CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER II.GHENT.

GHENT.

Bruges a cheap residence—Tables-d’Hôte, their influence upon society—Canal from Bruges to Ghent—Absence of country mansions—Gardens—Appearance ofGhent—M. Grenier and M. de Smet de Naeyer—TheConseil de Prud’hommes, its functions—Copyright of designs in Belgium—The linen trade of Belgium—Its importance—Great value of Belgian flax—Its cultivation—Revenue derived from it—Inferiority of British flax—Anxiety of the government for the trade in linen—Hand-spinners—Spinning by machinery—Société de la Lys—Flower gardens—The Casino—Export of flowers—General aspect of the city—Its early history—Vast wealth expended in buildings in the Belgium cities accounted for—Trading corporations—Turbulence of the people of Bruges and Ghent—Jacques van Artevelde—His death—Philip van Artevelde—Charles V.—Hisbon motsregarding Ghent—Latin distich, characteristic of the Flemish cities—Siege of Ghent, Madame Mondragon—House of the Arteveldes—Hôtel de Ville—The belfry and Roland—TheMarché de Vendredi—The great cannon of Ghent.

Brugeshas the reputation of being an economical residence for persons of limitedfortune, but I have reason to believe it does not fully merit it. I have understood, that at the termination of the war, a large mansion with every appurtenance, was to have been had for twenty-five pounds a year, but the concourse of English, and the influx of strangers, has now placed it, in this respect, pretty much upon a par with other places of the continent.

We dined at an excellent table-d’hôte at the Hôtel de Commerce, the only inconvenience being the early hour, 2 o’clock, but this, and even earlier hours for dinner, we became, not only reconciled to, but almost to prefer before leaving Germany. To the prevalence of these tables-d’hôte in every town and village of the continent, must, no doubt, be ascribed much of that social feeling and easy carriage which characterise the people of almost every country in Europe except our own. Being frequented by persons of all ranks, they lead to an assimilation of manners and of taste, which must be conducive to general refinement; and by an interchange of opinions and a diffusionof intelligence during the two or three hours of daily intercourse, they must contribute to a diffusion of information, and a better understanding between all classes.

In England, with our present sectional ideas and well defined grades, their introduction would be impossible, or if attempted, would only serve to make more distinct and compact the divisions into which society is parcelled out. And yet, how desirable would it be that some successful expedient could be discovered to produce a more frequent intercourse between these numerous castes, and to soften down these Hindoo prejudices, which are an unquestionable source of insecurity and weakness in England. It is to this, that in a great degree is to be ascribed the virulence of political jealousies, and the intense hatred of political parties. So long as wealth is constituted the great standard which is to adjust conventional precedence, affluence and intelligence must form one exclusive race, of whose feelings, habits, objects and desires, poverty and ignorance, as theycanknow nothing, may be easily persuaded to believe them hostile and destructive to their own; and even mediocrity of rank, as it stands aloof from either, will continue to look with alarm and jealousy upon both.

Were it practicable, by any salutary expedient, to enable the humble and laboriousto perceive for themselves, that the enjoyments and habits of the rich are not necessarily antagonist to their own, it would at once paralyze the strength of the demagogue and the incendiary. Religious bigotry and political malignity, like sulphur and nitre, are explosive only when combined with the charcoal of ignorance.

The railroad from Bruges to Ghent, runs for the entire way within view, and frequently along the bank of the canal which connects the two cities, and which occasionally presents greater beauty than one is prepared to expect; its waters folded over with the broad leaves of the water lilly, and variegated with its flowers, and those of the yellow bog bean; and its steep banks covered with the tassels of the floweringrush. The road passed through numerous copses, cultivated for firewood and planted with the oak, the chesnut and the weeping birch, with here and there broad patches of firs and hornbeam. But the beauty of the long lines of ornamental trees which enclose the road and sometimes border the canals in Flanders, is much impaired by the fashion of pollarding their tops for the purpose of fuel.

One misses, also, the numerous seats and mansions of the landed gentry to which we are familiarized in travelling in our own country, “the happy homes of England,” that constitute the rich luxuriance of a British landscape. But here, their erection is discountenanced by the law against primogeniture, by which the property of the individual is compulsorily divided amongst his heirs; and, at former periods, their absence may, perhaps, be ascribed to the insecurity of the country, perpetually visited with war and all its accessories, so that men found their only safety within the walls of their fortifiedtowns. In the neighbourhood of Ghent, however, they are more frequent than in any other district of Belgium which I have seen, an evidence, perhaps, of the more abundant wealth of its successful manufactures and merchants.

