[Ill.u.s.tration: A FLEMISH YOUNG WOMAN]

When Chatillon rode up to the walls of Bruges and demanded entrance the magistrates agreed to open the gates, on condition that he brought with him only 300 men-at-arms. But he broke his word, and the town was entered by 2,000 knights, whose haughty looks and threatening language convinced the people that treachery was intended.

It was whispered in the Market-Place that the waggons which rumbled over the drawbridges carried ropes with which the Clauwerts who had remained in the town were to be hanged; that there was to be a general ma.s.sacre, in which not even the women and children would be spared; and that the Frenchmen never unbuckled their swords or took off their armour, but were ready to begin the slaughter at any moment. It was a day of terror in Bruges, and when evening came some of the burghers slipped out, made their way to Damme, and told De Coninck what was pa.s.sing in the town.

That night Chatillon gave a feast to his chief officers, and amongst his guests was Pierre Flotte, Chancellor of France, perhaps the ablest of those jurists by whose evil councils Philip the Fair was encouraged in the ideas of autocracy which led him to make the setting up of a despotism the policy of his whole life. With Flotte--'that Belial,' as Pope Boniface VIII. once called him--and the rest, Chatillon sat revelling till a late hour. The night wore on; De Chatillon's party broke up, and went to rest; the weary sentinels were half asleep at their posts; and soon all Bruges was buried in silence. Here and there lights twinkled in some of the guild-houses, where a few of the burghers sat anxiously waiting for what the morrow might bring forth, while others went to the ramparts on the north, and strained their eyes to see if help was coming from Damme.

At early dawn--it was Friday, May 18, 1302--the watchers on the ramparts saw a host of armed men rapidly approaching the town. They were divided into two parties, one of which, led by De Coninck, made for the Porte Ste. Croix, while the other, under Breidel, marched to the Porte de Damme, a gateway which no longer exists, but which was then one of the most important entrances, being that by which travellers came from Damme and Sluis. Messengers from the ramparts ran swiftly through the streets, in which daylight was now beginning to appear, and spread the news from house to house. Silently the burghers took their swords and pikes, left their homes, and gathered in the Market-Place and near the houses in which the French were sleeping. The French slept on till, all of a sudden, they were wakened by the tramp of feet, the clash of arms, and shouts of 'Flanders for the Lion!' Breidel had led his men into the town, and they were rushing through the streets to where Chatillon had taken up his quarters, while De Coninck, having pa.s.sed through the Porte Ste. Croix, was marching to the Bourg. The Frenchmen, bewildered, surprised, and only half awake, ran out into the streets. The Flemings were shouting 'Schilt ende Vriendt! Schilt ende Vriendt!'[*] and every man who could not p.r.o.nounce these words was known to be a Frenchman, and slain upon the spot.

Some fled to the gates; but at every gate they found a band of guards, who called out 'Schilt ende Vriendt!' and put them to the sword.

[Footnote *: 'Shield and Friend!']

All that summer's morning, and on throughout the day, the ma.s.sacre continued. Old men, women, and children hurled stones from the roofs and windows down upon the enemy. Breidel, a man of great strength, killed many with his own hand, and those whom he wounded were beaten to death where they fell by the apprentices with their iron clubs. In the Market-Place, close to where the monument to De Coninck and Breidel stands, a party of soldiers, under a gallant French knight, Gauthier de Sapignies, made a stand; but they were overpowered and slaughtered to the last man. Chatillon tried to rally his forces, but the surprise had been too complete, and, disguising himself in the ca.s.sock of a priest, he hid, in company with Chancellor Flotte, till it was dark, when they managed to escape from the town. By this time the carnage had ceased; the walls of the houses and the gutters ran with blood; and the burghers of Bruges had done their work so thoroughly that 2,000 Frenchmen lay dead upon the streets.

