This inland coast line, geographically the northern edge of the plateau whose central and highest part is the chalk downs of Champagne, presents numerous sinuosities. Its course, that is to say, is a succession of capes and bays. In far-off times when in fact it was the sea coast, it must have presented a contour not unlike that of the present coast of Devonshire.
Formed of alluvial deposits and reclaimed little by little, the flats lying between this inland coastline and the sea are a very fertile tract. They gradually became the seat of a numerous population; and then, owing alike to proximity to the sea and to the number of the navigable waterways, the earliest and most important seat of industry and commerce on the Continent of Europe. The ancient capital of this country, the centre of its trade and the seat of its government when it formed an independent Dukedom, was Ypres. In the eighteenth century was made the discovery that underlying or contiguous to this area was one of the largest of the European coalfields. That discovery changed large parts of the flats by degrees into modern industrial districts.
The point to be kept in mind for present purposes is that geographically Flanders is one area, though now situated politically partly in France and partly in Belgium. Its two chief centres of population and industry are Ghent and Lille, both seats of the cotton trade, for like Lancashire in England, this Lancashire of the Continent is engaged mainly in the textile industry and in coal-mining. Lille is close to and in fact situated in one of the larger bays of the inland coastline already spoken of.
Nearly midway between Lille and the coast at Dunkirk there is a feature it is important to notice. The otherwise uniform flatness of the country is here broken by a range of low hills shaped like a crescent moon. This range of hills lies to the south of Ypres. From Kleine Zillebeke on the east to the Mont de Cats on the west the ridge is not more than ten miles in length. Ypres is situated within the crescent.
The feature is important to notice because of the streams which here take their rise. From the higher level of inland country there flow north-east the Scheldt, and north-west the Somme, and the lower courses of those rivers mark what may be called the natural outer boundaries of this flat area. From the hills south of Ypres again rise the Aa, the Yser, and the Lys. The first two flow outward towards the coast; the Lys bending first round to the south and then to the east, falls into the Scheldt at Ghent.
From Dunkirk eastward the country is protected against inroads of the sea by dykes. This part of it is below sea level. At Nieuport, the outlet of the Yser, there are locks which permit the outflow of the river at low tide, but bar the inflow of the sea at high tide. For a thousand years Flanders, owing to its natural fertility, has been the scene of a developed agriculture. Characteristic of it are the great substantial old farmhouses usually built round a square courtyard, places marked by the proverbial Flemish cleanliness and by the equally proverbial Flemish plenty. Practically every acre of the country was under cultivation. The only exceptions were the woods situated round the old châteaux and country houses, evidences of the general wealth. In addition to these there existed one or two not very extensive tracts of ancient forest.
Round Ypres, more especially to the east and north, these woods and pleasaunces formed an almost continuous ring. In the fourteenth century Ypres was a great industrial city with something like 200,000 inhabitants. During the struggles against first Spanish and then Austrian domination, and in the destructive wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it steadily lost its importance. The population dwindled. At the outbreak of the present war the number of inhabitants was not more than 20,000. The old city offered nevertheless many evidences of its former consequence and wealth. There was the monumental and famous Cloth Hall, one of the finest Gothic buildings in Europe. Erected by Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and adorned with statues of the forty-four Counts, it had a façade 462 feet in length, noble alike in design and in proportions. A conspicuous feature of the building was its central and massive square tower. In the Middle Ages Ypres was a fortress. From the top of the tower the view extended on every side over a wide extent of country. The sea and the coastline to the north, and the higher land across the Lys to the south came equally within the prospect. Conversely from outside Ypres the tower formed a notable landmark, seen rising above the horizon many miles away.
In old days the Cloth Hall was a great mart where, to merchants from every part of Europe, Flemish manufacturers displayed their fabrics, the then unrivalled wonders of the loom. In modern times, trade having departed save for an almost local industry in lace and linen, the Cloth Hall had become a museum and gallery of art. Under the public-spirited and careful government of the present Royal Family of Belgium, the building, one of the cherished monuments of the country, was in 1860 lovingly restored.[2]
Besides the Cloth Hall, however, and the fine cathedral dedicated to St. Martin, the former importance of Ypres was shown in its wide and elegant streets, bordered by antique Flemish mansions, abodes of an old world tranquillity, and with interiors like pictures. The most pleasantly situated perhaps of all the Flemish cities, Ypres was a favourite place of residence, an urban cameo set amid woods and hills of broad and sweeping yet softened outline, round about it a ring of peaceful villages, and the private seats of old-time and settled wealth.
If this was the ancient capital of Flanders, the scene on the farther side of the crescent of hills across the valley of the Lys presented the most striking of contrasts. In that direction the background of the picture was a forest of tall chimneys—the great city of Lille overhung by its cloud of smoke. The foreground was an apparent tangle of railways, roads, canals, brickworks, industrial villages, mills, dyeworks, machine shops, the multitudinous aspects in short of industry as it exists to-day, superposed upon the ancient Flemish features of the countryside—its spacious farms, its sluggish rivers, and its everlasting flatness.