TOWN CITIZENSHIP
It is not without interest to notice that this European conception of town-citizenship coincided with an exceptional artistic and economic development strongly subjected both to Latin and Germanic influences. While in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Ghent became the centre of Flemish-German trade, owing to its privileged position on the Cologne road, Bruges was the most cosmopolitan centre in Europe. It communicated with the sea by a canal, whose great dykes are mentioned by Dante (Inferno, XV, 4, 6), and its market-place, deserted to-day, was then crowded with traders from England, France, Spain and Germany and brokers from Lombardy and Tuscany. Seventeen States were represented in the city, where the Hanseatic towns had their main warehouses. Ships, laden with stores from all parts of the world, took with them Flemish textiles, which were celebrated for their suppleness and beauty of colour, and which were exported, not only to all parts of Europe, but even to the bazaars of the East. When local raw material became insufficient, wool was imported from England, and the Hansa of London centralized the trade between the two countries. England and Flanders were thus brought close together, and their commercial relations reacted on the policy of both countries.
In the shadow of the Bruges belfry, amid English, French, German and Italian traders, a new civilization was born, which, combining the Latin and Germanic influences to which it was subjected, was soon to assert its own originality. Belgium had definitely broken down the barriers of feudalism. The same causes which had liberated her people had brought them into contact with the outside world.
CHAPTER VII
THE GOLDEN SPURS
The political history of the last centuries of the Middle Ages is entirely dominated by the development of the Communes. Their influence is twofold. On one hand, they prevented the absorption of the country by the French kings; on the other, they delayed its unification under national princes. By safeguarding local liberties, they checked foreign ambitions, but, through their efforts to maintain their privileges and through their petty rivalries, they impeded, for a long time, the establishment of central institutions. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they fostered trade and industry by affording due protection to the burgesses and forcing the princes to follow a policy in accordance with the interests of the country. During the fourteenth century they were weakened by internal struggles between classes and cities, and, through their trade restrictions, became an obstacle to the free development of the economic life of the nation.
FLANDERS' INFLUENCE
The cardinal event of the period is the Battle of Courtrai (1302), also called the Battle of the Golden Spurs, owing to the great number of these spurs collected on the battlefield after the defeat of the French knights by the Flemish militia. It was hailed at the time as a miraculous triumph for the commoners, the disproportion between the opposing forces being somewhat exaggerated by enthusiastic contemporary chroniclers. But its influence was not only social, it was national, for it definitely secured the independence of Flanders and of the other Belgian principalities against the increasing power of the French kings, and this rendered possible the unification of the country, which was accomplished, a century later, under the dukes of Burgundy.