To the west of the Grande Place, and scarcely a stone’s throw from Baldwin’s Tower, rises the vast grey mass of Ste. Walburge, with ten or twelve tiny fifteenth or sixteenth century houses nestling snugly up against it. This splendid church dates from the very foundation of the city, an early chapel erected on this site having been sacked and burned by the Norsemen in 880. Twice after this the church was destroyed in the wars between Flanders and France, but in 1150 was begun an edifice of which some portions still remain. When John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, chose Audenaerde as his Flemish place of residence the burghers determined to enlarge and beautify their church and erected the semi-circular portion of the choir in 1406 to 1408. Soon afterwards the great nave was begun, but was not completed for fully a century, in 1515. The tower, one of the finest in the world, advanced still more slowly and was not entirely finished until 1624. Its original height was three hundred and seventy-three feet, but in 1804 the wooden spire was struck by lightning and burned. It has never been rebuilt, and the present height of the tower is two hundred and ninety-five feet. As it is, it dominates the little city and commands a wide view across the broad valley of the Scheldt in every direction. It was a stiff climb, up a perpetually winding stone stairway, to the top, but the view well repaid us for the exertion.

The interior of the edifice suggests a great metropolitan cathedral rather than the chief church of a small provincial town. The choir, which suffered severely from the ravages of the iconoclasts, has recently been restored with great skill, and is now one of the most beautiful in Europe. This church contains several paintings by Simon de Pape, a native of Audenaerde, whose father was the architect of the spire burned in 1804, also an “Assumption of the Virgin Mary” by Gaspard de Crayer, a follower of Rubens, who painted more than two hundred religious pictures. This, like all the others, is of mediocre merit. To the student of history and of ancient art one of the most interesting treasures of the church is its collection of tapestries of Audenaerde. Three of the more important ones represent landscapes—in fact the majority of Audenaerde tapestries that I have seen may be thus described—with castles, churches, and farmhouses in the centre and roses, tulips and other flowers in the foreground. Like most Audenaerde tapestries also they are crowded with winged creatures—birds flying or singing in the trees and hens, turkeys and pheasants strolling in the grass. A tapestry of a different genre is one belonging to the Confrerie de la Ste. Croix, which shows an Oriental landscape with Jerusalem in the distance, and at the four corners the figures of Herod, Pilate, Anna and Caiphas.

Tapestry weaving was introduced into Flanders during the time of the Crusades, the reports of the returning crusaders regarding the splendid carpets and rugs of the Orient arousing a desire on the part of the Flemish weavers to imitate them. Castle walls, however thick and strongly built, were apt to be damp and cold and a great demand speedily sprang up for the new productions for wall coverings. Starting at Arras and Tournai, the manufacture of tapestries spread to all the cities in the valley of the Scheldt and received a particularly important development at Audenaerde, which soon became the leading tapestry centre of Flanders. The weavers adopted Saint Barbara as their patron, and in 1441 were organised into a corporation. In their original charter it was stipulated that each apprentice must work three years for his first employer. Despite the severity of this regulation the manufacture of tapestries expanded with such rapidity that in 1539 no less than twenty thousand persons—including men, women and children—were employed as tapestry weavers at Audenaerde and its environs.

Among the famous Flemish artists who painted designs for the tapestry weavers of Audenaerde may be mentioned Floris, Coxcie, Rubens, David Teniers, Gaspar de Witte, Victor Janssens, Peter Spierinckx, Adolphus de Gryeff, and Alexander Van Bredael, while there were a host of others. Gradually, however, the artisans began to be discontented with their rate of pay, which the master tapestry makers kept at a low figure, and the advent of the religious wars found them eager to join any movement of revolt. After the outburst of the iconoclasts and the arrival of the Duke of Alva many fled to the Dutch provinces and to England, never to return. This emigration continued well into the seventeenth century, as various decrees passed by the magistrates between 1604 and 1621, confiscating the possessions of such emigrants, testify.

Another cause that contributed to the ruin of the tapestry industry at Audenaerde was the active effort made by the Kings of France, Louis XIII and Louis XIV, to induce the best weavers and master-workmen to emigrate to Paris. Philippe Robbins, one of the most celebrated master-weavers of Audenaerde, was invited to come to France in 1622 and was afterwards proclaimed at Beavais to be the Chef de tous les tapitsers du Roy. Many of the weavers who went to Paris and Brussels on their own account established ateliers where they manufactured what they proclaimed to be veritables tapis d’Audenaerde, and this competition still further injured the industry which soon afterward disappeared entirely from the city that gave its name to this type of tapestry and has never since been re-established there. With the departure of its weavers the little city on the Scheldt rapidly declined in importance, and for the past two centuries has been the sleepy little market-town that it is to-day.

On the other side of the River Scheldt, which flows through the town and is crossed by several bridges, is the interesting Church of Notre Dame de Pamela, which dates from the thirteenth century, having been constructed in the remarkably short space of four years and completed in 1239. It thus belongs to the transitional period between the Romanesque style and the pure Gothic and is of interest to the student of architecture as one of the most perfect examples of this period in Flanders. The general effect of the interior, especially when viewed from the foot of the organ loft, is noble and imposing in the highest degree. Our visit was during a sunny afternoon, and the effect of the long beams of light falling from the lofty windows of the nave across the stately pillars below was indescribably beautiful. Truly this masterpiece of stone expresses in its every line the truth of Montalembert’s beautiful remark that in such a church every column, every soaring arch, is a prayer to the Most High.