In the vicinity of all the villages and suburbs, each house is provided with a garden, richly stocked with flowers, (amongst which the multitude of dahlias was quite remarkable), and surrounded, not by a fence, but more frequently, in gardens of any extent, by a broad dyke of deep water, covered with lillies and aquatic plants. Every inch of ground seemed to have been subjected to the spade, and with a more than Chinese economy of the soil, made to contribute either to the decoration or the support of the owner’s dwelling.

After passing the hamlets of Bloemendael (the valley of flowers), and Aeltre, we came in sight of Ghent, situated on a considerable elevation above the water of the Scheldt (pronouncedSkeld), the Lys, the Lieve, and the Moer, which meetaround its base, and with their communicating branches and canals, divide the city into six-and-twenty islets, connected by upwards of eighty bridges of wood or stone. Its towers and steeples are discernible for some miles before it is reached, mingled with the tall chimnies of its numerous manufactories, which mark it as the Manchester of Belgium.

The court-yard of the station was filled with a crowd of omnibuses, fiacres andvigilantes, an improvement upon the cabs of London, and a drive of a few minutes brought us to the Cauter, or Place d’Armes, where, following the direction of the Hand-book, we stopped at the Hôtel de la Poste, a spacious house, kept by a M. Oldi, who, we were told, was son to a Baroness of the same name, who figured on the occasion of the trial of Queen Caroline.

My anxiety was to learn something of the actual state of manufacturing industryin Belgium, and Ghent, its principal seat and centre, presented the most favourable opportunities. Our introductions were numerous, but my chief obligations are toM. Grenier, one of the most intelligent and accomplished men of business whom it has been my good fortune to meet. He had been formerly an officer in the Imperial Guard of Napoleon, whilst Belgium was a province of the empire, but on the return of peace, in 1815, betook himself to pursuits of commerce, and is now connected with some of the most important manufacturing and trading establishments of Belgium. I owe a similar acknowledgment for the polite attentions ofM. de Smet de Naeyer,[6]an eminent manufacturer, and one of the officers of the Chamber of Commerce and of the Conseil de Prud’hommes at Ghent.

The latter body which is an institution, originally French, was introduced in Belgiumby a decree of Napoleon in 1810. It is a board formed jointly of employers and workmen, elected by annual sections, and discharging all its functions, not only gratuitously as regards the public, but without payment to its own members, beyond the mere expenditure of the office, and a moderate salary to a secretary. Its duties have reference to the adjustment of the mutual intercourse between workmen and their masters in every branch of manufacture, the prevention of combinations, the performance of contracts, the regulation of apprenticeship, and the effectual administration of the system oflivrets—a species of permanent diploma, which the artisan received on the termination of his pulpilage, signed by the master to whom he had been articled, and sealed by the President of the Conseil de Prud’hommes. Without the production of hislivret, no tradesman can be received into employment; and in it are entered all his successive discharges and acquittances with his various masters. The powers of fining and of forfeiture exercisedby the conseil, are summary up to a certain amount, and in cases of graver importance, there is a resort to the correctional police.

But the main functions of the Conseil de Prud’hommes are the prevention of any invasion of the peculiar rights of any manufacturer, or the counterfeit imitation of his particular marks; and especially the protection of the copyright of all designs and productions of art for the decoration of manufactures. With this view, every proprietor of an original design, whether for working in metals or on woven fabrics, is empowered to deposit a copy of it in the archives of the council, enveloped in a sealed cover, and signed by himself; and to receive in return a certificate of its enrolment, and the date of reception. At the same time, he is called upon to declare the length of time for which he wishes to secure to himself the exclusive right of its publication, whether for one, two, or three years, or for ever, and in either case, a trifling fee is demanded, in no instance exceedinga franc for each year the protection is claimed, or ten for a perpetuity.[7]In the event of any dispute as to originality or proprietorship, the officer of the council is authorized to break the seal, and his testimony is conclusive as to the date and circumstances of the deposit.

