More than a hundred years later, when the Stuart dynasty was a thing of the past and George III. was seated on the throne of England, the Rue Haute saw the arrival of some travellers who were very different from the roystering Cavaliers and frail beauties who had made it gay in the days of the Merry Monarch. The English Jesuits of St. Omer, when expelled from their college, came to Bruges in August, 1762, and took up their abode in the House of the Seven Towers, where they found 'nothing but naked walls and empty chambers.' A miserable place it must have been. 'In one room a rough table of planks had been set up, and the famished travellers were rejoiced at the sight of three roast legs of mutton set on the primitive table. Knives, forks, and plates there were none. A Flemish servant divided the food with his pocket-knife. A farthing candle gave a Rembrandt-like effect to the scene. The boys slept that night on mattresses laid on the floor of one of the big empty rooms of the house. The first days at Bruges were cheerless enough.'[*] The religious houses, however, came to the rescue. Flemish monks and the nuns of the English convent helped the pilgrims, and the Jesuits soon established themselves at Bruges, where they remained in peace for a few years, till the Austrian Government drove them out. The same fate overtook the inmates of many monasteries and convents at Bruges in the reign of Joseph II., whose reforming zeal led to that revolt of the Austrian Netherlands which was the prelude to the invasion of Flanders by the army of the French Revolution.

[Footnote *: Robinson, Bruges, an Historical Sketch, p. 291.]

After the conquest of Belgium by the French it looked as if all the churches in Bruges were doomed. The Chapel of St. Basil was laid in ruins. The Church of St. Donatian, which had stood since the days of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, was pulled down and disappeared entirely. Notre Dame, St. Sauveur, and other places of worship, narrowly escaped destruction; and it was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the town recovered, in some measure, from these disasters.

Bruges has doubtless shared in the general prosperity which has spread over the country since Belgium became an independent kingdom after the revolution of 1830, but its progress has been slow. It has never lost its old-world associations; and the names of the streets and squares, and the traditions connected with numberless houses which a stranger might pass without notice, are all so many links with the past. There is the Rue Espagnole, for example, where a vegetable market is held every Wednesday. This was the quarter where the Spanish merchants lived and did their business. There used to be a tall, dark, and, in fact, very dirty-looking old house in this street known by the Spanish name of the 'Casa Negra.' It was pulled down a few years ago; but lower down, at the foot of the street, the great cellars in which the Spaniards stored their goods remain; and on the Quai Espagnol was the Spanish Consulate, now a large dwelling-house. A few steps from the Quai Espagnol is the Place des Orientaux (Oosterlingen Plaats), where a minaret of tawny brick rises above the gables of what was once the Consulate of Smyrna, and on the north side of which, in the brave days of old, stood the splendid Maison des Orientaux, the headquarters of the Hanseatic League in Bruges, the finest house in Flanders, with turrets and soaring spire, and marvellous facade, and rooms inside all ablaze with gilding. The glory has departed; two modern dwelling-houses have taken the place of this commercial palace; but it must surely be a very dull imagination on which the sight of this spot, now so tranquil and commonplace, but once the centre of such important transactions, makes no impression. From the Place des Orientaux it is only a few minutes' stroll to the Rue Cour de Gand and the dark brown wooden front of the small house, now a lace shop, which tradition says was one of Memlinc's homes in Bruges, where we can fancy him, laboriously and with loving care, putting the last minute touches to some immortal painting.

Then there is the Rue Anglaise, off the Quai Spinola, where the English Merchant Adventurers met to discuss their affairs in houses with such names as 'Old England' or 'The Tower of London.' The head of the colony, 'Governor of the English Nation beyond the Seas' they called him, was a very busy man 400 years ago.[*] The Scottish merchants were settled in the same district, close to the Church of Ste. Walburge. They called their house 'Scotland,' and doubtless made as good bargains as the 'auld enemy' in the next street. There is a building called the Parijssche Halle, or Halle de Paris, hidden away among the houses to the west of the Market-Place, with a cafe and a theatre where Flemish plays are acted now, which was formerly the Consulate of France; and subscription balls and amateur theatricals are given by the English residents of to-day in the fourteenth-century house of the Genoese merchants in the Rue Flamande. The list of streets and houses with old-time associations like these might be extended indefinitely, for in Bruges the past is ever present.

[Footnote *: In the Flandria Illustrata of Sanderus, vol. i., p. 275, there is a picture of the 'Domus Anglorum.']



Even the flat-fronted, plain houses with which poverty or the bad taste of the last century replaced many of the older buildings do not spoil the picturesque appearance of the town as a whole, because it is no larger now than it was 600 years ago, and these modern structures are quite lost amongst their venerable neighbours. Thus Bruges retains its mediaeval character. In the midst, however, of all this wealth of architectural beauty and historical interest, the atmosphere of common everyday life seems to be so very dull and depressing that people living there are apt to be driven, by sheer boredom, into spending their lives in a round of small excitements and incessant, wearisome gossip, and into taking far more interest in the paltry squabbles of their neighbours over some storm in a teacup than in the more important topics which invigorate the minds of men and women in healthier and broader societies. Long before Rodenbach's romance was written this peculiarity of Bruges was proverbial throughout Belgium.

But it is possible that a change is at hand, and that Bruges may once again become, not the Venice of the North—the time for that is past—but an important town, for the spirit of commercial enterprise which has done so much for other parts of Belgium during the last seventy-five years is now invading even this quiet place, whose citizens have begun to dream of recovering some portion of their former prosperity. In 1895 the Belgian Parliament passed a law providing for the construction, between Blankenberghe and Heyst, of a harbour connected with Bruges by a canal of large dimensions, and of an inner port at the town. The works at See-Brugge, as the outer port is called, are nearly completed, and will allow vessels drawing 26-1/2 feet of water to float at any state of the tide. The jetty describes a large curve, and the bend is such that its extremity is parallel to the coast, and 930 yards distant from the low-water mark. The sheltered roadstead is about 272 acres in extent, and communication is made with the canal by a lock 66 feet wide and 282 yards in length. From this point the canal, which has a depth of 26-1/2 feet and is fed by sea-water, runs in a straight line to Bruges, and ends at the inner port, which is within a few hundred yards of where the Roya used to meet the Zwijn. It is capable of affording a minimum capacity of 1,000,000 tons per annum, and the whole equipment has been fitted up necessary for dealing with this amount of traffic.

The first ship, an English steamer, entered the new port at Bruges on the morning of May 29 in the present year (1905). The carillon rung from the Belfry, guns were fired, and a ceremony in honour of the event took place in the Hotel de Ville. It now remains to be seen whether any part of the trade which was lost 400 years ago can be recovered by the skill of modern engineers and the resources of modern capital.



THE PLAIN OF WEST FLANDERS—YPRES



CHAPTER VII

THE PLAIN OF WEST FLANDERS—YPRES

To the west of Bruges the wide plain of Flanders extends to the French frontier. Church spires and windmills are the most prominent objects in the landscape; but though the flatness of the scenery is monotonous, there is something pleasing to the eye in the endless succession of well-cultivated fields, interrupted at intervals by patches of rough bushland, canals, or slow-moving streams winding between rows of pollards, country houses embowered in woods and pleasure-grounds, cottages with fruitful gardens, orchards, small villages, and compact little towns, in most of which the diligent antiquary will find something of interest—a modest belfry, perhaps, with a romance of its own; a parish church, whose foundations were laid long ago in ground dedicated, in the distant past, to the worship of Thor or Woden; or the remains, it may be, of a mediaeval castle, from which some worthy knight, whose name is forgotten except in local traditions, rode away to the Crusades.

This part of West Flanders, which lies wedged in between the coast, with its populous bathing stations, and the better-known district immediately to the south of it, where Ghent, Tournai, Courtrai, and other important centres draw many travellers every year, is seldom visited by strangers, who are almost as much stared at in some of the villages as they would be in the streets of Pekin. It is, however, very accessible. The roads are certainly far from good, and anything in the shape of a walking tour is out of the question, for the strongest pedestrian would have all his pleasure spoilt by the hard-going of the long, straight causeway. The ideal way to see the Netherlands and study the life of the people is to travel on the canals; but these are not so numerous here as in other parts of the country, and, besides, it is not very easy to arrange for a passage on the barges. But, in addition to the main lines of the State Railway, there are the 'Chemins-de-fer Vicinaux,' or light district railways, which run through all parts of Belgium. The fares on these are very low, and there are so many stoppages that the traveller can see a great many places in the course of a single day. There are cycle tracks, too, alongside most of the roads, the cost of keeping them in order being paid out of the yearly tax paid by the owners of bicycles.[*]

[Footnote *: Bicycles entering Belgium pay an ad valorem duty of 12 per cent.]



This is the most purely Flemish part of Flanders. One very seldom notices that Spanish type of face which is so common elsewhere—at Antwerp, for instance. Here the race is almost unmixed, and the peasants speak nothing but Flemish to each other. Many of them do not understand a word of French, though in Belgium French is, as everyone knows, the language of public life and of literature. The newspapers published in Flemish are small, and do not contain much beyond local news. The result is that the country people in West Flanders know very little of what is going on in the world beyond their own parishes. The standard of education is low, being to a great extent in the hands of the clergy, who have hitherto succeeded in defeating all proposals for making it universal and compulsory.