One of the most curious of the paintings in Notre Dame de Pamela is a triptych by Jean Snellinck, a painter of Antwerp and a forerunner of Rubens who was greatly in vogue among the tapestry weavers of Audenaerde. This work represents the “Creation of Eve” in the central panel, the “Temptation” at the left and the “Expulsion from Eden” at the right. The figures are all finely painted, especially those in the left wing, and the entire work is an admirable example of early Flemish art. The church also possesses an interesting work by Simon de Pape representing the invention of the cross. Beneath the organ loft were three tapestries of Audenaerde workmanship which the caretaker obligingly spread out on the church floor for our inspection. All were in a poor state of preservation. One represented a woodland scene with three peasants on their way to market in the foreground. The second had a curious group of fowls in the foreground, while the third showed a sylvan scene with a mother and three daughters, each of the girls bearing a basket of flowers.

Both Ste. Walburge and Notre Dame de Pamela suffered severely from the fury of the iconoclasts, although the storm broke in Audenaerde at a later period than in the larger cities farther to the eastward. The curé of Ste. Walburge and four priests of Notre Dame de Pamela were thrown by the rioters into the Scheldt and drowned October 4th, 1572, while both churches were sacked.

On our way back from visiting the smaller church we paused on the quay named Smallendam to admire the superb view of Ste. Walburge across the river. A bit further on we entered a quaint little estaminet bearing the inviting name of In der Groote Pinte which we freely translated as “the big pint.” Apparently our Flemish was inexact, for the beverage with which we were served was not notable for quantity. It proved, moreover, to be exceedingly sour and unpleasant, and we left our glasses unfinished. In the course of a tour around the town we inspected what remains of the ancient Château de Bourgogne, the early residence of the Dukes of Burgundy. The principal building is now used by a Justice of the Peace, and we found little of interest save some old walls and a massive inner courtyard. At the hospital of Notre Dame, opposite the great tower of Ste. Walburge, we found two more Audenaerde tapestries in an admirable state of preservation, while a dozen fine mediæval doorways in different parts of the town attracted our attention. For so small a place there are a great many religious institutions, many of them of great antiquity. Among these may be mentioned the Convents of the Black Sisters (Couvents des Soeurs-Noires), the Abbey of Maegdendale, the Convent of Notre Dame de Sion, and the Béguinage—the last an especially charming little spot with a delightful street entrance dating from the middle of the seventeenth century.

It is hard to believe, as one wanders about the half-deserted streets of this sleepy old Flemish town, that in its day of greatness it was a city of no mean power, holding its own sturdily against the greatest princes in the world. Of its ancient walls and towers not a single trace remains, yet those vanished ramparts four times in less than two centuries defied the armies of the neighbouring—but, alas, not always neighbourly—city of Ghent, even the redoubtable Philip Van Artevelde retiring from in front of them discomfited in 1382. Three centuries later, in 1684, Louis XIV was beaten off from an assault on these same walls, but in revenge he ordered the bombardment of the city. This resulted in a conflagration from which it had not fully recovered half a century later. In 1708 the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy won a great victory over the French under the walls of Audenaerde. To this day along the frontier between France and Flanders the peasant women lull their babies to sleep with a crooning ballad which begins:

Small wonder that even the nursery songs tell of war and chant the name of the great Duke two hundred years after the Battle of Audenaerde, for during three centuries the Flemish plains were the battlefield of Europe. Happily the present war has not as yet smitten Audenaerde with any serious damage, although Le Petit Guerrier, from his perch on the belfry of the Hotel de Ville, has no doubt looked down upon long lines of marching men and gleaming bayonets.

CHAPTER XVIII
OLD ANTWERP—ITS HISTORY AND LEGENDS

While Bruges and Ghent were in their prime as centres of Flemish commerce and industry a rival that was destined ultimately to supplant and eclipse them both was slowly growing up along the banks of the River Scheldt at a point where that important stream, which flows entirely across Flanders, becomes a tidal estuary. From the most ancient times the prosperity of Antwerp—which in French is called Anvers, in Flemish Antwerpen—has been closely connected with the river. According to the legends a giant named Antigonus once had a castle where the city now stands and exacted a toll of all who passed up or down the river. Evasion of this primitive high tariff was punished by cutting off both the culprit’s hands. Of course this giant just had to be killed by the hero, whose name was Brabo, and who was said to have been a lieutenant of Cæsar. Brabo cut off the dead giant’s right hand and flung it into the river in token that thenceforth it should be free from similar extortions. The visitor will find this legend recalled in the city’s arms—which has two hands surmounting a castle—and in many works of art. Brabo is said to have become the first Margrave of Antwerp, and to have founded a line of seventeen Margraves, all bearing the same name, but the deeds and even the existence of these princes is as mythical as those of their ancestor—or the famous legend of Lohengrin, which belongs to this period of Antwerp’s history.

Like London, Antwerp is situated sixty miles from the sea. In olden days commerce was rather inclined to seek the more inland ports, as being safer from storms and less exposed to sudden attacks. The size of ocean-going ships was, moreover, slowly but steadily increasing from generation to generation, and this increase favoured Antwerp, which had a deep, sure channel to the sea, as against its early rival Bruges, whose outlet, the little River Zwyn, was gradually silting up. The fact that the town was situated just outside of the dominions of the Counts of Flanders probably helped its early growth, for the jealous men of Bruges might otherwise have obtained from the Counts decrees restricting, and perhaps prohibiting, its expansion. As it was, the great Counts ruled all of the left bank of the Scheldt from Antwerp to the sea, and also the waters of the river as far as one could ride into it on horseback and then reach with extended sword.

