Bruges and West Flanders

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 Hôtel 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 Hôtel de Ville and Palais de Justice, in a room of which the judges of the Inquisition used to sit.

[Footnote *: 'Furnes était devenue un oppidium, aux termes d'une charte de 1183, qui avait à se défendre à la fois contre les incursions des étrangers et les attaques d'une population "indocile et cruelle," comme l'appelle l'Abbé de Saint Riquier Hariulf, toujours déchirée par les factions et toujours prête à la révolte.'—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 Hôtel 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 Hôtel 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 cortège of the auto-da-fé; 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 'Confrèrie de la Sodalité du Sauveur Crucifié et de la Sainte Mère 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 mediævalism. 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 Hôtel 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 Hôtel 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, débonnaire, 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 fêtes, 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 fête, 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'Abbé 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 siège 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 étrangers de toutes les nations venaient y assister.'—L'Abbé 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 débris 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 Siècles.]

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.]

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 comité des fêtes, 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 comité des fêtes, 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, réservé 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 Société 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 Stübben, 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 mediæval 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 Musée 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.