“Louvain, thou wast built on my foundations, spirit of my spirit, heart of my heart.”
Scholars began to pour into the town, however, to glean what learning they could from the old parchments and books which its castles contained. In 1423 Duke John IV of Brabant founded Louvain University. Students flocked there from all over the world. In the sixteenth century it had 4,000 students and forty-three colleges.
The library occupied a large room with fine wood panels, carved in intricate designs. It held 150,000 volumes and thousands of manuscripts, valuable beyond price. It contained a colossal group representing a scene from the Flood, sculptured by Geerts in 1839.
One block to the north of the university is the Grande Place, on which faced the Hôtel de Ville, one of the finest examples of the late Gothic style of architecture in Europe. It surpassed the town halls of Bruges, Brussels, and Ghent in elegance of detail and harmony of design. It was erected in 1448 by Mathieu de Layens, and it was from the upper windows of this building that thirteen magistrates of noble birth were hurled to their death on the spears of the populace in the streets below during the weavers’ uprising.
Across the Grande Place stood the church of St. Pierre, a magnificent type of the Gothic style built on a cruciform plan and flanked by chapels holding reliquaries of the saints, life-sized wooden figures, and priceless carvings and paintings. There might have been seen the works of Van Papenhoven, Roger van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, and De Layens.
REDUCED TO A HEAP OF ASHES
The notification of the sacking of Louvain was contained in the notice issued by the British Press Bureau on Friday, August 28, 1914, which read as follows: “On Tuesday evening a German corps, after receiving a check, withdrew in disorder into the town of Louvain. A German guard at the entrance to the town mistook the nature of this incursion and fired on their routed fellow-countrymen, mistaking them for Belgians. In spite of all denials from the authorities the Germans, in order to cover their mistake, pretended that it was the inhabitants who had fired on them, whereas the inhabitants, including the police, had been disarmed more than a week before. Without inquiry and without listening to any protests the German commander-in-chief announced that the town would be immediately destroyed. The inhabitants were ordered to leave their dwellings; a party of the men were made prisoners and the women and children put into trains, the destination of which is unknown. Soldiers furnished with bombs set fire to all parts of the town. The splendid church of St. Pierre, the University buildings, the library, and the scientific establishment were delivered to the flames. Several notable citizens were shot. A town of 45,000 inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.”
PITILESS DESTRUCTION AS TOLD BY TOWN TREASURER
The town treasurer of Louvain, who managed to escape from the sacked city, gave in the London Times the following account of the destruction: