The Story of Bruges

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

In consenting to quit the Craenenburg Maximilian had removed the last obstacle which might perhaps have prevented or at all events retarded the execution of those of his friends who were prisoners like himself. The day after he left a great scaffold draped in black was erected in the Grande Place. Gilbert du Homme, a Norman, erst Burgomaster of the Franc, died first, then came Jan van Nieuwenhove; so battered and weak was he with the torture which he had undergone that they had to give him an armchair in which to await his turn for death. Perhaps the sight of his misery had unnerved the executioner; he struck three times before he succeeded in severing the head from the body.

Another man who had been Burgomaster of Bruges perished the same day, Jacob van Dudzeele, Lord of Ghistelle. He had been arrested in the Craenenburg under the very eyes of Maximilian, and to the last he protested his innocence. ‘For fifty years,’ he said, ‘I have served the princes who have succeeded one another in the government of this county, and I have never played the traitor. If any man affirm the contrary, I am ready to do battle with him, no matter who he may be, and to do all that behoveth a good and loyal knight, a nobleman, and a burgher of this town.’

Note that Ghistelle here esteems his citizenship no less highly than his knighthood or his nobility. Such was the wont of the burgher-nobles of Bruges. In vain the lady of Ghistelle besought the guildsmen to spare her lord. In vain his children, the Provost of St. Donatian’s, the Dean of Notre Dame and the foreign merchants, joined their supplication to hers. Jacob’s head rolled on the scaffold.

On the 15th March Peter Lanchals, long sought for, was at last found, betrayed by one of his friends for a hundred livres de gros and to save his own head, for death had been decreed against any man who should shelter him. He was arrested the same day by Burgomaster Jan van Haman, who conducted him to the Steen, and the howls of contempt and hatred which greeted his passage through the city were kept up around his prison all night. The men of Bruges were beside themselves with a delirium of fierce gladness. Volleys of cannon were fired off, bands of music paraded the town, and they danced and drank in the streets till morning, for had not this man been Maximilian’s head and heart and right hand in all his infernal machinations? Had he not intended to deliver Bruges over to be pillaged by the Germans? Had not the whole devilish plot been of his hatching? That cruel instrument of torture which he had invented, more cruel than any known hitherto in Flanders, should persuade him to own it. And it did, whatever we may think of an assertion made under such circumstances. By a strange irony of fate Lanchals was the first to test the efficacy of his own invention. Tortured as he had been, and in pitiable plight, Peter still clung to dear life. ‘Put me in some black hole and there let me eat out my heart,’ he vainly pleaded, ‘but for God’s sake let me live!’ When at length he saw that the people had no pity, he suffered the executioner to strip him of his clothes. One of the guild deans touched the gold chain which he wore round his neck. ‘Sir Dean,’ said the dying man, ‘you know well that no burgher of Bruges can be condemned to forfeit his life and his goods,’ and he handed the chain to his confessor and begged him to give it to his wife; then he besought the people that his body might receive honourable burial, and having commended his soul to God, he bade the executioner do his duty. In addition to his tomb and the chantry erected by his widow in the Church of Notre Dame—the same chantry in which now stand the tombs of Charles the Terrible and Marie of Burgundy—there is yet another souvenir at Bruges, and a more pleasing one, of poor Peter Lanchals:—the graceful, long-necked birds which disport themselves in great flocks, sometimes as many as thirty or forty of them together, on the canals and streams of the city. These birds belong to the corporation, and they are the descendants, tradition says, of the swans which Maximilian, when he regained his liberty, bade Bruges maintain for ever as a perpetual memorial of his favourite’s death. Lanchals, it should be noted, signifies in Flemish, long neck, and the swan is a prominent figure in the Lanchals family arms.

The news of these executions and of others, which, like them, were the outcome, it was said, of ‘the justice of the people,’ made Maximilian tremble in his prison. Perhaps he had cause to do so. The men of Venice had written to the men of Bruges to urge them to cut off his head: Homo mortuus non fecit guerram. And there were others who trembled for him—his father, the Emperor Frederick III., who wrote to the magistrates of Bruges warning them that he should hold them personally responsible for any evil which might befall the King of the Romans; the Pope, who threatened interdict; several German princes, who were making ready, it was said, for invasion; and his son Philip, who summoned the estates of Hainault and of Brabant with a view to obtaining their good offices. They invited the communes of Ghent and Bruges to meet them in conference at Malines. Louis of Gruthuise, now set at liberty, threw in his weight on the side of conciliation, and early in the spring of 1488 the Estates-General of all the provinces of the Netherlands met in solemn conclave at Ghent. Two great measures were the outcome of their deliberations—a treaty of confederation by which the various provinces mutually bound themselves to defend their rights and privileges, and a treaty of peace with Maximilian of which the conditions are sufficiently curious. The communes on their part promised to set their prince at liberty without further delay, on condition that he should undertake to dismiss his foreign gens de guerre within four days. In order to facilitate their departure the three bonnes villes undertook to pay Maximilian within a month twenty-five thousand livres Flemish upon the understanding ‘that if the aforesaid gens de guerre’ had not departed within the stipulated period, the money should be expended in the payment of ‘autres gens de guerre who by force should expulse them.’

