In reality Amman Cluting and his friends had not broken faith with John, but when they reached Brussels they found that the news of his arrival at Tervueren had preceded them and that the city was in a state of uproar. Kegel had been removed from the Porte de Louvain, the Regent had just ordered all the gates to be shut, and a meeting of the Grand Council was actually taking place in the Town Hall. Thither, then, the conspirators turned their horses' heads, and their arrival in the Council Chamber was the signal for a stormy scene. At first the magistrates of the Regent's faction hardened their hearts and stiffened their backs—no power on earth should persuade them to consent to the Duke's return, but their opponents were many and blustering, and they were weak-kneed and few. Presently they began to hesitate, and at last, when they accepted a compromise which was in reality a surrender, they flattered themselves that their firmness had saved the situation.
The meeting had lasted the best part of the day, and darkness was falling on the good town of Brussels when her aldermen, arrayed in robes of state, solemnly went forth to the great act of betrayal.
Wending their way by the Rue de la Montagne, Saint Gudule's, and the road which skirted the northern side of the park—then a great wood well stocked with game and extending right up to the ramparts—they presently reached the gate outside which John had been kicking his heels, as De Dynter says, for more
The Town Hall, Brussels.THE TOWN HALL, BRUSSELS.Click to view larger image.
THE TOWN HALL, BRUSSELS.
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than two hours, and in due course made known to him the result of their deliberations The Duke, they said, was free to enter the city provided he would limit his escort to a hundred and twenty men, amongst whom there must be no foreigner or no public enemy of the State. John passed his word, the gates were thrown open, a hundred and twenty knights rode in, and then the command rang out for the rest to follow. Some of the bystanders were for resistance, but the renegades succeeded in restraining them. Quick as thought the whole army dashed up to the Coudenberg, and presently the Count of Saint-Pol rode quietly off to Louvain.
Old Houses Near Saint Gudule's.OLD HOUSES NEAR SAINT GUDULE'S.Click to view larger image.
OLD HOUSES NEAR SAINT GUDULE'S.
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Next morning the Duke went down to the Town Hall, where a great crowd of aldermen, councillors, deans of trade companies and other civic officials were expecting him. His policy, he told them, was one of general appeasement, and he would fain have their co-operation; but though no sign of dissent was made he was filled with misgiving. What if his brother Philip should return with reinforcements? And presently he summoned the aldermen to the palace and demanded of them the course which in that event they would pursue. Their answer was a politic one—if the Dukedistrusted them they were quite ready to hand him the keys of the city gates, but John would not hear of it. He was well assured, he said, of their loyalty.
In reality the greatest source of danger was not from without but from within—in the growing discontent of the people at the greed and arrogance of 'these foreigngens de guerre,' who galloped through the streets with their swords drawn as if Brussels were a conquered town, and who openly bragged in hostel and tavern that they would not go back to Germany till they were all rich men, aye, and that they meant to have not only the goods, but the wives and the daughters of a host of wealthy citizens whom it was the Duke's intention, so they averred, to presently hang. What wonder then, when this state of things had been going on for the best part of a week, that a serving-maid, who perceived a lighted candle in the window of a certain foreign knight at an hour when all honest men should be a-bed, clean lost her wits, and ran up screaming to call her master; or that he, good man, when he had plucked up his courage to peer in at the casement, and with his own eyes had seen the knight arming, ran off at the top of his speed to tell the magistrates that a plot was on foot to murder all the burghers; or that they, no less scared than he, put a double guard at the city gates; or that a great host of craftsmen soon appeared in the Grand' Place armed and angry: and perhaps too they had reason. De Dynter is by no means sure that the alleged plot was altogether imaginary. 'As to the aforesaid conspiracy,' he says, 'it was found from information received, that the Germans that night went to bed in their armour, and hence theCommunaultéheld that the fact was sufficiently proven; but they, the Germans, on the other hand, denied all knowledge of it, alleging that they had only armed,when they heard the roar of the mob, not knowing what might be going to happen; and I, for my part, have not been able to discover the truth of the matter, and hence I can only note down what each party said.' Several of John's partisans, who afterwards fell into the hands of the Regent, not only acknowledged, albeit under torture, that a massacre had been in contemplation, but divulged its object, adding names and details: some fifteen hundred German knights, with Heinsberg and Amman Cluting at their head, were to rise at a given signal—the sounding of the bell ofSaint Jacques sur Coudenberg, seize the Town Hall, and, having thus made themselves masters of the city, arrest all the popular leaders and put them to death. The object being to break up Philip's party at Brussels before he had time to return with the reinforcements which he had gone to seek at Louvain.
