 45
Dixmude, 174
Don Juan, died at Bouges, 141; married to daughter of Maximilian, 94;
Spanish governor, 115
Don Luis de Requesens, 112
Donatello, 91
Douai, 29, 38, 46, 65
Drusius, abbot of Parc, 122
Dumouriez, General, 141
Dunkirk, coast of, 162; threatened, 174
“Dutch arithmetic,” 151; Dutch King, 156
Dutch rule, 4, 145 ff.
Dyeing, art of, 46
Dykes, 30
Ebro River, 12
_Écarlate_, 46
_Échevinage_, 41, 47, 136
_Échevins_, 42, 88
Edicts of Tolerance, 135
_Édit perpetual_, 122
Edward III, of England, 70; invited emigration, 73
Egmont, Count of, 106, 109
Egypt, 166
Eighteen Articles, 156
Elbe, the river, 12
Elizabeth: of Bohemia, 68; of Gorlitz, 75; queen of England, 101
Emmich, General von, 171
Emperor, of Constantinople, 57; German, 56, 57; Napoleon, 143
Empire, 95
Encyclopaedists, 134
England: ally of Flanders, 57; borders on Belgium, 13; Catholicism
in, 14; conquest of, by Normans, 25; copper and tin exported to, 38;
diplomatic relations between Flanders and, 25; influence of, 26; trade
relations of, with Bruges, 45; visited by Leopold II, 166
English Merchant Adventurers, 86
Ensor, _Belgium_, 126, 152
Ermengard, Countess, of Limburg, death of, 59
Escurial, the, 103
“Etappengebiet,” 175
Eugen IV, Pope, 92
Eugenics, Congress for, 167
Everachar, Saxon bishop, 33
Exchange, first in Europe, 87; free, 45
Expansion, commercial and colonial, 165 f.
Factories, 180
Fairs, and yearly markets, 38; of Antwerp, 87; of Champagne, 50
von Falkenhausen, 181
_Familiae_, 29
Farnese, Alexander, 116, 118
Fauquemont, 125; lords of, 60
Febronianism, 134
Ferrand, Count, 57, 58
Feudal church, 28
Feudalism, period of, 4; absence of political unity consequence of, 19;
Hainaut the last refuge of, 69; new political organization, 20; régime
of, broken, 44; tyranny of, 36
Fexhe, Peace of, 65
Figs, party of, 137
Fines, 178
Firing-line, 176, 181
Fishing, 31
Flag, Belgian, 153, 166
_Flämingdörfer_, 30
“Flamingants,” 179
Flanders: annexation of Walloon, by France, 46; artistic center of
Belgium, 32; under Austria, 130; belonging to France, 18; communes
of, 43; counts of, 30, 37; in diplomatic relations with England,
125; enjoyed friendly relations with Cambrai and Hainaut, 20; French
literary influence in, 34; front offensive on, 181; homogeneous
territory, 20; liberated from French influence, 64; maritime, 53; name
applied during Spanish rule, 5; people of Walloon and Flemish, 33;
politically united body, 19; in power of Franks, 10; powerful, 56;
religious reform in, 27; retreat through, 173; revolt of, 143; revolt
in West, 164; seat of cloth industry, 38; subjection of, 58; in touch
with Arab merchants, 37; trying to escape from influence of France, 26;
vassal of French king, 20; William the Conqueror hostile to, 26
Flemings, 30, 37; descendants of Franks, 11; Lotharingia included, 18;
party of, 179
Flemish, 33, 50; literature, 51, 52; university, 179
Fleur-de-lis, 63
Fleurus, battle of, 141
Florence, 45
Fontanet, battle of, 17
Formation, period of, 8
Fortification, system of, 168 f.