But the final reckoning with France was yet to come. Then Chatillon reached Paris and told his master the direful story of the Bruges Matins, Philip swore revenge; and a few weeks later an army 40,000 strong invaded Flanders, under the Comte d'Artois, with whom rode also Chatillon, Flotte, and many n.o.bles of France. The Flemings went to meet them--not only the burghers of Bruges, led by De Coninck and Breidel, marching under the banners of their guilds, but men from every part of Flanders--and on July 11, near Courtrai, the Battle of the Golden Spurs was fought.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FLEMISH BURGHER]

The ground was marshy, with a stream and pools of water between the two armies; and just as the Scots at Bannockburn, twelve years afterwards, prepared pitfalls for the heavy cavalry of England, so the Flemings laid a trap for the French knights by cutting down brushwood and covering the water. The hors.e.m.e.n, clad in c.u.mbrous armour, charged, the brushwood gave way, and most of them sank into the water. The Comte d'Artois got clear, but was beaten to the ground and killed. The Chancellor Flotte, who had boasted that he would bring the people of Bruges to their knees, was trampled to death. Chatillon died too; and when, at last, a long day's fighting came to an end, the Flemings had gained a complete victory. By this battle, which took its name from the thousands of golden spurs which were torn from the French knights who fell, the victors secured--for a time, at least--the liberty of their country, and the memory of it was for many a day to Flanders what the memory of Bannockburn was to Scotland, or of Morgarten to Switzerland.

DAMME--THE SEA-FIGHT AT SLUIS--SPLENDOUR OF BRUGES IN THE MIDDLE AGES--THE FALL AND LOSS OF TRADE

CHAPTER V

DAMME--THE SEA-FIGHT AT SLUIS--SPLENDOUR OF BRUGES IN THE MIDDLE AGES--THE FALL AND LOSS OF TRADE

Damme, where the patriots mustered on the eve of the Bruges Matins, is within a short hour's stroll from the east end of the town.

The Roya, which disappears from view, as we have already seen, opposite the Quai du Rosaire, emerges from its hidden course at the west end of the Quai du Miroir, where the statue of Jan van Eyck stands near the door of the building now used as a public library. This building was once the Customs House of Bruges, conveniently situated in the neighbourhood of the Market-Place, and on the side of the Roya, which thence stretches eastwards between the Quai du Miroir and the Quai Spinola for a few hundred yards, and then turns sharply to the north, and continues between the Quai Long and the Quai de la Potterie, which are built in rambling fashion on either side of the water. Some of the houses are old, others of no earlier date, apparently, than the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries; some large and well preserved, and some mere cottages, half ruinous, with low gables and faded yellow fronts, huddled together on the rough causeway, alongside of which are moored ca.n.a.l-boats with brown hulls and deck-houses gay with white and green paint. At the end of the Quai de la Potterie is the modern Ba.s.sin de Commerce, in which the Roya loses itself, the harbour for the barges and small steamers which come by the ca.n.a.l connecting Ostend with Bruges and Ghent; and near this was, in ancient days, the Porte de Damme, through which Breidel and his followers burst on that fateful morning in May 600 years ago.

To the right of the Ba.s.sin a broad ca.n.a.l, constructed by Napoleon in 1810, extends in a straight line eastwards, contained within d.y.k.es which raise it above a wide expanse of level meadow-lands intersected by ditches, and dotted here and there by the white-walled cottages with red roofs and green outside shutters which are so typical of Flemish scenery. About two miles out of Bruges one comes in sight of a windmill perched on a slope at the side of the ca.n.a.l, a square church-tower, a few houses, and some gra.s.sy mounds, which were once strong fortifications. Even the historical imagination, which everyone who walks round Bruges must carry with him, is hardly equal to realizing that this was once a bustling seaport, with a harbour in which more than a hundred merchant ships, laden with produce from all parts of the world, were sometimes lying at the same time. In those busy times Damme, they say, contained 50,000 inhabitants; now there are only about 1,100.

Beyond Damme the ca.n.a.l winds on through the same flat landscape, low-lying, water-logged, with small farmhouses and scanty trees, and in the distance, on the few patches of higher ground, the churches of Oostkerke and Westcapelle. At last, soon after pa.s.sing the Dutch frontier, the ca.n.a.l ends in a little dock with gray, lichen-covered sides; and this is Sluis, a dull place, with a few narrow streets, a market-place, two churches, and a belfry of the fourteenth century.

It is quite inland now, miles from the salt water; and from the high ramparts which still surround it the view extends to the north across broad green fields, covering what was once the bed of the sea, in the days when the tide ebbed and flowed in the channel of the Zwijn, over which ships pa.s.sed sailing on their way to Bruges.

