The Story of Bruges

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

In face of the storm of indignation aroused by so flagrant a breach of trust, Philip was constrained to hand over the reins of government to his co-trustee, Bourchard d’Avesnes, the son of the illustrious friend of Richard Cœur de Lion, and the chief of the Nationalist or anti-French party. But it was only after five years’ negotiation, and a threat to throw himself into the arms of England, that at length Bourchard was enabled to obtain his wards’ release, and before King Philip would suffer their return to Flanders, he took care to bestow Jeanne’s hand on his kinsman Ferdinand of Portugal, a prince whom he deemed would be wax in his hands.

Perhaps the French King was from the first mistaken in his man. Certain it is that when immediately after the marriage he seized St. Omer and Aire, and under pretext of hospitality forcibly detained the newly-married couple, en route for Flanders, at Péronne, until they acquiesced in this act of spoliation, Ferdinand showed no disposition to submit to the outrage tamely. He went forth from his prison at Péronne filled with projects of vengeance, and having concluded a secret treaty with John of England, he waited to see what would happen. For two years he was fain to possess his soul in patience, but everything comes to the man who knows how to wait, and at the expiration of this time Ferdinand’s opportunity came. Philip Augustus was now gathering up his strength for a crusade against John, whom the Pope had declared to have forfeited his crown, and he had summoned his vassals to meet him at Soissons. Ferdinand alone refused help. St. Omer and Aire, he averred, must first be restored to Flanders. Philip offered a money equivalent; Ferdinand would not accept it. Nothing but the restitution of the ceded cities would content him. By taking possession of them Philip had violated his duty as lord, and henceforth he (Ferdinand) was in no way bound by his oath of allegiance.

‘One of two things must needs come to pass,’ King Philip had swore when he learned that Ferdinand had renounced his overlordship; ‘France must be Flemish, or Flanders French,’ and presently he led into the Netherlands the great army which he had assembled to fight King John, who had now made his peace with the Pope. On May 24 Cassel fell, later on Ghent was invested, by the close of the summer the French were at the gates of Bruges. Soon tottering walls and smouldering embers were all that remained of ‘its famous seaport called Damme,’ and the vast wealth of merchandise stored there, and thousands of homes had been reduced to ashes. The fertile country round was white to harvest, and Philip reaped it with sickles of flame. From Bruges to the seashore all the country-side was one great field of black stubble.

All through the autumn the French King harried Flanders; Lille, Cassel, Courtrai, and a host of smaller towns had shared the fate of Damme before the snows of winter drove him back again to his native land.

About this time too Ferdinand set out on a journey that he had long had in contemplation—took shipping for Dover, and in due course reached Canterbury and his friend John, nor is it unlikely that during this interview the allies broached for the first time the famous project for the partition of France between England, Flanders, Limburg, Holland, Namur and the Empire, and which, if fate had been kind, would have assured to Ferdinand the provinces of Artois, Picardie and the Ile-de-France, including that Paris where, in days of yore, he had been so diverted by ‘les folles filles et les jongleurs.’ Be this as it may, the Flemish Count was the moving spirit and instigator of the whole plot. The outcome of it was the battle of Bouvines, and the outcome of the battle of Bouvines was twelve years’ captivity for Ferdinand, the French yoke more firmly riveted to her neck than ever for Flanders, and for England, as we all know, the Great Charter.

