Those quivering wings composed, that music still!”
[CHAPTER IX]
GHENT IN THE DAYS OF THE FLEMISH COUNTS
During the Middle Ages Ghent was, for nearly five centuries, one of the greatest cities in the Occidental world. “If you have ever been in Flanders,” wrote Jean Froissart, near the close of the fourteenth century, “you are aware that Ghent is the sovereign city of Flanders in power, in wisdom, in government, in the number of its houses, in position and in all else that goes to make a great and noble city, and that three great rivers serve to bring to it ships from every part of the world.” After further eulogising the three rivers referred to, which were the Scheldt, the Lys and the Lieve, the chronicler of Valenciennes added that the city could put eighty thousand men in the field, and that it would require a host of two hundred thousand warriors to capture it. These statements, though no doubt exaggerations, do not seem to the tourist so impossible of belief as corresponding figures regarding the former greatness of the other cities in Flanders, for Ghent is still “a great and noble city,” while some of its once puissant rivals are now little more than country villages. In fact, to the visitor who approaches the centre of the town from either of its two principal railway stations—it has five in all—the city seems to be essentially a modern one, with fine streets similar in every way to those to be found in Antwerp or Brussels, and it is therefore with a shock of surprise that he suddenly finds himself riding past one hoary old structure after another whose frowning grey walls and massive architecture bespeak an antiquity strangely at variance with their surroundings.
To the Professor, and to all students of the thrilling history of this famous old Flemish town, the most interesting of these reminders of the Ghent of five hundred or one thousand years ago is the imposing Château des Comtes, or Castle of the Counts, the ruins of which stand in the very heart of the town with the busy life and bustle of the Ghent of to-day surging about them. Hither, as soon as our belongings were safely deposited in the hotel, we came—almost as a matter of course. In part this magnificent relic of the feudal ages dates from the ninth century, when it was called the new castle, Novum Castellum, to distinguish it from a still older castle situated hard by that was destroyed about the year 1010. Two of the three stories composing this original structure are still intact and can be seen by the visitor when he inspects the cellar of the keep. Here the columns and arches are of later construction, but the walls—which are over five and a half feet thick—are the work of builders who put these stones in place more than a thousand years ago. It was in 1180, according to the Latin inscription that can still be read just inside of the main entrance from the Place Ste. Pharaïlde, that Philip of Alsace—son of the Dierick of Alsace who brought the Holy Blood to the chapel of St. Basil at Bruges—erected the present structure. Its purpose was “to check the unbounded arrogance of the inhabitants of Ghent, who had become too proud of their riches and of their fortified houses, which looked like towers.” The Count had been in Palestine two years before and had greatly admired some of the strong castles erected there by the crusaders and instructed his builders to imitate these models, which he no doubt described to them.
CASTLE OF THE COUNTS, GHENT.
Photograph by E. Sacré.