About nine or ten in the morning of the following day the French army, some forty thousand strong, was seen approaching, led by the youthful Count of Artois. After a reconnoitre two experienced officers advised the young Prince not to attack the Flemings at once, but to worry them with his archers and separate them from the town where their baggage and provisions were. “These people have to eat three, or four times a day—when they start to retreat, fall on them, you will quickly win,” they counselled him.
This sage advice did not appeal to the impetuous young Count, or to his valiant knights, who were burning with eagerness to avenge the Matin de Bruges. They confidently expected that at the very sight of their host, for the most part mounted knights, the cowardly townsmen would turn and run. Nor did they pay much heed to the shrewdness and skill with which the Flemish leaders had chosen their position. In the marshy ground in front of the Flemish army were many streams and canals, the water concealed by brushwood, while the River Lys and the fortifications of the town protected them against an attack on either flank or in the rear.
As the French knights rode forward the first ranks plunged into the hidden canals and streams with which the marsh—since known as the Bloed Meersch, or Bloody Marsh—was intersected. Then, as five centuries later at Waterloo, each succeeding rank pushed in the one before it, the canals became choked with drowning men and struggling horses, and it was not until these obstacles were literally filled with dead bodies that any part of the great French host could approach the Flemish lines. Then the Flemish guildsmen were for a moment hard pressed, but they quickly rallied and the proud French nobles were beaten down beneath their cruel pikes and clubs by hundreds. The Count of Artois himself led the reserves into the mêlée when the day was all but lost and fought his way clear to the great standard of the Lion of Flanders, at the foot of which he fell. Their leader killed, the French sought to flee, but the rout and slaughter lasted through the long summer twilight and far into the night.
According to an ancient chronicle, twenty thousand Frenchmen went down to death that day, including seven thousand knights, eleven hundred nobles, seven hundred lords, and sixty-three counts, dukes or princes. As to these statistics they differ in every history, but certain it is that the flower of French chivalry perished in unheard of numbers before the onslaught of the Flemish townsmen, and it is said that in all France there was no great house that did not mourn a father, a brother or a son.
To the men of Flanders, on the other hand, the victory was complete beyond their wildest dreams. They piously gave thanks to Notre Dame de Groeninghe, the Abbey overlooking the Bloody Marsh, and hung up seven hundred golden spurs taken from the battlefield in the Church of Notre Dame. For a time Philip the Fair sought to prolong the conflict, but his losses had been too terrible in this battle for him to risk another one against the now thoroughly aroused guildsmen, and a few years later a treaty was signed that completely rescinded the act of annexation and recognised the independence of Flanders once more.
In the little Museum of Paintings we found a most interesting picture of the famous battle by the great Belgian artist, Nicaise de Keyser. It is said that the historian Voisin suggested this subject to the painter, then a young man of twenty-three, and he devoted eight months to its execution. Exhibited at the Salon at Brussels in 1836, it made a sensation through its merit, the historical importance of the subject and the youth of the artist, and was purchased by the city of Courtrai by means of a popular subscription. It represents the decisive moment of the battle when the Count of Artois, unhorsed and disarmed, is about to be killed by the leader of the butchers’ guild, John Breidel. The museum contains a number of other interesting works by Belgian painters, chiefly modern, including one by Constantin Meunier, and a number by natives of Courtrai. This last feature is characteristic of all these little museums and is a most happy idea. In France the museums of fine arts in the provincial towns often form in themselves admirable memorials of the famous artists who were born or worked there, the names of the most important being carved about the frieze or brought to mind in some equally prominent way. In years to come it is to be hoped that these little Flemish towns can follow this example and erect suitable structures to house their art treasures—of which such a collection as this one at Courtrai forms a fine nucleus—and in so doing strive to commemorate all of those to whom the town is indebted for its artistic fame. In the case of Courtrai the roster would be a long one, for local authorities have recorded the names of more than two hundred painters, sculptors, architects, engravers, metal-workers, miniaturists and master-makers of tapestries.
Unlike many Flemish towns, Courtrai is less renowned for its churches than for its civic monuments. The great church of St. Martin, whose picturesque Gothic tower rises high above the Grande Place, although the edifice itself is some hundred yards distant from the Place itself, dates from 1382, when an older church on the same site was burned by the victorious troops of Charles VI when they sacked the city after the Battle of Rosbecque. It was completed in 1439 and contains a number of interesting paintings and carvings, several of them by local artists and sculptors. The more important Church of Notre Dame, with its square unfinished tower, dates from 1211 and was founded by Baldwin of Constantinople. At that time the Counts of Flanders had a castle at Courtrai and it was at the side of this that Count Baldwin and his fair wife Marie located their great church, of which the foundation stone was laid before the Count departed on the crusade from which he was destined never to return. In the Chapel of the Counts, which was built in the fourteenth century, are mural paintings of the Counts and Countesses of Flanders, the earlier ones dating from the century during which the chapel itself was constructed.
The artistic masterpiece of this church is the “Raising of the Cross,” by Van Dyck. This fine picture was painted for this very church and was delivered by the artist in 1631, the church still possessing his receipt for the one hundred livres de gros (about two hundred and twenty dollars) paid for it. In 1794 the picture was carried to Paris and placed in the Louvre, and on its restoration to the Netherlands was several years in the museum at Brussels, being returned to its proper place in Notre Dame in 1817. During the night of December 6th-7th, 1907, it was mysteriously stolen, its disappearance causing a great commotion, but January 23rd it was discovered in a field at Pitthem, where it had lain exposed to the rain and sunshine since its removal from the church. Apparently the robbers had become frightened and abandoned it, or possibly were prevented from returning to get it by the hue and cry that had been raised. At any rate, it did not seem to be much the worse for its little outing, and was duly hung up again where any tourist who has a franc to spare can see it.
It was in Notre Dame that the victors after the battle of Courtrai hung up seven hundred golden spurs, more or less, picked up from the battle-field. These were hung in a little side chapel at present decorated by two black lions, but the original spurs were taken away when the French sacked the city after the disastrous battle of Rosbecque.
A little beyond this interesting old church the rue Guido Gezelle—named after the poet who for many years was a vicaire at Notre Dame and whose bust stands in a little bosquet, or wooded parklet, hard by—conducts us to the famous old Broel towers which guard an ancient bridge across the Lys. These fine specimens of mediæval military architecture are in an admirable state of preservation. The Spuytorre, or Southern tower, was first built by Philip of Alsace in the twelfth century, was pillaged, and perhaps wholly destroyed, by Charles VI and restored or rebuilt by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1386. There was not much to see in this tower, save some dungeons below. The Inghelbrugtorre, or South tower, was built at the same time as the bridge, in 1411-1413. There was formerly an archeological museum in this tower, but we were told that it had been removed to the Grandes Halles, near the railroad station, which have recently been restored. We subsequently visited the collections there, which were very interesting but too miscellaneous to be described. Returning from the towers by the rue de Groeninghe we paid a brief visit to the fine monument of the Battle of Groeninghe, which is the Flemish name for the Battle of the Spurs. At the summit a bronze Pucelle of Flanders brandishes a goedendag, one of the celebrated war-clubs that did such deadly work on that famous day. This monument, by Godefroid Devreese, a native of Courtrai, was erected by popular subscription in 1905.