Fortresses, Dutch garrisons in Belgian, 132; at Liège and Namur, 168
Four Métiers, 24
Franc tireurs, 174
France, 13, 17, 23, 26; copper and tin exported to, 38
Franche-Comté, 77, 92, 126
Francis I, French king, 95; son of, 146
Franck, 178
Franco-German War, 161, 167
Franks, 18; Clodion, first king of, 11, 15; conquest by, 10; devastated
Gaul, 9; Flemings descendants of, 11; invasion of, 5; Northern Belgium
occupied by, 10
Frederick III, German Emperor, 76, 92
Frederick, Prince of Holland, attack on Brussels by, 153; defeat of, 154
Frederick William, Elector, of Prussia, 148
Freedom, personal and collective, 36; of worship, of the press, of
association, of educational teaching, to taxpayers, 154
French, civilization, 33; domination ended, 144; in Flanders and
Brabant, 50; influence, 33; language, 50, 88; régime, the, 4, 144 ff.;
repulsed Dutch, 157; Revolution, 140
French, Sir John, 174
Friesland, seigneurie of, 75; annexed, 95
Frisians, 18
Froissart, Jean, 67, 90
Garigliano River, 12
Gascony, 45
Gaul, 9
Gauls, 1, 8
Gendebein, 154 f.
Genoa, 45
_Genre_, historical, 51; didactical, 52
German, architects, 31; garrisons occupied cities, 177; invaders, 170;
Lotharingian bishops of, descent, 31; secret police, 178
Germanic ideas, 31
Germany, 13, 25, 30; culture of, 56
Gérard, Balthazar, 117, 157
Gerard, Bishop, 42
Gette, River, 171
Ghent: belfry of, 37; Calvinistic republic, 114; center of commerce,
44; cloth industry in, 46; diocese of, 105; pacification of, 113, 115;
revolt in, 80; road through, 39; wharves at, 37
Ghiberti, 91
Gibraltar, straits of, 44
Giovanni, 31
Goddess of Reason, 142
Godefrid, the Bearded, 27; of Bouillon, 33
Golden Fleece, order of the, 81; approved _placarts_, 97
Golden Spurs, battle of the, 41, 64
von der Goltz, General, 175
Gothic architecture, 92
Grand Council, 78, 93
“Grand Privilege,” 88, 93
Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de, Cardinal, 104, 106, 108
Greece, 166
Greek, teaching, 122
Groeninghe, 63
Groninge, 95, 105
Groote, Gerard de, 89
Gudelin, 123
Gueldre, Duke of, 95
Guiana, French, Catholics deported to, 142
Guilds, 40
Guns, 30.5-centimeter and 42.0-centimeter, 171
Haelen, 172
Haerlem, 105
Hague Convention, 129, 160
Hague, Treaty of the, 140
Hainaut, 8, 10, 20; agricultural center, 47; under Austria, 130; center
of political life, 25; clearing forests of, 49; Count of, 55, 57, 165;
county of, 19, 68, 75; house of, 22; princess of, 24
Hansa, 73, 86; of London, 46
Hanseatic, Association, 47; cities, 45
Hapsburg, house of, 93, 128 ff., 141
Hauthem, 172
Havre, Belgian government at, 176
Hegemony, in Europe, 55, 58, 64, 95
Henry I, Duke of Brabant, 58; reign of, 59
Henry III, French king, 117
Henry IV, 118
Heresy, 97, 108
Heretics, 109
Historians, 2, 52, 90, 116 note, 183
History: beginning of Belgian, as independent kingdom, 1; communes in,
44; from fifth century, 2; _genre_ in literature, 34; includes history
of Liège, 6; influence of ethnical and linguistic duality on, 2; of
northern provinces, 5; periods of Belgian, 4; Henri Pirenne’s, 2;
political, 21; political, of Europe, 101; under Spanish rule, 94; unity
of, 2; of wars, 126; writings of Van Maerlandt on, 52
Holland, 6, 13, 17, 20, 68; adopted constitution, 150; county of, 75;
fought against Gueldre, 20; friendly toward Cleves, 20; united with
Belgium, Kingdom of Netherlands, 145; United Provinces, 102, 118
Holstein, 30
d’Hoogvorst, Baron, 154
Hoover, 180
Horn, Count of, 106, 109
Hôtel de Ville, 153
Howell, James, 126
von Huehne, General, 181
Huguenots, French, 110
Hundred Years’ War, 74
Huns, invasion of country of Teutons, 9, 19
Huy: charter of freedom for, 42; mines near, 38; river wharves at, 37
Independence, period of national, 4, 155; seventy-fifth anniversary of
Belgian, 168
Institutions, ancient, abolished, 142
International law, authorities on: De Boeck, Descamps, Hagerup,
Blüntschli, 160
Invaders, 172 ff.
