In the time of Charles V., Ghent was not only the most powerful city in the rich Netherlands, but one of the most opulent in all Europe. And what the Belfry, whose chimes ring out with such sweet melody by night and day, was to Bruges, that was to the more warlike men of Ghent the 'iron tongue' of Roland, the mighty bell which hung in the lofty watch-tower. It called them to arms. It sent them forth to battle. It welcomed them home victorious, or bade them meet and defend their privileges in the market-place. 'It seemed, as it were, a living historical personage, endowed with the human powers and passions which it had so long directed and inflamed.'
The Belfry of Ghent, black with age, still towers above the Cloth Hall. But when, in 1540, the Emperor went there for the purpose of humbling the town, and punishing the burghers for their disobedience, he made a decree that Roland, whose voice had so often given the signal for revolt, should be taken down. No greater insult could have been offered to the proud city.
Bruges fell into the decay from which she has never yet recovered chiefly because, at a time when the whole commerce of Flanders and Brabant was beginning to languish, she lost her communications with the sea; and Ypres was ruined by years of internal discord and constant war. But Ghent, the third of the three 'Bonnes Villes' of Flanders, though the industrial depression which spread over the Netherlands and the long struggle against Spain combined to ruin her, has come triumphant through all vicissitudes. In the old days the men of Ghent were famous for their turbulent spirit and love of independence. It was no easy task to rule them, as Counts of Flanders, or Dukes of Burgundy, or Kings of Spain often found to their cost. And now it seems as if the robust character of the burghers who fought so hard, in mediæval times, to maintain their liberties, had been merely turned into another channel, and transmitted to their descendants in the shape of that keen activity in commerce which makes this town so prosperous at the present day.
Footnotes
[29] Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, part iv., chap. v.
CHAPTER XIII
THE DUKES OF BRABANT—THE JOYEUSE ENTRÉE—END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
A few miles to the south-west of Alost, on the borders of East Flanders, the River Dendre, on its way to join the Scheldt, forms the boundary of Brabant. From Denderleeuw, the frontier station, to Brussels is about fifteen miles by train, through a district which gradually loses the bare flatness of the plains of Flanders, and becomes wooded, undulating, and hilly as we approach the city.