But, steeped as most of them are in ignorance and superstition, the agricultural labourers of West Flanders are, to all appearance, quite contented with their lot. Living is cheap, and their wants are few. Coffee, black bread, potatoes, and salted pork, are the chief articles of diet, and in some households even the pork is a treat for special occasions. They seldom taste butter, using lard instead; and the 'margarine' which is sold in the towns does not find its way into the cottages of the outlying country districts. Sugar has for many years been much dearer than in England, and the price is steadily rising, but with this exception the food of the people is cheap. Tea enters Belgium duty free, but the peasants never use it. Many villagers smoke coarse tobacco grown in their own gardens, and a 10-centimes cigar is the height of luxury. Tobacco being a State monopoly in France, the high price in that country makes smuggling common, and there is a good deal of contraband trading carried on in a quiet way on the frontiers of West Flanders. The average wage paid for field labour is from 1 franc 50 centimes to 2 francs a day for married men—that is to say, from about 1s. 3d. to 1s. 8d. of English money. Bachelors generally receive 1 franc (10d.) a day and their food. The working hours are long, often from five in the morning till eight in the evening in summer, and in winter from sunrise till sunset, with one break at twelve o'clock for dinner, consisting of bread with pork and black coffee, and another about four in the afternoon, when what remains of the mid-day meal is consumed.

The Flemish farmhouse is generally a substantial building, with two large living-rooms, in which valuable old pieces of furniture are still occasionally to be found, though the curiosity dealers have, during the last quarter of a century, carried most of them away, polished them up, and sold them at a high profit. Carved chests, bearing the arms of ancient families, have been discovered lying full of rubbish in barns or stables, and handsome cabinets, with fine mouldings and brass fittings, have frequently been picked up for a few francs. The heavy beams of the ceilings, black with age, the long Flemish stoves, and the quaint window-seats deeply sunk in the thick walls, still remain, and make the interiors of many of these houses very picturesque; but the 'finds' of old furniture, curious brass or pewter dishes, and even stray bits of valuable tapestry, which used to rouse the cupidity of strangers, are now very rare. Almost all the brass work which is so eagerly bought by credulous tourists at Bruges in summer is bran-new stuff cleverly manufactured for sale—and sold it is at five or six times its real market value! There are no bargains to be picked up on the Dyver or in the shops of Bruges.



The country life is simple. A good deal of hard drinking goes on in most villages. More beer, probably, is consumed in Belgium per head of the population than in any other European country, Germany not excepted, and the system of swallowing 'little glasses' of fiery spirit on the top of beer brings forth its natural fruits. The drunken ways of the people are encouraged by the excessive number of public-houses. Practically anyone who can pay the Government fee and obtain a barrel of beer and a few tumblers may open a drinking-shop. It is not uncommon in a small country village with about 200 inhabitants to see the words 'Herberg' or 'Estaminet' over the doors of a dozen houses, in which beer is sold at a penny (or less) for a large glass, and where various throat-burning liquors of the petit verre species can be had at the same price; and the result is that very often a great portion of the scanty wage paid on Saturday evening is melted into beer or gin on Sunday and Monday. As a rule, the Flemish labourer, being a merry, light-hearted soul, is merely noisy and jovial in a brutal sort of way in his cups; but let a quarrel arise, out come the knives, and before the rural policeman saunters along there are nasty rows, ending in wounds and sometimes in murder. When the lots are drawn for military service, and crowds of country lads with their friends flock into the towns, the public-houses do good business. Those who have drawn lucky numbers, and so escaped the conscription, get drunk out of joy; while those who find they must serve in the army drown their sorrow, or celebrate the occasion if they are of a martial turn, by reeling about the streets arm in arm with their companions, shouting and singing. Whole families, old and young alike, often join in these performances, and they must be very drunk and very disorderly before the police think of making even the mildest remonstrance.

The gay character of the Flemings is best seen at the 'kermesse,' or fair, which is held in almost every village during summer. At Bruges, Ypres, and Furnes, and still more in such large cities as Brussels or Antwerp, the kermesse has ceased to be typical of the country, and is supplanted by fairs such as may be seen in England or in almost any other country. 'Merry-go-rounds' driven by steam, elaborate circuses, menageries, waxwork exhibitions, movable theatres, and modern 'shows' of every kind travel about, and settle for a few days, perhaps even for a few weeks, in various towns. The countryfolk of the surrounding district are delighted, and the showmen reap a goodly harvest of francs and centimes; but these fairs are tiresome and commonplace, much less amusing and lively than, for example, St. Giles's Fair at Oxford, though very nearly as noisy. But the kermesse proper, which still survives in some places, shows the Flemings amusing themselves in something more like the old fashion than anything which can be seen in the Market-Place of Bruges or on the boulevards of Brussels or Antwerp. Indeed, some of the village scenes, when the young people are dancing or shooting with bows and arrows at the mark, while the elders sit, with their mugs of beer and long pipes, watching and gossiping, are very like what took place in the times of the old painters who were so fond of producing pictures of the kermesses. The dress of the people, of course, is different, but the spirit of the scene, with its homely festivities, is wonderfully little changed.

About twenty miles from the French frontier is the town of Ypres, once the capital of Flanders, and which in the time of Louis of Nevers was one of the three 'bonnes villes,' Bruges and Ghent being the others, which appointed deputies to defend the rights and privileges of the whole Flemish people.

As Bruges grew out of the rude fortress on the banks of the Roya, so Ypres developed from a stronghold built, probably about the year 900, on a small island in the river Yperlee. It was triangular in shape, with a tower at each corner, and was at first known by the inhabitants of the surrounding plain as the 'Castle of the Three Towers.' In course of time houses began to appear on the banks of the river near the island. A rampart of earth with a ditch defended these, and as the place grew, the outworks became more extensive. Owing to its strategic position, near France and in a part of Flanders which was constantly the scene of war, it was of great importance; and probably no other Flemish town has seen its defences so frequently altered and enlarged as Ypres has between the primitive days when the Crusading Thierry d'Alsace planted hedges of live thorns to strengthen the towers, and the reign of Louis XIV., when a vast and elaborate system of fortifications was constructed on scientific principles, under the direction of Vauban.

The citizens of Ypres took a prominent part in most of the great events which distinguished the heroic period of Flemish history. In July, 1302, a contingent of 1,200 chosen men, '500 of them clothed in scarlet and the rest in black,' were set to watch the town and castle of Courtrai during the Battle of the Golden Spurs, and in the following year the victory was celebrated by the institution of the Confraternity of the Archers of St. Sebastian, which still exists at Ypres, the last survivor of the armed societies which flourished there during the Middle Ages. Seven hundred burghers of Ypres marched to Sluis, embarked in the Flemish boats which harassed the French fleet during the naval fight of June, 1340, and at the close of the campaign formed themselves into the Confraternity of St. Michael, which lasted till the French invasion of 1794. Forty years later we find no fewer than 5,000 of the men of Ypres, who had now changed their politics, on the French side at the Battle of Roosebeke, fighting in the thick mist upon the plain between Ypres and Roulers on that fatal day which saw the death of Philip van Artevelde and the triumph of the Leliarts.



Next year, so unceasingly did the tide of war flow over the plain of Flanders, an English army, commanded by Henry Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, landed at Calais under the pretext of supporting the partisans of Pope Urban VI., who then occupied the Holy See, against the adherents of Pope Clement VII., who had established himself at Avignon. The burghers of Ghent flocked to the English standard, and the allies laid siege to Ypres, which was defended by the French and the Leliarts, who followed Louis of Maele, Count of Flanders, and maintained the cause of Clement.

At that time the gateways were the only part of the fortifications made of stone. The ramparts were of earth, planted on the exterior slope with a thick mass of thorn-bushes, interlaced and strengthened by posts. Outside there were more defences of wooden stockades, and beyond them two ditches, divided by a dyke, on which was a palisade of pointed stakes. The town, thus fortified, was defended by about 10,000 men, and un June 8, 1383, the siege was begun by a force consisting of 17,000 English and 20,000 Flemings of the national party, most of whom came from Bruges and Ghent.

The English had been told that the town would not offer a strong resistance, and on the first day of the siege 1,000 of them tried to carry it at once by assault. They were repulsed; and after that assaults by the besiegers and sorties by the garrison continued day after day, the loss of life on both sides being very great. At last the besiegers, finding that they could not, in the face of the shower of arrows, javelins, and stones which met them, break through the palisades and the sharp thorn fences (those predecessors of the barbed-wire entanglements of to-day), force the gates, or carry the ramparts, built three wooden towers mounted on wheels, and pushed them full of soldiers up to the gates. But the garrison made a sortie, seized the towers, destroyed them, and killed or captured the soldiers who manned them.

Spencer on several occasions demanded the surrender of the town, but all his proposals were rejected. The English pressed closer and closer, but were repulsed with heavy losses whenever they delivered an assault. The hopes of the garrison rose high on August 7, the sixty-first day of the siege, when news arrived that a French army, 100,000 strong, accompanied by the forces of the Count of Flanders, was marching to the relief of Ypres. Early next morning the English made a fresh attempt to force their way into the town, but they were once more driven back. A little later in the day they twice advanced with the utmost bravery. Again they were beaten back. So were the burghers of Ghent, whom the English reproached for having deceived them by saying that Ypres would fall in three days, and whose answer to this accusation was, a furious attack on one of the gates, in which many of them fell. In the afternoon the English again advanced, and succeeded in forcing their way through part of the formidable thorn hedge; but it was of no avail, and once more they had to retire, leaving heaps of dead behind them. After a rest of some hours, another attack was made on seven different parts of the town at the same time. This assault was the most furious and bloody of the siege, but it was the last. Spencer saw that, in spite of the splendid courage of his soldiers and of the Flemish burghers, it would be impossible to take the town before the French army arrived, and during the night the English, with their allies from Ghent and Bruges, retired from before Ypres. The failure of this campaign left Flanders at the mercy of France; but the death of Count Louis of Maele, which took place in January, 1384, brought in the House of Burgundy, under whose rule the Flemings enjoyed a long period of prosperity and almost complete independence.

It was believed in Ypres that the town had been saved by the intercession of the Virgin Mary, its patron saint. In the Cathedral Church of St. Martin the citizens set up an image of Notre, Dame-de-Thuine, that is, Our Lady of the Enclosures, an allusion to the strong barrier of thorns which had kept the enemy at bay; and a kermesse, appointed to be held on the first Sunday of August every year in commemoration of the siege, received the name of the 'Thuindag,' or Day of the Enclosures.[*] The people of Ypres, though they fought on the French side, had good reason to be proud of the way in which they defended their homes; but the consequences of the siege were disastrous, for the commerce of the town never recovered the loss of the large working-class population which left it at that time.

