A short history of Belgium

by Léon van der Essen

Léon Van der Essen

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The editors have urged me to add in this edition a final chapter on the history of Belgium during the Great War. These events, of course, do not yet belong to history, but it seems possible to give at least a brief sketch of what happened in Belgium during the invasion and the German occupation. The knowledge which we have acquired in the year that has elapsed since the armistice has enabled us to establish the facts.

CHAPTER I

THE PERIOD OF FORMATION

When, in 57 B.C., the Roman Republic, then in control of most of the Mediterranean countries, the south of Gaul included, determined to conquer also the rest of that country, Belgium was occupied by a people of Celtic origin, called the Belgians, “Belgae.” They were a part of the larger group of the Gauls who possessed the country between the Pyrennees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the sea. The Belgians occupied, not only the actual territory of Belgium, but also a part of Northern France and of Rhenish Prussia. They formed a confederation of several tribes, among which the Nervians, dwelling in the provinces of Hainaut, Brabant, and Flanders, were the most important.

The Roman general, Julius Caesar, intrusted with the task of subduing the north of Gaul, attacked the Belgians in 57 B.C. The Roman army would have been routed by the Nervians in the first attack but for Caesar, who himself led the troops and saved the day. Notwithstanding a fierce guerrilla warfare that lasted four years, all the Belgian tribes were successively subdued and some of them exterminated. Their heroic resistance made Caesar say of them: “Among all the Gauls, the bravest are the Belgians.”

Once subdued, Belgium accepted the Roman rule and remained loyal to the Empire. Civilization was rapidly introduced; great military roads were constructed through the Belgian forests and marshes, connecting the different towns, and along their course villages were built and farms developed. Tongres and Tournai became entirely Romanized cities, where splendid monuments were built; remains of these are still to be found today. Farms were laid out and country houses were erected according to Roman pattern, with such changes as were imposed by the rigors of the northern climate. The Belgians adopted Roman manners and customs and the Latin language: they became Gallo-Romans, and even the national gods were renamed with Roman names.

If Belgium shared the splendor and the civilization of the Roman Empire, it shared also the disastrous days of its decline. There came a time when the Empire, once so strong, but now growing weaker and weaker, was quite unable to resist the hordes of barbarians, which, coming from the dark forests of Germany, threatened the rich provinces of Gaul, and Italy itself, with invasion. From the third century on, Franks and Alamans devastated Gaul and left the wealthy territories covered with ruins. The emperors did not succeed in expelling the Franks from the country: those tribes of Teutonic race were allowed to remain in the northern parts of Belgium, Flanders and Campine,[4] and became soldiers of the Empire. They early became dissatisfied with the territory allotted to them and resumed their march southward, conquering the whole of Belgium. The year 406 witnessed a terrible catastrophe. The Teutons, driven out of their country by the invasion of the Huns, burst like a hurricane upon the unfortunate provinces of Belgium, burned and devastated everything on their march, destroyed Tongres and Tournai, and finally, swarming over the Alps and the Pyrennees, invaded both Italy and Spain. After their passage, Belgium was left undefended by the Roman legions, recalled to defend Italy itself, and the Franks of Flanders and Campine occupied the abandoned territory without difficulty.

The conquest by the Franks is an important event in Belgian history. Indeed, it is from the fifth century that the bilingualism and the ethnographical dualism of Belgium may be said to date. The Franks, composed of two tribes, the Salians and the Ripuarians, advanced from the north and the east into Belgium and occupied the country in such a way that the actual provinces of Flanders, Antwerp, Limburg, the larger part of Brabant, and Liège fell into their power. Farther south they did not enter Belgium: their march was stopped by a dense and extended forest which, in Southwestern and Central Belgium, constituted the continuation of the forests of the Ardennes. The forest in question was called Sylva Carbonaria, “Coal Wood,” and covered the largest part of the actual province of Hainaut, the seat of the modern Belgian coal industry. Behind the curtain of that forest the oldest inhabitants of the country, the Gallo-Romans, remained free from oppression by the invaders and retained their Latin culture and civilization. So Belgium was separated by the Sylva Carbonaria into two quite distinct parts: the northern part, occupied by the Franks, with their Teutonic culture and civilization; the southern part, occupied by the Gallo-Romans. A line was thus drawn dividing the Belgian people, and an ethnical and linguistic duality, destined to remain for centuries one of the main characteristics of the country, was established. Indeed, the Walloons[5] of today are the descendants of the old Gallo-Romans from behind the limits of the Sylva Carbonaria, and the Flemings of Northern Belgium are the descendants of the Franks. This line drawn in the fifth century has undergone little change in the course of ages and, although the famous coal wood disappeared many centuries ago, the separation between Walloons and Flemings has remained more or less apparent down to the present. In this case the Sylva Carbonaria played a part like that of the Alps in the case of the Romanches and the Italians of the Tessino, and that of the hills of Wales and Cornwall in the case of the Britons of England.