The Tête de Flandre, opposite the centre of the older part of the city, marks the end of Flanders proper in this direction. As already explained by the Professor, however, Antwerp is none the less essentially a Flemish city in its art and architecture, its language and literature, and for many centuries of its brilliant history, and for these reasons deserves a place in this book.

Like the County of Flanders, the region surrounding Antwerp was an outlying “march” or frontier district of the Empire, and its rulers therefore derived their feudal title from the Emperor. About the year 1100 the Emperor bestowed the march on Godfrey of the Beard, Count of Louvain and first Duke of Brabant. To the Dukes of Brabant it thereafter always belonged until that title, with so many others, became merged in those acquired by the Dukes of Burgundy and united in their illustrious descendant, Charles V. On the whole, the Dukes, being absentees, were easy rulers—the shrewd burghers seizing upon their moments of weakness to wrest new privileges from them, and relying upon their strength for protection in times of danger. From time immemorial the burghers claimed a monopoly right to trade in fish, salt and oats. Other trading privileges followed, and by the time of the first Duke of Brabant the town was already an important one, with a powerful Burg, or fortress, surrounding five acres of land and buildings. Among the latter was the Steen, or feudal prison, a part of which still stands close to the river and is used as a museum of antiquities.

The early Dukes greatly extended the commercial rights and privileges of the town, Henry III granting a charter that allowed its citizens to hold bread and meat markets and trade in corn and cloth. Duke John I granted rights in his famous Core van Antwerpen, dated nearly five hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, that were remarkable for wisdom and liberality. “Within the town of Antwerp,” the charter read, “all men are free and there are no slaves. No inhabitant may be deprived of his natural judges, nor arrested in his house on civil suit.” In 1349 Duke John III granted a charter that not only confirmed all of its ancient privileges, but gave exceptional rights and liberties to foreigners—causing many of them to come and settle there. Among these was the right granted to any dweller within the city to sue: citizens according to local customs, foreigners according to the laws of their own lands. As at Bruges and Ghent all these precious charters were kept in a box having many locks, of which the keys were kept by delegates of the Broad Council of the city. “This box,” said Mr. Wilfred Robinson, in his valuable historical sketch of Antwerp, “might only be opened in the presence of all the civic authorities, while they stood around it bareheaded and holding lighted tapers in their hands. Truly it must have been a quaint and solemn scene!”

Some fifty years prior to the charter last mentioned Duke John II married one of the daughters of Edward I, King of England, and gave that monarch the city of Antwerp as a fief. Edward III used the city as a naval base, and in 1339 signed there with Jacques Van Artevelde a treaty of alliance with the communes of Brabant and Flanders. The Kings of England did not, however, retain their suzerainty over Antwerp very long, for it next passed—once more by marriage—to the daughter of Louis of Maele, Count of Flanders. The city sought to resist, and Count Louis was obliged to besiege it and punished the burghers severely for their disobedience. On his death it passed to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, along with the entire County of Flanders of which it was then a part, and thereafter remained under the Burgundian Dukes and their successors.

In 1446 Philip the Good—whose policy had proved so disastrous to Bruges and Ghent—laid the foundation for the commercial greatness of Antwerp by a liberal charter which he granted to the Merchant Adventurers of England. The English merchants had already left Bruges, where the River Zwyn was fast silting up, and now came to Antwerp and established there a most extensive trade. They were followed by the merchants of the other nations, and in less than seventy-five years after the granting of the charter the population of the city had doubled twice—from less than seventeen thousand to over forty—four thousand inhabitants.

It was during this period that many of the most interesting structures of “old Antwerp”—the portion of the city between the Steen and the cathedral and north of the Hotel de Ville—were built. We spent several interesting mornings tramping these quaint old winding streets, some of which are still as mediæval in aspect as any to be seen in Europe. The Vielle Boucherie, recently restored, dates from the reign of Louis of Maele. In its time it contained stalls for fifty-three butchers. The streets surrounding this quaint structure of ragged brick are well nigh as ancient and interesting as the “monuments” which one encounters here and there while exploring them. The Steen itself dates, as we have seen, from the very earliest period of the city’s history, but is only a remnant of what it was. In the days of the Spanish Inquisition this grim old structure became a place of dread, and its gloomy dungeons—which the cheerful and smiling guide showed us by candlelight, for two cents a head—were in constant use for the entertainment of guests of the Margraves and their successors, the Burgundian Dukes, for nigh on to eight centuries.

In 1485 the rivalry between Antwerp and Bruges reached the point of open war. The men of Bruges built a fort commanding the River Scheldt at a point near Calloo, mounting on it no less than sixty cannon. The Antwerp burghers met this challenge by building a similar fort at Austruwel, and then attacked and captured the Flemish fort on April 23—St. George’s Day. A yearly procession still commemorates this victory in the long contest to maintain the freedom of the river. A fleet of forty-nine merchant vessels that the Flemings had detained came triumphantly up the river, and the conflict for supremacy between the old sea gateway of the Netherlands and the new was settled once for all—as far as poor Bruges was concerned—in favour of Antwerp, the new maritime queen of the North.