But any English traveller who, having gone a little way out of the beaten track of summer tourists, may chance to mount the ramparts, and look down upon the fields which stretch away to the sh.o.r.es of the North Sea and the estuary of the Scheldt, and inland beyond Damme to the Belfry and the spires of Bruges, is gazing on the scene of a great event in the naval history of England.

Here, on what is now dry land, on the morning of June 24, 1340, 800 ships of war, full of armed men--35,000 of them--were drawn up in line of battle; and further out to sea, beyond the entrance of the Zwijn, the newly-risen sun was shining on the sails of another fleet which was man?uvring in the offing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRUGES. Qua du Miroir]

'In the cities of Flanders,' says Dr. Gardiner, 'had arisen manufacturing populations which supplied the countries round with the products of the loom. To the Ghent and Bruges of the Middle Ages England stood in the same relation as that which the Australian colonies hold to the Leeds and Bradford of our own day. The sheep which grazed over the wide, unenclosed pasture-lands of our island formed a great part of the wealth of England, and that wealth depended entirely on the flourishing trade with the Flemish towns in which English wool was converted into cloth.' When, therefore, Edward III. claimed the throne of France, and the Hundred Years' War began, it was of vital importance to the trade of Flanders and England that the merchants of the two countries should maintain friendly relations with each other. But Philip of Valois had persuaded the Count of Flanders, Louis de Nevers, to order the arrest of all the English in Flanders, and Edward had retaliated by arresting all the Flemings who were in England, and forbidding the export of English wool to Flanders. The result was that the weavers of Bruges and the other manufacturing towns of Flanders found themselves on the road to ruin; and, having no interest in the question at issue between the Kings of France and England, apart from its effect on their commercial prosperity, the burghers of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, under the leadership of the famous Jacob van Artevelde (antic.i.p.ating, as one of the modern historians of Bruges has noticed, what the Great Powers did for Belgium in 1830[*]), succeeded in securing, with the a.s.sent of Philip, the neutrality of Flanders.

The French King, however, did not keep faith with the Flemings, but proceeded to acts of aggression against them, and a league against France was formed between England and Flanders.

[Footnote *: Robinson, _Bruges, an Historical Sketch_, p. 107.]

In June, 1340, Edward, who was then in England, hearing that an immense number of French ships of war were at anchor in the Zwijn, set sail to give them battle with a squadron of 300 vessels. The English fleet anch.o.r.ed off the coast between Blankenberghe and Heyst on the evening of June 23, and from the top of the dunes the English scouts saw in the distance the masts of the French ships in the Zwijn.

As soon as there was light next morning, the English weighed anchor and sailed along the coast to the east; past lonely yellow sands, which have swarmed during recent years with workmen toiling at the construction of the immense harbour of See-Brugge, which is to be the future port of Bruges; past what was then the small fishing hamlet of Heyst; past a range of barren dunes, amongst which to-day Duinbergen, the latest of the Flemish watering-places, with its s.p.a.cious hotel and trim villas, is being laid out; past a waste of storm-swept sand and rushes, on which are now the digue of Knocke, a cl.u.s.ter of hotels and crowded lodging-houses, and a golf-course; and so onwards till they opened the mouth of the Zwijn, and saw the French ships crowding the entrance, 'their masts appearing to be like a great wood,' and beyond them the walls of Sluis rising from the wet sands left by the receding tide.

It was low-water, and while waiting for the turn of the tide the English fleet stood out to sea for some time, so that Nicholas Behuchet, the French Admiral, began to flatter himself that King Edward, finding himself so completely outnumbered, would not dare to risk fighting against such odds. The odds, indeed, were nearly three to one against the English seamen; but as soon as the tide began to flow they steered straight into the channel, and, Edward leading the van, came to close quarters, ship to ship. The famous archers of England, who six years later were to do such execution at Crecy, lined the bulwarks, and poured in a tempest of arrows so thick that men fell from the tops of the French ships like leaves before a storm. The first of the four lines in which Behuchet had drawn up his fleet was speedily broken, and the English, brandishing their swords and pikes, boarded the French ships, drove their crews overboard, and hoisted the flag of England. King Edward was wounded, and the issue may have been doubtful, when suddenly more ships, coming from the North of England, appeared in sight, and hordes of Flemings from all parts of Flanders, from the coast, and even from inland towns so far away as Ypres,[*] came swarming in boats to join in the attack. This decided the fate of the great battle, which continued till sunset. When it ended, the French fleet had ceased to exist, with the exception of a few ships which escaped when it was dark. The Flemings captured Behuchet, and hung him then and there. Nearly 30,000 of his men perished, many of whom were drowned while attempting to swim ash.o.r.e, or were clubbed to death by the Flemings who lined the beach, waiting to take vengeance on the invaders for having burned their homesteads and carried off their flocks. The English lost two ships and 4,000 men; but the victory was so complete that no courtier was bold enough to carry the news to King Philip, who did not know what had befallen his great fleet till the Court jester went to him, and said, 'Oh!