[Footnote *: 'Thuin,' or 'tuin,' in Flemish means an enclosed space, such as a garden plot.]



The religious troubles of the sixteenth century left their mark on Ypres as well as on the rest of Flanders. Everyone has read the glowing sentences in which the historian of the Dutch Republic describes the Cathedral of Antwerp, and tells how it was wrecked by the reformers during the image-breaking in the summer of 1566. What happened on the banks of the Scheldt appeals most to the imagination; but all over Flanders the statues and the shrines, the pictures and the stores of ecclesiastical wealth, with which piety, or superstition, or penitence had enriched so many churches and religious houses, became the objects of popular fury. There had been field-preaching near Ypres as early as 1562.[*] Other parts of West Flanders had been visited by the apostles of the New Learning, and on August 15, 1566, the reformers swept down upon Ypres and sacked the churches.

[Footnote *: Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, part ii., chapter vi.]

In the awful tragedy which soon followed, when Parma came upon the scene, that 'spectacle of human energy, human suffering, and human strength to suffer, such as has not often been displayed upon the stage of the world's events' the town had its share of the persecutions and exactions which followed the march of the Spanish soldiery; but for more than ten years a majority of the burghers adhered to the cause of Philip. In July, 1578, however, Ypres fell into the hands of the Protestants, and became their headquarters in West Flanders. Five years later Alexander of Parma besieged it. The siege lasted until April of the following year, when the Protestants, worn out by famine, capitulated, and the town was occupied by the Spaniards, who 'resorted to instant measures for cleansing a place which had been so long in the hands of the infidels, and, as the first step towards this purification, the bodies of many heretics who had been buried for years were taken from their graves and publicly hanged in their coffins. All living adherents to the Reformed religion were instantly expelled from the place.'[*] By this time the population was reduced to 5,000 souls, and the fortifications were a heap of ruins.

[Footnote *: Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, part ii., chapter vi.]



A grim memorial of those troublous times is still preserved at Ypres. The Place du Musee is a quiet corner of the town, where a Gothic house with double gables contains a collection of old paintings, medals, instruments of torture, and some other curiosities. It was the Bishop of Ypres who, at midnight on June 4, 1568, announced to Count Egmont, in his prison at Brussels, that his hour had come; and the cross-hilted sword, with its long straight blade, which hangs on the wall of the Museum is the sword with which the executioner 'severed his head from his shoulders at a single blow' on the following morning. The same weapon, a few minutes later, was used for the despatch of Egmont's friend, Count Horn.

Before the end of that dismal sixteenth century Flanders regained some of the liberties for which so much blood had been shed; but while the Protestant Dutch Republic rose in the north, the 'Catholic' or 'Spanish' Netherlands in the south remained in the possession of Spain until the marriage of Philip's daughter Isabella to the Archduke Albert, when these provinces were given as a marriage portion to the bride. This was in 1599. Though happier times followed under the moderate rule of Albert and Isabella, war continued to be the incessant scourge of Flanders, and during the marching and countermarching of armies across this battlefield of Europe, Ypres scarcely ever knew what peace meant. Four times besieged and four times taken by the French in the wars of Louis XIV., the town had no rest; and for miles all round it the fields were scarred by the new system of attacking strong places which Vauban had introduced into the art of war. Louis, accompanied by Schomberg and Luxembourg, was himself present at the siege of 1678; and Ypres, having been ceded to France by the Treaty of Nimeguen in that year, was afterwards strengthened by fortifications constructed from plans furnished by the great French engineer.[*]

[Footnote *: Letter from Vauban to Louvois on the fortifications of Ypres, 1689; Vereecke, pp. 325-357.]

In the year 1689 Vauban speaks of Ypres as a place 'formerly great, populous, and busy, but much reduced by the frequent sedition and revolts of its inhabitants, and by the great wars which it has endured.' And in this condition it has remained ever since. Though the period which followed the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714, when Flanders passed into the possession of the Emperor Charles VI., and became a part of the 'Austrian Netherlands,' was a period of considerable improvement, Ypres never recovered its position, not even during the peaceful reign of the Empress Maria Theresa. The revolution against Joseph II. disturbed everything, and in June, 1794, the town yielded, after a short siege, to the army of the French Republic. The name of Flanders disappeared from the map of Europe. The whole of Belgium was divided, like France, with which it was now incorporated, into departements, Ypres being in the Department of the Lys. For twenty years, during the wars of the Republic, the Consulate, and the Empire, though the conscription was a constant drain upon the youth of Flanders, who went away to leave their bones on foreign soil, nothing happened to disturb the quiet of the town, and the fortifications were falling into decay when the return of Napoleon from Elba set Europe in a blaze. During the Hundred Days guns and war material were hurried over from England, the old defences were restored, and new works constructed by the English engineers; but the Battle of Waterloo rendered these preparations unnecessary, and the military history of Ypres came to an end when the short-lived Kingdom of the Netherlands was established by the Congress of Vienna, though it was nominally a place of arms till 1852, when the fortifications were destroyed. Nowadays everything is very quiet and unwarlike. The bastions and lunettes, the casemates and moats, which spread in every direction round the town, have almost entirely disappeared, and those parts of the fortifications which remain have been turned into ornamental walks.[*]

[Footnote *: The evolution of Ypres from a feudal tower on an island until it became a great fortress can be traced in a very interesting volume of maps and plans published by M. Vereecke in 1858, as a supplement to his Histoire Militaire d'Ypres. It shows the first defensive works, those erected by Vauban, the state of the fortifications between 1794 and 1814, and what the English engineers did in 1815.]

But while so little remains of the works which were constructed, at such a cost and with so much labour, for the purposes of war, the arts of peace, which once flourished at Ypres, have left a more enduring monument. There is nothing in Bruges or any other Flemish town which can compare for massive grandeur with the pile of buildings at the west end of the Grand Place of Ypres. During two centuries the merchants of Flanders, whose towns were the chief centres of Western commerce and civilization, grew to be the richest in Europe, and a great portion of the wealth which industry and public spirit had accumulated was spent in erecting those noble civic and commercial buildings which are still the glory of Flanders. The foundation-stone of the Halle des Drapiers, or Cloth Hall, of Ypres was laid by Baldwin of Constantinople, then Count of Flanders, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but more than 100 years had passed away before it was completed. Though the name of the architect who began it is unknown, the unity of design which characterizes the work makes it probable that the original plans were adhered to till the whole was finished. Nothing could be simpler than the general idea; but the effect is very fine. The ground-floor of the facade, about 150 yards long, is pierced by a number of rectangular doors, over which are two rows of pointed windows, each exactly above the other, and all of the same style. In the upper row every second window is filled up, and contains the statue of some historical character. At each end there is a turret; and the belfry, a square with towers at the corners, rises from the centre of the building.

Various additions have been made from time to time to the original Halle des Drapiers since it was finished in the year 1304, and of these the 'Nieuwerck' is the most interesting. The east end of the Halle was for a long time hidden by a number of wooden erections, which, having been put up for various purposes after the main building was finished, were known as the 'Nieuwe wercken,' or new works. They were pulled down in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and replaced by the stone edifice, in the style of the Spanish Renaissance, which now goes by the name of the Nieuwerck, with its ten shapely arches supported by slender pillars, above whose sculptured capitals rise tiers of narrow windows and the steeply-pitched roof with gables of curiously carved stone. Ypres had ceased to be a great commercial city long before the Nieuwerck was built; but the Cloth Hall was a busy place during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when Ypres shared with Bruges the responsibility of managing the Flemish branch of the Hanseatic League.

The extensive system of monopolies which the League maintained was, as a matter of course, the cause of much jealousy and bad feeling. In Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres defended their own privileges against other towns, and quarrelled amongst themselves. The merchants of Ypres had a monopoly which forbade all weaving for three leagues round the town, under a penalty of fifty livres and confiscation of the looms and linen woven; but the weavers in the neighbouring communes infringed this monopoly, and sold imitations of Ypres linen cloth on all hands. There was constant trouble between the people of Ypres and their neighbours at Poperinghe. Sometimes the weavers of Ypres, to enforce their exclusive privileges, marched in arms against Poperinghe, and sometimes the men of Poperinghe retaliated by attacking their powerful rivals. Houses were burnt, looms were broken up, and lives were lost in these struggles, which were so frequent that for a long time something like a chronic state of war existed between the two places.



Besides the troubles caused by the jealousy of other towns, intestine disputes arising out of the perpetual contest between labour and capital went on from year to year within the walls of Ypres. There, as in the other Flemish towns, a sharp line was drawn between the working man, by whose hands the linen was actually woven, and the merchants, members of the Guilds, by whom it was sold. In these towns, which maintained armies and made treaties of peace, and whose friendship was sought by princes and statesmen, the artisans, whose industry contributed so much to the importance of the community, resented any infringement of their legal rights. By law the magistrates of Ypres were elected annually, and because this had not been done in 1361 the people rose in revolt against the authorities. The mob invaded the Hotel de Ville, where the magistrates were assembled. The Baillie, Jean Deprysenaere, trusting to his influence as the local representative of the Count of Flanders, left the council chamber, and tried to appease the rioters. He was set upon and killed. Then the crowd rushed into the council chamber, seized the other magistrates, and locked them up in the belfry, where they remained prisoners for some days. The leaders of the revolt met, and resolved to kill their prisoners, and this sentence was executed on the Burgomaster and two of the Sheriffs, who were beheaded in front of the Halle in the presence of their colleagues.[*] It was by such stern deeds that the fierce democracy of the Flemish communes preserved their rights.