Be this as it may, so firmly convinced were the craftsmen that some great catastrophe was impending that they all turned out in the middle of Monday night, as we have seen, determined, if need be, to sell their lives dearly. So fierce and so threatening was their attitude, and so alarming were the rumours which presently reached the palace, that about eleven o'clock Duke John, who was not without courage in moments of emergency, determined to go forth himself and do what he could to calm the storm, but his efforts were met with shouts of derision; as he rode round the market from guild to guild, begging the rioters to go home to bed, and assuring them they had no cause for fear, 'Go home to bed yourself,' they cried, 'and sleep well; your own fears are groundless, not one of us would harm a hair of your head,' and they probably spoke the truth, for though his subjects despised him and detested his methods of government, John himself was not personally unpopular. Indeed,the people regarded him rather with pity than hatred, for, after all, he was but a poor little puppet, the men who pulled the strings were alone to blame. They were soon to have their reward, but not to-night: it was not until Wednesday morning that a great mob of armed craftsmen came surging up to the palace. John faced them. 'Why this tumult? What did it mean?' 'Heinsberg, and they meant to have him.' And soon Heinsberg was led forth, for there was no denying them, and, oh! the irony of it, by his fellow-conspirator, Cluting. It was the amman's last official act: two days later he was himself arrested, and afterwards endured, as we shall see, a worse fate than the man whom he now handed over to the aldermen, who, like their chief, had changed sides, to be dragged in chains to prison. Before noon every German in Brussels was taken: the knights fettered and cast into gaol, their followers stripped and with only a few rags to cover them turned loose into the winter fields, and towards dusk the cheering of the mob and the bells from a hundred steeples announced Philip's arrival with a great army of nobles from the countryside, and of burghers from Louvain and Antwerp.
That night the craftsmen of Brussels were in a wild frenzy of gladness—not only on account of their triumph, but because they knew that the wine for which they had so long thirsted, the glorious wine of liberty, would soon be gurgling down their throats; the fragrance of its bouquet already filled their nostrils and they were drunk in anticipation. Philip had hailed them as the saviours of Brabant, and he would never refuse to strong men flushed with victory the wages they had justly earned. Let patricians do what they would, self-government was now assured to them.
As a matter of fact, it was not in the power of thepatricians, split up as they were into hostile factions, to offer opposition to anyone. The clans which had triumphed and which, had they been left to their own resources, would have been utterly wiped out, were bound hand and foot to the plebeian allies who had rescued them and given them the victory. Their vanquished opponents, utterly cowed, were considering only how best they might escape the consequences of their indiscretion. From these men, then, there was nothing to fear.
On the night of Philip's coming some of the most deeply implicated, amongst them Alderman Kegel and old William of Assche, desperate in the belief that if they remained in Brussels their doom was fixed, taking their lives in their hands sallied forth boldly into the streets, and passing through the crowd, unnoticed in the darkness and confusion, succeeded in gaining the open country and a place of refuge till the storm had passed. The rest, trembling behind barred doors and windows, expected each moment to be dragged forth and torn in pieces by an infuriated mob—phantom peril, offspring of their conscious guilt. The city, given over to rejoicing, was content to leave vengeance in Philip's hands, and Philip, good man, wearied out with the day's travail, had retired to bed. It was not until the morrow, after dinner, that he proceeded with a small escort to the Coudenberg and put all, or nearly all, of the members of the ducal household under arrest. The greater number, however, were set at liberty the same day, though none of them were reinstated in office. Indeed, in dealing not only with these men, but with the burghers who had opposed him, Philip certainly acted with singular moderation. His policy seems to have been to strike at the leaders only, and that, with no undue harshness, and to suffer the small fry to go scot-free.
Though the number of persons concerned in one or other of the recent conspiracies must have been considerable, probably not less than a thousand, some twenty only were deemed worthy of punishment, notable burghers all of them or nobles from the countryside. Fourteen who had been duly tried, and under torture had acknowledged their guilt, were sentenced to imprisonment for life in fortresses outside the city. A direct violation this of one of the most cherished privileges of citizenship, but doubtless inspired out of consideration for the personal safety of the prisoners, who would have run no small risk of being lynched if they had been detained in Brussels. Some three or four who had fled from justice were condemned in default to lifelong exile and to the forfeiture of their estates. Only two were brought to the block, ex-Amman Cluting and one of his sergeants. They were taken on the Thursday night, and their end came with tragic speed. 'On Saturday morning,' says De Dynter, who was perhaps an eye-witness of the scene he describes, 'the whole community being assembled in the market-place under arms, Jan Cluetinck and Arnulph Vander Hove were led bound into the midst, and when Gerard Vander Zype, who ruled the Regent, coming forth from the Town Hall, with a loud voice had cried out, "Now we are going to begin," Amman Diedeghem gave the signal, and straightway and without any interval their heads were struck off.'
Cluting had not only taken an active part in the betrayal of the city on the 21st of January, but he was said to have been a prime mover in the alleged German conspiracy to murder the leaders of the popular party; and seeing that Philip and his barons were firmly convinced of the reality of the plot and that his guilt was proven, they could hardly have done otherwise than condemn him to death. In all probability VanderHove died for aiding and abetting his chief. De Dynter, however, does not tell us for what crime he suffered: he contents himself with simply recording the fact of his execution.
One cannot help being astonished at the moderation which the working population of Brussels at this time showed. The craftsmen were now masters of the city, they were seconded by a large number of the patricians themselves, and in all probability no demand which they had chosen to make would have been refused them. Yet, unlike their fellows of Bruges and Ghent, who had long since excluded their patricians as such from all share in municipal government, so that they could only take part in civic affairs by enrolling themselves in one or other of the trade companies, the craftsmen of Brussels were content with a half share in the government of the city. All the old institutions were preserved, but they were enlarged so as to admit the plebeian element, or new institutions were created alongside of them.