For the rest, it was agreed that Maximilian should at once bring back his son to Flanders, and that during his minority the county should be administered by the three Estates in Philip’s name, that Maximilian should strictly adhere to the Treaty of Arras, cease to quarter the arms of Flanders on his escutcheon and promise to protect Flemish merchants all the world over, and that the communes should pay him by way of solatium an annual pension of a thousand livres.

There was some difficulty at first as to sureties. Maximilian had named the Duke of Saxony and the Marquis of Baden, but these princes hesitated to guarantee his good faith; it were an undertaking, they averred, too risky. The knot was at length cut by Philip of Cleves, who, on learning of the difficulty, wrote to Maximilian offering to do anything in his power to help him. Philip was the son of the Lord of Ravestein, one of the four regents whom Maximilian had accepted at the commencement of his son’s reign. He was a man deservedly popular amongst the burghers, his influence with them had contributed in great measure to the successful issue of the negotiations, and in due course his name appeared at the head of the list of guarantors.

The communes, however, were not yet satisfied, and that, though Maximilian, in order to further reassure them, had renounced Philip’s homage so that he might be free to take up arms against him in the event of his breaking his troth, and Philip, at his request, had bound himself by oath to do so. The treaty of peace, they said, must be ratified by the Pope, the Emperor and the imperial Electors, and before Maximilian was set free he must undertake to obtain such ratification. He seems to have had no hesitation in doing so, for the same day he left Jean Gros’s palace and, preceded by priests with relics, and guildsmen with banners and torches, betook himself to the market-place, where, on the very spot on which the scaffold had lately stood, a magnificent throne had been erected, surmounted by a richly-embroidered canopy. Hard-by there stood an altar, and on it was set a Book of the Gospels and amid flaming torches the Host. Before these sacred objects Maximilian presently knelt down and ‘with much seeming fear and reverence took the appointed oath. “Of our free will we promise,” he said, in a voice so sweet’—we are quoting the words of one who heard him—‘that it would have melted a heart of stone, “of our free will we promise and swear in good faith on the Sacred Host here present, on the cross, on the Book of the Gospels, on the precious body of St. Donatian and on the Canon of the Mass to carry out wholly and entirely the treaty of peace and alliance which we have concluded with our well-beloved Estates ... and on our princely and royal word, on our honour, and on our faith we hereby promise never to do anything to violate it.” ’ Maximilian having thus pledged himself, the Bishop of Tournai solemnly blessed all those who should keep inviolate, and afterwards solemnly cursed all those who should presume to infringe, the treaty agreed to that day (May 16, 1488). Then followed a sumptuous banquet, then, at St. Donatian’s a Te Deum, after which Philip of Cleves, who had only just reached Bruges, took oath ‘to aid them of Flanders against all infractors of the said peace, union and alliance.’ At length, after an imprisonment of eleven weeks, Maximilian was once more free. Towards sundown he set out for his château at Maele, the deputies of the Estates of Flanders accompanied him part of the way, and before he bade them farewell he again confirmed his promises. ‘Monseigneur,’ Philip had said, ‘you are now a free man, tell me frankly your intentions.’ ‘Fair cousin of Cleves,’ replied Maximilian, ‘believe me I shall keep my word,’ and thus they parted.

Great was the joy of the city of Bruges, and the people determined to make a night of it in the Grande Place, as is still their wont upon festive occasions, with malt liquor and music and dancing, without which accompaniments no Flemish festival ever has been, or probably ever will be, complete. Suddenly the band of musicians who had stationed themselves on the summit of the Belfry ceased playing. They had descried a hundred tongues of flame rising up from the woods of Maele. Maximilian’s foreign gens de guerre were celebrating their master’s return by firing the peasants’ homesteads, and though next day Maximilian sent word to Bruges that the incendiaries had not acted under his instructions, and perhaps he spoke the truth, what had happened was far from reassuring, and men began to doubt whether the peace which had just been signed would after all be one of long duration; nor were their fears ill founded. From the first the King of the Romans had been playing a double part. Even whilst the negotiations with his burghers were pending he was secretly pressing the imperial Electors to send their armies against them; four days after the peace of May 16 had been publicly proclaimed in the cities of Flanders he felt himself strong enough to drop the mask.

Maximilian had now taken up his abode in the impregnable fortress of Hulse, and from thence he issued a proclamation to all the communes of Flanders informing them that he did not intend to observe the treaty he had sworn to. An oath, he said, taken under obligation had no binding force.