Lovanium doctis, gaudet Mechlinia stultis.[15]
With the abdication of Charles V, that most remarkable incident in the history of kings, which took place in the church of St. Gudule at Brussels, and the accession of Philip II, arose the reign of terror in the Netherlands, when Alva and his bloodhounds ravaged Flanders, and their successors, for twenty years, rendered her cities abattoirs of Europe.
In these events, Ghent took a prominent part, and the siege of her citadel, which was garrisoned by the Spaniards, affords the noble story of its defence till reduced by famine, when the Flemish, on its surrender, discovered that its heroic resistance had been the work of a woman, Madame Mondragon, the wife of the commandant, who, in the absence of her husband, had assumed his command, and capitulated only when hunger and disease had reduced her little garrison to one hundred and fifty souls, including herself and her children. Philip, weary of the war, and assured of the loss of Holland, which had adopted its liberator, the Prince of Orange, as its sovereign, compromised in some degree with the Flemish, by separating their country from the crown of Spain, and conferring it on his daughter, Isabella, by whose marriage with Albert, it became again united to the house of Austria, under whose dominion it remained, with the exception of its brief occupation by Louis XIV previous to the treaty of Utrecht, till incorporated with the French republic in 1794, and subsequently annexed to Holland in February 1815.
The streets of Ghent are full of monuments and reminiscences of these stormy and singular times. In a small triangular place, called the Toad’s-corner (Padden hoek), stood the house of the elder Artevelde and the scene of his murder; that which has been erected upon the spot, bears an inscription on its front:—“ICI PERIT VICTIME D’UNE FACTION, LE XXVII JUILLET MCCCXXXXV, JACQUES VON ARTAVELDE QUI ELEVA LES COMMUNES DE FLANDRE A UNE HAUTE PROSPERITÉ.”
In the Hôtel de Ville, one of the enormous edifices of the period, in Moresco gothic architecture, the celebrated declaration, called “the Pacification of Ghent,” by which the states of the Netherlands formed their federation to resist the tyrannous bigotry of Philip II, was signed by the representatives of Holland and Belgium in 1576.
Close by it stands the belfry from which Charles V directed the removal of the pride of the burghers, their ponderous bell Roland, which, by turns, sounded the tocsin of revolt, or chimed in the carillon of loyalty; the tradition says it was of such dimensions as to weigh six tons, and was encircled by an inscription:—
Mynen naem is Roland—als ick clippe dan is’t brandt
Al sick luyde, dan is’t storm in Vlaenderlande.
“When I ring, there is fire; when I toll, there is a tempest in Flanders.”
And many a stormy reveille it must have pealed over the hive of turbulent craftsmen who swarmed around its base.