So complicated did the municipal machinery now become, that any detailed account of it is impossible within the limits of this volume; suffice it to say, that at the head of the administration were two burgomasters, the first a patrician and the second a plebeian, the patrician burgomaster being chosen by the craftsmen from a list of three names presented to them annually by the incoming aldermen, who as heretofore were all patricians, and the plebeian burgomaster being chosen by the aldermen from a list of three names presented to them by the trade companies. These officers were held to be the representativespar excellenceof the city, its guardians and supreme chiefs, and they were invested with judicial powers to settle all trade disputes, in which the matter at issue did not exceed ademi livre vieux gros.
The magistracy proper, as of yore, consisted of a College of Aldermen of seven members and two patrician treasurers. No change was made in the manner of their appointment, but it was ordained that henceforth these offices should only be conferred on patricians resident in Brussels, and such as were not in the employ of the Duke or of any great noble, because, as the charter quaintly explains, such have been found by experience to bepeu profitables.Added to the magistracy were eight plebeian members, viz., six councillors and two treasurers. These were selected by the aldermen from a triple list presented to them by the trade companies. Thus the magistracy consisted of seventeen members, of whom nine were patricians and eight plebeians. Also provision was made for a referendum to the people. When in the opinion of the burgomasters and the plebeian councillors such a course was desirable, they were competent to convoke the juries of the trade companies, but before doing so they were bound to advise the aldermen. Then when they had communicated to the craftsmen the opinion of the magistracy on the matter in hand they demanded their decision, and that decision seems to have been final. Thus, though the patricians had a majority of one in the town council, the last word practically lay with the people in all grave matters.
The articles of the new charter were agreed upon in a great assembly of barons and of deputies of the towns of Brussels, Antwerp and Louvain, on Thursday the 6th of February 1421. The charter itself was signed and sealed by the Regent on the following Tuesday (February 11), and its provisions were immediately put into execution.
Until now the proletariat of Brussels had willingly acquiesced in the wise and moderate policy of the Regent and his advisers. No constraint had beenplaced on the personal liberty of Duke John; the three aldermen of the popular party, in spite of their lamentable weakness in the matter of the great betrayal, had not been deprived of office. Of the many who were undoubtedly guilty, only a comparatively small number had been put on trial, and the light punishments meted out to them might well have called forth the resentment of those who had suffered from their crimes; and yet the working population had acquiesced in all these things, and when they had at length received their charter of enfranchisement the craftsmen were content to lay down their arms; but the mildness and confidence of these men was soon to give place to cruel suspicion and an insatiable hunger for vengeance.
Shortly after Jacqueline's flight in the summer of 1420 some of Duke John's most intimate friends had banded together in a secret and lifelong league to support the throne, and generally to defend the Duke against the machinations of his enemies. This at least was the ostensible object of the league, but there is little doubt that the action of its members, all of whom were partisans of the Straetens, was inspired less by love of John than by hatred of the brothers Heetvelde. The matter was kept so quiet that none of the Duke's opponents had any inkling of it until the close of March 1421, when Gerard Vander Straeten, Provost of Saint Jacques sur Coudenberg, and one of the greatest churchmen in Brabant, was arrested, on suspicion seemingly, of being concerned in the German plot, of which Hendric Van Heetvelde, rumour had it, was to have been the first victim.
Whatever the cause of his arrest may have been, the consequences of it were tremendous. His house was searched, and there in his chamber were found mysterious papers relating to the secret league, with the names of the members in their own handwriting, andwith their signets affixed, and also a letter of approval signed and sealed by Duke John himself.
The men of Brussels were bewildered and dismayed. What did it all mean? But when thei's were dotted and thet's were crossed by the burghers imprisoned without the walls, constrained thereto by torture—for these miscreants were all implicated—dismay became frenzy, and bewilderment a mighty voice compelling retribution. Again the craftsmen flew to arms, again they surged into the market-place, and again, but not until three days had passed, Myn Here Vander Zype appeared in the tribune of proclamation. 'Children,' he cried, 'be of good heart, your prayer is granted,' and presently the sergeants led in 'Gedolphus of Coudenberg, Willem Pipenpoy and Lord Everard T'Serclaes, Knight,'—conspirators, all of them, on their own showing; for had they not set their hands and seals to the fatal roll in Vander Straeten's chamber? The name of T'Serclaes was second on the list, and he was probably the originator of the movement—evilest of John's evil counsellors, unworthy offspring of a noble stock, and yet, for his father's sake, they might have spared him; but no voice was raised on his behalf, and his head was struck off with the rest. Of Vander Straeten's ultimate fate, De Dynter, who tells the story, says nothing, but his name in itself was enough to damn him.