Invasion, by Germans, 174
Investitures, Struggle for the, 28
Isabella, and Archduke Albert, 121
Italy, 9, 17, 166
Jacqueline, of Bavaria, 75
Jeanne, Spanish infanta, 94
Jemappes, victory of, 141
Jenneval, 153
Jerusalem, 166
Jesuits, 122
Jodoigne, 60
John, Duke of Luxemburg, 68
John I, Duke of Brabant, 59, 60
John I, of England, 58
John IV, 75
Joly, 154
Jordaens, 122
Joseph II, 132, 136, 141, 147
Jourdain, 178
Joyeuse Entrée of Brabant, 66, 137, 154
Juarez, 163
_Juntas_, 127
Jura Mountains, 18
_Keure_, 41
King, first, of the Belgians, 163 ff.
von Kluck, 171 f.
_Kreischef_, 175
Kurth, G., 5, 127
Lalaing, Count of, 116
Languages: French and Flemish, 49; Romance and Teutonic, 32; known by
abbots, 33
Latin: culture and civilization, 10, 26; customs, language, 9, 50, 51;
language of diplomacy, 88; manners, 9; teaching of, 122
Layens, Mathieu de, 82, 92
Léau, 39, 45
_Le Bruxellois_, 178
Le Cateau, 172
L’Ecluse, French fleet destroyed at, 71
Leeuwarden, diocese of, 105
_Leliaerts_, 63
Leman, General, 171
Leopold I, 158; married Louise-Marie, daughter of Louis-Philippe, 163;
strong influence, 164
Leopold II, 140, 163, 165 ff.
Leopold, Prince of Saxe-Goburg-Gotha, 155
_Le Patriote_, 178
Liberals, and Catholics united, 152; in power, 164
Liberty of conscience, 108
“Libre Belgique,” 178
Libri, editor, 153
Liège: center of literary life in Lotharingia, 33; city of, 39, 42,
47, 51, 77; civilization and institutions of, 6; defended, 171;
ecclesiastical principality, 19; liberty of, 65, 92; occupied by
French, 141; occupied by Germans, 171; palace of bishop-princes at,
127; not a part of the Netherlands, 6; in power of Franks, 10;
principality of, 6, 59; resistance of, 172; revolt of, 141; river
wharves at, 37; St. James’s Church at, 31
Lille, 38, 65
Limburg, 10, 59; annexed by Brabant, 60; under Austria, 130; county of,
19; divided, 125; enemy of Brabant, 20; people of, 33
Linen, manufactured in Flanders, 38; under “Saisie,” 180
Lion of Flanders, 62
Lipsius, Justus, 123
Literary influence, French rather than German, 34
Lombardy, 45
Loncin, fort of, 171
London, 37
Lorraine: Reform of Cluny originated in, 27; regained independence, 92;
taken by Charles the Bold, 77
Lotharingia, 1-5, 18; annexed to Germany, 18, 20, 21; in contact with
France and England, 56; destruction of German influence in, 28, 33;
Duke of, 21, 27; influence of German Empire in, 25; religious reform
in, 27
Lotharius, eldest son of Emperor Louis, 17; death of, 18
