LINEN AND TAPESTRY
Besides, when the resistance to English rivalry proved fruitless, in spite of the repeated prohibitions decreed by Philip the Good, the country turned, with extraordinary adaptability, to the linen industry as a substitute for the woollen. Linen replaced cloth, and the same processes and looms which had been applied to the old industry were successfully applied to the new. Clothmaking took refuge either in the Flemish country districts, where the wages were lower, or in some remote parts of the Walloon country. The existence of Verviers as a clothmaking town dates from 1480. The decline of the cloth industry was also to a certain extent compensated for by the introduction in Northern Flanders and in Brabant of tapestry, whose centres, until then, had been in Arras and Tournai.
I have already alluded to the ornamental character of Burgundian Gothic contrasting with the severity of the communal period. Luxury rather than strength is aimed at by the architects of the hôtels de ville and other well-known monuments of the period, such as the Hôtel Gruthuse and the Chapelle du Saint Sang in Bruges. This richness is real, and not artificially confined to the prince and the upper classes of society.
At the beginning of the Burgundian régime, under Philip the Bold, Flanders was partially ruined by internal and external wars. Its towns were depleted of their craftsmen, its polders converted into marshes by the incursions of the sea, and wolves and wild boars again wandered through the country as in the early Middle Ages. Brabant, Holland, Zeeland and Liége, though less severely affected, passed through a time of strife and civil war. Fifty years later (about 1430), the Low Countries were again the most prosperous States of Europe, and the historian Philip de Commines was able to call them "a land of promise," while Gachard contrasts them with the southern domains of the duke, "Burgundy, which lacks money and smells of France." Chastellain eloquently vaunts their banquets and gorgeous festivities. The dukes themselves took every opportunity to display their wealth, especially in the presence of foreign princes. It seems as if they wanted to make up for the title of king which they vainly coveted by an ostentatious luxury which no king of the time could have afforded. When, in 1456, the Dauphin Louis visited Bruges with the duke, the decoration of the town amazed the French, "who had never witnessed such riches" (Chastellain), and when Margaret of York entered the town, on the occasion of her marriage with Charles the Bold, in 1469, the streets were covered with cloth of gold, silks and tapestries, and the procession had to stop ten times before reaching the market-place to admire tableaux vivants illustrating the periods of sacred and profane history: "By my troth," wrote John Paston, one of the English gentlemen who attended Margaret's wedding, "I heard never of so great plenty as there is, and, as for the duke's court, as for lords, ladies and gentlewomen, knights, squires and gentlemen, I heard never of none like to it save King Arthur's court."
MANNERS OF THE TIMES
This astounding economic recovery must not, it is true, be attributed only to the beneficial action of the dukes' administration, but it seems evident that a long period of peace, guaranteeing order, security and free communication with other countries, combined with wise administrative and financial measures, contributed greatly to hasten it. Measures were taken to lighten the restrictions and monopolies of towns and corporations and to regulate and control the minting of money. As early as 1483, Philip the Good was able to boast that his money was better than that of any of his neighbours. The right of coining money was no longer farmed out, but entrusted "to notables well known for their wealth, who could provide the country with gold and silver money and exchange any money which might be brought to them by the merchants." In 1469 Edward IV of England and Charles the Bold agreed to call a conference in Bruges to determine a common currency for both countries and to suppress the exchange.
ANTWERP AND BRUGES
These financial regulations are intimately connected with the transformation which trade underwent at the time, and which was one of the main causes of the transfer of the economic centre of the country from Bruges to Antwerp. The reason generally given for this change is a geographical one. It is pointed out that while, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the widening of the western branch of the Scheldt through inundations in Zeeland afforded a direct road from Antwerp to the high-seas (formerly ships had to go round the island of Walcheren), all the efforts made to prevent the silting up of the Zwyn from 1470 to 1490 were fruitless. In 1506, it was possible for carts to drive safely at low tide across the end of the harbour. The progress of navigation, increasing the tonnage of ships, and the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries acted also in favour of the deeper and safer harbour, but there are other reasons which might have ruined Bruges in favour of Antwerp, even if the geographical advantages of both ports had remained equal.
From the beginning of the fifteenth century the conditions of trade underwent complete transformation. Powerful companies, disposing of large capital and wide credit, took the place of the old local merchant companies. Transactions became so considerable and involved that mediæval regulations, instead of controlling commerce, only hampered it. Any protective measure detrimental to foreigners became fatal to home trade. Antwerp, which then appeared as a new metropolis, had no difficulty in adapting itself to modern capitalist conditions. At the end of the fourteenth century the town had already lost its Brabançon character and had become almost cosmopolitan. It had adopted economic liberty. Foreign merchants meeting at its fairs were protected by safe conducts. The positions of brokers and money-changers were open to all, and citizenship easily accessible. Bruges, on the other hand, hampered by old regulations and closely attached to its privileges, was not able to adapt itself to the new situation. As late as 1477 measures were taken to prevent foreigners from introducing on the market wares purchased elsewhere, and their position was no longer in accordance with the principle of free trade. It thus happened that, while the population of Antwerp increased by leaps and bounds, from 3,440 families in 1435 to 8,785 in 1526, the trade of Bruges decreased steadily, owing to the emigration of foreign merchants. Protective measures against the import of English cloth estranged the Hanseatic merchants, and, in 1442, the "Merchant Adventurers" established themselves definitely in Antwerp, where they were soon followed by the Italians, Spanish and Portuguese. It is true that Bruges remained, for a time, the centre of banking activity, which accounts for the fact that it preserved its architectural and artistic splendour at the very time when its trade was failing. But in the natural course of events the financiers had to follow the merchants, and at the end of the century the decadence of Bruges as a great seaport was almost as complete as that of Ypres as an industrial centre. It was characteristic of the new trade conditions that no "halles" were built in Antwerp, the mediæval emporium being replaced by a modern exchange.