The river itself seemed to favour the prosperity of Antwerp, as if proud and eager to become the handmaiden of so valiant and beautiful a city, for the western entrance of the Scheldt gradually deepened at about this period—from causes that in those days no one tried to understand. This gave the port a deep channel to the sea to accommodate the growing draught of ocean-going ships. The discoveries of Columbus and Vasco da Gama helped the port also. Until then Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of the sugar trade of the East. Now it came sea-borne to Antwerp, and the formerly profitable overland sugar trade between Venice and Germany was ruined. This caused the Portuguese to establish a factory at Antwerp. The Spaniards followed, while the English and Italians enlarged their warehouses. Several great German trading houses opened premises in the city, although the Hanseatic League did not abandon Bruges for Antwerp until 1545—being the very last to go.

While the decline of Bruges led the painters of that city to desert it for its fast-growing rival on the Scheldt, Quentin Matsys, the greatest of the early Antwerp artists, does not seem to have derived much of his inspiration from the masterpieces of the Bruges school. The early chronicles give a most romantic account of the life of this painter, who was born at Louvain about 1466. According to these more or less legendary stories he was at first a blacksmith, and changed to a painter through love for a damsel whose father was a great patron and admirer of that art. Another account has it that he took up painting owing to illness, first colouring images of the saints such as were then given to children during the carnival. Blacksmith he certainly was, as his father had been before him, and the wonderful cover for the well in front of the cathedral is his handiwork. It seems probable, however, that he first learned the art of painting at Louvain, probably as an apprentice to the son of Dierick Bouts. At Antwerp he soon fell in love with a beautiful girl, who may have been the model for some of his charming Madonnas. The story is told by one old chronicler that the maiden’s father opposed the match because the young suitor was not a sufficiently skilful artist. On a certain occasion Matsys, finding his intended father-in-law out, painted a fly on one of the figures in a painting belonging to him. On his return the owner of the painting started to brush the fly off and, seeing his mistake, heartily admitted that the young artist who had painted it merited all praise and gave his consent to the nuptials.

The museum at Antwerp is rich in masterpieces by Matsys, including his greatest work, “The Entombment.” This is a triptych, the panels showing Herod’s banquet with the head of John the Baptist lying on the table, and St. John in the boiling oil. The “Madonna,” in the same museum, is one of the sweetest faces ever painted among the hundreds of Madonnas that abound in mediæval art, and one cannot but feel that it is the very face that won the heart of the artist and caused him to adopt painting as his profession. Its resemblance to the face of the Madonna now in the Berlin museum strengthens this theory. At Antwerp also there are to be seen “The Holy Face,” a companion painting to the “Madonna” just mentioned, and the gruesome yet appealing “Veil of Veronica,” showing the livid face of the Saviour with drops of blood from the cruel crown of thorns trickling down across it. The museum at Brussels possesses another masterpiece, and the oldest dated picture by this artist, “The Legend of St. Anne,” which was completed in 1509 for the brotherhood of St. Anne at Louvain. He also painted several strong and striking portraits, of which the best is that of Erasmus at the Städel Institute at Frankfort. Matsys was one of the first Flemish artists to present subjects of every-day life as well as religious episodes and characters. “The Banker and his Wife,” at the Louvre in Paris, is the finest example of this kind. There are authenticated works by this master in a number of European museums, while a considerable number of his pictures have become lost or have not as yet been identified.

Matsys is the greatest name in the history of Flemish art between the masters of Bruges and the school of Rubens. It was his success that made Antwerp the Florence of the North. Among Matsys’ successors Frans de Vriendt, better known as Frans Floris, was one of the most notable. He was a member of the Antwerp guild of St. Luke at the age of twenty-three, and produced a vast number of works, many of which can still be seen scattered among the churches and art collections of Flanders. He had over one hundred pupils, of whom Martin de Vos achieved the greatest fame. As this painter worked after the destruction of the image-breakers many of his religious subjects survive to this day. The Antwerp museum contains no less than twenty-three of his works, as against only four by his master. Both of these artists, however, were profound admirers of the Italian school, and the work of Floris especially—though vastly admired in his day—is now looked upon as more Italian than Flemish, more imitative than original.

This cannot be said of the next really great painter to appear in Flanders, Peter Breughel the Elder. Born at the little village of Breughel, near Breda in Brabant, about 1526, this artist studied for a time in Italy—as did all of his contemporaries—and then settled at Antwerp. Here he obtained the themes of many of his most famous compositions. “In the port, in the tavern, in the fairs of neighbouring villages,” says Prof. A. J. Wauters, “meeting now a young couple in the giddy dance, or a drunkard stumbling in his path, he sought the humble spectacle of homely things, the noisy mirth of rustic festivities, and was always in quest of every-day subjects, which earned for him, at the hands of posterity, the surname of ‘Breughel of Peasants.’” He later removed to Brussels, where he received many commissions, particularly from the Emperor Rudolph II, who greatly admired his work. Several of his chief masterpieces are therefore in the Imperial Museum at Vienna, but the Royal Museum at Antwerp contains four of his works, while several others are scattered about Europe.

To the lover of Flemish paintings Breughel is one of the most characteristic and charming of them all. His art is distinctively Flemish, in subject, treatment and inspiration. Somewhat influenced perhaps by Jerome Bosch, a Brabant painter of the previous century renowned for his weird and eccentric conceptions, Breughel is never conventional. His work is that of a humourist, a satirist who sees the follies of the world but laughs at them. His pictures are admirable in their colouring, execution and the grouping of the figures, and they are especially interesting in their vivid portrayal of the every-day Flemish life of the times in which he lived.