Lotharius II, 18
Louis, Emperor, son of Charles the Great, 17
Louis of Male, 72
Louis of Nevers, 72
Louis-Philippe, son of, 155
Louis XI, King of France, 76, 92
Louis XIV, 125
Louise, of Orléans, 156; Marie, 163
Louvain, 22, 39, 41, 60, 172; town hall of, 82; University of, 75
Ludendorff, 171
_Ludwigslied_, 33
Luther, Martin, 97
Lutherans, 107, 110
Luxemburg: agricultural region, 47; under Austria, 130; city of, 51;
Count of, 60; duchy of, 19; famous for princes, 68; on friendly terms
with Namur, 20; house of, 75; population, 67; revolt of peasants, 143
Lys, River, 13
Machines and machine tools, taken by Germans, 180
Madrid, 109
Maestricht, 29; river wharves at, 37; road through, 39; sovereignty
over, 125; town of, 156
Mainz, Cathedral of, 31
Malines: archbishopric of, 105; city of, 39; rivaled Flemish cities,
46; railway to Brussels, 164
Marck, Adolf de la, 65; family of, 95
Margareta, Duchess of Parma, 103, 106
Maria, of Hungary, 146
Maria Theresa, empress, 132; heirs of, 165
Marie-Henriette, of Austria, 165
“Marine-gebiet,” coast defense, 175
Marmion, Simon, of Valenciennes, 91
Marne, 173
Marseilles, 46
Martens, Thierry, of Alost, 89
Martin V, Pope, 92
Martyrdom, 181
Mary, of Burgundy, 92
“Master of Flémalle,” 91
Mathias, Archduke, 114
“Matins of Bruges, The,” _Matines brugeoises_, 63
Max, mayor of capital, 176
Maximilian of Hapsburg, 93, 163
Mazarin, Cardinal, 146
Mediterranean, 44
Meerssen, Treaty of, 18
Meix-devant-Virton, 127
Mercatores, 42
Mercenaries, 127
Merchants, 37, 38; foreign, 85; privileges granted to, 45
Mercier, Cardinal, 176, 181
Merode, Count Felix de, 154
Messines, 38
Metal industry, 38
Metals, 180
Meuse, 31, 32, 37, 68; cities in valley of, 47; industry in valley of
Upper, 38; trade by, 39
Mexico, Emperor, of Maximilian, 163
Michel, General, 172
Middelburg, diocese of, 105
Middelkerke, 49
Military service, 43
Mines, copper and tin, 38
_Ministeriales_, 30
Monks, 32; Cistercian, 48; not citizens, 47
Mons, 29, 47, 172; battle of, 172
Mons-en-Pevèle, battle of, 64
Monstrelet, 90
Mountainous region, 38
Municipal movement, 43
Munitions, 180
Munster, Treaty of, 125, 132
Music, 91
Namur: agricultural region, 47; annexed by Flanders, 61; atrocities
committed at, 175; under Austria; county of, 19; diocese of, 105;
fortress of, fall of, 172; on good terms with Hainaut and Luxemburg, 20
Nancy, battle of, 78, 92
Napoleon I, 143; fall of, 144; defeat at Waterloo, 150
Napoleon III, 163 f.