the English cowards! the English cowards! They had not the courage to jump into the sea as our n.o.ble Frenchmen did at Sluis.'

[Footnote *: Vereecke, _Histoire Militaire de la Ville d'Ypres_, p. 36.]

It is strange to think that Flemish peasants work, and cattle feed, and holiday visitors from Knocke, or Sluis, or Kadzand ramble about dry-shod where the waves were rolling in on that midsummer's morning, and that far beneath the gra.s.s the timbers of so many stout ships and the bones of so many valiant seamen have long since mouldered away. And it is also strange to think, when wandering along the ca.n.a.ls of Bruges, where now the swans glide silently about in the almost stagnant water which laps the bas.e.m.e.nts of the old houses, how in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ships of every nation carried in great bales of merchandise, and that rich traders stored them in warehouses and strong vaults, which are now mere coal-cellars, or the dark and empty haunts of the rats which swarm in the ca.n.a.ls.

'There is,' says Mr. Robinson, 'in the National Library at Paris a list of the kingdoms and cities which sent their produce to Bruges at that time. England sent wool, lead, tin, coal, and cheese; Ireland and Scotland, chiefly hides and wool; Denmark, pigs; Russia, Hungary, and Bohemia, large quant.i.ties of wax; Poland, gold and silver; Germany, wine; Liege, copper kettles; and Bulgaria, furs.' After naming many parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, that sent goods, the ma.n.u.script adds: 'And all the aforesaid realms and regions send their merchants with wares to Flanders, besides those who come from France, Poitou, and Gascony, and from the three islands of which we know not the names of their kingdoms.' The trade of Bruges was enormous. People flocked there from all quarters.

'Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies; Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.'

We read of 150 ships entering in one day, and of German merchants buying 2,600 pieces of cloth, made by Flemish weavers, in a morning's marketing. A citizen of Bruges was always at the head of the Hanseatic League, and maintained the rights of that vast commercial society under the t.i.tle of 'Comte de la Hanse.' Merchant princes, members of the Hanse, lived here in palaces. Money-changers grew rich.

Edward III. borrowed from the Bardi at Bruges on the security of the Crown jewels of England. Contracts of insurance against maritime risks were entered into from an early period, and the merchant shipping code which regulated traffic by sea was known as the 'Roles de Damme.'[*] There were twenty consulates at one time in Bruges, and the population of the town is said, though it is difficult to believe that this is not an exaggeration, to have been more than 200,000 before the middle of the fourteenth century.

[Footnote *: Gilliodts van Severen, _Bruges Ancienne et Moderne_, p. 14.]

Six years after the Battle of Sluis, Louis of Nevers was killed at Crecy, and his son, Louis of Maele, reigned in his stead as Count of Flanders. He was a Leliart to the core, and his reign of nearly forty years, one long struggle against the liberties of his people, witnessed the capture of Bruges by Philip van Artevelde, the invasion of Flanders by the French, the defeat of the Nationalists, and the death of Van Artevelde on the field of Roosebeke. Nevertheless, during this period and after it Bruges grew in beauty and in wealth.

The Hotel de Ville, without the grandeur of the Hotel de Ville at Brussels, but still a gem of mediaeval architecture, was built on the site of the old 'Ghiselhuis' of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer. Other n.o.ble buildings, rich in design and beautiful in all their outlines, and great mansions, with marble halls and ceilings of exquisitely carved woodwork, rose on every side; towers and pinnacles, shapely windows and graceful arches, overhung the waterways; luxury increased; in the homes of the n.o.bles and wealthy merchants were stores of precious stones, tapestries, silk, fine linen, cloth of gold; the churches and many buildings gleamed with gilded stone and tinted gla.s.s and brilliant frescoes. Art flourished as the town grew richer. The elder and the younger Van Eyck, Gerard David, and Memlinc, with many others before and after them, were attracted by its splendour, as modern painters have been attracted by its decay; and though the 'Adoration of the Immaculate Lamb' hangs in the choir of St. Bavon at Ghent, the genius which coloured that matchless altar-piece found its inspiration within the walls of Bruges.