The visitor to Antwerp cannot fail to observe the images of the Virgin placed at the corners of nearly every street in the older quarter of the city. These are said to be due to the Long Wapper, a somewhat humorous but none the less grim and terrifying fiend who was wont, many centuries ago, to play weird pranks upon the good people of Antwerp after nightfall. He used to lie in wait for wayfarers upon deserted by-streets in the uncanny hours between midnight and dawn. Pouncing upon his terrified victims, he would carry them off, sometimes never to return. Now and then he assumed the form of a lost baby, to which, being found by some charitable mother, the breast was given. Presently the good woman discovered to her horror that the foundling was swelling and becoming heavy, and when she put it down the Wapper assumed his own shape and ran off shrieking. At times he peered into church windows and howled and gibbered at the worshippers, and afterwards frightened them terribly as they went homeward, or, stretching his body to an incredible length, he peered into the upper windows of people’s houses. Men feared to speak evil of the Long Wapper, for something terrible was certain to happen to those who did. At last it was found that he would never pass an image of the Virgin, and that is why so many were erected that finally the evil fiend had no more streets left in which to play his mad pranks and left Antwerp for the lonely moors and dunes along the seacoast where he is still said to be seen.

The place most frequented by the Long Wapper was a little stream which came to be called the Wappersrui in consequence, and a bridge across it the Wappersbrucke. Here he often strode out of the water with his long thin legs extending far down into its dark depths like two black stilts. Once he had reached the embankment he shrank instantly to a diminutive size—usually taking the form of a schoolboy. These first appearances were generally between daylight and dark, when the twilight made it difficult to distinguish faces clearly, and he always took the place of some boy who happened to be absent. A favourite game of the boys, who were then returning from school, was called shove-hat. In this game one boy tossed his hat on the ground and the others shoved and kicked it about with their feet while its owner sought to regain it. When it came the turn of the Long Wapper to throw down his hat the first one to give it a kick broke his wooden shoe to pieces and fractured his toes, for the hat proved to be a heavy iron pot. Then the street echoed with a jeering “Ha, ha, ha!” but the Wapper had disappeared.

His pranks upon grown-up people were apt to be far more serious in their consequences than those just described. Often he paused at some tavern door and joined the party seated there in a game of cards, which invariably resulted in a violent quarrel in the course of which one or more of the players was usually killed. On another occasion he appeared in broad daylight selling mussels. Encountering four women sitting outside their door at work he opened a mussel and offered it to one of them. She tasted it, but it turned into dirt in her mouth. Apologising, he opened another, which all could see was a sound, fine mussel, and offered it to another of the women. No sooner was it in her mouth than it turned into a huge spider. The women thereupon set upon him, but he defended himself so rudely that two of them were nearly killed, when he suddenly vanished, leaving only an echo of wild laughter.

In the country to the east of Antwerp there are many quaint legends still told at the peasants’ firesides on stormy winter nights about the Kaboutermannekens who in ancient times frequented that neighbourhood. Near the village of Gelrode there is a small hill on the sides of which are many little caves which were formerly the abode of these fairies, the hill being called the Kabouterberg to this day in consequence. There is a similar hill, called Kaboutermannekensberg, between Turnhout and Casterle. They were also called Red Caps or Klabbers, and were usually clad in red from head to foot, and often had green hands and faces, according to those who were so fortunate as to see them. These little gnomes or elves seem to have resembled their kind as reported in the folk-lore of other northern countries, being the willing and loyal slaves of those who treated them kindly, and the bitter, and sometimes dangerous, enemies of those who misused them.

Still another local sprite—this time a spirit of evil resembling in some respects the Long Wapper—was known as Kludde. This fiend was often met with after dark in many parts of Flanders, and even in Brabant. At times Kludde would appear to the peasants as the dusk of twilight was deepening into the intense darkness of night on the Flemish plains, in the guise of an old, half-starved horse. If a farmer or stable-boy mistook him for one of his own horses and mounted on Kludde he instantly rushed off at an incredible speed until he came to some water into which he pitched his terrified rider headlong. This accomplished to his satisfaction he vanished, crying “Kludde, Kludde!” as he went away, whence came his name.

CHAPTER XIX
THREE CENTURIES OF ANTWERP PRINTERS

The joyous entry of the boy prince who was afterward to become Charles V was the signal for ten days of rejoicing by the citizens of Antwerp. This was early in the year 1515; and, in truth, the city prospered mightily under the rule of the great Emperor, who favoured it on many notable occasions. The bankers and merchant princes of Antwerp became renowned the world over for their wealth and magnificence. Anthony Fugger, who was the banker of Maximilian and Charles V, left a fortune of six million golden crowns, and it is said that his name survives to this day as a synonym for wealth—the common people calling any one who is extremely rich a rykke Fokker, a rich Fugger. It is related that another rich Antwerp merchant, Gasparo Dozzo, on being privileged to entertain the Emperor in his house, cast into the fire a promissory note for a large loan he had formerly made to his sovereign.

This period of wealth and prosperity continued till the very end of the reign of the Emperor, but under his successor, Philip II, the city was plunged into misfortunes and miseries as swift and as appalling as those that befell in the terrible Fall of 1914. In 1556 Philip opened a chapter of the Knights of the Golden Fleece at St. Mary’s, afterward the cathedral, in Antwerp—thereby recognising the supremacy of this town over the others in his Flemish dominions. Among the new knights to whom he gave the accolade were William the Silent and the Count of Horn. Little men thought on that day of festivity and good will what the future held in store for them all!