Napoleonic system, suppressed, 169
Nassau, Maurice of, 121
National Convention, French, 142
National debt, 156
“Nations,” 85
Nemours, duke of, 155
Netherlands, 20, 96; in art, 91; Austrian, 131, 142, 148; history
of, 36; Kingdom of, 145; lack of sympathy between, and Belgium, 150;
Protestantism in, 97; provinces of, 5; revolt of, against Spain, 101
Neutral territory, 145 ff., 156, 158
Neutrality, of Belgium, 158, 161; preserved, 167; violated, 162
Nieuport, battle of, 121, 174
Nimègue, treaty of, 126
Nivelles, 60
Noblemen, 36, 59, 105, 143
Norbertins, 28
Normandy, Duke of, 24, 25; trade with Bruges, 45
Normans, conquest by, 25, 26; Flemish troops took part in, 25; invasion
of, 37
North Sea, 18, 44
Nuncio, Bentivoglio, 126 note
Nuncio Caraffa, 122
Nuncio of Cologne, abolished, 135
Ockeghem, Jan, 91
Octrois, abolished, 164
Oléron, island of, 142
Ommelanden, 95
Orange, Prince of, 106, 110, 113; assassinated, 117; Belgian provinces
under, 149
Orient, 44; cloth exported to, 46
Ostend, 121
“Osterlings,” 45, 85
Otto I, reign of Emperor, 21; iron policy of, 23; of Brunswick, 58; von
Freising, 33
Overyssel, the, 95
Painters, 31, 91
Painting, 90; Flemish school of, 122
Palestine, 166
Palmerston, Lord, 155
Paris, 12; agents from, to Belgian cities, 58; banking houses of, 46
Parliament, 150
Parliament of Malines, 78, 93
Parma, Ottavia Farnese, Duke of, 104
Pasture, Roger de la, 90
Patricians, party of, 62, 63, 69
Patriotism, 176
Patriots, party of, 137
Peace, 150, 167; of Athis-sur-Orge, 65
Peasant-farmers, 36; free, 48, 49
Peckius, 123
Peppin, 12; founder of Carolingians, 12
Perez, 123
Permanent impost, 100
Personal service, 169
Petit, Gabrielle, 178
Philip August, 56, 57
Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, 75
Philip of Bourbon, 128
Philip, Count, of Alsace, 56, 57
Philip the Good, 75, 83
Philip, the Fair, 61, 93, 94; invaded Flanders, 63
Philip II, 99; of Spain, King of Netherlands, 100 ff.
Philip IV, of France, 41
Philip de Saint-Pol, 75
Philippe, Count of Flanders, 163
Physiocrats, 134
Picard, Romance literature written in, 51
Picardy, 30, 92
Pirenne, Henri, 2
_Placarts_, 97 ff., 107
Place du Sablon, 111
Place Royal, Prince Frederick stopped by Belgian Volunteers, 153
_Poésie bourgeoise_, 51
Poitou, 45
“Polders,” 38, 48, 83
Political: conditions, 23, 26; hegemony, 50; tendencies, 68
Politics, 56
Population, 47
Pragmatic Sanction, 131 f.
Premontrés, 28
Prés, Josquin de, 91
Priests, 36
Printing, 89
“Prix du Roi,” 167
Protectorate, 147
Protestant, 150
Protestantism, 97, 102
Provence, trade with Bruges, 45
Provisional government, 154
Prussia, coins of Flanders in, 37; expedition against, 69
Puteanus, Erycius, 123
Pyrenees, 8; treaty of, 126
Queretaro, 163
Raab, 12
Railway, Belgium built first on the Continent, 164
Rastadt, treaty of, 128
Rathenau, Walther, 180
Ré, island of, 142
Reconstruction, 121
Referendum, 142
Reform, of civil and criminal law, 122
Religious conditions, 26
Renaud, of Gueldre, 60
Republic, 8
Republique des États Belgiques unis, 138 f.
Revival of trade, 36
Revolt: of 1566, 110; of 1830, 145
Revolution of 1830, 4
Rhine, 22, 23, 59; princes from left bank of, 5; traffic between, and
Bruges, 59
Richelieu, Cardinal, 125, 146
_Rinehart the Fox_, 51
Ripuarians, 10
Risquons-Tout, 164
Rivers, 13; wharves and winter quarters established, 37
Rixensart, 49
Robber barons, 67
Rodolphe, Emperor, 114
Rogier, Charles, 153 f.