The effect of this simple and inexpensive tribunal has been found so thoroughly effectual, that the most equitable security has been established for designs of every description applicable to works of taste, and theintellectual propertyof a pattern has been as thoroughly vindicated to its inventor through the instrumentality of the register of the Prud’hommes, as hismaterial property, in the article on which it is to be impressed, is secured to him by the ordinary law. In fact, the whole operation of the institution at Ghent has proved so beneficial to manufactures universally, that by aprojet de loiof 1839, similar boards are about to be established in all the leadingtowns and cities, as Liege, Brussels, Courtrai, Antwerp, Louvain, Mons, Charleroi, Verviers, and the manufacturing districts, generally, throughout Belgium.

One of our first visits was to a mill for spinning linen yarn, recently constructed by a joint stock company, calledLa Société de la Lys, in honour, I presume, of the Flemish river on which it is situated, and which is celebrated on the continent for the extraordinary suitability of its waters for the preparation of flax. Belgium, from the remotest period, even, it is said, before the Christian era, has been celebrated for its manufacture of clothing of all descriptions. It was from Belgium that England derived her first knowledge of the weaving of wool; damask has been made there since the time of the Crusades, when the soldiers of Godfrey of Bouillon and of Count Baldwin, brought the art from Damascus; and to the present hour, the very name of “Holland” is synonymous with linen, and the cloth so called, has for centuries been woven principally in Flanders.

Under the government of Austria, the manufacture seems to have attained its acmé of prosperity in the Netherlands, her exports of linen, in 1784, amounting to 27,843,397 yards, whilst at the present moment, with all her increase of population and discoveries in machinery, she hardly surpasses thirty millions. Again, under the continental system of Napoleon, from 1805 to 1812, it attained a high degree of prosperity, which sensibly decreased after the events of 1814, when English produce came again into active competition with it.

The cultivation of flax is still, however, her staple employment, one acre in every eighty-six of the whole area of Belgium, being devoted to its growth. In peculiar districts, such as Courtrai and St. Nicolas, so much as one acre in twenty is given to it; and in the Pays de Waes, it amounts so high as one in ten. Every district of Belgium, in fact, yields flax, more or less, except Luxembourg and Limburg, where it has been attempted, but without success;but of the entire quantity produced, Flanders alone furnishes three-fourths, and the remaining provinces, one. The quality of the flax, too, seems, independently of local superiority in its cultivation, to be essentially dependent upon the nature of the soil in which it is sown. From that around Ghent, no process of tillage would be sufficient to raise the description suitable to more costly purposes; that of the Waloons yields the very coarsest qualities; Courtrai those whose strength is adapted for thread; and Tournai alone furnished the fine and delicate kinds, which serve for the manufacture of lace and cambric.

Of the quantity of dressed flax prepared in Belgium, calculated to amount to about eighteen millions of kilogrammes, five millions were annually exported to England and elsewhere, on an average of eight years, from 1830 to 1839. According to the returns of the Belgian custom-houses, the export has been as follows—from 1830 to 1839.

It is important to observe the steady increase of the English demand since 1834. The remainder is reserved for home manufacture into thread and cloth, and it is estimated by M. Briavionne, that the cultivation of this one article alone, combining the value of the raw material with the value given to it by preparation, in its various stages from flax to linen cloth, produces annually to Belgium, an income of 63,615,000 francs.[8]

Belgium possesses no source of national wealth at all to be put into comparisonwith this, involving as it does, the concentrated profits both of the raw material and its manufacture, and, at the present moment, the attention of the government and the energies of the nation are directed to its encouragement in every department, with an earnestness that well bespeaks their intimate sense of its importance.

Nor are the prudent anxieties of the Belgium ministry on this point without serious and just grounds. Their ability to enter into competition with England in the production of either yarn or linen cloth, arises solely from the fortunate circumstance to which I have just alluded, that not only do they themselves produce the raw material for their own manufactures, but it is they, who, likewise, supply it to their competitors, almost at their own price.Such is the superiority of Belgian flax, that whilst, in some instances, it has brought so high a price as £220 per ton, and generally ranges from £80 to £90; not more than £90 has in any instance that I ever heard of, been obtained forBritish, and its ordinary average does not exceed £50.