If Philip and his council had been left to their own devices, these men's lives would doubtless have been spared. It was only under compulsion that they at last yielded to the clamour of the mob, and if they had held out longer, not even the influence of Vander Zype, who, as De Dynter reiterates again and again, 'ruled the Regent and swayed the people,' would have availed to save the rest of the leaguers. As it was, he was able to induce the craftsmen to lay down their armsand to acquiesce, for the moment, in no further proceedings being taken against them. Shortly afterwards Duke John formally approved of all that the Estates and the Regent had done, confirmed the new charter, and solemnly promised that no man should ever be molested for anything that had taken place in the course of the revolution. 'Whereat,' says De Dynter, 'the common folk were so well pleased that those in authority, having pity on the burghers imprisoned without the walls, were emboldened to mitigate the rigour of their confinement.'
At Louvain they were even permitted to receive their friends and to eat and drink with them. Naturally they took heart. Some of them began to dream of pardon, and even, over their wine-cups, to utter threats of vengeance, which of course reached the ears of the craftsmen of Brussels, and of course bred uproar. 'These blusterers must be led to the block; that was the only way to deal with them. Public safety demanded it.' In vain Vander Zype urged that it were the grossest injustice to increase the punishment of men who had been already tried and sentenced; the insurgents answered that the sum of their infamy was not then known, and that, if this boon were not granted, they would have out the Germans and cut their throats.
That was enough. Sigismund was already pressing for his subjects' release, and the Regent knew that if any evil should befall them he would have to make ready for battle. On Saturday, then, the 7th of June 1421, the prisoners were led in chains to Brussels, and before sundown they were dead men. On the morrow, when Gerard Vander Zype rode through the Grand' Place along with the bride to whom he had just plighted his troth in the old Church of Saint Nicholas, the pavement was still red with their blood, and they were all of them his own kinsmen—gruesome preludethis to the banquet of which the newly married couple were about to partake in the ducal palace.
Had Jeanne Vander Zype no foreboding of the horrible doom in store for her husband? And if so, did her heaving bosom gleam with those priceless jewels, the wedding gift with which Heinsberg hoped, not vainly, to purchase his redemption?
Of these things De Dynter says nothing, but we know that, thanks to Gerard's good offices, the German knights were released shortly after his marriage, and that the craftsmen, mollified by the blood which he had shed, offered no resistance; and we know, too, that the man who had sacrificed his kinsfolk to avert war was made to suffer for it in his own person, but not yet.
One chronicler asserts that Duke John himself was present at the executions of the 7th of June; but if this had been the case, De Dynter would have almost certainly mentioned it; and, moreover, as Wauters justly observes, the story is a most improbable one: John was so grieved at the death of his friends that he left Brussels immediately after the executions, perhaps even before they had taken place, and refused to return to the Coudenberg for two years.
Things being now set in order, the councillors who had led John astray being all in exile or dead, and John himself having solemnly engaged to rule henceforth according to law, the Estates were for recalling him and reinvesting him with the government of his domains; but Philip, supported by the men of Brussels, was loth to lay down authority, and for a time it seemed as if there would be trouble. At last, however, when all the confiscated estates of John's favourites had been conferred on him by way ofsolatium,and a large cash payment to cover expenses out of pocket, he yielded, and on November 25, 1423, Duke John came back to Brussels.
Some turbulent spirits there were who, angered at the Duke's refusal to retain the services of the Lord of Bigard, whom the magistrates had appointed captain of the city, on the ground that as he, John, had now returned he would be able in future to perform the duties incumbent on that office himself, broke out into riot, but the vast majority of the craftsmen were little inclined to risk their new-born liberty in the fortunes of a fresh revolution. Philip's influence was now on the side of the authorities, the disturbance was soon quelled, and the Lord of Bigard having submitted to the Duke, by order of the city magistrates was relieved of his office.
When Philip of Saint-Pol resigned the regency, Duke John, compelled thereto, no doubt, by his brother, had named Gerard Vander Zype Controller-General of Finance and Chief Steward of his household—the most honourable and lucrative appointment in his gift. At first the Duke professed himself well pleased with Vander Zype's management, but presently he began to complain of his unconscionable parsimony: even his own board, he alleged, was insufficiently furnished, and he knew there was no lack of funds. Perhaps there was another cause for John's rancour, perhaps in his heart he resented the violence which his steward had done to so many of his friends. Still there was no open rupture, but the Duke's sentiments were well known, it was whispered abroad that Vander Zype's removal, by whatever means, would be welcome to him, and this is what happened.
On the morning of the 23rd of April 1424 Gerard Vander Zype rode out to Tervueren, where the Duke was at this time sojourning. Having transacted the business which called him there—what it was De Dynter does not say—he set out on the homeward journey early in the afternoon. The road from Tervueren to Brussels led, as it still does, through the forest of Soignes, inthose days a much more wild and desolate tract of country than it is now. When he had accomplished half of his journey and was nearing Stockel, on the outskirts of the wood, he descried in the distance a horse-man riding furiously towards him. It was 'Messire Jehan Blondeel, who hated him with a perfect hatred.' 'Death, death!' cried the knight as he hurled himself against his foe, and, dragging him from his saddle, plunged his sword into his heart.
Vander Zype was not unattended, but his servants, probably in Blondeel's pay, took to their heels at the first sign of danger, and the body of the great patriot was left alone by the wayside all night.