Rolduc, 125
Roman army, 8
Romance, basilica, 32; ideas, 31; literary movement, 14, 51;
occupation, 4
Rubens, Peter Paul, 122
Ruremonde, 105
Russia, coins oi Flanders in, 37
St. Amand, Abbey of, 32
St. Gerard, of Brogne, 26
Saint Gudula, church of, 47, 53
Saint Jean d’Acre, siege of, 57
St. John’s church, at Ghent, 53
Saint Just, monastery of, 100
St. Lambert, school of, 34
St. Mary, school of, 34
Saint Omer, 29; diocese of, 105
St. Servatius, 14
Saint-Trond, 39, 46; city of, 47; freedom of, 42
“Saisie,” 180
Salians, 10
Sambre River, 68, 172; battle of, 172
“Sans-culottes,” 142
von Sauberzweig, 176
Scheldt, the River, 13, 17, 18, 22, 24, 32, 110; attempted opening of,
133, 147; commercial intercourse with Thames, 37; freed from Dutch
control, 143; inundations of, 86; tolls of the, 164; trade by, 39
_Schepenbank_, 41
von Schroeder, Admiral, 175
Science, 166
Scientists, Belgian, 167
Sculptors, 31
Sculpture, 90; of Dijon, 91
Sedan, 167; lord of, 95
Senate, Belgian, 165 f.
Separation, of Belgium and Holland, 153
“Serfs,” 29, 37, 48
Seventeen Provinces, 95 f., 112
Sheep-raising, 38
Sienna, 45
Sigebert, of Gembloux, historical work, 34
Silesia, 30
Sluter, Claus, 90
Social welfare, 167
Somme, cities of the, 92
Spain: Leopold II visited, 166; trade with Bruges, 45
“Spanish Fury,” 113
Spanish Inquisition, 104 f.
Spanish rule, 4, 108 ff., 124, 125 ff., 146
Speyer, cathedral of, 31
Spinola, General, 121
States-General, 82; declaration of, 147; met in Brussels, 97, 107, 113
Stone, of Tournai, famous, 32
Struggle for the Investitures, 28, 55
Sunt, the, 44
Switzerland, 166
Sylva Carbonaria, 10, 11
Taxes: of Alva, 111; freedom to those who paid, 154; octrois abolished,
164
Teniers, painter, 122
Termonde, 175
Térouanne (later Saint-Omer) 38, 95
Territory, loss of, 156, 157
Terrorizing, 175
Teutonic, 10; “barbarism,” 33
Teutons, 9
Theology, 136
Thourout, 38
Thuringia, 30
Tin, 38
_Tirage au sort, le_, 169
Tirlemont, 60
Tolls, of the Scheldt, 164
Tongers, oldest bishop of Belgium in, 13; Romanized, 9
Tournai: annexed by Charles V. 95; artistic and religious capital
of Flanders, 32, 53; campaign of conquest from, Clodovech started,
11; cathedral of, 32, 53; conquered by Clodion, 11; diocese of,
105; intellectual center, 34; local school of sculptors at, 32, 53;
procession of, 27; stone of, famous, 32, 53; vainly besieged by
Anglo-Flemish, 71
Tournaisis, 95
Town hall, 54; of Brussels, 92, 138; of Louvain, 82, 92; of Antwerp, 110
Trade and industry, 36, 38, 39, 44, 73, 123
Treaties: Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 126; of April 19, 1839, quintuple,
162-68; of Arras, 116; of Bade, 128; of the Barriers, 129 ff., 147; of
Campo Formio, 142; with Flanders and Liège, 66; of France and Holland
against Spain, 146; of the Hague (1790), 140; for independence of
Belgium, 158; of London, 157 f., 163; of Meerssen, 18; of Nimégue, 126;
of the Twenty-four Articles, 157; of Utrecht, 128; of Verdun, 17, 23,
24; of Verdun in 879, Second, 18; of 1870, 162
Treaty, draft, published by Bismarck, 161; placing neutral zones, 159
Tribunal of the XXII, 66
Truce, for 12 years, 121
Tulden, 123
Turks, Count of Flanders in crusade against, 25
Twenty-four Articles, Treaty of the, 157
United Kingdom of the Netherlands, national debt of, 156
University of Louvain, founded by John IV, 75, 84, 92, 111, 119, 122
f., 136; Philosophic College at, 152
Utrecht, 20; archbishopric of, 105; bishopric of, 95; treaty of, 128;
Union of, 117
Valenciennes, river wharves at, 37; revolt at, 69
Valois, 56, 70; King Philip of, 70
Van Artevelde, Jacques, 70
Van Craesbeke, councilor of Brabant, 122
Van de Weyer, 154 f.
