The Spell of Belgium

by Isabel Anderson

In the words of an eminent writer, the Belgian commune of this period was essentially “a confederacy of the inhabitants of a town, living within the gates, who bound themselves by an oath to lend advice and a helping hand and to be true to one another, mutually and individually.” The most striking prerogatives of this free association, says the same author, were “(1) a municipal counting-house; (2) a common house, or town hall; (3) a seal; (4) a belfry (belfort in Flemish), a lofty tower which contained the town bell, and which ordinarily served as a prison or a repository for the archives; and (5) an arsenal.”

Besides these communal rights, there were individual, property and judicial rights guaranteed by the charters of the towns, as was mentioned in connection with the charter of Grammont. Serfs became freemen. The vexatious droit de halle was done away with, by which all kinds of goods must be sold in a given place and were subject to heavy duties. From this came, it is said, those immense halles, most of which were built before the towns received their charters. Henceforward, justice was to be administered by councillors drawn from the wealthy burghers and “juries” representing the trade guilds, and fines and penalties were no longer arbitrary impositions but were fixed by law.

It was this same Baldwin VI who granted the charter of Grammont of whom the old chroniclers wrote: “He might be seen riding across Flanders with a falcon or hawk on his wrist; he ordered his bailiffs to carry a white staff, long and straight, in sign of justice and clemency; no one was allowed to go out armed; the labourer could sleep without fear with his doors open, and he could leave his plow in the fields without apprehension of being robbed.”

When the King of France, the nominal overlord of the greater part of Flanders, interfered in their government in 1071, the citizens quickly sprang to arms. Their count had died, and the King of France chose to the vacant place his widow, Richilde, also Countess of Hainault and Namur in her own right. The nobility and the people of the higher grounds submitted to this French intervention, but the townsmen of the lowlands rallied to the banner of Robert the Frisian, brother of their late count, and inflicting upon those professional soldiers a crushing defeat, they wrested from the Countess Richilde not only Flanders but also Namur and Hainault. This battle has come down to us as the victory of Cassel, in which “street men” showed that they could defend their freedom.

The Flemish burghers of the twelfth century have the honour of initiating a mighty forward step in civilization. In every country of Europe, up to that time, when one man had wronged another the injured party took justice into his own hands and punished his enemy himself. The Church had, by the Truce of God, prohibited these blood feuds on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of every week, and also on certain holy days, but Philip of Alsace was the first ruler who did away with this relic of barbarism and ordered that henceforth every man should bring his quarrel for trial to the juries chosen by the townsmen. The glory of demanding this reform belongs, however, to the Flemish burghers.

By 1260, the cities of Flanders had become so strong that they dared to resist their count, and passed from his rule to that of the French king, whose aid they had sought. Forty years later, they rose against this new master. The townsmen of Bruges slaughtered the French garrison, and the following year won the “battle of the spurs” at Courtrai, after which seven hundred golden spurs were picked up on the field. Early that morning, twenty thousand artisans of Bruges, in their working dress and armed with boar-spears or plowshares set in long clubs, received on their knees the blessing of the Church, raised a bit of Flemish soil to their lips, kissed it, and vowed to die for their country, then gave battle to sixty thousand of the steel-clad knights and men-at-arms of France.

A few years later, Brabant compelled its duke to grant it an assembly which should transact all legal and judicial business, and should consist of fourteen deputies, four chosen from the nobles and the other ten from the people. The towns soon began to join their forces. Brabant and Flanders formed a sort of union. But the burghers owed allegiance not to a country but only to a small bit of a country, each to his own town. Their confederacy was bound together by self-interest alone. Ghent was jealous of Bruges, and failed to lend assistance when the Brugeois rebelled against their count. For lack of this support the latter were crushed.

We speak of the cities of the Netherlands, but in the thirteenth century they bore little resemblance to the cities of today. They were walled towns, to be sure, but the walls were generally ramparts of earth with an outside covering of thick planking. Within the walls the better class of people lived in low wooden dwellings roofed with thatch, the churches and the houses of the noblemen and the chief citizens were often built of stone, but the poor, we may imagine, found shelter in rude mud huts. The “streets” were usually mere crooked cart tracks, the dumping ground for the rubbish of the community, in which boards and straw were thrown down in an effort to bridge the numerous holes and pools of muddy water. In Bruges and Ghent, as we learn from the ancient records, the principal streets were paved with stone from the quarries near the Meuse. The squares were, perhaps, not unlike the “common” of a New England village, open grassy places in which were pumps—the common source of water supply for the inhabitants—and drinking troughs for the domestic animals that were allowed to roam through the streets. There was the ever present danger of fire in cities so rudely built, and the fires often became great conflagrations in which whole cities were consumed. What with the bad roads, the blackness of the unlighted streets, and the presence in these towns of many ignorant, riotous workmen and seamen from foreign ports, we can understand that the citizen who sallied forth without escort for an evening stroll, having only his lantern for protection, might well be risking his life in a dangerous adventure.

Edward III of England now laid claim to the crown of France. Jacob van Artevelde, the Brewer of Ghent, rallied the Flemings against the tyranny of their count, who was supported by France, and threw off his yoke. Among the petty jealousies and rivalries of that mediæval time, the Great Brewer—so called only because he was registered in the brewers’ guild—stands out as the lone statesman of his land. (Van Artevelde at first belonged to the aristocratic clothmakers’ guild, and perhaps changed to that of the brewers in order to ally himself more closely with the democracy of the city.) His outlook was broader than the narrow circle of municipal interests. He endeavoured to unite the cities into one commonwealth, and formed an alliance with Edward. In his first public utterance he said, “It is necessary for us to be friends with England, for without her we cannot live.“ He added, ”I do not mean that we should go to war with France. Our course is to remain neutral.”

The combined English and Flemish fleets gained the great naval victory of Sluys over the French. The Great Brewer was made ruward, or conservator of the peace, of Flanders, and used his almost kingly power to strengthen the alliance with England and to favour the trade with that country. But he was too great a man for his time, and the traders of his native city were easily stirred by a trumped-up charge that he was plotting to deliver Flanders to the Black Prince. He met his death in 1345, at the hands of a mob, before his own doorway.