In the morning it was found by some country folk and carried to Brussels, and presently, by order of Philip, cut to the quick at the death of his friend, laid to rest in the Church of Saint Jacques sur Coudenberg with solemn dirge and requiem.
Click to view larger image.
Click to view larger image.
The enemies of Duke John of Brabant were disappearing one by one. The bitterest opponent of all, the injured and insulted wife, whose heritage he had yielded to her ruthless competitor, and whose honour he had trampled in the dust, about this time, too, endured the first of that long series of rebuffs which in the end crushed her.
Shortly after her flight to England Jacqueline had lodged an appeal to the Holy See for the dissolution of her marriage, on the ground that at the time she pledged her troth she was not a free agent. Whilst the case was still pending she had bestowed her hand on Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and towards the close of the year 1423 she appeared in Hainault with the man whom she now called her husband and six thousand English archers.
The nobles almost to a man flocked to her standard, every town in the county save HalacknowlegedacknowledgedGloucester as their lawful prince, even the Governor of Hainault cast off his allegiance to John and swore fealty to his rival. But Jacqueline's former friends in Brabant regarded her new marriage from another point of view. The men of Brabant had dreamed that their triumph would be hers; they flattered themselves that they would have been able to reconcile the ill-matched pair. They had looked forward to the birth of a son destined to unite under one sceptre his father's and his mother's domains, and they nowturned their swords, not against the outraged woman whose wrongs they had sworn to avenge, and whose dignity, as the Consort of their Sovereign, they were bound in honour as loyal subjects to uphold, but against the wanton, whose delirious passion had shattered their hopes. And there were others, too, who were angered at the course which Jacqueline had seen fit to pursue:—John the Pitiless, who, opportunely dying by poison, it was said, shortly after her arrival, was unable to vent his spleen, and Philippe l'Asseuré, to whom John had bequeathed his claims, and who, in order to safeguard his interests as heir-presumptive to Jacqueline's dominions, effectually showed his displeasure by joining hands with her former husband. The men of Hainault and their English allies were unable to withstand the united strength of Brabant and Burgundy. City after city and fortress after fortress surrendered or went up in flames. When, early in March 1424, Braine-le-Comte was taken, Gloucester withdrew to England to collect fresh forces, and before he had had time to return his last stronghold was in the hands of his opponents, and his wife a prisoner in Ghent.
De Dynter relates a strange delusion on the part of the English, which led to the surrender of Braine-le-Comte during the opening days of the campaign, and that, in spite of the fact that the city was strongly fortified and well stored with supplies.They had descried, they said, from the ramparts, amongst the knights of Brabant, their patron, Saint George; his arms were displayed on his ensign, and he was seated on his traditional white charger. At sight of the apparition their hearts had shrivelled, and no strength was left in their bodies; it was a sure sign from Heaven that they were favouring an unrighteous cause. 'Now, amongst our knights,' explains De Dynter, 'was MynHere Daniel van Bouchout, the horse he bestrode was a white one, and his family arms exactly resemble the arms ofMonseigneur Saint Georges.'
Burghers from every commune in Brabant, save Bois-le-Duc, took part in the siege of Braine, and when all was over and the loot divided the great town bell was allotted to the men of Lierre. They carried it in triumph to their native city, where it still hangs in the tower adjoining the Town Hall.24
Of the events which led to the surrender of Mons and to her own imprisonment, Jacqueline herself gives a curious account in a letter which she dispatched to Gloucester early in July 1425, and shortly before the final catastrophe. Mons had been besieged since the middle of May by Duke John of Brabant in person, and the city had been reduced to such straits that the burghers themselves had opened negotiations with the enemy unknown to Jacqueline, who was daily expecting reinforcements from England and had obstinately refused to treat. Early in June conditions of surrender were agreed upon, which, though sufficiently favourable to the burghers, provided that Jacqueline should undertake to break off all relations with Gloucester and acknowledge her former husband as legitimate Sovereign of her domains until such time as the Pope should pronounce judgment on her appeal.
To these terms she refused to consent, and the city was in consequence on the verge of rebellion. In vain she had gone down to the Town Hall (June 16) and made a personal appeal to the honour and chivalry of the burghers.
'Not only did they refuse to help me,' runs the letter from which the above facts are culled, 'but they said that my knights were doing their utmostto compass their destruction, and then, in spite of me, took Sergeant Macquaert and cut off his head, and put no less than two hundred and fifty of your most devoted followers under arrest, and at last told me plainly that if I any longer refused to make peace they would themselves deliver me into the hands of my cousin of Brabant. I have only eight days' delay and then they will send me to Flanders, grievous affliction, and I shall never see you again unless you make speed to save me, my only hope, my sole and sovereign joy. All that I suffer is for love of you; for God's sake, then, have pity on your sorrowing creature if you would not bring about her ruin. I have some hope that you will help me, for never have I done aught to offend you, nor will I as long as I live, but on the contrary I am ready to die for love of you and of your person, so greatly doth your noble domination delight me, by my faith, most redoubted lord and prince. For the love of God and of my Lord Saint George, consider then my wretched plight, this you have not yet done and methinks you have clean forgotten me. Inform me of your good pleasure and I will do it with all my heart, as the Blessed Son of God doth know right well. May He grant you a good and a long life and give me the joy of seeing you. Written in the false and traitorous town of Mons on the 6th day of July 1425. Your grieving and devoted handmaid, suffering great pain by your commandment.—Your handmaid,'Jacqueline.'