Van der Goes, Hugo, 91
Van der Noot, 137, 141
Van der Weyden, 90 f.
Van Dyck, 122
Van Eyck, Hubert, 90 f.; Jan, 90 f.
Van Hoogendorp, Count Charles, 149
Van Maenen, minister, of William I, 153
Van Maerlandt, Jacob, 52, 88
Van Ruysbroeck, Jan, 89
Van Veldeke, Hendrik, 52
Van Wassenhove, Juste, of Ghent, 91
Venice, 45, 46
Verdun, Treaty of, 17, 23, 24; Second Treaty of, in 879, 18; cut
Belgium in two parts, 17
Vermandois, 30, 56
Vernuleus, Nicholas, 123
Verviers, town of, 85
“Verwaltung,” for Flanders, 179
Victoria, Queen of England, 158, 163
Vienna, Congress of, 145
Visitation, system of, 122
Visscher, Ch. de, 158
Vonck, 137, 141
Waes, 52
Wales, 11
Wallony, 179
Walloon-Flanders, 24, 65
Walloon monks, 32; spoke Flemish and French, 33
Walloons, 11, 15, 30, 115
War: against northern provinces, 120; of the civilians, 174; with
France, 95, 155; Franco-German, 167; _franc-tireur_, 175; levy, 181;
not possible without consent of communes, 44; on own soil, 126; of the
Peasants, 143; right to make, 161; of the Spanish Succession, 128;
spoils, 173
Warfare, trench, 174
Waxweiler, 158
Wealth, 181
Wellington, Duke of, 149
Westphalia, Treaty of, 131
William the Conqueror, 25, 26, 37
William, Count, 69
William I, Dutch King, 150, 153
William I, of Prussia, 166
William II, German Emperor, 166
William III, of Netherlands, 166
William the Silent, 110; declared himself Calvinist, 115
Wool cloths, 38; industry, 38; importers, 46; insufficient English
supply, 47; from Spain and Navarre, 47; under “saisie,” 180
Worms, Cathedral of, 31
Worringen, battle of, 60
Würtemberg, Duke of, 174
Yoens, 62
Ypres, 38, 46; diocese of, 105; hall of, 54, 55; ruin of, 84; strip of
country containing, 174
Yser, defended, 173 f.; king and queen with troops on, 176; trenches on
the, 177; troops of the, 182
Zeeland, country of, 75; islands of, 24; Prince of Orange in control
of, 112
“Zivilverwaltung,” 175
Zutphen, 77
Zwyn, river, 37
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See G. Kurth, _Notre nom national_.
[2] H. Colenbrander, _De Belgische Omwenteling_.
[3] I am much indebted for the drawing of the maps in the book to
Mr. Isidore Versluys, librarian of the Historical Seminary in the
University of Louvain.
[4] A wide expanse of sandy soil extends from east to west almost
uninterruptedly across Belgium; the eastern section of this, covering
the northeastern portions of the provinces of Antwerp and Limburg, is
called the Campine. Cf. R. C. K. Ensor, _Belgium_, p. 24.
[5] The term “Walloon” comes from _Wala_, “foreigner,” the name that
was given by the Teutonic invaders to the Gallo-Romans dwelling behind
the Sylva Carbonaria. The name _Wala_ is to be connected with the
terms “Welsh,” “Wales,” apparently of the same origin and given to the
Britons and their country by the Anglo-Saxon invaders.
[6] R. C. K. Ensor, _Belgium_, pp. 37-38.
[7] By Walloon-Flanders is to be understood the southern part of the
county, including the cities of Lille, Douai, and Béthune.