[Footnote *: Vereecke, p. 41.]

Each town, however, stood for itself alone. The idea of government by the populace on the marketplace was common to them all, but they were kept apart by the exclusive spirit of commercial jealousy. The thirst for material prosperity consumed them; but they had no bond of union, and each was ready to advance its own interests at the expense of its rivals. Therefore, either in the face of foreign invasion, or when the policy of some Count led to revolt and civil war, it was seldom that the people of Flanders were united. 'L'Union fait la Force' is the motto of modern Belgium, but in the Middle Ages there was no powerful central authority round which the communes rallied. Hence the spectacle of Ghent helping an English army to storm the ramparts of Ypres, or of the Guildsmen of Bruges girding on their swords to strike a blow for Count Louis of Maele against the White Hoods who marched from Ghent. Hence the permanent unrest of these Flemish towns, the bickerings and the sheddings of blood, the jealousy of trade pitted against trade or of harbour against harbour, the insolence in the hour of triumph and the abject submission in the hour of defeat, and all the evils which discord brought upon the country. No town suffered more than Ypres from the distracted state of Flanders, which, combined with the ravages of war and the religious dissensions of the sixteenth century, reduced it from the first rank amongst the cities of the Netherlands to something very like the condition of a quiet country town in an out-of-the-way corner of England. That is what the Ypres of to-day is like—a sleepy country town, with clean, well-kept streets, dull and uninteresting save for the stately Cloth Hall, which stands there a silent memorial of the past.



FURNES—THE PROCESSION OF PENITENTS



CHAPTER VIII

FURNES—THE PROCESSION OF PENITENTS

The traveller wandering amongst the towns and villages in this corner of West Flanders is apt to feel that he is on a kind of sentimental journey as he moves from place to place, and finds himself everywhere surrounded by things which belong to the past rather than to the present. The very guidebooks are eloquent if we read between the lines. This place 'was formerly of much greater importance.' That 'was formerly celebrated for its tapestries.' From this Hotel de Ville 'the numerous statuettes with which the building was once embellished have all disappeared.' The tower of that church has been left unfinished for the last 500 years. 'Fuimus' might be written on them all. And so, some twenty miles north of Ypres, on a plain which in the seventeenth century was so studded with earthen redoubts and serrated by long lines of field-works and ditches that the whole countryside between Ypres and Dunkirk was virtually one vast entrenched camp, we come to the town of Furnes, another of the places on which time has laid its heavy hand.

The early history of Furnes is obscure, though it is generally supposed to have grown up round a fortress erected by Baldwin Bras-de-Fer to check the inroads of the Normans. It suffered much, like its neighbours, from wars and revolutions,[*] and is now one of the quietest of the Flemish towns. The market-place is a small square, quaintly picturesque, surrounded by clusters of little brick houses with red and blue tiled roofs, low-stepped gables, and deep mouldings round the windows. Behind these dwelling-places the bold flying buttresses of the Church of Ste. Walburge, whose relics were brought to Furnes by Judith, wife of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, and the tower of St. Nicholas, lift themselves on the north and east; and close together in a corner to the west are the dark gray Hotel de Ville and Palais de Justice, in a room of which the judges of the Inquisition used to sit.

[Footnote *: 'Furnes etait devenue un oppidium, aux termes d'une charte de 1183, qui avait a se defendre a la fois contre les incursions des etrangers et les attaques d'une population "indocile et cruelle," comme l'appelle l'Abbe de Saint Riquier Hariulf, toujours dechiree par les factions et toujours prete a la revolte.'—GILLIODTS VAN SEVEREN: Recueil des Anciennes Coutumes de la Belgique; Quartier de Furnes, vol. i., p. 28.]



Though some features are common to nearly all the Flemish towns—the market-place, the belfry, the Hotel de Ville, the old gateways, and the churches, with their cherished paintings—yet each of them has generally some association of its own. In Bruges we think of how the merchants bought and sold, how the gorgeous city rose, clothed itself in all the colours of the rainbow, glittered for a time, and sank in darkness. In the crowded streets of modern Ghent, the busy capital of East Flanders, we seem to catch a glimpse of bold Jacques van Artevelde shouldering his way up to the Friday Market, or of turbulent burghers gathering there to set Pope, or Count of Flanders, or King of Spain at defiance. Ypres and its flat meadows suggest one of the innumerable paintings of the Flemish wars, the 'battle-pieces' in which the Court artists took such pride: the town walls with ditch and glacis before them, and within them the narrow-fronted houses, and the flag flying from steeple or belfry; the clumsy cannon puffing out clouds of smoke; the King of France capering on a fat horse and holding up his baton in an attitude of command in the foreground; and in the distance the tents of the camp, where the travelling theatre was set up, and the musicians fiddled, and an army of serving-men waited on the rouged and powdered ladies who had followed the army into Flanders.



Furnes, somehow, always recalls the Spanish period. The Hotel de Ville, a very beautiful example of the Renaissance style, with its rare hangings of Cordovan leather and its portraits of the Archduke Albert and his bride, the Infanta Isabella, is scarcely changed since it was built soon after the death of Philip II. The Corps de Garde Espagnol and the Pavilion des Officiers Espagnols in the market-place, once the headquarters of the whiskered bravos who wrought such ills to Flanders, are now used by the Municipal Council of the town as a museum and a public library; but the stones of this little square were often trodden by the persecutors, with their guards and satellites, in the years when Peter Titelmann the Inquisitor stalked through the fields of Flanders, torturing and burning in the name of the Catholic Church and by authority of the Holy Office. The spacious room in which the tribunal of the Inquisition sat is nowadays remarkable only for its fine proportions and venerable appearance; but, though it was not erected until after the Spanish fury had spent its force, and at a time when wiser methods of government had been introduced, it reminds us of the days when the maxims of Torquemada were put in force amongst the Flemings by priests more wicked and merciless than any who could be found in Spain. And in the market-place the people must often have seen the dreadful procession by means of which the Church sought to strike terror into the souls of men. Those public orgies of clerical intolerance were the suitable consummation of the crimes which had been previously committed in the private conclave of the Inquisitors. The burning or strangling of a heretic was not accompanied by so much pomp and circumstance in small towns like Furnes as in the great centres, where multitudes, led by the highest in the land, were present to enjoy the spectacle; but the Inquisition of the Netherlands, under which Flanders groaned for so many years, was, as Philip himself once boasted, 'much more pitiless than that of Spain.'

The groans of the victims will never more be heard in the torture-chamber, nor will crowds assemble in the market-place to watch the cortege of the auto-da-fe; but every year the famous Procession of Penitents, which takes place on the last Sunday of July, draws many strangers to Furnes.

It is said in Bruges that the ghost of a Spanish soldier, condemned to expiate eternally a foul crime done at the bidding of the Holy Office, walks at midnight on the Quai Vert, like Hamlet's father on the terrace at Elsinore; and superstitious people might well fancy that a spectre appears in the market-place of Furnes on the summer's night when the town is preparing for the annual ceremony. The origin of the procession was this: In the year 1650 a soldier named Mannaert, only twenty-two years old, being in garrison at Furnes, went to Confession and Communion in the Chapel of the Capucins. After he had received the consecrated wafer, he was persuaded by one of his comrades, Mathurin Lejeusne, to take it out of his mouth, wrap it in a cloth, and, on returning to his lodging, fry it over a fire, under the delusion that by reducing it to powder he would make himself invulnerable. The young man was arrested, confessed his guilt, and himself asked for punishment. Condemned to be strangled, he heard the sentence without a murmur, and went to his death singing the penitential psalms. Soon afterwards Mathurin Lejeusne, the instigator of the sacrilege, was shot for some breach of military duty. This was regarded as a proof of Divine justice, and the citizens resolved that something must be done to appease the wrath of God, which they feared would fall upon their town because of the outrage done, as they believed, to the body of His Son. A society calling itself the 'Confrerie de la Sodalite du Sauveur Crucifie et de la Sainte Mere Marie, se trouvant en douleur dessous la Croix, sur Mont Calvaire,' had been formed a few years before at Furnes, and the members now decided that a Procession of Penitents should walk through the streets every summer and represent to the people the story of the Passion.



Though the procession at Furnes is a thing of yesterday compared to the Procession of the Holy Blood at Bruges, it is far more suggestive of mediaevalism. The hooded faces of the penitents, the quaint wooden figures representing Biblical characters, the coarse dresses, the tawdry colours, the strangely weird arrangement of the whole business, take us back into the monkish superstitions of the Dark Ages, with their mystery plays. It is best seen from one of the windows of the Spanish House, or from the balcony of the Hotel de Ville, on a sultry day, when the sky is heavy with black clouds, and thunder growls over the plain of Flanders, and hot raindrops fall now and then into the muddy streets. The first figure which appears is a veiled penitent bearing the standard of the Sodality. Then come, one after another, groups of persons representing various scenes in the Bible story, each group preceded by a penitent carrying an inscription to explain what follows. Abraham with his sword conducts Isaac to the sacrifice on Mount Moriah. A penitent holding the serpent and the cross walks before Moses. Two penitents wearily drag a car on which Joseph and Mary are seen seated in the stable at Bethlehem. The four shepherds and the three Magi follow. Then comes the flight into Egypt, with Mary on an ass led by Joseph, the infant Christ in her arms. Later we see the doctors of the Temple walking in two rows, disputing with the young Jesus in their midst. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem is represented by a crowd of schoolchildren waving palm-branches and singing hosannahs round Jesus mounted on an ass. The agony in the garden, Peter denying his Lord and weeping bitterly, Jesus crowned with thorns, Pilate in his judgment-hall, the Saviour staggering beneath the cross, the Crucifixion itself, the Resurrection and the Ascension, are all shown with the crude realism of the Middle Ages. There are penitents bearing ponderous crosses on their shoulders, or carrying in their hands the whips, the nails, the thorns, the veil of the Temple rent in twain, a picture of the darkened sun, and other symbols of the Passion. At the end, amidst torches and incense and solemn chanting, the Host is exhibited for the adoration of the crowd.