The elements of their trade are, therefore, two-fold, the growth of flax, and secondly, its conversion by machinery into yarn and cloth. In the latter alone, from the relative local circumstances of the two countries, it is utterly impossible that Belgium could successfully maintain the contest with England, with her inferior machinery, her more costly fuel, and her circumscribed sale; but aided by the other happy advantage of being enabled to supply herself with the raw material at the lowest possible rate, and her rivals at the highest, she is in possession of a position of the very last importance.

But, should any circumstance arise to alter this relative position, should England wisely apply herself to the promotion of such an improvement in the cultivation and dressing of her flax at home as would render it in quality equal to that for which she is now dependent for her supply from abroad—should India or her own coloniesbetake themselves to its production, or should some other country, adopting the processes of Belgium, supplant her in the market, and thus reduce her competition with England to a mere contest with machinery, the linen trade of Belgium could not by any possibility sustain the struggle, and her staple manufacture for centuries would pass, at once, into the hands of her rivals.

Conscious of their critical situation in this respect, the King of Holland, during his fifteen years’ administration of the Netherlands, bestowed a care upon the encouragement and improvement of their mechanical skill, which may have, perhaps, been carried to an unwise extreme; and with a similar anxiety for the maintenance of their ascendancy in the other department, the ministers of King Leopold have devoted a sedulous attention to the cultivation of flax; and the very week of my arrival at Ostend, a commission had just returned from England, whose inquiries had been specially directed to the question ofimposing restrictions upon its exportation.

Much of the uneasiness of the government upon this head, arises, at the present moment, from the necessity of promoting vigorously the spinning by machinery, and, at the same time, the difficulty of finding employment for the thousands who now maintain themselves by the old system of spinning by hand, and whom the successful introduction of the new process will deprive of their ordinary means of subsistence. Although this is one of those complaints to which we have long been familiarized in England, and which the people of this country have, at length, come to perceive is not amongst—

“Those ills that kings or laws can cause or cure,”

the alarm and perplexity of the Belgians, and their earnest expostulation on finding their employment suddenly withdrawn, have caused no little embarrassment to theirown government; and a formidable party, both in the country and in the House of Representatives, have been gravely consulting as to the best means of securing a continuance of their “ancient industry” to the hand-spinners at home, by restricting the export of flax to be spun by machinery abroad!

The practicability of this, and the propriety of imposing a duty upon all flax shipped for England, was understood to be the subject of inquiry by the commission despatched by the Chambers to England, which consisted of Count d’Hane, a member of the upper house, M. Couls, the representative for the great linen district of St. Nicolas, and M. Briavionne, a successful writer upon Belgian commerce, and one or two other gentlemen connected with the linen trade.

The application of machinery to the manufacture of linen yarn, though comparatively recent in its introduction into Belgium, has, nevertheless, made a surprising progress, and bids fair, if unimpeded, tomaintain a creditable rivalry with Great Britain. The offer by Napoleon, in 1810, of a reward of a million of francs for the discovery of a process by which linen could be spun into yarn with the same perfection as cotton, naturally gave a stimulus to all the artisans of the empire, and almost simultaneously with its promulgation, a manufacturer of Belgium, called Bawens, announced his application of the principle of spinning through water, which is now in universal use. The old system of dry spinning, however, still obtained and was persevered in till superseded, at a very recent period, by the invention of Bawens, improved by all the subsequent discoveries in England and France.

The seat of the manufacture, at present, is at Ghent and Liege, and is confined to a very few extensive establishments, projected by joint stock companies, or Sociétés Anonymes,[9]for the formation of which,there has latterly been almost a mania in Belgium. Four of these establishments, projected between 1837 and 1838, proposed to invest a capital amounting amongst the whole, to no less than fourteen millions of francs. One of them at Liege, perfected its intention and is now in action. A second, at Malines (Mechlin), was abandoned after the buildings had been erected, and the other two at Ghent, are still only in process of completion. Besides these, there is a third at Ghent, in the hands of an individual, calculated for 10,000 spindles.

