CHAPTER I
The First Flemings
IT is not to the stalwart Celtic tribes which Cæsar found scattered about the low-lying sandy plain which stretches along the coast from the mouth of the Rhine to the Canche that this part of Europe owes either its name or its greatness.
The Menapii and the Morini, the bravest of them all and the last to withstand the Roman legions, were at length compelled to bend their necks beneath the yoke of Rome’s enervating and effete civilization, and when, four centuries later, a whirlwind of Northern barbarism had swept the land, only a handful of them, sparsely scattered, abject, cringing, hidden away in forest and marsh, were left to tell the tale.
The civilization of Rome had been clean wiped out in that quarter of Europe. Silence unbroken settled down on the land, and for two hundred years the Latin-Celts of the Netherlands slipped out of the world’s memory.
It was not until the middle of the six hundreds that men began once more to think of them.
The cause of their reappearance upon the stage of European history is chronicled for us in a contemporary life of St. Amand, Bishop of Bourges.[1] It happened in this wise.
Towards the close of the year 630, Amand, who had journeyed to Rome, was one day praying before the tomb of the Apostles, when suddenly he heard the voice of St. Peter bidding him be up and return to Gaul, where he must preach the Gospel.
So impressed was he with the reality of the warning, that he at once set out for the northern province, and presently reached Sens.
Here he was told that there was a country beyond the Scheldt called Gand, where dwelt a wild people who had forgotten God, and who worshipped trees, and that so rude was this land, and so fierce were its inhabitants, that no missionary had hitherto ventured there. This must be the field, said Amand, which St. Peter would have me till, and with a small band of companions he landed on the further bank of the Scheldt.
The reception the new comers met with was not one calculated to inspire confidence. The natives, men and women alike, showed unmistakable signs of hostility, and at length, in a wild outburst, seized upon Amand himself and plunged him into the stream. This so terrified his companions that they, all of them, drew back in fear of their lives. But Amand, nothing daunted, went on with the work he had undertaken, and in course of time won the confidence of the natives, many of whom he baptized.