Much of this spectacle is grotesque, and even ludicrous; but there is also a great deal that is terribly real, for the penitents are not actors playing a part, but are all persons who have come to Furnes for the purpose of doing penance. They are disguised by the dark brown robes which cover them from head to foot, so that they can see their way only through the eyeholes in the hoods which hide their faces; but as they pass silently along, bending under the heavy crosses, or holding out before them scrolls bearing such words as, 'All they that see Me laugh Me to scorn,' 'They pierced My hands and My feet,' or, 'See if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow,' there are glimpses of delicate white hands grasping the hard wood of the crosses, and of small, shapely feet bare in the mud. What sighs, what tears and vain regrets, what secret tragedies of passion, guilt, remorse, may not be concealed amongst the doleful company who tread their own Via Dolorosa on that pilgrimage of sorrow through the streets of Furnes!



NIEUPORT—THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES



CHAPTER IX

NIEUPORT—THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES

On the morning of July 2, in the year 1600, two armies—Spaniards, under the Archduke Albert, and Dutchmen, under Prince Maurice of Nassau—stood face to face amongst the dunes near Nieuport, where the river Yser falls into the sea about ten miles west from Ostend.

In a field to the east of Nieuport there is a high, square tower, part of a monastery and church erected by the Templars in the middle of the twelfth century, which, though it escaped complete destruction, was set on fire and nearly consumed when the town was attacked and laid in ruins by the English and the burghers of Ghent in 1383, the year of their famous siege of Ypres. It is now in a half-ruinous condition, but in July, 1600, it was an important part of the fortifications, and from the top the watchmen of the Spanish garrison could see the country all round to a great distance beyond the broad moat which then surrounded the strong walls of Nieuport. A few miles inland, to the southwest, in the middle of the plain of Flanders, were the houses of Furnes, grouped round the church tower of St. Nicholas. To the north a wide belt of sandhills (the 'dunes'), with the sea beyond them, extended far past Ostend on the east, and to the harbour of Dunkirk on the west. Nearer, on the landward side of the dunes to the east, and within less than a mile of each other, were the villages of Westende and Lombaerdzyde. Close at hand, all round Nieuport, there were numerous small lakes and watercourses connected with the channel of the Yser, which, flowing past the town, widened out until it joined the sea, and became a harbour, which on that morning was full of shipping.

A new chapter had just begun in the history of West Flanders when the Dutchmen and the Spaniards thus met to slaughter each other amongst the sand and rushes of the dunes. Philip II. had offered to cede the Spanish Netherlands to his daughter, the Infanta Isabella, on condition that a marriage was arranged between her and the Archduke Albert of Austria. After the death of Philip II. this offer was confirmed by his successor, Philip III., and the wedding took place in April, 1599.



Albert and Isabella were both entering on the prime of life, the Archduke being forty and the Infanta thirty-two at the time of their marriage, and were both of a character admirably fitted for the lofty station to which they had been called. In their portraits, which hang, very often frayed and tarnished, on the walls of the Hotel de Ville of many a Flemish town, there is nothing very royal or very attractive; but, even after making every allowance for the flattery of contemporary historians, there can be little doubt that their popularity was well deserved—well deserved if even a part of what has been said about them is true. The Archduke is always said to have taken Philip II. as a model of demeanour, but he had none of the worst faults of the sullen, powerful despot, with that small mind, that 'incredibly small' mind of his, and cold heart, cold alike to human suffering and human love, who had held the Flemings, whom he hated, for so many years in the hollow of his hand. His grave mien and reserved habits, probably acquired during his sojourn at the Court of Spain, were distasteful to the gay and pleasure-loving people of Flanders, who would have preferred a Prince more like Charles V., whose versatility enabled him to adapt himself to the customs of each amongst the various races over whom he ruled. Nevertheless, if they did not love him they respected him, and were grateful for the moderation and good feeling which distinguished his reign, and gave their distracted country, after thirty years of civil war, a period of comparative tranquillity.

The Infanta Isabella, debonnaire, affable, tolerant, and noble-hearted, as she is described, gained the hearts of the Flemings as her husband never did. 'One could not find any Court more truly royal or more brilliant in its public fetes, which sometimes recall the splendid epoch of the House of Burgundy. Isabella loves a country life. She is often to be seen on horseback, attending the tournaments, leading the chase, flying the hawk, taking part in the sports of the bourgeoise, shooting with the crossbow, and carrying off the prize.' Above all things, her works of charity endeared her to the people. In time of war she established hospitals for the wounded, for friends and enemies alike, where she visited them, nursed them, and dressed their wounds with her own hands, with heroic courage and tenderness.[*]

[Footnote *: De Gerlache, i. 260.]



Even on their first coming into Flanders, before their characters were known except by hearsay, they were received with extraordinary enthusiasm. Travelling by way of Luxembourg, they came to Namur, where their first visit was made the occasion of a military fete, conducted under the personal supervision of Comte Florent de Berlaimont. At Nivelles the Duc d'Arschot paid out of his own purse the cost of the brilliant festivities to which the people of Brabant flocked in order to bid their new rulers welcome, and himself led the procession, accompanied by the Archbishop of Malines and the Bishop of Antwerp. So they journeyed on amidst scenes of public rejoicing until they came to Brussels, where they established their Court in accordance with the customs and ceremonies which had been usual under the Dukes of Burgundy and the Kings of Spain.

But when the Archdukes, as they were called, passed from town to town on this Royal progress, the phantoms of war, pestilence, and famine hung over the land. The great cities of Flanders had been deserted by thousands of their inhabitants. The sea trade of the country had been destroyed by the vigorous blockade which the Dutch ships of war maintained along the coast. Religious intolerance had driven the most industrious of the working classes to find a refuge in Holland or England. Villages lay in ruins, surrounded by untilled fields and gardens run to seed. Silent looms and empty warehouses were seen on every side. To such a pass had the disastrous policy of the Escurial brought this fair province of the Spanish Empire! From all parts of Flanders the cry for peace went up, but the time for peace was not yet come.[*]

[Footnote *: L'Abbe Nameche, xxi. 6-8.]

The new reign had just begun when Maurice of Nassau suddenly invaded Flanders with a great force, and laid siege to Nieuport, the garrison of which, reinforced by an army, at the head of which the Archduke Albert had hurried across Flanders, was under the command of the Archduke himself, and many Spanish Generals of great experience in the wars.



Though the Court at Brussels had been taken by surprise, the Dutch army was in a position of great danger. Part of it lay on the west side of the Yser, and part to the east, amongst the dunes near Lombaerdzyde and Westende, with a bridge of boats thrown across the river as their only connection. Their ships were at anchor close to the shore; but Prince Maurice frankly told his men that it was useless to think of embarking in case of defeat, and that, therefore, they must either win the day or perish there, for the Spaniards were before them under the protection of Nieuport, the river divided them, the sea was behind them, and it would be impossible for a beaten army to escape by retreating through the dunes in the direction of Ostend.

Such was the position of affairs beneath the walls of Nieuport at sunrise on July 2, 1600. The morning was spent by the Dutch in preparing for battle. Towards noon the Spanish leaders held a council of war, at which it was decided to attack the enemy as soon as possible, and about three o'clock the battle began. A stiff breeze from the west, blowing up the English Channel, drove clouds of sand into the eyes of the Spaniards, and the bright rays of the afternoon sun, shining in their faces as they advanced to the attack, dazzled and confused them. But, in spite of these disadvantages, it seemed at first as if the fortunes of the day were to go in their favour.

The bridge of boats across the Yser was broken, and some of the Dutch regiments, seized by a sudden panic, began to retreat towards the sea; but, finding it impossible to reach the ships, they rallied, and began once more to fight with all the dogged courage of their race. For some hours the battle was continued with equal bravery on both sides, the Spaniards storming a battery which the Dutch had entrenched amongst the dunes, and the Dutch defending it so desperately that the dead and wounded lay piled in heaps around it. But at last the Spanish infantry were thrown into confusion by a charge of horsemen; the Archduke Albert was wounded, and had to retire from the front to have his injuries attended to. Prince Maurice ordered a general advance of all his army, and in a few minutes the enemy were fleeing from the battlefield, leaving behind them 3,000 dead, 800 prisoners, and more than 100 standards. The loss on the Dutch side was about 2,000.

The Archduke Albert, who had narrowly escaped being himself taken prisoner, succeeded in entering Nieuport safely with what remained of his army. The town remained in the hands of the Spaniards, for Prince Maurice, after spending some days in vain attempts to capture it, marched with his whole force to Ostend, where soon afterwards began the celebrated siege, which was to last for three long years, and about which all Europe never tired of talking.[*]

[Footnote *: 'Le siege d'Ostende fut, pendant ces trois ans, la fable et la nouvelle de l'Europe; on ne se lassait pas d'en parler. Des princes, des etrangers de toutes les nations venaient y assister.'—L'Abbe Nameche, xxi. 24.]



The history of Nieuport since those days has been the history of a gradual fall. Its sea trade disappeared slowly but surely; the fishing industry languished; the population decreased year by year; and it has not shared to any appreciable extent in the prosperity which has enriched other parts of Flanders since the Revolution of 1830. It is now a quiet, sleepy spot, with humble streets, which remind one of some fishing village on the east coast of Scotland. Men and women sit at the doors mending nets or preparing bait. The boats, with their black hulls and dark brown sails, move lazily up to the landing-stages, where a few small craft, trading along the coast, lie moored. Barges heavily laden with wood are pulled laboriously through the locks of the canals which connect the Yser with Ostend and Furnes. The ancient fortifications have long since disappeared, with the exception of a few grass-grown mounds; and only the grim tower of the Templars, standing by itself in a field on the outskirts of the town, remains to show that this insignificant place was once a mighty stronghold.