That which we visited belonging toLa Société de la Lys, may be taken as a fairillustration of the progress which the art has made in Belgium, as the others are all constructed on similar models, and with the same apparatus in all respects. It was originally calculated for 15,000 spindles, but of these not more than one third are yet erected, and in motion, and but 5,000 others are in preparation. The steam engines were made in England, by Messrs. Hall, of Dartford, on the principle known as Wolf’s patent, which, using two cylinders, combines both a high and low pressure, and is wrought with one half to one third the fuel required for the engines, in ordinary use in England,[10]an object of vast importance in a country where coals are so expensive as theyare in Belgium.[11]The machinery is all made at the Phœnix works in Ghent, the preparatory portions of it are excellent, and exhibit all the recent English improvements, and in roving they use the new spiral frames. But the spinning rooms show the Belgian mechanics to be still much behind those of Leeds and Manchester, as evinced by the clumsiness and imperfect finish of the frames, although they were still producing excellent work; the yarn we saw being of good quality, but of a coarse description,and intended for home consumption, and for the thread-makers of Lisle. The quantity produced, per day, was quite equal to that of English spinners,[12]and their wages much the same as those paid in Ireland, and somewhat less than the English.[13]

On the whole, the linen trade of Belgium,notwithstanding its extensive preparation of machinery, and the extraordinary demand for its flax, must be regarded as in anything but a safe or a permanent position. In those stronger articles which can be made from flax of English growth, the English considerably undersell her already; an important trade is, at this moment, carried on in the north of Ireland in exporting linen goods to Germany, whence they were formerly imported into England, and whence they are still sent into Belgium, where the damask trade of Courtrai, which has been perpetually declining since 1815, is now, all but superseded by the weavers of Saxony and Herrnhut; and the tickens of Turnhout, by those woven from the strong thread of Brunswick.

The contemplated measure of the French government, to impose a heavy duty on the importation of linen-yarn, will, if persevered in, be most prejudicial to the spinners of Belgium, as more or less, it must inevitably diminish their consumption. On the other hand, as England herself may be said to grow no flax for herown manufacture, and that of Ireland is not only far inferior in quality to the Dutch and Belgian, but inadequate to her own consumption, and every year increasing in demand and rising in price,—so long as Great Britain is thus dependant upon her own rivals for a supply of the raw material to feed her machinery, at an expense of from 8 to 10 per cent, for freight and charges, in addition to its high first cost, and whilst she must, at the same time, compete with them in those continental markets, which are open to them both, the spinning mills of Belgium cannot but be regarded otherwise than as formidable opponents. Nor is this apprehension diminished by the fact, that Belgium, which a few years since had no machinery for spinning yarn, except what she obtained from other countries, or could smuggle from England at a serious cost, is now enabled to manufacture her own, and has all the minerals, metals, and fuel within herself, which combined with industry and skilled labour, are essential to bring it to perfection. For the present, the English manufacturer, has a protection in the cost ofhis machinery alone—the factory of theSociété de la Lyscost £80,000 to erect, which supposing its 10,000 spindles to be in action, would be £8 per spindle, and as only the one half of these are at present employed, the actual cost is sixteen pounds; whilst an extensive mill can be erected in Ireland for from £4 to £5, and in England for even less. The difference of interest upon such unequal investments, must be a formidable deduction from the actual profits of the Belgians.

We returned to our Hotel by a shady promenade along theCoupure, which connects the waters of the Lys with the canal of Bruges, the banks of which planted with a triple row of tall trees, form one of the most fashionable lounges and drives in Ghent. Opening upon it are the gardens of the Casino, a Grecian building of considerable extent, constructed in 1836 for the two botanical and musical societies of Ghent, and, in which, the one holds its concerts, and the other its spring and autumn exhibition of flowers. At the rear of the building is a large amphitheatre with seats cut fromthe mossy bank and planted with flowers, where theSociété de St. Cecilegive their Concerts d’Eté, which are held in the open air, in summer, and at which as many as six thousand persons have occasionally been accommodated.

In the rearing of flowers, Belgium and more especially Ghent, has outrivalled the ancient florists of Holland, the city is actually environed with gardens and green-houses, and those of the Botanical Society, are celebrated throughout Europe for their successful cultivation of the rarest exotics. At Ghent their sale has, in fact, become an important branch of trade; plants to the value of a million and a half of francs having been exported annually, on account of the gardeners in the vicinity; and it is no unusual thing to see in the rivers, vessels freighted entirely with Camellias, Azaleas, and Orange trees, which are sent to all parts of Europe, even to Russia by the florists of Ghent.

