BELGIUMHistory
ONE
For the story of the primitive inhabitants of Belgium, we must consult the chronicles of the Belgae, a Gallic race extolled for their bravery by Julius Caesar, half a century before the birth of Christ. Long before the Romans came, the fair land bounded by the Atlantic, the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees was occupied by the Gauls, who were called in their own language, “Celts.” Gaul, divided into three parts, was inhabited in the north by the Belgae; in the middle region by the Celts, or Gauls proper; and in the south by the Aquitani. This ancient race remained under the Roman yoke for more than five centuries. Meantime, a Frankish tribe came from across the Rhine to occupy what we know as the Flemish Plain. The western part of what was called Belgium in that day (and included the land known to us as Holland) was ceded to France; eastern provinces fell to Germany, and for three hundred years comprised the duchy of Lower Alsace. The Province of Liège, on the eastern border, existed for nearly a thousand years as a possession of the bishop-princes of the Holy Roman (or German-Roman) Empire, which began with Charlemagne in the year 800.
The hereditary principalities of Flanders, Hainaut, Artois, Namur, Brabant, Limburg, Antwerp and Malines were established in the Middle Ages. The geographical divisions of these feudal states, with the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, were subjected to little change throughout succeeding centuries, and form the framework of the present-day kingdom of Belgium. When we read the romantic story of the Belgian countships, duchies and baronies, we discover how large a part their knights played in the chivalrous enterprises of Europe. The “Low Countries,” of which Belgium was the most important, were represented in the Crusades by such zealous warriors as Godfrey of Bouillon, Marquis of Antwerp, and that Count of Flanders who became the first King of Jerusalem. Another Count of Flanders, Baldwin IX, was crowned Emperor of the East when the Crusaders entered Constantinople in 1204.
The rise of Belgian cities dates from the founding of the cloth markets in the tenth century. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, hundreds of trading vessels entered Flemish ports, carrying away carpets, tapestries, cannon, lace, silks, linens, embroideries and metal-ware. Charles the Fifth, who was very vain of his Belgian possessions, boasted to Francis the First, of France, that he “could put Paris inside his Ghent.” The French word for glove isgant: the pun is obvious. In the sixteenth century Ghent surpassed London in population and trade. Belgian cities were supreme in Europe. Belgian provinces were at the zenith of their prosperity.
Chroniclers of Belgian history divide the period between 1555 and 1830 into six sections: the devastating reign of Philip Second of Spain; the more beneficent and independent reign of Philip’s daughter and her husband, Archduke Albert; the renewal of direct Spanish rule; Austrian rule; French rule; and Dutch rule. For more than a century most of Europe’s battles were fought on Belgian soil. “The Netherlands,” a writer declared in 1642, “have been for many years the very cock-pit of Christendom, the school of arms and rendezvous of adventurous spirits.”
The battledore of war drove Belgium, the shuttlecock, to Spain, then to Austria, to France, and back to Austria again. At the end of the French Revolution all the provinces, including Liège, became part of France. Under the Republic and during the reign of Napoleon I., Belgium enjoyed a period of comparative peace. In 1814, against the will of the people, their land was ceded to the Dutch by the Congress of Vienna. By the Revolution of 1830, Belgium became an independent nation. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was elected the first King. The perpetual neutrality of Belgium was insured by the leading powers of Europe, though the people would have resisted this agreement if the will of England and Prussia had not prevailed to make the war-torn territory a bulwark against France.
Leopold I. was succeeded in 1865 by Leopold II., who advanced the industrial status of the country, and brought about the annexation of the Congo Free State, in Africa. Albert, son of this monarch’s brother, came to the throne in 1909.
Though its foundations as an independent nation were several times threatened, the neutrality of the kingdom was preserved until the momentous year 1914, when the treaty executed eighty-three years before was contemptuously regarded by the Germans as but “a scrap of paper.” Once more, Belgium became the “cock-pit of Europe,” and for four years suffered the ravages of the most ruthless war in history. The King and Queen, driven out of Brussels by the invasion of the Teutonic hordes, took refuge in La Panne, a village just north of the French boundary. By the treaty of Versailles the Belgian frontiers were again restored. The inhabitants of a country proverbially industrious are now making commercial and agricultural history, undoing as far as possible the work of the Hun.
WRITTEN FOR THE MENTOR BY RUTH KEDZIE WOODILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 8, No. 3, SERIAL No. 199COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.
THE PALACE OF JUSTICE, BRUSSELS
THE PALACE OF JUSTICE, BRUSSELS