In those old Flemish towns, however, it is always possible to find something picturesque; and here we have the Cloth Hall, with its low arches opening on the market-place, and the Gothic church, one of the largest in Flanders, with its porch and tower, where the bell-ringers play the chimes and the people pass devoutly to the services of the church. But that is all. Nieuport has few attractions nowadays, and is chiefly memorable in Flemish history because under its walls they fought that bloody 'Battle of the Dunes,' in which the stubborn strength and obstinacy of the Dutch overcame the fiery valour of the Spaniards.

They are all well-nigh forgotten now, obstinate Dutchman and valiant Spaniard alike. Amongst the dunes not a vestige remains of the field-works for which they fought. Bones, broken weapons and shattered breastplates, and all the debris of the fight, were long ago buried fathoms deep beneath mounds of drifting sand. Old Nieuport—Nieuport Ville, as they call it now—for which so much blood was shed, is desolate and dreary with its small industries and meagre commerce; but a short walk to the north brings us to Nieuport-Bains, and to the gay summer life which pulsates all along the Flemish coast, from La Panne on the west to the frontiers of Holland.



THE COAST OF FLANDERS



CHAPTER X

THE COAST OF FLANDERS

To walk from Nieuport Ville to the Digue de Mer at Nieuport-Bains is to pass in a few minutes from the old Flanders, the home of so much romance, the scene of so many stirring deeds, from the market-places with the narrow gables heaped up in piles around them, from the belfries soaring to the sky, from the winding streets and the narrow lanes, in which the houses almost touch each other from the tumble-down old hostelries, from the solemn aisles where the candles glimmer and the dim red light glows before the altar, from the land of Bras-de-Fer, and Thierry d'Alsace, and Memlinc, and Van Eyck, and Rubens, the land which was at once the Temple and the Golgotha of Europe, into the clear, broad light of modern days.

The Flemish coast, from the frontiers of France to the frontiers of Holland, is throughout the same in appearance. The sea rolls in and breaks upon the yellow beach, which extends from east to west for some seventy kilometres in an irregular line, unbroken by rocks or cliffs. Above the beach are the dunes, a long range of sandhills, tossed into all sorts of queer shapes by the wind, on which nothing grows but rushes or stunted Lombardy poplars, and which reach their highest point, the Hoogen-Blekker, about 100 feet above the sea, near Coxyde, a fishing village four or five miles from Nieuport. Behind the dunes a strip of undulating ground ('Ter Streep'), seldom more than a bare mile in width, covered with scanty vegetation, moss, and bushes, connects the barren sandhills with the cultivated farms, green fields, and woodlands of the Flemish plain. On the other side of the Channel the chalk cliffs and rocky coast of England have kept the waves in check; but the dunes were, for many long years, the only barrier against the encroachments of the sea on Flanders. They are, however, a very weak defence against the storms of autumn and winter. The sand drifts like snow before the wind, and the outlines of these miniature mountain ranges change often in a single night. At one time, centuries ago, this part of Flanders, which is now so bare, was, it is pretty clear, covered by forests, the remains of which are still sometimes found beneath the subsoil inland and under the sea. When the great change came is unknown, but the process was probably gradual. At an early period, here, as in Holland, the fight against the invasions of the sea began, and the first dykes are said to have been constructed in the tenth century. The first was known as the Evendyck, and ran from Heyst to Wenduyne. Others followed, but they were swept away, and now only a few traces of them are to be found, buried beneath the sand and moss.[*]

[Footnote *: Bortier, Le Littoral de la Flandre au IXe et au XIXe Siecles.]



The wild storms of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries changed the aspect of the coast of Flanders. Nieuport rose in consequence of one of these convulsions of Nature, when the inhabitants of Lombaerdzyde, which was then a seaport, were driven by the tempests to the inland village of Santhoven, the name of which they changed to 'Neoportus'—the new harbour. This was in the beginning of the twelfth century, and thenceforth the struggle against the waves went on incessantly. Lands were granted by Thierry d'Alsace on condition that the owner should construct dykes, and Baldwin of Constantinople appointed guardians of the shore, charged with the duty of watching the sea and constructing defensive works. But the struggle was carried on under the utmost difficulties. In the twelfth century the sea burst in with resistless force upon the low-lying ground, washing away the dunes and swallowing up whole towns. The inroads of the waves, the heavy rains, and the earthquakes, made life so unendurable that there were thousands who left their homes and emigrated to Germany.

Later, in the thirteenth century, there was a catastrophe of appalling dimensions, long known as the 'Great Storm,' when 40,000 Flemish men and women perished. This was the same tempest which overran the Dutch coast, and formed the Zuyder Zee, those 1,400 square miles of water which the Dutch are about to reclaim and form again into dry land. In the following century the town of Scarphout, in West Flanders, was overwhelmed, and the inhabitants built a new town for themselves on higher ground, and called it Blankenberghe, which is now one of the most important watering-places on the coast.

Ever since those days this constant warfare against the storms has continued, and the sea appears to be bridled; but anyone who has watched the North Sea at high tide on a stormy day beating on the shores of Flanders, and observed how the dunes yield to the pressure of the wind and waves, and crumble away before his eyes, must come to the conclusion that the peril of the ocean is not yet averted, and can understand the meaning of the great modern works, the digues de mer, or sea-fronts, as they would be called in England, which are being gradually constructed at such immense cost all along the coast.

A most interesting and, indeed, wonderful thing in the recent history of the Netherlands is the rapid development of the Flemish littoral from a waste of sand, with here and there a paltry fishing hamlet and two or three small towns, into a great cosmopolitan pleasure resort. Seventy-five years ago, when Belgium became an independent country, and King Leopold I. ascended the throne, Ostend and Nieuport were the only towns upon the coast which were of any size; but Ostend was then a small fortified place, with a harbour wholly unsuited for modern commerce, and Nieuport, in a state of decadence, though it possessed a harbour, was a place of no importance. To-day the whole coast is studded with busy watering-places, about twenty of them, most of which have come into existence within the last fifteen years, with a resident population of about 60,000, which is raised by visitors in summer to, it is said, nearly 125,000. The dunes, which the old Counts of Flanders fought so hard to preserve from the waves, and which were at the beginning of the present century mere wastes of sand, a sort of 'no man's land,' of little or no use except for rabbit-shooting, are now valuable properties, the price of which is rising every year.

The work of turning the sand into gold, for that is what the development of the Flemish coast comes to, has been carried out partly by the State and partly by private persons. In early times this belt of land upon the margin of the sea was held by the Counts of Flanders, who treated the ridge of sandhills above high-water mark as a natural rampart against the waves, and granted large tracts of the flat ground which lay behind to various religious houses. At the French Revolution these lands were sold as Church property at a very low figure, and were afterwards allowed, in many cases, to fall out of cultivation by the purchasers. So great a portion of the district was sold that at the present time only a small portion of the dune land is the property of the State—the narrow strip between Mariakerke and Middelkerke on the west of Ostend, and that which lies between Ostend and Blankenberghe on the east. The larger portions, which are possessed by private owners, are partly the property of the descendants of those who bought them at the Revolution, and partly of building societies, incorporated for the purpose of developing what Mr. Hall Caine once termed the 'Visiting Industry'—that is to say, the trade in tourists and seaside visitors.[*]

[Footnote *: Letter to the Manx Reform League, November, 1903.]



Plage de Westende, Le Coq, and Duinbergen—three charming summer resorts—have been created by building societies. Nieuport-Bains and La Panne have been developed by the owners of the adjoining lands, the families of Crombez and Calmeyn. Wenduyne, on the other hand, which lies between Le Coq and Blankenberghe, has been made by the State, while the management of Blankenberghe, Heyst, and Middelkerke, as bathing stations, is in the hands of their communal councils.

On the coast of Flanders, Ostend—'La Reine des Plages'—is, it need hardly be said, the most important place, and its rise has been very remarkable. Less than fifty years ago the population was in all about 15,000. During the last fifteen years it has increased by nearly 15,000, and now amounts to about 40,000 in round numbers. The increase in the number of summer visitors has been equally remarkable. In the year 1860 the list of strangers contained 9,700 names; three years ago it contained no less than 42,000. This floating population of foreign visitors who come to Ostend is cosmopolitan to an extent unknown at any watering-place in England. In 1902 11,000 English, 8,000 French, 5,000 Germans, and 2,000 Americans helped to swell the crowds who walked on the sea-front, frequented the luxurious and expensive hotels, or left their money on the gaming-tables at the Kursaal. On one day—August 15, 1902—7,000 persons bathed.[*]

[Footnote *: I give these figures on the authority of M. Paul Otlet, Advocate, of Brussels, to whom I am indebted for much information regarding the development of the coast of Flanders. See also an article by M. Otlet in Le Cottage, May 15 to June 15, 1904.]

Blankenberghe, with its 30,000 summer visitors, comes next in importance to Ostend, while both Heyst and Middelkerke are crowded during the season. But the life at these towns is not so agreeable as at the smaller watering-places. The hotels are too full, and have, as a rule, very little except their cheapness to recommend them. There is usually a body calling itself the comite des fetes, the members of which devote themselves for two months every summer to devising amusements, sports, and competitions of various kinds, instead of leaving people to amuse themselves in their own way, so that hardly a day passes on which the strains of a second-rate band are not heard in the local Kursaal, or a night which is not made hideous by a barrel-organ, to which the crowd is dancing on the digue. At the smaller places, however, though these also have their comite des fetes, one escapes to a great extent from these disagreeable surroundings.