'Not only did they refuse to help me,' runs the letter from which the above facts are culled, 'but they said that my knights were doing their utmostto compass their destruction, and then, in spite of me, took Sergeant Macquaert and cut off his head, and put no less than two hundred and fifty of your most devoted followers under arrest, and at last told me plainly that if I any longer refused to make peace they would themselves deliver me into the hands of my cousin of Brabant. I have only eight days' delay and then they will send me to Flanders, grievous affliction, and I shall never see you again unless you make speed to save me, my only hope, my sole and sovereign joy. All that I suffer is for love of you; for God's sake, then, have pity on your sorrowing creature if you would not bring about her ruin. I have some hope that you will help me, for never have I done aught to offend you, nor will I as long as I live, but on the contrary I am ready to die for love of you and of your person, so greatly doth your noble domination delight me, by my faith, most redoubted lord and prince. For the love of God and of my Lord Saint George, consider then my wretched plight, this you have not yet done and methinks you have clean forgotten me. Inform me of your good pleasure and I will do it with all my heart, as the Blessed Son of God doth know right well. May He grant you a good and a long life and give me the joy of seeing you. Written in the false and traitorous town of Mons on the 6th day of July 1425. Your grieving and devoted handmaid, suffering great pain by your commandment.—Your handmaid,
'Jacqueline.'
This letter was intercepteden routeand handed to Philip of Burgundy, but had it reached Gloucester it would probably not have touched him. If he indeed loved Jacqueline, she was not the sole mistress of his heart; her rival, Eleanor Cobham, had accompaniedhim to Hainault and returned with him to England, and doubtless the society of this lady was some consolation for the grief which, as Vinchant informs us, he had publicly displayed at parting with the woman he called his wife.
As for the hapless Jacqueline, she accepted the terms of surrender arranged on the 1st of June, and was presently conducted to Philip's palace at Ghent, where she was virtually a prisoner. She recognised John of Brabant as rightful Sovereign of her domains until such time as the Pope should pronounce judgment on her appeal: John, in his turn, undertook to provide for her maintenance, and in accordance with the terms of the treaty appointed Philip of Burgundy Regent of Hainault and Holland.
Jacqueline, however, was not yet at the end of her adventures. In Holland the Hoeks25were still devoted to her, a plan was contrived for her deliverance, and presently it was successfully carried out. Vinchant tells us how it all happened.
'One evening early in October two of her most trusty and loyal friends, Dirk Merwede and Arnulph Spyerink, arrived in the city of Ghent, and having left their horses saddled and bridled in a certain place, went to visit their lady, bringing with them, done up in a bundle, a suit of male attire, which she, whilst herpeople were at supper, hastily put on, and thus disguised departed with the aforesaid knights without being recognised by any of her guards, and riding hard all night never halted till she reached Wondelghem, and from thence she went to the castle of the Lord of Vianen, who received her gladly, and having arrayed her in some of his wife's garments led her to Schoonhaven, where all the town was marvellously glad at her coming. Next day she journeyed to Gouda, from thence to Oudenwater ... and wherever she went she was welcomed, caressed and entreated as Lady and Countess of Holland—always accompanied by the Lord of Vianen, whom she named her commander-in-chief.'
For three years this indomitable princess was able to defy her opponents, but the issue of the contest was from the first a foregone conclusion. Philip was able to pour into Holland theéliteof his soldiery, 'tous exercités,' as Monstrellet says, 'et excités en armes et faits de guerre.' He had, too, the support, of the Duke of Gelderland and of course of John of Brabant, and in Holland itself the Church, the burghers, the great mass of the industrial population, were all in his favour.
What chance had Jacqueline of victory in face of such odds? At first, indeed, she had some help from Gloucester, who, in spite of his brother of Bedford, Philip's friend, made shift to send her three thousand archers, but on the 27th of January 1426, the Pope affirmed the validity of Jacqueline's former marriage, and Gloucester, constrained to sever his connection with the woman who had suffered so much for his sake, made her cup yet more bitter by espousing her rival, Eleanor Cobham, and by withdrawing his troops from Holland. Henceforth she stood alone at the head of her loyal Hoeks. Inspired byher heroic courage, her indomitable will and the glamour of her misfortunes and her beauty, these stalwart Dutch knights were able to prolong the unequal contest for nearly three years, and then at last she was constrained to own herself vanquished.
On the 3rd of July 1428, by the Treaty of Delft, she acknowledged Philip as Regent of her domains, delivered into his hands all her strongholds and solemnly engaged not to marry again without his consent, for Jacqueline was now a widow—on the 17th of April, 1427, Duke John of Brabant had gone the way of all flesh.
