The assassination of Artevelde was followed a short time after by the death of his enemy, the Count of Flanders himself. Louis of Nevers fell among the French knights on the battlefield of Crécy, where the English King won a decisive victory. The new count, Louis of Male, was an enemy of democracy. He had to meet a serious revolt of the craftsmen of Ghent, under the leadership of Philip, the son of Artevelde. The son of the “wise man” had no particular military or political talents; his extraction alone had commended him to the restless people of Ghent. He tried to renew the alliance with England, but failed. A French army was sent to Flanders in order to assist the Count against his subjects. In the battle of Roosebeke, near Courtrai (1382), the Flemings were defeated and Philip Van Artevelde was killed. The whole of Flanders fell into the hands of the victors, except the commune of Ghent. That mighty city, thanks to the courage of Peter Vanden Bossche and his troops, resisted the kingdom of France for two years.
Finally, Louis of Male, the last of the family of the Dampierre, died in 1384. His death opens the rule of the Burgundian dukes in the history of Flanders.
The many years of internal struggle had seriously injured the prosperity of Flemish trade and industry. The finances of the communes were ruined; poverty was on the increase; the income from licenses had diminished; foreign merchants complained of the insecurity of their goods. Edward III invited many Flemish to emigrate to England, which they did, and the Flemish counts, by punishing the rebellious cities, had themselves cut off many sources of production and wealth. From 1350 on, the German Hansa, whose members resided at Bruges, complained of the heavy taxes, and of the complete lack of peace and safety. In 1380 the Count banished the merchants, charging them with having plotted against his authority and with having assisted the Flemish rebels. This was a serious blow to the prosperity of the country. The Hansa left Bruges for Antwerp. Here began the decline and fall of the once famous seaport.
If we look back at this stage of the political development of the Belgian principalities during the time of the communes we note a growing tendency to consolidation on the part of most of the duchies and counties. At the end of the fourteenth century, Flanders, Brabant, and Limburg were united under one dynasty; the same thing occurred in the case of Hainaut and Holland. Little by little the separation resulting from the treaty of Verdun in the ninth century had disappeared, and all parts of Belgium had gradually experienced the imperceptible drawing together which time had effected. They were ultimately to be united, as a political body, by the dukes of Burgundy. To explain that result is the task of the next chapter.
CHAPTER V
THE UNION OF THE BELGIAN PRINCIPALITIES UNDER THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY
At the very moment when all the Belgian principalities had won their complete political autonomy and rejected the French, the English, and the German influence, they were brought together under the scepter of one dynasty, and became united in a solid monarchic federation. As such, they constitute, between Germany and France, that buffer state represented on the map of Europe by the kingdoms of Belgium and Holland. The unconscious tendency of the preceding centuries was brought to a head in the fifteenth century by the dukes of Burgundy. They were aided in large part by the political circumstances of the time. France was exhausted after the Hundred Years’ War and Germany had lost the prestige and the strength of its monarchic power. In favoring the desire for a union of the Belgian principalities, the dukes saved Belgium from conquest or absorption by France. They continued and completed the work of the warriors of the battle of the Golden Spurs. The Scheldt was no longer a political barrier between the east and the west of the country. Belgium, as a united political body, was now for the first time a reality.
The achievements of the Burgundian dukes may be considered from two points of view. We may consider the territorial and geographical consolidation and the political reform.
As for the territorial consolidation, there existed, at the end of the fourteenth century, three ruling houses in Belgium, each of them dominating many provinces, and each hoping to bring the whole country under its scepter. These houses were those of Luxemburg, Bavaria, and Burgundy. The house of Luxemburg had annexed to its hereditary duchy the duchies of Brabant and Limburg; that of Bavaria ruled Hainaut, Holland, and Zeeland; that of Burgundy possessed the duchy of the same name with the counties of Flanders and Artois. It was the Duchess Jeanne of Brabant who turned the scale in favor of Burgundy. Although she had promised the duchy of Brabant to the house of Luxemburg, she gave it to her niece, wife of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and Count of Flanders. So, in 1404, according to the testamentary devises of the late Jeanne of Brabant, Brabant and Limburg went to Antoine, youngest son of Philip the Bold, while to John without Fear, the eldest son, were given Flanders and Artois. There were thus a Flemish and a Brabantine branch of Burgundy. Antoine, Duke of Brabant, married Elizabeth of Gorlitz, heiress of the duchy of Luxemburg, and annexed that vast territory to his two other duchies (1409). His son John IV, by his marriage with Jacqueline of Bavaria, added to the duchies transmitted by his father the counties of Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland, and the seigneurie of Friesland. John IV was an insignificant prince. History remembers him for having, in 1425, founded the University of Louvain. His brother, Philip de Saint-Pol, died without issue, and thereupon the states of Brabant offered the possessions of the Brabantine branch of Burgundy to the head of the Flemish branch, Philip the Good, Count of Flanders (1430). As Philip the Good had purchased in 1429 the county of Namur, practically all the Belgian principalities came under the same rule. At this moment the unity of Belgium was born. Only the three ecclesiastical principalities of Cambrai, Liège, and Utrecht failed to become united with the other provinces, and in these the Burgundian dukes exerted their influence by appointing members of their family as bishops or by supporting candidates in the episcopal elections who were devoted to their interests.
Philip the Good, whom the historian Juste Lipse called, in the seventeenth century, conditor Belgii (“the founder of Belgium”), was known in his own times as the Grand Duke of the West. The fame of his power was carried to the Mediterranean, where his vessels fought the Turkish pirates. He lacked only the title of king. He instituted negotiations with the Emperor for restoring in his favor the former kingdom of Lotharingia. These negotiations did not succeed because he refused to pay to Frederick III, the German Emperor, the sum the latter demanded, and to give the oath of allegiance and vassalage for those parts of his possessions which were fiefs of the Empire. He boasted to an envoy of Louis XI, King of France, that “he wanted them to know he could have been king, if he had only willed it.”