[8] During the reign of Count Robert (1093), William the Conqueror,
then King of England, adopted a hostile attitude toward Flanders. As
a result Robert gave his daughter in marriage to the King of Denmark
and, in agreement with him, planned an invasion of England. The hostile
attitude of the English kings of the Norman dynasty turned the counts
of Flanders to seek again the protection of France.
[9] The outlet to the sea for the city of Bruges was by means of the
river Zwyn.
[10] _Inferno_, XV, 4-6.
[11] The priests and monks, as subject to the canon or ecclesiastical
law, were not citizens. They were judged by their special tribunals,
not by the _échevinage_.
[12] E.g., Rixensart, Baesrode, Middelkerke.
[13] Count Baldwin became Emperor of Constantinople and was killed by
the Bulgarians after the battle of Adrianople (1205).
[14] According to the unpublished correspondence of Alexander Farnese
which I have studied in the state archives of Naples and Parma. See
the Introduction to the book by A. Cauchie and L. Van der Essen,
_Inventaire des archives farnésiennes de Naples_ (published by
the Royal Commission of History), Brussels, 1910. See also L. Van
der Essen, _Les Archives farnésiennes de Parme au point de vue de
l’histoire des Pays-Bas catholiques_ Brussels, 1913 (Royal Commission
of History).
[15] According to the same sources.
[16] Attention has been called to the fact that the present King
and Queen of the Belgians bear the same names: Albert and Elisabeth
(Isabella).
[17] This information is given by Ensor, _Belgium_, pp. 103-4. At about
the same time, the Nuncio Bentivoglio, in his famous _Della Guerra di
Fiandra_, calls Belgium the _arena militare_ of Europe.
[18] Mentioned by G. Kurth, _Manuel d’histoire de Belgique_, 2d ed.
[19] See R. Dollot, _Les Origines de la neutralité de la Belgique et le
système de la Barrière_ (1609-1830), Paris, 1902.
[20] The history of the establishment of Belgian independence is well
described by Ensor, _Belgium_, pp. 123 ff., whom we largely follow in
the narration of the revolution.
[21] As is well known, the “Brabançonne” became the national anthem.
[22] See Em. Waxweiler, _La Belgique neutre et loyale_, pp. 45 ff.,
Paris, Lausanne, 1915; Ch. de Visscher, “The Neutrality of Belgium,”
_Political Quarterly_ (1915), pp. 17-40.
[23] Article 10 of the Hague Convention, October 18, 1907.
[24] Article 5 of the Hague Convention.
[25] Despagnée and De Boeck, Descamps, Hagerup, and Blüntschli.
[26] “At the expiration of this term [one year after the War of 1870]
the independence and the neutrality of Belgium will continue to be
based as before upon Article I of the quintuple Treaty of April 19,
1839.”
Corrections
The first line indicates the original, the second the correction.
p. 45
_Divina Comedia_
_Divina Commedia_
p. 59
The war with Liège in Henry’s time was not very succesful.
The war with Liège in Henry’s time was not very successful.
p. 65
the battle they were overthown by the craftsmen
the battle they were overthrown by the craftsmen
p. 171, 173
305- and 420-centimeter guns
30.5- and 42.0-centimeter guns
p. 192
Guns, 405-centimeter and 420-centimeter, 171
Guns, 30.5-centimeter and 42.0-centimeter, 171
p. 193
Jordeans, 122
Jordaens, 122
_Krieschef_, 175
_Kreischef_, 175
_Leliarts_, 63
_Leliaerts_, 63
influence of ethnical and lingustic duality
influence of ethnical and linguistic duality
Layens, Mathiew de, 82, 92
Layens, Mathieu de, 82, 92
p. 194
Middleburg, diocese of, 105
Middelburg, diocese of, 105
Middlekerke, 49
Middelkerke, 49
Footnote 7
By Wallyon-Flanders
By Walloon-Flanders
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