The general appearance of the city, without being highly picturesque, is to a stranger, of the most agreeable I rememberto have seen. It does not present in the mass of its houses and buildings, that uniform air of grave antiquity which belongs to those of Bruges, the greater majority of the streets having been often rebuilt and modernized, as well as from the effects of civic commotions, as to suit the exigencies of trade and manufactures, which, when they deserted the rest of Belgium, seem to have concentrated themselves here. Its modern houses are almost all constructed on the Italian model, with ampleportes-cochers, spacious court yards, lofty staircases, tall windows, and frequently frescoes and bas-reliefs, to decorate the exterior.[14]Almost every house is furnished with anespion, a small plate of looking-glass fixed outside the window, at such an angle, that all that is passing in the street is seen by those inside, without their appearing themselves.

Here and there upon the quays and in the narrower streets, there are to be found the gloomy old residences of the “Men of Ghent,” now converted into inns or ware-rooms, with their sharp tilted roofs, high stepped gables, abutting on the street, fantastic chimneys, and mullioned windows, sunk deep into the walls. And turning some sudden corner in a narrow passage obstructed by lumbering waggons, drawn by oxen, one finds himself in front of some huge old tower, or venerable belfry, covered with gothic sculpture, and stretching up to the sky till he has to bend back his head to descry the summit of it. One singular old building on the Quai aux Herbes, remarkable for its profusion of Saxon arches and stone carvings, was the Hall of the Watermen, whose turbulent insurrection under John Lyon, is detailed with quaint circumstantiality in the pages of Froissart. But in the main, the streets of Ghent are lively and attractive, and its squares, spacious and planted with trees, forming a striking contrast to the melancholybrick and mortar buildings, that compose the manufacturing towns of England. Here too, as in Manchester and Leeds, the population seem all alive and active, but instead of the serious and important earnestness which one sees in every countenance in Lancashire, the Gantois seems to go about his affairs with cheerfulness and alacrity, as if he was less employed on business than amusement. The canals are filled with heavily laden barges, and the quays with long narrow waggons of most primitive construction, into which they unload their cargoes; whilst the number of handsome private carriages, that one sees in every thoroughfare, bespeak, at once, the wealth and refinement of the population. The shops are exceedingly good though not particularly moderate in their charges, and I was somewhat surprised to see as an attraction on the sign boards at the doors of the drapers and modistes, the announcement thatScotchandEnglish goodswere to be had within. Altogether the combination of antique singularity with moderncomfort, commercial bustle, wealth, gaiety, cleanliness, and vivacity, which is to be seen at Ghent, cannot fail to strike the most hurried traveller, and I doubt much whether it is to be found in equal perfection, in any other city of the continent of equal extent.

Every quarter of the city exhibits traces of the former wealth of the burghers, and every building has some tradition characteristic of the fiery turbulence of this little municipal republic. Bruges and Ghent are, in this regard, by far the most interesting towns of Flanders. Brussels, Liege and Ypres, are all of more modern date and infinitively less historical importance, during the stormy period of the Flemish annals from the 12th to the 16th century. Ghent was a fortified town a thousand years ago, when its citadel was erected by Baldwin of the Iron Arm, but it was only with the rage for the Crusades, that the wealth and importance of the towns of the Low Countries arose; when the Seigneurs, in order to obtain funds to equip them for their expeditions to the Holy Land, released the inhabitantsof the towns from their vassalage, and sold to them the lands on which their cities were built, and all the rights of self government, privileges which subsequently assumed the form of a corporate constitution. Ghent thus obtained her independence from Philip of Alsace, in 1178, and for the first time secured the right of free assembly, the election of her own provosts, a common seal, and belfry, always an indispensable accompaniment of civic authority, and important in sounding the alarm and convoking the citizens upon every emergency.

It was in consequence of these momentous concessions, that whilst the lords of the soil and their agrarian followers were wasting their energies in distant war, or subsisting by rapine and violence against one another, the inhabitants of the towns, secured within their walls and fortified places, were enabled to devote themselves to manufactures and to commerce, and thus to concentrate in their own hands, the largest proportion, by far, of the monied wealth of the Netherlands.

But, coupled with their high privileges,there were also some restrictions, to which we of to-day are indebted for the vast and magnificent edifices which the burghers of these flourishing communities have left for our wonder and admiration. The rights accorded to them by their Seigneurs were rigidly confined to the limits of their own walls, no free burgher could purchase or hold landed estate beyond the circuit of his municipality; and thus, whilst driven to accumulate capital in the pursuit of trade and traffic, they were equally constrained to invest it, not in land, like the retired merchants of modern times, but in the construction of these vast palaces and private mansions, and in the decorations of their dwellings, and the adornment of their cities.

