HISTORIC ROMANCES OF BRUGES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3337, 27 February 1918, Page 53

HISTORIC ROMANCES OF BRUGES.

By Edith Seable Gbossmann, M.A. For the average reader Flanders Has Scarcely any connected history until the fifteenth century. Wihat we read of all that happened before that era is more like chronicles of various detached incidents in the lives of individual heroes and heroines. They have left memorials of themselves in churches, cathedrals, squares, mansions, and palaces. In this very, Market square of Bruges, the Hotel de Ville (Tovn Hall) still keeps the statues of 43 long-vanished Counts of Flanders. It did not require a very vigorous exercise of fancy for the American poet as he looked down from 'the belfry tower - upon the city to see the phantom forms imaged in stone there coming back in the mists of morning to their farmer haunts. In the Place de Bourg, which opens out of the Grand Place, and is almost a part of it, is the small but gorgeous Ohapelle du Saint Sang, or Chapel of the Holy Blood. A crusading Count of Flanders, Thierry d'A'lsaoe, gave to this ohapel a drop of blood, said to be that of the Saviour, brought back to Bruges from far-off Palestine. It Was here enshrined, and is to this day worshipped by thousands —. most of all at the great annual profession in its, honour. Moat lovers of history know by name at least Jacqueline of Hainault, whose tale (u.iless I am mistaken) is grievously mistold in Scott's " Quentin Dufward," and whom Motley classes with the unfortunate tragic heroines of history—the Mary Stuarts and Joans of Arc. Jacqueline's hereditary domains were seized from her by her cousin Philip, miscalled "The Good," who united under, his sovereignty the Netherlands and Luxemburg, as well as Burgundy, and became so powerful and wealthy through his misgotten possessions that he was accepted as bridegroom of the daughter of the King of Portugal, at that era one of the most powerful of European kingdoms. In honour of this marriage he founded in this city of Bruges ',' The Order of the Golden Fleece," one of the most famous and magnificent orders of knightly brotherhoods of chivalry. There could never be more than 25 -'knights of this order. They included kings, emperors, princes, and the most illustrious nobles in Europe. They wore as a badge a pendant lamb, religiously typifying the Lamb of God, whose humility "these potent and arrogant despots were supposed to imitate. But with the devotional element was mixed' references to the wool of Flanders, from which came her wealth, and also to the classical legend of the Argonauts—a singular jumble of ideas peculiarly characteristic of the Renaissance. A knight of the Golden Fleece could never be tried' except by his- brethren of. the Order. In the fury of his bigotry Philip of Spain later on set this proviso aside, although he was at that time himself its Grand Master and must have sworn to observe its laws. At his instigation two famous knights of the Golden Fleece, Egmont and William Prince of Orange, were summoned before the Alva's Blood Council. Egmont, in defiance of all his privileges, was condemned to death, although the most important members of the brotherhood, including the Emperor and the Prince Palatine, urgently interceded and protested.' On the black draped scaffold in the Grand Place at Brussels Egmont with his own hands removed the badge of the Golden Fleece, and bowed his head to the executioner, the Spanish soldiers keeping back the mourning citizens. But this tragedy of Brussels was enacted more than a century after Philip's ancestor ruled in Flanders. He, too, was a tyrant, if not a monster of cruelty, and he set himself to stamp out the liberties which the prosperous burghers had won, beginning by annulling all the charters he had sworn to while Jacqueline lived. His son* Charles theBold, followed in his footsteps, and, after crushing the Netherlands, turned to Switzerland. His dreams of conquest ended miserably. ,A fugitive, deserted and alone, he wandered, and his body was found naked in a pool of frozen blood. He left as heiress to all his rich domains a young and lovely daughter, Marie, "the gentle Mary" of Longfellow's poem. She was at once beset by plots and perils. The crafty fox, Louis the Eleventh of France, known to us best through " Quentin Durward," intrigued to get possession both of the heiress and her domains for his son. Mary appealed for aid and protection to the cities and estates of Flanders. At Ghent she appeared before the nobles and worthy burgomasters, who were not too deeply stirred by the appeal of their young and lovely Duchess to neglect taking the opportunity oi establishing their liberties. They were willing to stand by her, but they demanded and obtained from her need the " Groot Privilegie " of tha Netherlands, its Magna Charta, giving the cities and estates control over war and taxation, the marriage of the sovereign, and their own local affairs. Bat Mary 7 however ! gentle she may have been, was also a Burgundian Princess, and she took the first opportunity of trying to escap-j from her contract. A mission was shortly afterwards sent by the estates to King Louis, and amongst the envoys went two whom she had won over to her 6ide, and who took from her secret instructions to solicit aid from Louis to enable her to repudiate the new charter and crush her subjects' resistance. Having used the Netherlands against Louis, she, with a finesse' characteristic of her family, now tried to use Louis against the Netherlands. The astute monarch divined that these were the tactics of one in a weak position, and he judged it safest in his own interest to betray her to the dominant estates. The wretched envoys on their return were arrested at Ghe?it- as

traitors to their country. The Duchess clad herself in mourning robes, and with dishevelled hair and flowing eyes pleaded in vain for them at the Town Hall and in the Public Square. The burghers inexorably beheaded them. Marie gave herself in marriage to Maximilian, son of the Emperor of Austria, and himself later on Emperor—a, fateful marriage, for from the line that sprang from these two was to come a fanatic monster whose ciimes have never been equalled in Western Europe until our own days. She was married with great ceremony at Bruges, though Maximilian himself was absent, and his place was taken by the Duke of Bavaria. While still in her youth the Duchess was thrown from her horse and killed as she was out huntine in the woods hear Bruges with her husband. Her richly-adorned sarcophagus can still be seen in the Church of Notre Dame in the Rue de St. Esprit. She left a little son, throughout his life remarkable for the charm and beauty inherited from his mother, and known to history as Philip the Handsome. The motive force in the history of Flanders—indeed of the whole Netherlands^—was for ages the same as it _ is now—a struggle between a freedom-loving people and despotic rulers. . For some generations their tyrants were at least their countrymen, by association if not by descent. Mary was associated with Bruges; her son, Philip the Handsome, iwas a Fleming by choice and-by nature, disliking everything Spanish; his eon, Charles the Fifth, was born in Ghent, and though half a Spaniard" was not unmindful of his birthplace. It was with Charles's son, Philip the Second of Spain, that the final rupture came. It was almost anticipated after Mary's _ death, when her foreign husband determined to rule her domains. He claimed to govern for his infant son, but the estates appointed their own Council of Regency. Maximilian laid siege to Bruges, but its citizens drove back his forces and took him prisoner. He was kept in prison until he consented to kneel in the Public Square (the Grand or Market Place) and swore to concede the demands of the citizens, dismiss his. troops, and never take vengeance on his captors. He was then released, and, with the usual perfidy of Belgium's tyrants, he immediately raised fresh troops and crushed the Flemings. To avenge his own humiliation, he forced the most prominent citizens of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres _to kneel publicly before him in mourning garments, and to beg his forgiveness and pay him 300,000 crowns of gold. Maximilian then began a reign of force and despotism. He revoked the Great Privilege conceded by Mary, confiscated to his own use all estates left without male heirs, debased the coinage, and beheaded the city fathers when they appealed to the laws of their land. At the age of 17 Philip the Handsome took the place of his father, who by this time had far wider realms than Flanders and Brabant to engage his attention.