About the middle of the ninth century, Baldwin, a Fleming of great power, who had defended the coast against the Normans, carried off Judith, daughter of the French king, Charles the Bald. Much against his will, Charles was obliged to give his consent to the marriage, and settled upon Baldwin all the land between the Scheldt and the Somme. Baldwin, named Bras-de-fer (of the Iron Arm), was thus the first Count of Flanders. Some authorities consider this the oldest hereditary title of nobility in Europe. It is borne today by the second son of the King.
Other powerful vassals of this period were the counts of Louvain and Namur. Still mightier was the Bishop of Liège, who felt himself so strong that he even made an attempt—unsuccessful, however—to seize the domain of the Count of Louvain.
Under Baldwin II, son of Bras-de-fer, who married the daughter of Alfred the Great of England, the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Courtrai and Ypres were fortified, and thus insured the opportunity of becoming the great mediæval centers of freedom and progress.
After cloth weaving was begun, the first markets were opened at Ghent, Courtrai and Bruges. The word kermesse, the Belgian name for fair or fête, is linked in an interesting way with these markets of the Middle Ages. They were called kerk (church) messe (market), because held around the church or cathedral, and only the inconvenient letter k needed to be dropped out to give the word kermesse.
At first sight, the history of the Netherlands from about the tenth century down to the nineteenth appears a confused and confusing story of wars and uprisings, of conspiracies and persecutions—count against bishop, city against city, nobles and even, in one instance, a king, against the Emperor. But if we look more closely, we discern, three great forces at work through all the turmoil. These were feudalism, the Crusades, and the rise of the towns, or communes. A fourth influence, the power of the Church, was closely associated with these, sometimes as a direct impelling force, sometimes as a guiding or restraining hand, and again battling for its own temporal power with little more regard for the well-being of the masses than was manifested by the lay barons themselves.
COMTE DE FLANDRE, SECOND SON OF KING ALBERT.
After the break-up of the Roman Empire, when there were no strong central governments in Europe, when practically the only law was the will of the strongest, it was inevitable that a vast number of petty chieftains should gather about them as many followers as possible, both in order to protect themselves and to plunder others. The ablest of these, by waging a continual warfare, either killed off many of their rivals and took possession of their lands, or reduced them to submission and made them tenants of their own. These tenants held their land only on condition of furnishing a certain number of men for their lord’s wars and paying certain taxes, later called “aids,” for his support. When this state of society became finally organized as the feudal system, the king or emperor was the overlord, the counts swore allegiance to him, the petty nobles and knights were tenants in their turn. By the twelfth century, the counts and bishops were little kings in their own domains. They had gradually acquired all the rights of the crown. They coined money, established markets, acquired the rights of fishing, hunting, brewing and milling, and collected the tolls. They were vassals of the king in little more than name.
Below this landed aristocracy were the two classes of villains and serfs, who led a miserable existence, possessing scarcely one of what we consider the inalienable rights of man. Both villains and serfs were slaves, bound to the soil, but the servitude of the latter was hopeless and irremediable. Serfs must always be serfs. But the villains had the privilege of earning their freedom.
When Peter the Hermit, a Walloon of the province of Liège, made his impassioned appeals to Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from the Saracen, it was Godfrey of Bouillon, another Walloon, who laid aside his titles and sold his possessions that he might equip an army for the conquest of the Holy Land. Godfrey was made “Advocate” of Jerusalem, and was the first Western ruler of the sacred city. His brother Baldwin became King of Edessa, in Mesopotamia, and his descendants were kings of Jerusalem. Next to Godfrey, both as knight and leader, stood Count Robert of Flanders.