Louis made war against Brabant, lost, but regained Malines, which he had sold to his father-in-law of Brabant, and then turned his attention to a final suppression of Ghent, the last stronghold of the declining democracy of Flanders. It was in 1279 that Bruges asked for a canal to the Lys to make amends for the silting up of her only outlet to the sea. Ghent protested, fearing loss of her own trade, and took up arms when Louis granted the canal. The “White Hoods” defeated the forces sent against them, whereupon the fickle burgers of Bruges and Ypres went over to their side and long, hard fighting followed, until Louis found himself besieged in Audenaarde by some 60,000 “White Hoods” and was only saved by the intervention of his son-in-law Charles of Burgundy. Retreating to France, with headquarters at Lille, he reorganised his forces, renewed the attack, captured Ypres, and, one after the other, all the cities of Flanders except Ghent, to which he laid siege. At this last crisis in its fortunes Ghent turned to Philip, son of Jacques van Artevelde, who took command, organised a force of 5,000 men, led them against Count Louis’ army of 40,000, attacked near Bruges, and defeated it utterly, Louis escaping only in the clothes of his servant. Bruges was occupied and its walls destroyed, Ypres and Courtrai joined in with Ghent, and Bruges itself turned against its count.
The issue was now fairly joined between commons and knights; Louis de Mâle made his cause that of order and the nobility against anarchy and the proletariat, the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy joined him, and under Oliver, constable of France, 80,000 men, amongst whom no communal levies were admitted, marched on Ghent and its allies. Against this force Philip van Artevelde mustered 40,000 men who advanced to the attack with a mad confidence born of their recent victory over Louis. In a thick fog they hurled themselves in a solid body on the centre of the enemy, broke it, saw victory before them, and then, the fog lifting, found themselves flanked on both sides by the constable’s horse, and abandoned themselves to a panic that ended in the slaughter of more than half their number, including Van Artevelde himself, whose brief day of success and glory had lasted exactly eleven months.
The French sacked Courtrai and went home, whereupon Ghent again took heart of hope, and, aided by Henry Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, with 3,000 men, defied Louis and laid siege to Ypres, which was relieved by the returning French, and a truce was finally signed at Calais.
It was the end of the democratic communes, not only in Flanders but in Brabant, where Duke Wenceslas at the same time had defeated the communes at Louvain, and as well in France, where the growing spirit of communal
THE QUAI AUX HERBES, GHENT
independence was wiped out by a king who had found in Flanders the proof that this cannot co-exist with a strong and centralised monarchy.
Already industrial decline had set in; the country had been harried by French armies and by civil wars, many had gone overseas to England to establish there a rival industry that slowly sapped the prosperity of Flanders and Brabant. The Black Death had decimated the remaining population, and Bruges, Courtrai, Ypres, indeed nearly all the great towns but Ghent, slowly lost their population until hardly a tenth was left. Still a large degree of prosperity remained, and wealth was as much desired and as successfully attained as before, only within narrower lines and by a far smaller number of people.