May, June, and September are the pleasantest months upon the coast of Flanders, for the visitors are not so numerous, and even in mid-winter the dunes are worth a visit. Then the hotels and villas fronting the sea are closed, and their windows boarded up. The bathing-machines are removed from the beach, and stand in rows in some sheltered spot. The digue, a broad extent of level brickwork, is deserted, and the wind sweeps along it, scattering foam and covering it with sand and sprays of tangled seaweed. The mossy surface of the dunes is frozen hard as iron, and often the hailstones rush in furious blasts before the wind. For league after league there is not a sign of life, except the sea-birds flying low near the shore, or the ships rising and falling in the waves far out to sea. In the winter months the coast of Flanders is bleak and stormy, but the air in these solitudes is as health-giving as in any other part of Europe.

Of late years the Government, represented by Comte de Smet de Naeyer, has bestowed much attention on the development of the littoral, and King Leopold II. has applied his great business talents to the subject. Large sums of money have been voted by the Belgian Parliament for the construction of public works and the extension of the means of communication from place to place. There is a light railway, the 'Vicinal,' which runs along the whole coast, at a short distance from the shore, from Knocke, on the east, to La Panne in the extreme west, and which is connected with the system of State railways at various points. From Ostend, through Middelkerke, to Plage de Westende, an electric railway has been constructed, close to the beach and parallel to the Vicinal (which is about a mile inland), on which trains run every ten minutes during the summer season. As an instance of the speed and energy with which these works for the convenience of the public are carried out, when once they have been decided upon, it may be mentioned that the contract for the portion of the electric line between Middelkerke and Plage de Westende, a distance of about a mile and a half, was signed on May 9, that five days later 200 workmen began to cut through the dunes, embank and lay the permanent way, and that on June 25, in spite of several interruptions owing to drifting sand and heavy rains, the first train of the regular service arrived at Plage de Westende.



A large sum, amounting to several millions of francs, is voted every year for the protection of the shores of Flanders against the encroachments of the sea, by the construction of these solid embankments of brickwork and masonry, which will, in the course of a few years, extend in an unbroken line along the whole coast from end to end. The building of these massive sea-walls is a work of great labour and expense, for what seems to be an impregnable embankment, perhaps 30 feet high and 90 feet broad, solid and strong enough to resist the most violent breakers, will be undermined and fall to pieces in a few hours, if not made in the proper way. A digue, no matter how thick, which rests on the sand alone will not last. A thick bed of green branches bound together must first be laid down as a foundation: this is strengthened by posts driven through it into the sand. Heavy timbers, resting on bundles of branches lashed together, are wedged into the foundations, and slope inwards and upwards to within a few feet of the height to which it is intended to carry the digue. On the top another solid bed of branches is laid down, and the whole is first covered with concrete, and then with bricks or tiles, while the edge of the digue, at the top of the seaward slope, is composed of heavy blocks of stone cemented together and bound by iron rivets.

Digues made in this solid fashion, all of them higher above the shore than the Thames Embankment is above the river, and some of them broader than the Embankment, will, before very many years have passed, stretch along the whole coast of Flanders without a break, and will form not only a defence against the tides, but a huge level promenade, with the dunes on one side and the sea on the other. This is a gigantic undertaking, but it will be completed during the lifetime of the present generation.



Another grandiose idea, which is actually being carried into effect, is to connect all the seaside resorts on the coast of Flanders by a great boulevard, 40 yards wide, with a road for carriages and pedestrians, a track for motor-cars and bicycles, and an electric railway, all side by side. Large portions of this magnificent roadway, which is to be known as the 'Route Royale,' have already been completed between Blankenberghe and Ostend, and from Ostend to Plage de Westende. From Westende it will be continued to Nieuport-Bains, crossing the Yser by movable bridges, and thence to La Panne, and so onwards, winding through the dunes, over the French borders, and perhaps as far as Paris!

A single day's journey through the district which this 'Route Royale' is to traverse will lead the traveller through the most interesting part of the dunes, and introduce him to most of the favourite plages on the coast of Flanders, and thus give him an insight into many characteristic Flemish scenes. La Panne, for instance, and Adinkerque, in the west and on the confines of France, are villages inhabited by fishermen who have built their dwellings in sheltered places amongst the dunes. The low white cottages of La Panne, with the strings of dried fish hanging on the walls, nestle in the little valley from which the place takes its name (for panne in Flemish means 'a hollow'), surrounded by trees and hedges, gay with wild roses in the summer-time. Each cottage stands in its small plot of garden ground, and most of the families own fishing-boats of their own, and farm a holding which supplies them with potatoes and other vegetables.

For a long time these cottages were the only houses at La Panne, which was seldom visited, except by a few artists; but about fifteen years ago the surveyors and the architects made their appearance, paths and roads were laid out, and, as if by magic, cottages and villas and the inevitable digue de mer have sprung up on the dunes near the sea, and not very far from the original village. The chief feature of the new La Panne is that the houses are, except those on the sea-front, built on the natural levels of the ground, some perched on the tops of the dunes, and others in the hollows which separate them. The effect is extremely picturesque, and the example of the builders of La Panne is being followed at other places, notably at Duinbergen, one of the very latest bathing stations, which has risen during the last three years about a mile to the east of Heyst.

Another very interesting place is the Plage de Westende, the present terminus of the electric railway from Ostend. The old village of Westende lies a mile inland on the highway between Nieuport and Ostend, close to the scene of the Battle of the Dunes. This Plage is, indeed, a model seaside resort, with a digue which looks down upon a shore of the finest sand, and from which, of an evening, one sees the lights of Ostend in the east, and the revolving beacon at Dunkirk shining far away to the west. The houses which front the sea, all different from each other, are in singularly good taste; and behind them are a number of detached cottages and villas, large and small, in every variety of design. Ten years ago the site of this little town was a rabbit warren; now everything is up to date: electric light in every house, perfect drainage, a good water-supply, tennis courts, and an admirable hotel, where even the passing stranger feels at home. Though only three-quarters of an hour from noisy, crowded, bustling Ostend by the railway, it is one of the quietest and most comfortable places on the coast of Flanders, and can be reached by travellers from England in a few hours.

Some years hence the lovely, peaceful Plage de Westende may have grown too big, but when the sand has all been turned into gold, and when the contractors and builders have grown rich, those who have known Westende in its earlier days will think of it as the quiet spot about which at one time only a few people used to stroll; where perhaps the poet Verhaeren found something to inspire him; where many a long summer's evening was spent in pleasant talk on history, and painting, and music by a little society of men and women who spoke French, or German, or English, as the fancy took them, and laughed, and quoted, and exchanged ideas on every subject under the sun; where the professor of music once argued, and sprang up to prove his point by playing—but that is an allusion, or, as Mr. Kipling would say, 'another story.'

The district in which Westende lies, with Lombaerdzyde, Nieuport, Furnes, and Coxyde close together, is the most interesting on the coast of Flanders. Le Coq, on the other hand, is in that part of the dune country which has least historical interest, and is chiefly known as the place where the Royal Golf Club de Belgique has its course. It is only twenty minutes from Ostend on the Vicinal railway, which has a special station for golfers near the Club House. There is no digue, and the houses are dotted about in a valley behind the dunes. This place has a curious resemblance to a Swiss village.

A few years ago the owners of lands upon the Flemish littoral began to grasp the fact that there was a sport called golf, on which Englishmen were in the habit of spending money, and that it would be an addition to the attractions of Ostend if, beside the racecourse, there was a golf-course. King Leopold, who is said to contemplate using all the land between the outskirts of Ostend and Le Coq for sporting purposes, paid a large sum, very many thousands of francs, out of his own pocket, and the golf-links at Le Coq were laid out. The Club House is handsome and commodious, but, unfortunately, the course itself, which is the main thing, is not very satisfactory, being far too artificial. The natural 'bunkers' were filled up, and replaced by ramparts and ditches like those on some inland courses in England. On the putting greens the natural undulations of the ground have been levelled, and the greens are all as flat and smooth as billiard-tables. There are clumps of ornamental wood, flower-beds, and artificial ponds with goldfish swimming in them. It is all very pretty, but it is hardly golf. What with the 'Grand Prix d'Ostende,' the 'Prix des Roses,' the 'Prix des Ombrelles, handicap libre, reserve aux Dames,' the 'Grand Prix des Dames,' and a number of other objets d'art, which are offered for competition on almost every day from the beginning of June to the end of September, this is a perfect paradise for the pot-hunter and his familiar friend Colonel Bogey. Real golf, the strenuous game, which demands patience and steady nerves, perhaps, more than any other outdoor game, is not yet quite understood by many Belgians; but the bag of clubs is every year becoming more common on the Dover mail-boats.

Most of these golf-bags find their way to Knocke, where many of the English colony at Bruges spend the summer, and which, as the coast of Flanders becomes better known, is visited every year by increasing numbers of travellers from the other side of the Channel. Knocke is in itself one of the least attractive places on the Flemish littoral. The old village, a nondescript collection of houses, lies on the Vicinal railway about a mile from the sea, which is reached by a straight roadway, and where there is a digue, numerous hotels, pensions, and villas, all of which are filled to overflowing in the season. The air, indeed, is perfect, and there are fine views from the digue and the dunes of the island of Walcheren, Flushing, and the estuary of the Scheldt; but the place was evidently begun with no definite plan: the dunes were ruthlessly levelled, and the result is a few unlovely streets, and a number of detached houses standing in disorder amidst surroundings from which everything that was picturesque has long since departed.

But the dunes to the east are wide, and enclose a large space of undulating ground; and here the Bruges Golf and Sports Club has its links, which present a very complete contrast to the Belgian course at Le Coq. The links at Knocke, if somewhat rough and ready, are certainly sporting in the highest degree. Some of the holes, those in what is known as the Green Valley, are rather featureless; but in the other parts of the course there are numerous natural hazards, bunkers, and hillocks thick with sand and rushes. It has no pretentions to be a 'first-class' course (for one thing, it is too short), but in laying out the eighteen holes the ground has been utilized to the best advantage, and the Royal and Ancient game flourishes more at Knocke than at any other place in Belgium. The owners of the soil and the hotel-keepers, with a keen eye to business, and knowing that the golfing alone brings the English, from whom they reap a golden harvest, to Knocke, do all in their power to encourage the game, and it is quite possible that before long other links may be established along the coast. The soil of the strip behind the dunes is not so suitable for golf as the close turf of St. Andrews, North Berwick, or Prestwick, for in many places it consists of sand with a slight covering of moss; but with proper treatment it could probably be improved and hardened. It is merely a question of money, and money will certainly be forthcoming if the Government, the communes, and the private owners once see that this form of amusement will add to the popularity of the littoral.