This last condition she did not scruple to break, and Vinchant tells us why. 'After four years had passed,' he says, 'in good peace and concord between Madame Jacqueline, Countess of Holland, and Duke Philip of Burgundy, it so happened that Madame Marguerite, the Countess Dowager, sent her by certain gentlemen a present of some beautiful jewels and several good horses; whereat Countess Jacqueline, finding herself without cash, having expended all her funds on the late war, and having nothing to bestow by way of gratuity on her mother's people, sent secretly to the Vicomte de Montform, who had formerly been her lieutenant in Holland, begging him to lend her the wherewithal to preserve her reputation in the eyes of the aforesaid gentlemen by bestowing on each of them, according to his rank, some token of her gratitude; but the Vicomte excused himself, saying that he had expended all his means in her service, and the aforesaid lady, much perplexed, sent to another of her friends and was treated by him in like manner. Whereat she was so grieved that she withdrew to her chamber weeping, and one of her servants, Guillaume de Bye, seeing his lady thus distressed, took pity on her and said, "Madame, an it please you, I will go to Messire Franche de Borselle,lieutentantlieutenantof Zeeland, and explainto him your present straits, and I am not without hope that some good will come of it?" "What!" says she,"toute esplourée, he is our foe and has never received any kindness from us." "Yet," says Guillaume, "an it please Madame,je l'esprouveray par quelque moyen que ce soit." "I fear," quoth the Countess, "we shall gain nothing by it, albeit go, and say I will soon repay the debt." And Guillaume went,de bonne grace, and presently the Lord of Borselle, counting out the money, "Go tell my lady that not this time only, but always throughout my life, she may dispose of me and mine according to her good pleasure." Wherefore Madame Jacqueline held him in high esteem and conceived so great an affection for him that she desired to give him her hand, which she afterwards did clandestinely in her own chamber.' But for all that Philip got wind of it and obtained possession of the persons of the newly-married couple, and Jacqueline, constrained tochosechoosebetween the death of her husband and the loss of her crown—for the Treaty of Delft conserved to her the nominal sovereignty of her domains—preferred the latter alternative. On the 12th of April 1433 Philip the Good exchanged his title of Regent for that of Count, and some three years later (April 9, 1436), his victim died of despair and consumption at the old Castle of Teylingen, hard by Leyden.
Jacqueline left no issue and her cousin of Burgundy thus became the legitimate lord of her domains. Six years before he had received the heritage of Duke Philip of Brabant, who had died most opportunely on the eve of his intended marriage (August 4, 1430). Rumour had said poison; the physicians, a sudden chill; and the man who inherited his patrimony, that Fortune was invariably kind to him.
It was not till the days of Charlemagne that art was born in the Low Country, and Charlemagne may be not inaptly said to have been its progenitor. When that monarch planted the outposts of Christian Europe on the banks of the Elbe he made the Low Country—a land then of marsh and wood, whose inhabitants had hitherto lived apart, forgotten by the rest of the world, on the edge, so to speak, of civilisation—the central province of his dominions, and, as such, it in due course became the centre of contemporary culture: the common intellectual mart of the Teutonic regions of the East and the North, the Latin provinces of the West and the South, of Ireland, of England, and of the land of the Scot. The bishops, satraps, scholars, merchants, courtiers, courtesans who flocked to Aix-la-Chapelle from all parts of Europe, all of them passed through the Low Country and were constrained to sojourn for rest and refreshment in the only hostelries which the land possessed—the convents and monasteries sparsely scattered amid its forests and fens. The traffic on the old Roman road across the Charbonnière was now greater than it had ever been before; the Meuse and the Scheldt for the first time became highways along which were towed huge barges heavily laden with foodstuffs for the provisionment of the Court, and thus, as Pirenne has it, 'on this soil, formed by the alluvial deposit of French and German streams,there gradually sprang up a civilisation of like nature with the soil itself, a civilisation made up of divers elements—Latin, German, French, in a word, a civilisation not so much national in character as European.'
Nor was it only thus indirectly that Charlemagne promoted the civilisation of the people of the Netherlands. The rapid progress which was at this time made in humanising these rugged folk was in large measure due to the Emperor's personal initiative: he brought artists from England, Italy, Constantinople, to decorate his palaces at Aix and Nimègue, he established a school of art attached to the Court, he ordained that the churches should be adorned with mural paintings, and named inspectors to watch over the work and see that his orders were strictly carried out, and, most important of all, he charged himself with the task of providing foreign teachers for the novices of the few religious houses which at this time were established in the land, and where the culture of art and letters seems to have fallen wholly into disrepute. The scholars to whom the Emperor confided this task were among the most famous of their day. Men like his secretary and biographer, Eginhard—the architect of the dome of Aix-la-Chapelle—whom he set over the twin abbeys of Saint Peter and Saint Bavon at Ghent; and Arnon, one of the most brilliant disciples of Alcuin, who became abbot of Elnone by Tournai; and the Italian mechanician Georgius, who taught at Saint-Sauve, by Valenciennes; and the great Irish scholar Sedulius, who later on (840-855) lectured in the frescoed hall of Bishop Hartgar's new palace at Liége.
