The Count of Artois set out from Lille during the early days of July, and, leaving behind him a long red streak, for in order to terrorize the peasant folk he had spared neither women nor children, he presently pitched his silken tents on a knoll of rising ground about two leagues from Courtrai. Before that time this hill had been called Mossenberg (the Mossy Mount), but on account of the revelry which then took place it has since been known as the Berg van Weelden, or the Mount of Feasting.
It took two days for the French force to assemble, and meanwhile the scouts, whom Artois had sent out to ascertain the position of the Flemish, brought back word that they were spread out in a single phalanx in the plain before the Abbey of Grœninghe, to the east of the town on the road to Ghent; that the river Lys on the north covered their rear; that on the west they were protected by the entrenchments of Courtrai, and on the south and east by the river Grœninghe, and that their position was impregnable; that, so far from showing fear at the approach of the enemy, as Artois had confidently expected, ‘they were drawn up man to man with their arms raised above their heads like valiant huntsmen awaiting the charge of the wild boar.’
Those of the French knights who best knew Flanders besought their chief to put off the battle till the morrow. The Flemish, they urged, were not accustomed to remain long in camp, and want of supplies would soon disperse them; but Artois rejected the counsel with disdain. ‘What!’ he cried. ‘We outnumber these men by half as many again; we are on horseback, they on foot; we are well armed and they are without weapons; shall we remain, before such a foe as this, rooted to the ground in terror?’
The decisive contest took place on Wednesday the 11th of July. The Flemish began the day with fasting and prayer. ‘Behold before ye,’ cried that militant prelate William of Juliers, ‘behold before ye men armed for your destruction! Our hope is in the name of the Lord, invoke His aid.’ Then, when a priest had raised the Sacred Host high above the kneeling throng, William of Renesse made known the battle cry—‘Flanders for the Lion,’ and then each man took up a handful of earth and pressed it to his lips, by way perhaps of spiritual communion, perhaps to testify their love for the soil of Flanders and that they were sworn to defend it.
Before the battle commenced, a frugal repast was served out to the men. The town archives of Bruges have preserved for us the bill of fare—fish, eggs, mustard and sorrel. Nor were omens lacking which presaged the fortune of the coming fray. A flock of doves hovered about the heads of the Flemish host, whilst over the French squadrons there wheeled ravens. Rumour said too that the Count of Artois had risen from his bed full of evil forebodings, that his favourite hound had attacked him and almost fastened to his throat, and that when he sprang into his saddle, his charger had reared three times before he would start. A more certain augury of misfortune was the impatient ardour which fretted his soul, and some grey-headed knights called to mind that fifty-three years before his father’s impetuous temper had, at the battle of Mansourah, wrecked another French host.
Amongst the mercenaries whose assistance the French King had bought was a band of famous archers recruited in Genoa. These men at the opening of the conflict, stealthily advancing along the road to Sweveghem, presently espied on the other side of a thick hedge which skirted the banks of a stream a company of Flemish bowmen, and in less than the twinkling of an eye the arrows of the Italians were playing havoc with them. But if the foreigners’ sharpshooting discomfited their opponents, it afforded no consolation to their French paymasters, and one of them appealed to Artois. ‘Sire,’ he burst out in the bitterness of his soul, ‘sire, if these villains do so much, the day will be theirs, and what share will the nobles have in the glory?’ ‘Then let them charge,’ was the reply. In vain that shrewd old fox Flotte pointed out that when once the Italian archers had broken the Flemish ranks and constrained them to quit their entrenchment, the nobles alone would have the glory of putting the enemy to flight. Artois refused to hear him. ‘By the devil,’ he cried, ‘Pierre, you have still the wolf’s skin,’ and the knights rushed forward, trampling under their horses’ hoofs the Italian archers, and even cutting their bow-strings with their swords.
There is some consolation in the thought that the littleness of these fine gentlemen was the cause of their overthrow. The marshy land—the Bloed Meersch, as it was afterwards called—in the foreground of the Flemish camp was everywhere intersected by streams, and deep and broad dykes, with hedges on their banks thick and high. (Such is still the character of the landscape in many parts of Flanders). These the Flemings had cut down, and with the felled brushwood they had concealed the water. The Frenchmen, unacquainted with the nature of the country, failed to perceive the trap which had been laid for them, and in an instant hundreds of men and horses were struggling in a watery grave, and the few who succeeded in reaching land were received by their opponents on the points of their spears. Then followed a hardly-fought contest, for though the knights who had first charged had been nearly all slain those behind them were legion, and the streams, now choked up with dead bodies, no longer barred the way. For a moment the Flemish were driven back and for a moment panic was imminent, but Guy of Namur, turning round to the great Abbey Church of St. Mary which towered behind him, cried out with a voice which echoed over the battlefield, ‘Great Queen of Heaven, help us,’ and with that cry he so heartened his wavering forces that they returned with renewed courage to battle.
During the mêlée which followed, Rudolphe of Nesle was struck down—a three-fold traitor this man; a traitor to his country, for he was a Fleming of pure blood; a traitor to the traditions of his own house, for in his veins flowed the blood of Dierick of Alsace, and the nobler blood of Erembald; and a traitor to his wife, for she was a daughter of the Count of Flanders. But in spite of it all he was a brave knight; he had gone farther that day than any Frenchman, and he preferred to die rather than to yield up his sword. By a strange coincidence, Jacques de Châtillon, who had been Rudolphe’s successor in the government of Bruges, was fighting by his side when Rudolphe fell, and he too was cut down by the Flemish pikes. Not far off an old man was seen to throw himself on his knees. He had that day put on mail for the first time, thinking when he did so, not to take part in the conflict, but to have his share in the triumph which every Frenchman believed that morning would be its issue. Somehow or other he had been drawn, in spite of himself, into the thick of battle, and now loudly cried to his friends to carry him out, but no man had pity on him, and he was presently trampled to death by his own comrades.
Thus perished Chancellor Flotte, the foremost of Philippe’s law lords, of that new noblesse de robe which he had raised up to counterbalance the might of the old noblesse d’épée, of that band of chevaliers ès lois, as they loved to style themselves, by whose astute aid he was gradually changing monarchy into despotism, and who, as Kervyn notes, ‘under the grandson of St. Louis, became the tyrants of France.’ Philippe had found him on the dunghill, and he made him to sit among the princes of his people. He was a shrewd, hard-headed man of business, and of good qualities, at least, he possessed these: fidelity to the cause he served, and loyalty to the man who made him. He had sworn not to return to France until he had wiped out the indignity which had been put on him by Bruges, and, as we have seen, he kept his word.
On the other side it had gone hard with the Provost of Maestricht, who was carried out of the battle with his temples streaming with blood. If it had not been for the presence of mind of his esquire, this circumstance would perhaps have caused a panic. He, swiftly buckling on his master’s armour and galloping into the thick of the fight, cried out, ‘It is I, William of Juliers, come back to do battle,’ and so saved the situation.