It is to this political circumstance of their position that we are to refer, in order to account for the extent and splendour of those ancient houses which we meet at every turning in Bruges and Ghent—for the costly carvings and sculptured decorations of their fronts and interiors, and for the quantity of paintings and ornaments in which they abound.

The accumulation of their municipal resources, too, required to be similarly disposed of, and was applied to the erection of their lofty belfries, the construction of those gigantic towers which are elevated on all their churches, and to the building of their town halls and hôtels-de-ville, whose magnitude and magnificence, are a matter, equally of admiration of the genius which designed, and astonishment at the wealth which was necessary to erect them.

As the towns increased in prosperity and wealth, money always sufficed to buy from their sovereigns fresh privileges and powers, and fresh accessions of territory to be added to their municipal districts, till, at length, the trades became so numerous as to enroll themselves in companies, half civil and half military, whilst all united to form those trading commandaries or Hansen, the spread of which, over the north-west of Germany, forms so remarkable a feature in the history of commerce and civilization. Foremost in the Netherlands in the race of prosperity was Ghent, which, within a century from its enfranchisement, by Philipof Alsace, rendered itself, in effect, the capital of Flanders, with an extent and importance even greater than the capital of France, whence Charles V subsequently ventured upon his bon mot, that he could put all Paris in hisglove“dans mon gant.”

But with this increase of prosperity, increased, also, the troubles and cares of these republican communities; their excessive wealth at once engendering internal rivalries and faction, and inviting foreign cupidity and invasion. “Never,” says Hallam, “did liberty wear a more unamiable aspect than among the burghers of the Netherlands, who abused the strength she gave them, by cruelty and insolence.” The entire history of Bruges and Ghent, but especially the latter, is, in fact, a series of wars, to repel the aggressions of France, or to suppress the turbulence and insurrectionary spirit of their own citizens. These were not the mere tumultuous skirmishes which have been dignified by the title ofwarsamongst the rival cities and states of northern Italy about the same period, and in which it not unfrequently happened thatno blood was spilt; but in the battles of Courtrai, Rosebeke and Everghem, the citizens could send 20 to 40,000 soldiers into the field, and conducted their hostilities almost upon the scale of modern warfare. At Courtrai, “the men of Ghent” carried off seven hundred golden spurs from the defeated nobles of France. When Charles VII was preparing to expel the English from Calais, Philip the Good was able to send him 40,000 men as a subsidy, of whom 16,000 were from Ghent alone.

Nor were theseinternalfeuds upon a minor scale. Jacques van Artevelde, the Masaniello of Flanders, and more generally known as “the Brewer of Ghent,” from his having joined the guild of that trade, from which he was afterwards chosen by fifty other corporations of tradesmen, as the head of each, was enabled to organize such an army of the city companies, as to render his alliance an object of importance to Edward III of England, when making his preparations for invading France.

Under this extraordinary “tribune ofthe people,” Ghent was enabled, virtually, to cast off its allegiance to the courts of Flanders, to elect Artevelde as their Ruwaert or Protector, and to bid defiance to their native sovereign, backed by all the power of France. Artevelde became the personal friend and counsellor of the English King, who sent ambassadors to his court, and entered into alliance with the city he commanded in conjunction with that of Bruges and Ypres. It was at the suggestion of Artevelde, that Edward quartered the arms of France and assumed the fleur de lis, which for so many centuries was borne upon the shield of England; and it was in the palace of the Flemish demagogue, that Queen Philippa gave birth to a son, whose name has made Ghent familiar in the annals of England:—

“Old John ofGaunt, time honoured Lancaster.”

The Ruwaert in honour of Philippa gave her name to his son, who, at a subsequent period, became the demagogue of Ghent, and who,

“Dire rebel though he was,Yet with a noble nature and great giftsWas he endowed: courage, discretion, wit,An equal temper and an ample soul,Rock bound and fortified against assaultsOf transitory passion: but belowBuilt on a surgeing subterranean fireThat stirred and lifted him to high attempts,So prompt and capable, and yet so calm.He nothing lacked in sovereignty but the right;Nothing in soldiership except good fortune.”