This, then, was the plight of Flanders at the close of the year 1214. For sovereign she had a young and tearful wife, casting about her for some means to obtain her husband’s release, and ready, for the moment, to make any sacrifice to deliver him. On this weak, helpless girl Philip Augustus had imposed as chief counsellor a creature of his own, a degenerate scion of the house of Erembald—one Rodolphe de Nesle, Châtelain of Bruges. Added to this, fortresses had been dismantled, strongholds had been razed, and two-thirds of the chivalry of Flanders were languishing in French prisons. But there was a gleam of hope on the horizon; there was still one man left in Flanders, mighty enough, as every one believed, to save the fatherland from sinking into a mere French province—that same man who, in the days of Philip’s treachery, had taken the reins of government into his own strong hands and forced the French King to release his master’s daughters. So thought all Flanders, and all Flanders was doomed to disappointment. For, despite his noble qualities and his great parts—a brilliant knight, a ripe scholar, an accomplished diplomatist, and withal a shrewd, hard-headed man of business—Bourchard d’Avesnes was not able to work out his own salvation much less the salvation of Flanders. When in the year 1211 the Flemish princesses returned to their native land, King Philip Augustus had reluctantly confided the younger of them, Marguerite, then a child of some eleven years, to his care until such time as she should have attained marriageable age, and Bourchard had since prolonged the term of his guardianship to one of life-long duration, as he fondly hoped, by espousing her himself: a proceeding which in no little measure enhanced his prestige and influence for the moment. Bourchard had announced his marriage to his sister-in-law, who, at least, had shown no open disapprobation, and after the battle of Bouvines, and the capture of Ferdinand, his star was still in the ascendant. If aught should befall the childless Jeanne, now cut off from all hope of offspring, his wife would be Countess of Flanders, and, in accordance with the usage of the day, he himself would share her throne. If this were matter of no little rejoicing for the inhabitants of that country, it was no less a source of consternation to the French King, who foresaw in Bourchard, Count of Flanders, an emulator of Robert the Frisian, and from that moment he determined to crush him. It was owing to his influence that the Countess Jeanne first showed herself Bourchard’s foe, and if Philip himself was not the fabricator of the rumours which blasted his after career, fortune had placed in his hands a deadly poison which he did not scruple to employ.

It was in the gossiping ante-chambers of the Lateran palace that these rumours first took shape, and whatever of truth or falsehood there may have been in them, they were credited by Innocent III., who on 19th January 1216 sent letters to the Archbishop of Rheims, bidding him proclaim Bourchard d’Avesnes excommunicated ‘until such time as he shall set Marguerite of Flanders at liberty, and humbly return to the manner of life becoming his ecclesiastical state. The testimony of several prelates and other trustworthy persons had convinced him that Bourchard was a sub-deacon and that he had been at one time a canon of Laon.’

Of the circumstances of the marriage, which had been celebrated after the banns had been regularly published in the presence of all the great nobles of Hainault, Innocent was probably ignorant. Indeed, he seems to have been doubtful whether any marriage had taken place at all. ‘Bourchard has not feared,’ he says, ‘to perfidiously conduct Marguerite, the sister of the Countess of Flanders, to one of the castles confided to his care, and there to retain her, averring that she is united to him in wedlock.’ Great then was the surprise of the Papal legates when they presently approached the Château de Quesnoy, and Marguerite herself came forth to meet them with her beautiful face radiant with youth and happiness—she was only fifteen years old—nor did her words of greeting in any way lessen their amazement. ‘Learn from mine own lips,’ she said, ‘that Bourchard is my lawful spouse, and know too that I have for husband a better man and a better knight than hath my sister Jeanne.’

The sentence of excommunication was not pronounced. Bourchard had lodged an appeal to the Pope, but for all that, Jeanne, entirely under the influence of her French counsellors, laid siege to the castle of Quesnoy. The Lord of Avesnes, so far from being in a position to fight for his fatherland, was hard pressed to defend his wife, and during two years an intermittent warfare continued between his vassals and the vassals of the Countess of Flanders. At the end of this period he seems to have been taken captive, and there is a tradition that he was at one time imprisoned at Ghent. What became of Marguerite during her husband’s captivity does not appear, but certain it is that when he had obtained his release and had withdrawn to the Château de Houffalize, on the banks of the Meuse, she found means to join him, and that here she later on bore him two sons—Baldwin and Jean.

The birth of these children but increased the fury of their father’s enemies. Jeanne’s French counsellors were well aware that unless Bourchard’s marriage could be shown to be null and void, one or other of his sons would in all probability succeed to the throne, and they feared that in that case vengeance would be meted out to the men who had persecuted him. Philip Augustus too was more than ever convinced of the necessity of annulling the marriage, which guaranteed the legitimacy of his offspring, and by making Jeanne believe that she could obtain the release of her own husband at the cost of her sister’s shame, prevailed on her to re-open the case at Rome, and the outcome was a fresh sentence of excommunication which set under the Church’s ban not only the Lord of Avesnes himself, but his brother Guy and the friend who had given him hospitality, Thierri of Houffalize.