The history of Bruges for many long years, especially under the rule of the House of Burgundy, was, in the midst of war, turmoil, and rebellion, the history of continuous progress. But all this prosperity depended on the sea. So long as the Zwijn remained open, neither war nor faction, not even the last great rising against the Archduke Maximilian, which drove away the foreign merchants, most of whom went to Antwerp, and so impoverished the town that no less than 5,000 houses were standing empty in the year 1405,[*]

could have entirely ruined Bruges. These disasters might have been retrieved if the channel of communication with Damme and Sluis had not been lost; but for a long time the condition of this important waterway had been the cause of grave anxiety to the people of Bruges.

The heavy volume of water which poured with every ebbing tide down the Scheldt between Flushing and Breskens swept past the island of Walcheren, and spread out into the North Sea and down the English Channel, leaving the mud it carried with it on the sands round the mouth of the Zwijn, which itself did not discharge a current strong enough to prevent the slow but sure formation of a bank across its entrance. Charters, moreover, had been granted to various persons, under which they drained the adjoining lands, and gradually reclaimed large portions from the sea. The channel, at no time very deep, became shallower, narrower, and more difficult of access, until at last, during the second half of the fifteenth century, the pa.s.sage between Sluis and Damme was navigable only by small ships. Soon the harbour at Damme was nearly choked up with sand. Many schemes were tried in the hope of preserving the Zwijn, but the sea-trade of Bruges dwindled away to a mere nothing, and finally disappeared before the middle of the sixteenth century.

[Footnote *: Gilliodts van Severen, p. 25.]

And so Bruges fell from greatness. There are still some traces of the ancient bed of the Zwijn amongst the fields near Coolkerke, a village a short distance to the north of Bruges--a broad ditch with broken banks, and large pools of slimy water lying desolate and forlorn in a wilderness of tangled bushes. These are now the only remains of the highway by which the 'deep-laden argosies'

used to enter in the days of old.

'BRUGES LA MORTE'

CHAPTER VI

'BRUGES LA MORTE'

They call it 'Bruges la Morte,' and at every turn there is something to remind us of the deadly blight which fell upon the city when its trade was lost. The faded colours, the timeworn brickwork, the indescribable look of decay which, even on the brightest morning, throws a shade of melancholy over the whole place, lead one to think of some aged dame, who has 'come down in the world,' wearing out the finery of better days. It is all very sad and pathetic, but strangely beautiful, and the painter never lived who could put on canvas the mellow tints with which Time has clothed these old walls, and thus veiled with tender hand the havoc it has made.

To stand on the bridge which crosses the ca.n.a.l at the corner of the Quai des Marbriers and the Quai Vert, where the pinnacles of the Palais du Franc and the roof of the Hotel de Ville, with the Belfry just showing above them, and dull red walls rising from the water, make up a unique picture of still-life, is to read a sermon in stones, an impressive lesson in history.

The loss of trade brought Bruges face to face with the 'question of the unemployed' in a very aggravated form. How to provide for the poor became a most serious problem, and so many of the people were reduced to living on charity that almshouses sprang up all over the town. G.o.d's Houses ('G.o.dshuisen') they called them, and call them still. They are to be found in all directions--quaint little places, planted down here and there, each with a small chapel of its own, with moss-grown roofs and dingy walls, and doors that open on to the uneven cobbles. Every stone of them spells pauperism.

The Church does much towards maintaining these shelters for the poor--perhaps too much, if it is true that there are 10,000 paupers in Bruges out of a population of about 55,000. There is a great deal of begging in the streets, and a sad lack of st.u.r.dy self-respect amongst the lower cla.s.s, which many think is caused by the system of doles, for which the Church is chiefly responsible. Bruges might not have been so picturesque to-day if her commerce had survived; but the beauty of a town is dearly purchased at the cost of such degradation and loss of personal independence.