On August 18, 1566, the miraculous statue of the Blessed Virgin was taken from its place in St. Mary’s church and carried through the streets of the city in a solemn procession—as it had been for nearly two hundred years. This time there were murmurs of disapproval from the crowds that lined the streets, some stones were thrown, and the procession hastily returned to the church. The next day a small mob, composed for the most part of boys and men of the lowest class, entered the church and destroyed the statue and the entire contents of the sacred edifice, including some seventy altars, and paintings and statues almost without number. The organ, then the wonder of Europe, was ruined, and the rabble dressed itself in the costly vestments of the clergy and carried away the treasures of the church and even the contents of the poor boxes. This was the beginning of the work of the image-breakers, as they came to be called, which spread throughout Flanders until scarcely a religious edifice had escaped the destruction of its movable contents, while a few here and there were burned. As noted in the chapter on Audenaerde, Margaret of Parma was Regent at this time and acted resolutely to suppress the disorders—which were largely due to the supine attitude of the local magistrates at the beginning.

She had all but succeeded in restoring peace and quiet throughout Flanders when Philip suddenly decided to send an army there, and selected the Duke of Alva to command it. The story of the eighty years’ war that followed is familiar to every American through Motley’s account of it, although that brilliant writer is more concerned with the details relating to the Dutch provinces than those regarding the portion of the Netherlands that remained subject to Spain. Two events, however, in the long war were so directly concerned with Antwerp, and loom so large in its history, that they cannot be passed over here. Both have a renewed interest in view of the history of Antwerp’s latest siege in 1914. These are the Spanish Fury, and the great siege of the city by the Duke of Parma.

Alva, who superseded the gentle Margaret of Parma as Regent of the Netherlands, quickly took stern measures for the repression of further disorders at Antwerp, which he regarded as a hot-bed of heresy. A huge citadel was built at the southern end of the town, near the Scheldt, in 1572, in the centre of which Alva erected a bronze statue of himself. On the marble pedestal the inscription related how “the most faithful minister of the best of Kings had stamped out sedition, repelled the rebels, set up religion, and restored justice and peace to the country.” So far were these boasts from being true that only the following year, in 1573, Alva stole away to Spain secretly, his government a failure, his army mutinous, and half of the country he had been sent to rule in open and successful revolt. War with England had ruined the commerce of Antwerp, Alva’s fiscal policy and incessant taxes had half beggared the people of the entire country, while thousands of the noblest and bravest in the land had met death on the scaffold or in the torture chambers of the Inquisition.

Requesens, the next Regent, was unable either to stem the rising tide of revolt or to pay his soldiers—King Philip failing to send funds until the pay of the Spanish veterans was at one time twenty-two months in arrears. The sudden death of Requesens in 1576 left matters in a nearly chaotic condition. The veterans who had been fighting in Zeeland against the Dutch mutinied and returning to Flanders captured the town of Alost, where they forced the citizens to give them food and shelter. On November 4th, 1576, the mutineers marched to Antwerp, some two thousand strong, where they joined the Spaniards and mercenaries in the citadel. They were under the command of an Eletto, or elected leader. Jerome Roda, a Spaniard, had proclaimed himself the commandant of the fortress until the new Regent, Don John of Austria, should arrive in Flanders. Under these two worthies the combined forces in the citadel, some five thousand men in all, proceeded to attack the city. The citizens, on their side, had for some time feared such an attack and should have been able to repel it. There were fourteen thousand armed burghers, four thousand Walloons and an equal number of German troops—twenty-two thousand in all. It may have been that they felt unduly secure against an attack on that day because it was Sunday. It is certain that they were badly commanded.

Shortly after noon the Spaniards rushed from the citadel and across the broad open esplanade cleared a few years before by Alva, shouting their war cry, Sant Jago y cierra España. The Eletto was the first to fall, but the rush of furious soldiers was not to be stopped by a single volley. The Walloons put up a brave fight but part of the Germans treacherously lowered their pikes and let the Spaniards pass down the rue St. Georges. On the Place de Meir the defenders made another stand, but were swiftly swept back in a confused and disorganised mass by the Spanish cavalry. At the Hotel de Ville the burghers fought fiercely until the mutineers set fire to the edifice. In the conflagration that followed not only this noble structure, one of the finest in Europe, but the adjoining guild houses and some eighty other buildings were consumed. Of the Hotel de Ville only the blackened walls remained. By nightfall the Spaniards and the German mercenaries, most of whom had joined the victors in order to share in the spoils, were masters of the doomed city.

That night the scenes of pillage and rapine as the savage and half drunken soldiers swept through the streets and ransacked the houses of all who did not instantly pay a stiff ransom, exceed the descriptive powers of the contemporary historians. One of the burgomasters was stabbed to end a quarrel as to his ransom. Many burghers were killed near the town hall, or were burned within it like rats. For three days the city was given up to be sacked. The number who were killed, including women and children, has been variously estimated at from seven thousand to seventeen thousand of the citizens and defenders of the city, and from two hundred and fifty to six hundred of the Spaniards. The loss in property amounted to many millions, but no accurate estimate could be made of it, as many who suffered most in this respect lost their lives as well. Cartloads of plunder were sent out of the city, while much of it was actually sold by those who did not care or dare to keep it in a temporary market-place at the Bourse. Some were said to have concealed their wealth by having sword hilts and breastplates made of solid gold. Like the ill-gotten gains of the Spaniards in America, however, none of this booty—the reward of treachery, of assassination, of cruelty and the sudden setting free of all the basest elements in human nature—profited its captors very greatly. In a few days after the arrival of Don John, the new Regent, the mutinous soldiers were paid off and marched away to Maestricht and presently to other battlefields, from Flanders to Lombardy, where, no doubt, most of the golden breastplates and sword hilts fell—in due time—to other conquerors. Such was the Spanish Fury—until 1914 the worst blot on civilisation that history records.

