At the close of the reign of that magnificent ruffian, John the Fearless, the communes had thus achieved no small measure of success, whilst the progress which their rulers had made towards the goal of their ambition, at least so far as Flanders was concerned, was nil. For every two steps forward the exigencies of circumstances had forced them three steps back, so that, when John the Fearless died, Flanders was freer than she had ever been before.
This is all the more remarkable from the fact that Ghent, the mightiest of the Flemish cities, had of late shown herself but half hearted in support of the popular cause. It was the old story. Jealousy of her great rival, Bruges, and the national inability to withstand corruption. Philip the Rash and his morose son had alike favoured Ghent.
The vicissitudes of Bruges during the whole of this season were marvellous in the extreme—a continual alternation of peace and warfare, of merry-making and tumultuous frays, of luxury and pinching need, of honeyed speech and dire threats, for Philippe and John alike carried two faces under their hoods. When they wanted anything they could smile sweetly enough, and when they felt themselves independent they were wont to terrorize with fierce looks, and bloody deeds too, for the matter of that.
Hardly had the echo of the Carillon died away, which had swung out the joy of the burghers at the great pacification at the opening of Duke Philip’s rule, when hostilities broke out again. Philip was in no way sincere in signing that treaty which Ghent had so proudly negotiated with him, more like an independent sovereign state than a conquered rebel city, and presently he conceived a diabolical plot to slay all her burghers by means of Breton mercenaries whom he would secretly have brought into their midst. This fell design having been happily discovered, the agents who were to have accomplished it, disappointed of the rich booty they thought to have obtained at Ghent, turned their attention to Bruges, and soon began to break into the houses of sundry honourable burghers there, and to insult and molest their women. Whereupon tumult unspeakable, and in the midst of it all the Duke of Berri was descried riding towards the Pont des Carmes. This man was the most hated of all the French knights, for his hands were red, every burgher believed, with the blood of their favourite Louis of Maele. In a moment he was surrounded by the howling mob, unhorsed, wounded almost to death, and ‘if it had not been for the intervention of the Sire de Ghistelle—a man of weight, at Bruges—he would not have escaped with his life.’ Thus Froissart; and he adds, ‘Nor would a single knight or squire of France have been left alive in the town.’
Meanwhile Philip’s affairs had prospered in France. He was now practically regent of the kingdom. His wife, ‘une creuse et haute dame,’ was installed at Paris, and had undertaken the administration of the Queen’s household. The King’s counsellors were in exile; the Bishop of Laon was dead—poisoned, it was thought by many—and others would have probably shared his fate had not Philip’s hand been restrained by a passing fear that the King’s reason was returning.
Things then were going well with the Duke of Burgundy. He had time to turn his attention to the taming of the Flemish burghers, and amongst other regulations and proceedings, in direct contravention of the treaty of Tournai, he began to fight against the popular conscience.
It was the time of the great schism. From Rome and Avignon rival claimants to the Papal throne were hurling anathemas at one another. All Europe was divided as to who was the rightful Pope, and since it suited Philip to support Clement, of course his burghers felt bound in conscience to acknowledge Urban. Thanks to a gift of sixty thousand francs, the Ghenters had obtained permission to remain neutral, but hardly had three months expired when the Bishop of Teruanne went over to the side of Avignon, and at the same time all Antwerp followed his example. A favourable moment, thought Philip, to commence proselytism, by corruption, by violence, by any means at hand; and presently he formally forbade any of his subjects to obey the Pope of Rome. Then throughout Flanders all public worship ceased. Here and there, in the chapel of some great castle protected by high walls and a double moat, a Clementine priest would occasionally say Mass, but the boldest of them would not celebrate in public. If they had ventured to do so, the people would have dragged them from the altar. Bruges was beside herself. From the pulpit of St. Walburge the curate proclaimed the curse of Heaven on all who should recognize the Pope of Avignon, and forthwith fled the country. So too the Abbot of St. Peter’s and the Abbot of Bandeloo, and a host of monks and burghers, not a few of whom took refuge in England, where they obeyed the Pope of Rome. One of these last was not so fortunate. Petrus van Roesclare, a civic dignitary of great wealth. He was arrested and carried to Lille, and there they cut off his head. John van der Capelle, the patriot whom Philip had appointed High Steward of Flanders, after the pacification of Tournai, was for the same motive deprived of his office. So too John of Heyle, whose good offices had greatly contributed to the settlement of Tournai. He was loaded with chains and cast into prison, where shortly afterwards he died. ‘Men called him a martyr, for during the two months previous to his death he had tasted no solid food, and all that time he had passed in prayer.’
Philip, who was not ignorant of the rebellious spirit which his religious policy had aroused, about this time came to Bruges, hoping that his presence would frighten the burghers into submission. He had brought with him the Clementine Bishop of Tournai. On the following Sunday an ordination took place at St. Sauveur’s, and the next day at Sluys, but on neither occasion was a single burgher present, nor would any of them avail themselves of the ministrations of the newly-ordained clergy.
But though the Bruges men grumbled and stayed away from Mass, their religious convictions were not sufficiently strong, or they were too much awed by the presence of Philip, to attempt any overt act of opposition. Not so the men of Ghent. As soon as the obnoxious edict had been published, a riot ensued which was only with difficulty calmed by the Urbanist clergy themselves. Whereupon Philip, perceiving that the burghers had made up their minds, permitted them to follow the dictates of conscience, and Ghent then became a place of pilgrimage throughout Flanders. It was the only town in the country where men could worship as they would, and all Bruges went out there at Easter-time to receive Holy Communion (1394).
The death of Duke Philip, ten years later, afforded no little consolation to his subjects, but the advent of a yet sterner ruler soon taught them to regret the old man’s decease, for if Philip had beaten the Flemings with rods, his son John scourged them with scorpions.