Heart of Europe

by Ralph Adams Cram

Offsetting the gains were corresponding losses. Successful industry, through group action, together with the consequent development of the town unit, resulted in a general loss of any national or racial spirit. The interests of each man were those of his guild or town, and during the entire Middle Ages there was the most kaleidoscopic grouping and regrouping of towns and provinces, now against the Empire, now against

ST. BAVON’S TOWER, GHENT

France, Burgundy, England, now against each other or some count or duke working in his turn for dynastic or political dominance. Another cause of dissension was the complicated absurdity of feudal tenure, whereby the French-speaking people of Brabant and Lorraine were united to the Empire, the Flemings to France, while, as happened in the case of the Count of Flanders, a prince might be one of the Twelve Peers of France, and a vassal of the King, and yet be vassal to the Emperor for portions of his land. The process of progressive unification which was taking place elsewhere was here reversed, and by the end of the twelfth century Brabant had been broken up into five counties, while as far as the Seine were small and involved feudal domains and bishoprics, such as Hainault, Vermandois, Ponthièvre, Amiens, Reims, Coucy, Beauvais.

Flanders retained a certain unstable unity, and against this Philip Augustus of France set himself in his comprehensive policy of unification; after his first invasion Ferrand of Portugal, who had married the heiress of the last Baldwin of Flanders and Hainault, took the lead in forming an alliance with England and the Empire for the crushing of France and the division of the kingdom. Bouvines saw the ending of the ambitious plot, and as well the beginnings of modern France. Later came the League of Grammont and the second attempt to destroy France, which failed also; but at the battle of Courtrai by the Lys, the Flemish army of 25,000 utterly defeated a French force of double the number, with the loss of the proudest blood in France. A thousand knights fell, with 20,000 squires and men-at-arms, and in the Church of Our Lady of Courtrai, 700 gold spurs, from the heels of dead knights, were hung to the glory of the great victory.

So through the thirteenth century incessant fighting went on both in Flanders and Brabant, and in the great bishopric of Liége, the net result being the complete downfall of feudalism in advance of the rest of Europe and the solidifying of the popular passion for personal liberty and self-government.

The fourteenth century was the golden age of the communes and as well of renewed resistance to the continuous encroachments of France, when the brief period of the commercial alliance with England under Edward III came to an end. This English alliance, prompted by both commercial and political considerations, had been the dream of the first Van Artevelde, Jacques by name, the leader of the weavers of Ghent. For nine years he had laboured for the interests of his fellow guildsmen and Ghentois, supporting King Edward III in his claims on the crown of France, plotting and planning to preserve the independence of Flanders. He fell a victim, however, to the spirit of irresponsible faction which already had been the inevitable outcome of the democratic, socialistic, and selfishly greedy elements inherent in an unhampered guild system, and was murdered by his own followers in the streets of Ghent.

In the meantime Louis de Mâle, had become Count of Flanders, in succession to his father, Louis de Nevers, while Wenceslas of Luxembourg, son of the King of Bohemia, who had married one of the daughters of John III, became Duke of Brabant. Here, as in Flanders, the various guilds had gained a control that was periodically contested by the nobles, particularly in Louvain, where the disorders continued for twenty years. In the end the cities were defeated, for they had used their power ill, determining their action by superhuman cruelty and greed, oppressing the weaker communes whenever they threatened their trade, fighting amongst themselves, splitting up into factions, and vacillating between sudden enthusiasms and corresponding treachery. Already the tendency was setting in away from the mediæval looseness, mobility, and even democracy in government, and toward that centralisation coupled with autocracy which was to be the contribution of the Renaissance to the science of government and was to end in the absolutism of Henry VIII, Philip of Spain, and Louis XIV. Even if the guilds had shown a high standard of morals and of statesmanship, if the communes had been truly patriotic and national in their aims and methods, they could hardly have stood against a tendency already clearly defined and marking the new era, now coming to birth, as their high beginnings had marked that already drawing to its close.