Soon after the Spaniards left the city permission was given to the people to destroy the citadel that the tyrant Alva had built to overawe the town. The entire population flocked to this welcome task—men, women and children, each taking a shovel, a basket or a barrow. It is related that even the great ladies of the city took part in the work of demolition—so hated had the grim fortress become. The statue of the cruel Duke that he had so vaingloriously erected in the centre of the citadel only five years before was torn down and dragged through the streets by a cheering throng. Charles Verlat has given the world a vivid picture of this incident which hangs in the Antwerp museum.

Six years later the Duke d’Alençon, who had been made nominal sovereign over the Low Countries by William the Silent, planned to treacherously attack and sack the city with his French soldiers, some three thousand, five hundred strong. This time, however, the citizens were not caught napping and when the tocsin in the cathedral called the alarm the burghers rushed out in thousands. The French swashbucklers proved to be less stubborn fighters than the Spanish veterans and soon were driven back in a confused mass to the city gates, most of them being killed and the cowardly Duke only saving himself by flight. This episode has been derisively called the French Fury. It happened January 17, 1583.

The following year Alexander Farnese, the Duke of Parma—and the son of the Duchess of Parma, whose career as Regent of the Netherlands was briefly described in the chapter on Audenaerde, her birthplace—determined to besiege Antwerp, which, since the Spanish Fury, had fallen into the hands of the revolted Provinces. Unfortunately for its defenders, William the Silent had just died at the hands of an assassin and his plans for the protection of the city by flooding all of the marshes surrounding it were not followed. The butchers opposed flooding all of their pasture lands and the important Kowenstein Dyke was not cut. The Prince of Parma, who was the greatest military leader of his age, swiftly captured the forts on the Flemish side of the river, seized the Kowenstein Dyke—which extended on the Brabant side from a point opposite Calloo to Starbroeck—and began to build a bridge across the river itself. This daring project, if successful, would completely isolate Antwerp from the sea and its Dutch allies and render certain its ultimate subjection by starvation.

The bridge was built partly on piles, as far out as the water was sufficiently shallow, then the intervening gap was spanned by means of thirty-two large vessels anchored at both ends and lashed together by chains and heavy cables. The structure was completed in February, 1585, to the amazement of the besieged burghers and the great joy of the Prince’s army. It would seem a small affair to the pontoon bridge builders of to-day, being two thousand, four hundred feet long and twelve feet wide, but at that time it was deemed one of the most notable achievements ever known. The defenders of the city sent huge fireships down the river to destroy the bridge. One of these actually exploded against the structure and another off Calloo, destroying more than eight hundred Spanish soldiers and endangering their intrepid leader himself. The bridge was wrecked, but Farnese repaired it before the people at Antwerp learned of the success of their attempt.

A tremendous attack was next made on the Kowenstein Dyke, with a view to cutting it—a feat that could have been done without any trouble if the Prince of Orange’s counsels had been followed a few months earlier. A fleet of one hundred and fifty Dutch ships joined in the battle from the sea side, while a strong force of Flemings, English and Dutch from Antwerp attacked the dyke from the land side. After a fierce struggle it was cut, the waters rushed through and one vessel loaded with provisions for the beleaguered city made its way past. That night Antwerp rejoiced, but in the darkness the Prince of Parma made another furious assault and finally drove back the allies, capturing twenty-eight ships of the Dutch fleet and filling in the dyke once more. This victory—which as a feat of arms was one of the most brilliant of the war—sealed the fate of the city, which finally capitulated August 17th. So important was this success to the Spanish, cause that Isabella, the daughter of King Philip, was awakened by her father during the night by the tidings, “Antwerp is ours!” Its fall settled approximately the extent of the region that was left to the Spanish Crown out of the wreck of its former empire in the Low Countries. Thenceforth all of the provinces to the west and south of Antwerp—the region now comprised in the Kingdom of Belgium—remained subject to the King of Spain and his Austrian successors until the great French Revolution. The remaining provinces became the Dutch Republic and now form the Kingdom of Holland.

The Spanish Fury and the great siege had together well-nigh destroyed the commerce of the port, and the heavy fine imposed by the conquerors upon the city for its rebellion completed its ruin. Packs of wild dogs are said to have roamed unmolested through the outlying villages, which stood deserted, while even wolves were seen. Grass grew in the once crowded streets of the city, and famine added to the miseries of its fast declining population. It would hardly be conceivable that a quarter of a century of hideous misrule could have so utterly obliterated the prosperity of this once opulent city, but for the fearful object lesson afforded in 1914 that war is still as potent a breeder of destruction and despair as it was in that dark age.

Enough, however, of wars and sieges and the sack of cities. Antwerp’s past includes many pleasanter stories as well—stories of progress and achievement. To those who are interested in the noble art of printing, and the various branches of the fine arts that serve as handmaids to the printer, Antwerp possesses one of the rarest treasure-houses in the world. This is the Museum Plantin-Moretus, for three centuries the head office and workshop of the great printing-house whose name it bears.