“Dire rebel though he was,

Yet with a noble nature and great gifts

Was he endowed: courage, discretion, wit,

An equal temper and an ample soul,

Rock bound and fortified against assaults

Of transitory passion: but below

Built on a surgeing subterranean fire

That stirred and lifted him to high attempts,

So prompt and capable, and yet so calm.

He nothing lacked in sovereignty but the right;

Nothing in soldiership except good fortune.”

Taylor’s Philip van Artevelde.

But the fate, like the fortune of Artevelde, was characteristic of the proverbial caprice and vacillations of republican popularity. After being for ten years or more, the idol of the people, he presumed to induce them to expel the Counts of Flanders from the succession, and to acknowledge the Black Prince, the son of his friend, as their sovereign in his stead; but his followers, startled at so bold a proposition, made a pretence for getting rid of their “protector,” and massacred Artevelde in his own house, which they burned to the ground, “Poor men raised him,” says Froissart, “and wicked men slew him.”

Thirty years after, when Flanders, bythe marriage of Margaret with Philip the Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, became united with that sovereignty, and the citizens were again at war amongst themselves, “the men of Ghent” elected Philip van Artevelde, godson of Queen Philippa, and her namesake, the son of their former favourite and victim, as their leader in their strifes with the burghers of Bruges, who were about to cut a canal from their city to Denys, which would have been injurious to the prosperity of Ghent, which had “the harvest of the river for her revenue,” when Philip defeated the army of Louis le Mael, entered Bruges in triumph, and carried off the Golden Dragon as large as an ox, which, till lately, surmounted the belfry of Ghent, and is said to have been brought home by the Flemings who followed Count Baldwin to Constantinople.

For sometime, in the heyday of good fortune,

“Van Artevelde in all things apedThe state and bearing of a sovereign prince;Had bailiffs, masters of the horse, receivers,A chamber of accompt, a hall of audience;Off gold and silver eat, was clad in robesOf scarlet furred with minever, gave feastsWith minstrelsy and dancing, night and day——”

“Van Artevelde in all things aped

The state and bearing of a sovereign prince;

Had bailiffs, masters of the horse, receivers,

A chamber of accompt, a hall of audience;

Off gold and silver eat, was clad in robes

Of scarlet furred with minever, gave feasts

With minstrelsy and dancing, night and day——”

But the power of France leagued with his native sovereign was irresistible, and at the battle of Rosebeke, he laid down, at once, his usurped authority and his life.

Under the Dukes of Burgundy, the annals of these remarkable military merchants is the same continued story of broils and battles, and the union of Flanders to Austria, by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy, only brought a fresh line of combatants into the Low Countries.

In 1500, Charles V, the grandson of this ominous alliance, was born at Ghent, in the old château of the Counts of Flanders, the remains of which are still to be seen in the Place de St. Pharailde, converted into a cotton factory, the lofty chimney of which now pours its volume of smoke above the cradle of a monarch who made it his boast, that “the sun never set upon his dominions.”

With the same fiery independence of their forefathers, the “men of Ghent,”resisted the despotism of the Emperor as sturdily as they had done the exactions of their Earls and Dukes; and it was after quelling one of these insurrections, that Charles, intent on devising a punishment for their contumacy, was advised by the Duke of Alva, the future Moloch of the Netherlands under Philip II, to raze it to its foundations, when Charles replied by pointing to its towers and palaces, and asking him in a repetition of his former witticism, “combien il croyait qu’il fallait de peaux (villes) d’Espagne, pour faire ungantde cette grandeur.”

Charles, however, exacted a punishment more humiliating, if not so savage as that contemplated by thebourreauof the church, by repealing all the charters of the city, dismounting their famous bell, Roland, fining the community, and compelling the ringleaders to supplicate his mercy in their shirts, with halters round their necks, a ceremony which is erroneously said to have been commemorated by the magistrates of Ghent continuing to wear the rope, as a part of their official costume, andwhich is still kept alive in the distich which enumerates the characteristics of the Flemish cities:—

Nobilibus Bruxella viris—Antuerpiæ nummisGandavum laqueis, formosis Brugia puellisLovanium doctis, gaudet Mechlinia stultis.[15]

Nobilibus Bruxella viris—Antuerpiæ nummis

Gandavum laqueis, formosis Brugia puellis

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, MadameMondragon, 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 Arteveldeand 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 theHôtel 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 bellRoland, 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:—

Back to Index Next