The Story of Brussels

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

When it became known that the Duchess had gone, throughout the length and breadth of the land there was a widespread feeling of indignation, which, however, seems to have been at first stronger in some places than in others, and, generally speaking, the rural districts, influenced as they were by the feudal lords—almost all of them, from sentiments of chivalry, ardent partisans of Jacqueline, were more hostile than the towns. At Bois-le-Duc, indeed, John's adherents were sufficiently numerous and influential to insure the loyalty of the city throughout the contest which was now impending; Antwerp, for a time, also refrained from active hostility, and so, too, Brussels. The common folk had 'wondered and wept' when they saw Jacqueline leaving the palace in tears and on foot, and attended by only one serving-man, and the heartless boy, who had driven her from home, had long ago forfeited their confidence and respect, but at Brussels the common folk did not yet count, and the patricians, though many of them shared their sentiments, were for the most part loth to quarrel again with their best customer; for the cloth trade was waning in face of English competition, and the Court was now the mainstay of their prosperity.

At Louvain it was otherwise. The Dukes of Brabant had long since forsaken the cradle of their race, the tradesmen of the capital had little to gain and little to lose from the smiles or the evil looks of the occupant of the throne, and their judgment was not warped by self-interest. Moreover, at Louvain, the people—always eager to resent injustice and to champion the cause of the weak, were directly and largely represented in the municipal senate, and a healthier, manlier, more independent spirit pervaded the whole town. Nowhere in the duchy of Brabant was John's unworthy conduct held in greater contempt, nowhere were men more firmly determined to deliver him from the evil counsellors who, for their own ends, had prompted it, and the burghers of Louvain, to their honour, took the first step in this direction.

Shortly after Jacqueline's flight John, again short of cash, had summoned the Estates of Brabant to meet at Brussels, and the aldermen of Louvain, knowing very well that liberty could hardly be assured in the Court city, utterly ignored John's invitation and invited the Estates on the same day to assemble in their own town. It was a bold step, but the issue proved the wisdom of it: when the appointed day arrived a few stragglers from Antwerp and Bois-le-Duc betook themselves to Brussels, and representatives of the first and second order from all parts of the duchy flocked into the capital. They found it in a greater state of commotion than any of them had anticipated, for news had just come to hand of a fresh act of tyranny—the Duke had presumed to violate one of the oldest and most cherished privileges of the time-honoured Church of Saint Peter.