Christopher Plantin, the founder of this famous establishment, was by birth a Frenchman—having first seen the light of day in the vicinity of Tours in the year 1514. Fleeing from the plague with his father to Lyons, he went from there to Orleans, to Paris, and finally to Caen in Normandy, where he learned the art of printing from Robert Mace. Here also he met Jeanne Rivière, who became his wife in 1545 or 1546. The couple soon went to Paris, where Plantin learned the art of bookbinding and of making caskets and other articles of elegance from leather. In 1549 he came to Antwerp and the following year was enrolled as a citizen and also as a member of the famous guild of St. Luke with the title of printer. He does not appear to have followed this profession, however, but speedily gained much renown for his exquisite workmanship as a bookbinder and casket maker, finding several wealthy patrons and protectors-among them Gabriel de Çayas, Secretary of Philip II, then the most powerful monarch in Christendom.

In the year 1555, while on his way to deliver in person a jewel-case he had just made for this client, he met with an adventure that changed the course of his career. It was quite dark before he had completed his errand, and as he made his way along the narrow, ill-lit streets of the old city he was set upon by a party of drunken revellers who mistook him, with the casket under his arm, for a guitar player against whom they had some grievance. One of the party ran the unfortunate casket-maker through the body with his sword, and he had barely strength enough to drag himself home, more nearly dead than alive. Skilful medical and surgical aid finally saved his life, but left him unable to do any manual work. He therefore gave up his casket-making and resumed the trade of printer, which he had learned at Caen. Instead of a misfortune, as it no doubt seemed at the time, this sword thrust proved the turning point in his career, for in his new profession he was destined to achieve undying fame.

There were at this time no less than sixty-six printing establishments in the Low Countries, of which thirteen were at Antwerp, some of the latter rivalling the best printers of Paris, Basel and Venice in the beauty of their productions. Plantin’s first book was issued the year of his accident, in 1555, and was entitled “La Institutione di una fanciulla nata nobilmente.” During the next seven years his presses turned out a limited number of works, but in 1562 his office was raided by order of the Regent, Margaret, the Duchess of Parma, and three of his workmen seized and condemned to the galleys for a heretical book they had printed unknown to him, entitled “Briefve instruction pour prier.” Plantin fled to France, and to avoid confiscation he had some of his friends, acting as creditors, sell and buy in his printing plant. The following year—having convinced the Government of his orthodoxy—he returned to Antwerp and organised a company consisting of himself and four partners, including some of his pretended creditors. While this arrangement lasted, from 1563 to 1567, more than two hundred books were printed, and forty workmen kept constantly employed. His work was already considered notable for the beauty of its type and excellence of the paper used.

Soon after the partnership was dissolved Plantin undertook what was destined to be the greatest work of his career, and one of the most notable in the history of printing, the famous Biblia Regia. This was an edition of the Bible in four ancient languages, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Chaldean. The Hebrew type was purchased from a Venetian printer, while the last two were cast expressly for this book. His friend Çayas interested Philip II in the project and that monarch sent the great scholar Arias Montanus from Alcala to supervise the work. At the suggestion of Cardinal Granville, Syriac was added to the other texts, so that, including French, there were six languages in all. The first volume of this “Polyglot Bible,” as it came to be called, appeared in 1569 and the eighth and last in 1573. The work proved to be exceedingly costly, and to help meet the expense the King of Spain advanced 21,200 florins, and granted Plantin a monopoly for its sale throughout the Spanish dominions for the period of twenty years. A similar monopoly was granted by the Pope, the Emperor, the King of France and the Republic of Venice. In spite of all this, the book brought its printer no profits, but kept him in debt for the rest of his life. Pensions promised by Philip II to himself and his son-in-law, Raphelingen, were never paid.

Between the editor of the great Bible and its printer a strong friendship sprang up. “This man,” wrote Arias on one occasion, “is all mind and no matter. He neither eats, drinks, nor sleeps.” And again, “Never did I know so capable and so kindhearted a man. Every day I find something fresh to admire in him, but what I admire the most is his humble patience towards envious colleagues, whom he insists on wishing well, though he might do them much harm.”

Besides the Biblia Regia Plantin, now at the height of his fame, managed to turn out a vast quantity of printed matter. High in royal favour by reason of this worthy work, he had no difficulty in obtaining for himself and his heirs a profitable monopoly for printing and selling missals and breviaries throughout Spain’s wide dominions. While the largest printers at Paris rarely employed more than six presses, Plantin kept twenty-two constantly at work, had agents at Paris and Leyden, and sent a member of his family every year to attend the fairs at Leipzig and Frankfort. In 1575 his office is said to have had seventy-three kinds of type, weighing over seventeen tons.

In 1570 he was appointed by Philip to the newly created office of Prototypographer in the Netherlands. Masters and men in the printing trade had to apply to him for certificates as to their fitness, while he was also required to draw up a list of forbidden books. In this, curiously enough, one of the earlier products of his own press found a place—a rhyming version of the Psalms in French by Clement Marot. This office does not seem to have paid much salary, if any, or to have given its first possessor anything but a lot of worry.

The Plantin Press was located at various places about the city until 1576, when it was established on the rue Haute near the Porte de St. Jean. Three years later Plantin purchased from the owner of this property the premises occupied by the present museum and extending from the rue Haute through to the Friday Market, with a large gateway opening into the latter. Plantin had been only eight months in this new location when the Spanish Fury broke out. He was away on a journey himself, but his son-in-law, Moretus, had to pay a heavy fine to save the printing-office from pillage. The next few years were full of trouble and anxiety. For a time Plantin had to leave Antwerp, going to Leyden, where he met Justus Lipsius and was made printer to the University. During the great siege of Antwerp he fled, with many other Catholics, to Cologne, where he thought for a time of establishing his chief printing-office. After the siege he hurried home, but a short time later his health began to fail.