Not content with performing the stipulated humiliation, the burghers did more than Philippe had prescribed. They erected triumphal arches, adorned their houses and their public buildings with rich drapery, and strewed flowers along his path; nor was this all—at intervals they set up allegorical groups, typical of repentance and submission. Thus, hard by the Porte de Ste. Croix stood St. John the Baptist, bearing in his hands a scroll on which was written: Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini. Further on stood four prophets, each with his parchment scroll, after the manner of the figures in the painted windows of the period. On the first was inscribed—‘Thy people shall rejoice in thee’; on the second—‘The prince of God is in the midst of us’; on the third—‘Come let us return to the Lord,’ and on the fourth—‘Let us do all that the Lord saith to us.’ Thus did these worthy merchants cringe—an edifying sight—before the blood-stained tyrant who twelve months before had tortured and slain their noblest fellows. For them he had become as the Saviour of the Gospel, aye and as the God of Abraham, for they chose the sacrifice of Isaac to typify the absolute obedience which they owed to him. And who shall blame them? The craven cur who licks the hand which has struck him is after all a more sagacious beast that the mettlesome hound who resents an unjust blow by springing at his master’s throat. The former is sometimes received back into favour, the latter is not unfrequently hanged. In the present case, as we shall see, the burghers had their reward.
Till the close of Philippe’s reign Bruges was at peace.
During ten years a great calm reigned throughout Flanders. ‘Remember Bruges,’ Philippe had said to the citizens of Ypres, who for a moment showed signs of being restive, and the warning was enough. But the men of Ghent were made of sterner fibre, and when in 1450 Philippe would have taxed their salt, they broke out in open rebellion. For three years the burghers did battle for liberty with heroism and fortitude, but with so redoubtable an opponent there could be but one issue to the conflict, and in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, the saddest year of the fifteenth century, Kervyn calls it, Ghent too was conquered.
All this time the prosperity of Bruges was seemingly increasing by leaps and bounds, but it was but the glow of the sunset which presaged eternal night, though the pomp and splendour of the Ducal Court—the most splendid Court of the richest sovereign in Europe—made the sunset a golden one.
Magnificent fêtes and gorgeous tournaments were following one another in rapid succession, sumptuous palaces were springing up on all sides, sanctuaries were being everywhere enlarged and adorned with a countless array of art treasures. But there was another side to the picture. In spite of lotteries and the sale of annuities, in spite of direct taxation—a means of producing revenue hitherto unknown in Bruges—there was now a constantly recurring and constantly increasing deficit in the annual city budget, and the list of persons constrained to accept public relief, including as it now did not only obscure names, but alongside of them the names of clergymen, of merchants, and of men of honourable and ancient lineage, was each year growing longer and longer. Intrigue, and riot, and suppression, and the silting up of the Zwyn were driving trade from Bruges. A host of merchants had left for Antwerp, a city less subject to internal commotions; not a few, as we have seen, had emigrated to England, to Germany, to the South of France, whilst the shipping, which could no longer find its way into the harbours of Sluys and Damme, now sought shelter in other ports.
This was the state of affairs at Bruges during the time which elapsed between her humiliation in 1440 and the death of Philippe l’Asseuré in 1467—a time of peace and quietude after the long years of strife; a time of fêtes and royal pageants; a time of much intellectual activity; a time of music, and poetry and art; but a time also of gradual commercial wane, and in the midst of it the stupendous intellect of the man who had accomplished all this became clouded, like the city which he had beautified and destroyed, by premature decay. The astute tyrant, who had been able to tame the burghers of Flanders, and, in spite of bloody deeds, to make himself beloved; the cultured patron of art who had known how to appreciate the works of the Van Eycks, and of Roger Van der Weyden; the clear-headed man of business who had received a heritage encumbered with debt, and, before his decease, was the richest prince in Europe, now passed all his time in a little workshop dyeing old fragments of cloth, fitting together pieces of broken glass, and sharpening needles. Early in 1466 he was struck down with apoplexy; though he rallied from the attack, his physicians knew that his days were numbered, and on Monday, the 15th of June, 1467, the end came. They buried him at Bruges in the Church of St. Donatian, and so great was the throng at the funeral, and the heat engendered by thousands of candles, that they shattered the gorgeous stained windows to let in the air.