Thus: Sieger, chief of the house of Heetvelde, was one of the mightiest nobles of Brabant in the far-off days of Duchess Jeanne, with whom he claimed kinship, for he traced his descent to a natural son of the great house of Gaesbeke, a legitimate though younger branch of the reigning family. The Van Heetveldes, in the course of ages, had acquired estates and manorial rights in all parts of the duchy; they were patricians, too, of Louvain, for a Heetvelde of bygone days had married a daughter of that city, and the status of patrician, unlike that of the feudal lord, was transmissible in the female line. Invested with all the rights and privileges of the various orders to which he belonged, at Brussels, where he habitually resided, old Sieger was too mighty a man to be loved; five lignages banded together against him, and one morning he was found in the Grand' Place with his throat cut. Who was the actual murderer was never known, but Sieger's sons suspected a patrician called Nicholas de Swaef, and publicly charged him with the crime, and hence there arose a feud between the family of the murdered man and the family of the man who, as he had sworn, had been falsely accused of the murder. For years the streets of Brussels were the scene of their bloody conflicts. In vain the burghers of Louvain joined their efforts to the burghers of Brussels as mediators. At their instance Duchess Jeanne ordained that the quarrel should be forgotten, menacing with death any man who should venture to reopen it; but her threats were wholly disregarded, and after twenty years the Heetveldes and the Vanderstraetens[22] were still flying at one another's throats. At last, about Easter 1417, the belligerents agreed to accept the arbitration of Duke John IV., provided he gave his decision within a twelvemonth. For some reason or other he neglected to do so, and it was not till the 20th of June 1420 that he summoned the brothers Heetvelde to his presence and informed them that he was about to pronounce judgment. To this they demurred, on the ground that the stipulated time had long since gone by. Whatever may have been the case three years before, the Vanderstraetens were now John's friends and the Heetveldes among his bitterest opponents, and naturally enough the latter feared he would not hold the scales of justice evenly. Whereat John sentenced them, there and then, to banishment as contumacious, and the Heetveldes, instead of submitting, fled to Louvain. They were Petermen, they said, and as such subject only to their own tribunal. What wonder, then, that the anger of the burghers blazed more fiercely than ever, or that the Estates, to which the Heetveldes had appealed, quashed the iniquitous sentence, and forthwith informed the Duke that no fresh aid would be granted until their grievances had been redressed. The miscreants who had deprived Jacqueline of her heritage, driven her from Brabant, wasted the resources of the realm, and who had not even feared to flout Saint Peter, must first be dismissed from office. Nor did John dare to refuse, but the men whom he named to take their places made his former counsellers regretted: amongst them was Everard T'Serclaes, the fons et origo of all the mischief. Whereat the Estates, convinced that it was hopeless to expect reform so long as John remained in power, did two things—they sent letters to 'Madame the Duchess of Brabant and to Madame the Widow, her mother,' proposing co-operation, and by 'the vigour of the replies which they presently received were greatly consoled and comforted'; and they despatched 'Friar Edmond' to Paris to bring home the Count of Saint-Pol. And in this too they were successful, for although the Duke, getting wind of it, had immediately written to his brother urging him not to come, Friar Edmond proved himself the better diplomatist, and on the 10th of September returned to Louvain, bringing the young prince with him. Shortly afterwards came ambassadors from the King of France and from the Duke of Burgundy with a mission 'to appease the strife which had arisen between Duke John of Brabant, on the one part, and Madame the Duchess and Madame the Widow, and the nobles and the good towns of Brabant, on the other'; and, better still, a few days later came 'Madame Jaque herself and Madame her mother,' and then, after much confabulation and much coming and going between Brussels and Louvain, a conference was arranged at Vilvorde for Sunday the 29th of September. Thither, on the appointed day, came the allies from Louvain, with 'Madame Jaque and My Lord of Saint-Pol' at their head. But Duke John did not come. Hardly safe at Brussels, where his friends had still the upper hand, he was far too wise to attend a meeting in a town where he knew his opponents were more numerous than his partisans. Excusing himself on the ground of indisposition, he kept close house, and at nightfall on the morrow stealthily crept out into the darkness and slipped away. To cover his flight Everard T'Serclaes gave out that the Duke was too ill to see anyone but a couple of trusty serving-men, who were in the secret, and who carried his supper into his bedchamber after his departure, as if he were still there, whereas in reality he had fled with the Lord of Ashe and four others, who led him by circuitous routes to Bois-le-Duc.

As soon as it was publicly known that John had left the city, the Assembly at Vilvorde, by the advice of the French ambassador, conferred the government on Philip of Saint-Pol, who on the following day (October 2), along with Jacqueline, her mother and the Estates, triumphantly entered Brussels.[23]

Five months before the Duchess of Brabant had left her home, accompanied only by a humble serving-lad. As she wended her way through the muddy streets to her mother's lodging in the rue de la Montagne the few stragglers who recognised her had stood silent as she passed, in sympathy and respect at her humiliation; and now she returned in triumph at the head of a brilliant cavalcade of churchmen, and knights and burghers; and the people welcomed her with shouts of acclamation, and with trumpets and clashing bells.

How different too was her position in the palace to what it had been in former days. The fears of her poor little husband had compelled him to leave it trembling, disguised, under cover of night, and by a back door, in more pitiable condition almost than she had been when she had fled from the Coudenberg. And the man without heart and without soul, who, having robbed her of her husband's affection, thought it almost an honourable thing to stoop to the pettiness of depriving her ladies of their dinner, he, too, had gone the way of his master and his dupe, and of the corrupt crew whose pride and debauchery had in days of yore rendered her life intolerable, not one was left within the walls of the Coudenberg.

She was now in the midst of friends and attended by her own people. Her will was law. She was Sovereign, and, such was the chivalrous devotion of the men who had rescued and restored her, that in the ardour of their first enthusiasm they placed her interests before their own. At the solemn assembly which took place next day in the Town Hall the Estates unanimously decided to forthwith equip an expedition to wrest from John the Pitiless 'the possessions of the Duchess which her husband had abandoned to him without her consent.' Soon a great host was assembled at Breda, hard by the cities it had been decided, in the first place, to take. Knights from every lordship in Brabant were there, and armed burghers from every town save Bois-le-Duc, and Jacqueline herself was in the midst of them.

On the 16th of October she was at the gates of Heusden. The city surrendered without a blow, and the next day she was solemnly enthroned there as Duchess of Brabant. Four days later she sat down before Gertruidenberg. On Saint Martin's Day the city went up in flames, and on the 24th of November, flushed with victory, she returned at the head of her troops to Brussels.