Nor was this policy unprofitable. A spark was enkindled which soon became a burning and a shining light. Clerks began to polish their rusty Latin, monks to busy themselves with history, in writing the lives of local saints, and by erecting in their honour templesnot unworthy of the patrons to whom they were dedicated. Cloistered women, too, devoted their leisure hours to art: they adorned their refectories and chapels with frescoes, and their choir-books with exquisite miniatures and capitals cunningly devised, and, for the service of the altar, made marvellous vestures of gold, wrought about with divers colours. A specimen of their illumination has come down to us: in the sacristy of the old church at Maeseyck there is a copy of the Gospels, painted by two sisters, Saint Harlinda and Saint Renilda, who, about this time, ruled over the great Abbey of Aldeneyck, on the outskirts of the town. This is the most ancient piece of miniature work in Belgium. In a word, the ignorance and grossness which had so long disfigured the Church in the Netherlands completely disappeared, the soil teemed with religious houses, each of which was an active centre of literary and artistic life, and there was soon no more flourishing province in Christendom than the land between the Rhine and the sea. But the glory of it all was short-lived: after the Danish Terror there was nothing left of it but a memory. Unless the subterranean Church of Saint Guy at Anderlecht, as some maintain, be of this period, in Brabant, at least, no vestige remains of Carlovingian architecture. For more than sixty years thick darkness enveloped the land. Isolated efforts, indeed, there were: the monks of Lobbe maintained an obscure school; Bishop Stephen at Liége, and, at Utrecht, Bishops Radbod and Balderic, did what they could, in the midst of the barbarism and anarchy of the times, to keep alive the lamp of learning; but it was not until 953, when the Emperor Otho placed the ducal crown of Lotharingia on the head of his brother Bruno, that there was anything like an approach to a general Renaissance movement. Under Saint Bruno's firm andgentle rule discipline was re-established. Art and literature followed in its wake. Everachar the Saxon, whom he named to the See of Liége in 959, was the founder, or at least the restorer, of the Cathedral School there—a school which was renowned almost from its origin, and which, under his successor Notger, became one of the chief centres of learning in the West. The masters of Liége lectured in all parts of the empire—at Mainz, at Ratisbonne, at Brescia, and even penetrated into France; and students from all parts of Europe flocked to drink in knowledge in the famous school of Saint Lambert.
The literary and artistic movement inaugurated by Saint Bruno and the imperial bishops was no doubt accentuated by the monastic revival promoted about the same date by Gerard of Brogne. Great cathedrals and abbey churches now sprang up in rapid succession, cloisters were everywhere enlarged or rebuilt, bishops' palaces were adorned with sculpture and painting, and the little edifices of wood, which on the countryside had hitherto done duty for parish churches, were replaced by more substantial buildings of stone or brick. German in origin for the most part, it was naturally to German architects that the bishops of Lotharingia entrusted their building operations. Thus the style in vogue in the valley of the Rhine spread rapidly towards the west. With the architects came artisans of all sorts—sculptors, hewers of stone, painters, woodcarvers, founders of copper and of bronze. These foreigners founded schools in the country, a host of apprentices joined them, who made such progress in their craft that soon they were able to compete with their masters. Thus was there gradually formed a native school of architects and artists, of whose talent and technical skill the remnants of their work which have come down to us bear witness; and we know that in their own daytheir fame was so great that Abbot Suger had recourse to their aid for the work which at this time he was engaged upon in the Abbey of Saint-Denis.
They did not, however, at first form a new style. For something like two hundred years they were content to walk in the paths which their German masters had traced for them. Not only in architecture, but in painting, in sculpture, in wood-carving, in metal work, in embroidery, the school of the Meuse, as M. Pirenne aptly puts it, was the legitimate daughter of the school of the Rhine.
Indeed, as long as the Church in the Low Country remained imperial, German traditions prevailed. Even the main body of the cathedral at Tournai, with its dome and its turreted apsidal transepts, which was only commenced in 1030, is distinctively German in character, and so, too, was the cathedral at Cambrai,26designed on similar lines, and this is all the more remarkable from the fact that it was not completed till nearly a hundred and fifty years later—some seventy years, that is, after the episcopate of Walcher, the last of the imperial bishops of this diocese.
Of the buildings in Brussels and its immediate neighbourhood, which date from this period (950-1200), but few remain. Indeed, in the city itself there are only fragments. Foremost among the monuments which contain them note the Parish Church of Saint Nicholas in the Rue au Beurre, one of the oldest and perhaps the most interesting of the time-honoured sanctuaries of Brussels. The date of its foundation is not known, but it cannot be later, and may be considerablyearlier, than the close of the ten hundreds. It is one of those old buildings which, by reason of their great age and thrilling memories, have attained individuality and almost become living things—a stalwart veteran who in the course of a long and honourable career has manfully endured an unwonted share of the trials and vicissitudes of life. It has gained many scars in wrestling with time and the elements, more in its conflict with man. It has been cast down and renewed, enlarged and curtailed, defaced and embellished, polluted and blessed over and over again; and though for the last fifty years it has been constantly threatened by municipal blockheads with total destruction, it still towers amid the nest of habitations which cluster round its walls and cling on to its buttresses, a picturesque and venerable pile in spite of its mutilations—not the least pleasing of the rare landmarks of old-world Brussels.