A short mile's walk to the west of Knocke brings us to Duinbergen, one of the newest of the Flemish plages, founded in the year 1901 by the Societe Anonyme de Duinbergen, a company in which some members of the Royal Family are said to hold shares. At Knocke and others of the older watering-places everything was sacrificed to the purpose of making money speedily out of every available square inch of sand, and the first thing done was to destroy the dunes. But at Duinbergen the good example set by the founders of La Panne has been followed and improved upon, and nothing could be more chic than this charming little place, which was planned by Herr Stuebben, of Cologne, an architect often employed by the King of the Belgians, whose idea was to create a small garden city among the dunes. The dunes have been carefully preserved; the roads and pathways wind round them; most of the villas and cottages have been erected in places from which a view of the sea can be obtained; and even the digue has been built in a curve in order to avoid the straight line, which is apt to give an air of monotony to the rows of villas, however picturesque they may be in themselves, which face the sea at other places. So artistic is the appearance of the houses that the term 'Style Duinbergen' is used by architects to describe it. Electric lighting, a copious supply of water rising by gravitation to the highest houses, and a complete system of drainage, add to the luxuries and comforts of this plage, which is one of the best illustrations of the wonders which have been wrought among the dunes by that spirit of enterprise which has done so much for modern Flanders during the last few years.



COXYDE—THE SCENERY OF THE DUNES



CHAPTER XI

COXYDE—THE SCENERY OF THE DUNES

The whole of the coast-line is within the province of West Flanders, and its development in recent years is the most striking fact in the modern history of the part of Belgium with which this volume deals. The change which has taken place on the littoral during the last fifteen or twenty years is extraordinary, and the contrast between the old Flanders and the new, between the Flanders which lingers in the past and the Flanders which marches with the times, is brought vividly before us by the difference between such mediaeval towns as Bruges, Furnes, or Nieuport, and the bright new places which glitter on the sandy shores of the Flemish coast. But in almost every corner of the dunes, close to these signs of modern progress, there is something to remind us of that past history which is, after all, the great charm of Flanders.

One of the most characteristic spots in the land of the dunes is the village of Coxyde, which lies low amongst the sandhills, about five miles west from Nieuport, out of sight of the sea, but inhabited by a race of fisherfolk who, curiously enough, pursue their calling on horseback. Mounted on their little horses, and carrying baskets and nets fastened to long poles, they go into the sea to catch small fish and shrimps. It is strange to see them riding about in the water, sometimes in bands, but more frequently alone or in pairs; and this curious custom, which has been handed down from father to son for generations, is peculiar to the part of the coast which lies between La Panne and the borders of France.

Near Coxyde, and at the corner where the road from Furnes turns in the direction of La Panne, is a piece of waste ground which travellers on the Vicinal railway pass without notice. But here once stood the famous Abbey of the Dunes.



In the first years of the twelfth century a pious hermit named Lyger took up his abode in these solitary regions, built a dwelling for himself, and settled down to spend his life in doing good works and in the practice of religion. Soon, as others gathered round him, his dwelling grew into a monastery, and at last, in the year 1122, the Abbey of the Dunes was founded. It was nearly half a century before the great building, which is said to have been the first structure of such a size built of brick in Flanders, was completed; but when at last the work was done the Abbey was, by all accounts, one of the most magnificent religious houses in Flanders, consisting of a group of buildings with no less than 105 windows, a rich and splendid church, so famous for its ornamental woodwork that the carvings of the stalls were reproduced in the distant Abbey of Melrose in Scotland, and a library which, as time went on, became a storehouse of precious manuscripts and hundreds of those wonderfully illustrated missals on which the monks of the Middle Ages spent so many laborious hours. We can imagine them in the cells of Coxyde copying and copying for hours together, or bending over the exquisitely coloured drawings which are still preserved in the museums of Flanders.

But their most useful work was done on the lands which lay round the Abbey. There were at Coxyde in the thirteenth century no fewer than 150 monks and 248 converts engaged at one time in cultivating the soil.[*] They drained the marshes, and planted seeds where seeds would grow, until, after years of hard labour on the barren ground, the Abbey of the Dunes was surrounded by wide fields which had been reclaimed and turned into a fertile oasis in the midst of that savage and inhospitable desert.

[Footnote *: Derode, Histoire Religieuse de la Flandre Maritime, p.86.]

When St. Bernard was preaching the Crusade in Flanders he came to Coxyde. On his advice the monks adopted the Order of the Cistercians, and their first abbot under the new rule afterwards sat in the chair of St. Bernard himself as Abbot of Clairvaux. Thereafter the Cistercian Abbey of the Dunes grew in fame, especially under the rule of St. Idesbaldus, who had come there from Furnes, where he had been a Canon of the Church of Ste. Walburge. 'It has also a special interest for English folk. It long held lands in the isle of Sheppey, as well as the advowson of the church of Eastchurch, in the same island. These were bestowed on it by Richard the Lion-Hearted. The legend says that these gifts were made to reward its sixth abbot, Elias, for the help he gave in releasing Richard from captivity. Anyhow, Royal charters, and dues from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a Bull of Pope Celestine III., confirmed the Abbey in its English possessions and privileges. The Abbey seems to have derived little benefit from these, and finally, by decision of a general congregation of the Cistercian Order, handed them over to the Abbot and Chapter of Bexley, to recoup the latter for the cost of entertaining monks of the Order going abroad, or returning from the Continent, on business of the Order.'[*]

[Footnote *: Robinson, Bruges, an Historical Sketch, p. 176.]



The English invasion of the fifteenth century destroyed the work of the monks in their fields and gardens, but the Abbey itself was spared; and the great disaster did not come until a century later, when the image-breakers, who had begun their work amongst the Gothic arches of Antwerp, spread over West Flanders, and descended upon Coxyde. The Abbey was attacked, and the monks fled to Bruges, carrying with them many of their treasures, which are still to be seen in the collection on the Quai de la Poterie, beyond the bridge which is called the Pont des Dunes. The noble building, so long the home of so much piety and learning, and from which so many generations of apostles had gone forth to toil in the fields and minister to the poor, was abandoned, and allowed to fall into ruins, until at last it gradually sunk into complete decay, and was buried beneath the sands. Not a trace of it now remains. History has few more piteous sermons to preach on the vanity of all the works of men.

The fishermen on the coast of Flanders have, from remote times, paid their vows in the hour of danger to Notre Dame de Lombaerdzyde. If they escape from some wild storm they go on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving. They walk in perfect silence along the road to the shrine, for not a word must be spoken till they reach it; and these hardy seafaring men may be seen kneeling at the altar of the old, weather-beaten church which stands on the south side of the highway through the village, and in which are wooden models of ships hung up as votive offerings before an image of the Virgin, which is the object of peculiar veneration. The Madonna of Lombaerdzyde did not prevail to keep the sea from invading the village at the time when the inhabitants were driven to Nieuport, but the belief in her miraculous power is as strong to-day as it was in the Dark Ages.



There is a view of Lombaerdzyde which no one strolling on the dunes near Nieuport should fail to see—a perfect picture, as typical of the scenery in these parts as any landscape chosen by Hobbema or Ruysdael. A causeway running straight between two lofty dunes of bare sand, and bordered by stunted trees, forms a long vista at the end of which Lombaerdzyde appears—a group of red-roofed houses, with narrow gables and white walls, and in the middle the pointed spire of the church, beyond which the level plain of Flanders, dotted with other villages and churches and trees in formal rows, stretches away into the distance until it merges in the horizon. Adinkerque, a picturesque village beyond Furnes, is another place which calls to mind many a picture of the Flemish artists in the Musee of Antwerp and the Mauritshuis at The Hague; and the recesses of the dune country in which these places are hidden has a wonderful fascination about it—the irregular outlines of the dunes, some high and some low, sinking here into deep hollows of firm sand, and rising there into strange fantastic shapes, sometimes with sides like small precipices on which nothing can grow, and sometimes sloping gently downwards and covered with trembling poplars, spread in confusion on every side. Often near the shore the sandy barrier has been broken down by the wind or by the waves, and a long gulley formed, which cuts deep into the dunes, and through which the sand drifts inland till it reaches a steep bank clothed with rushes, against which it heaps itself, and so, rising higher with the storms of each winter, forms another dune. This process has been going on for ages. The sands are for ever shifting, but moss begins to grow in sheltered spots; such wild flowers as can flourish there bloom and decay; the poplars shed their leaves, and nourish by imperceptible degrees the fibres of the moss; some hardy grasses take root; and at length a scanty greensward appears. By such means slowly, in the microcosm of the dunes, have been evolved out of the changing sands places fit for men to live in, until now along the strip which guards the coast of Flanders there are green glades gay with flowers, and shady dells, and gardens sheltered from the wind, plots of pasture-land, cottages and churches which seem to grow out of the landscape, their colouring so harmonizes with the colouring which surrounds them. And ever, close at hand, the sea is rolling in and falling on the shore. 'Come unto these yellow sands,' and when the sun is going down, casting a long bar of burnished gold across the water, against which, perhaps, the sail of some boat looms dark for a moment and then passes on, the sky glows in such a lovely, tender light that those who watch it must needs linger till the twilight is fading away before they turn their faces inland. There are few evenings for beauty like a summer evening on the shores of Flanders.