The Story of Bruges

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

It must not be supposed from what has been noted above that Guy was animated by the instincts of a tyrant; he had no wish to establish a despotism in Flanders—nay, he undoubtedly had the welfare of his country at heart, but self came first. When he was not blinded by his own personal interests, he showed himself a just and a benevolent prince, following in his methods of government the example of his predecessors, Jeanne and Marguerite. Like them he favoured industry and commerce, and to a certain extent the freedom of the towns, but he viewed with an evil eye the extreme independence of the great communes, the like of which existed nowhere else in Northern Europe, and he would have reduced their liberties to the same level as those obtaining in France.

The jealousy with which the upper classes viewed the increasing well-being of the people was another item in the political situation of the day, and Guy endeavoured to exploit it for his own ends. The quarrel was not, as has so often been represented, a duel between burgher and noble, it was rather a tug-of-war between men of wealth and men of moderate means.

On the one side were doubtless a certain number of rich feudal lords, but there were also allied to them almost all the great merchants and traders of the greater communes, and nearly all the higher clergy—in a word, the majores et potentiores, as Monachus Gandavensis calls them. On the other, the small traders, the lower clergy, and perhaps a sprinkling of the Court nobility.

The former class alone monopolised all municipal authority, every post of profit and advancement was reserved for them, and the latter viewed this state of things with great disfavour; and Guy, with a view to crushing the oligarchy which governed the towns, fomented and increased the quarrel, backing up the small men who were not strong enough to disquiet him.

The Flemish as a nation have never been renowned for loyalty to the princes who governed them, and the sturdy patriotism of this hard-headed race will most frequently be found to have been inspired less by motives of sentiment than by motives of self-interest. This was certainly the case with the ‘majores et potentiores’ of Bruges and Ypres and Ghent in the days of Count Guy.

So long as their rights and privileges and monopolies were respected, so long as all political and municipal power was in their hands, it mattered little to them whether they were called Frenchmen or Flemings, whether their nominal chief styled himself Count of Flanders or King of France. Thus it came to pass that when Guy, in order to curtail their power, threw his weight on the side of the little men, the governing oligarchy appealed from their Count to the parliament of his liege lord, the King of France, and that when, thanks to their aid, that monarch had made Flanders a French province, and had then thrown off the mask, and attempted to deprive them of all they held most dear, they veered round to the side of their rightful government, united with the little men, and finally chased the French from Flanders.

‘Philippe le Bel,’ says Kervyn, ‘represents in the thirteenth century the worst tendencies of absolute monarchy.’ He was firmly resolved to gather up all power into his own hands, that he alone should rule France, and that in the domains of his vassals nothing should take place without his consent. And note this. He was the first French sovereign who used the formula—Par le plenitude de notre puissance royal, and the first too who styled himself metuendissimus.

Flanders was the first province to which he directed his attention. Her princes were amongst the mightiest and the most independent of his vassals, and behind them was the strength of their free cities. United, these two forces would have been invincible; in hurling himself against the bed rock of their omnipotence Philippe would have only dashed himself to pieces, but, unhappily, at the time of which we are treating, Guy and his burghers were at daggers drawn, and their mutual animosities—animosities which he made it his business to foment—afforded Philippe a favourable opportunity for crushing both.

From the commencement of his reign the French King had persistently worried the Count of Flanders with a policy of exasperation which culminated, in 1296, in the decoying and detention of his favourite daughter Phillippine. This it was which at length drove Guy to openly break with his suzerain, and on the 7th of January 1297, after signing on the previous day at Winendael an offensive and defensive alliance with Edward of England, he despatched the abbots of Gembloux and of Florceffe to Paris to inform the French King that on account of his evil deeds and his perfidy, Count Guy of Flanders henceforth held himself to be quit, delivered and absolved from all bonds, alliances, conventions, obediences, and services by which he might hitherto have been bound to him.

Philippe replied by invading Flanders at the head of 60,000 men. The greater communes, of whose rights and liberties he posed as the champion, received him with open arms, and so hard pressed were Count Guy and his allies that early in October (1297) they were glad to consent to an armistice which was afterwards prolonged to a truce of three years.