CHAPTER VI

Vengeance

MEANWHILE Charles’s friends had been scouring the country far and wide, and wherever they went crying vengeance, and that not vainly. A bevy of thirty knights at once took up arms and swore they would not lay them down until they had washed them in the blood of the assassins, and—ominous note of warning—these men were all of them, or nearly all of them, partisans of the Erembalds. By common consent they chose Gervais Van Praet for their chief, and at once began to lay waste and plunder the lands and property of those who would not join them. Thus, gaining fresh recruits wherever they went, the little band rapidly grew into a vast army. Soon the town and fortress of Ravenschoot—a mighty stronghold of the Karls which, through some unaccountable blunder, had been left ungarrisoned—went up in flames; by the end of the week the smouldering embers of his brother Wulfric’s palace, not a stone’s throw from Bruges, warned Bertulph that the enemy was at his gates, and there was no sign of the reinforcements which William of Löo, who was perhaps in daily communication with the Provost, had promised to send from Ypres. Next morning, therefore, his nephews made a sortie beyond the ramparts, in the hope of putting the insurgents to flight, but after no little hard fighting they were smitten hip and thigh and forced to lead their shattered troops back to the city.

The burghers, however, still loyal to the cause of their châtelain, had been hard at work night and day strengthening the fortifications—old men, women and children, even the clergy themselves, had lent a willing hand—and the town was said to be impregnable. Perhaps it was, but for all that, on Wednesday the 9th of March, the enemy walked in at the Sablon gate. There was a traitor within the camp. May be one of the provost’s own household. It was the hour of the evening meal, and so confident were the townsfolk in the strength of their walls that they remained quietly seated at table whilst the Isegrins[11] were marching through their streets, and the insurgents were already in the heart of the city before the news of their advent had reached Bertulph’s palace. The Erembalds then were had at an advantage, and though they fought bravely—they always fought bravely—after a long and bloody conflict, the chief shock of which was on the Pont de l’Ane Aveugle, they were at last forced to retire to the Bourg, hoping against hope that they would be able to hold out until William of Löo should arrive.

As for the burghers, when they saw how the land lay, and that the insurgents would probably prove victorious, they either joined hands with them or endeavoured to maintain a neutral attitude, awaiting the issue of events—a prudent policy which their descendants have not unfrequently followed. Some ten days after the night of the great betrayal, the Isegrins approached their opponents with overtures of peace—offers of life and liberty for all within the beleaguered fortress who averred their innocence, if only they would come forth and prove it.

In the turmoil and confusion incident on the flight to the Bourg not a few of the attacking party were still within the fortress when the gates were shut, and many plain citizens, who perhaps had little sympathy with either side, but certainly had had no part in Charles’s death, were in like predicament. It was on behalf of these men that the Isegrins now approached their foes. Still there is no reason to doubt that the offer was made in good faith. ‘Many who were innocent availed themselves of it, and many also,’ says Galbert, ‘whose conduct was suspected. Of their ultimate fate we know nothing, nor what proportion the out-goers bore to those who remained behind. The number of these last, however, must have been considerable, and among them were Bertulph, Hacket and a nephew whom the contemporary chroniclers invariably describe as Robert the Child. Not that these three acknowledged themselves guilty—on the contrary, they stoutly maintained their innocence, nor had they any sympathy with the murder—but for them the bonds of kinship were indissoluble, and the guilt of Burchard and some other members of the family was notorious and avowed. ‘Not one among ye,’ cried Hacket, who was spokesman for the rest, ‘not one among ye bewails this bloody deed more bitterly than do we. Send into exile, if ye will, all those who acknowledge their guilt. Impose on them what penalty our judges and our bishops shall deem fit, provided that life and liberty be respected, and that ye do them no bodily harm. Give us some assurance of this, and that we, who declare our innocence, shall be offered opportunity of proving it, each man as befitteth his state—clerk according to Church law, knight in accordance with the laws of chivalry—and we surrender, but if these conditions do not seem good to ye, then will we remain here and defend this fortress. It is better to live with our guilty kinsmen than to come forth and meet a dishonourable death at your hands.’ This extraordinary speech is given by Walbert, who was at Bruges during the whole of this troublous period, and avers that he noted down on his tablets each night the events that had occurred during the day, but he adds that owing to the excitement and turmoil that prevailed in the city it is not unlikely that some of his statements are inaccurate.

Needless to say that the Isegrins turned a deaf ear to Hacket’s proposals. In the deliverance of their friends they had obtained all that they wanted; the only answer they vouchsafed was from the mouth of the ‘Winged Lie’ and the ‘Winged Lie’ breathed out threatening, and slaughter, and curses into the bargain. All hope of conciliation was at an end, and, says Walbert, ‘the belligerents went their several ways full of headiness and gall.’

All that day the fight continued without any marked success on either side, but towards sunset the attacking party were beaten back with great loss, and the Erembalds were left, as they fondly believed, at peace for the night.

Worn out with hard fighting, and filled with an overweening sense of security, inspired by their unlooked-for success, the whole of the little garrison had retired to rest, save only a handful of sentinels wearily straining their eyes over the dark city. All through the night these men were content to freeze on the ramparts, chilled to the bone by a cutting east wind, but towards the small hours of morning the icy breath of coming day drove them into the great hall of Charles’s palace, where some one had kindled a fire. There they sat before the glowing logs, dozing and drinking and chatting together in a fool’s paradise, and clean forgot the little western door by which their friends were wont to come and go, and that a rusty lock and half-a-dozen nails alone secured it. ‘This one weak spot, when we were freezing on the battlements, some prowling Isegrin smelt out, and whilst we are rubbing a little life into our poor numbed limbs before Charles’s fire, a host of them swarm round it. Some one suggests an axe, it yields at a blow, and the rabid pack rush in so swiftly and so suddenly, and with so little noise, that their cruel fangs are at our throats almost before we are awake. The whole Bourg is alive with men—they seem to spring up from the earth, every crevice and every corner bristles with them, and so dark is it that we cannot distinguish friends from foes. Panic lays hold of us, we lose our heads, turn cowards and sue for mercy, or leap in despair over ramparts as doth poor Giselbert, whose bruised and bleeding body they tie to a horse’s tail and drag all round the market-place. The bravest of us take to our heels, and trampling one another down, crush through the narrow bridgeway which leads from Charles’s palace into St. Donatian’s church, determined there to make our last stand, and then, O wonderment! the howling pack draw off and leave us for a little space at peace.’

Such was the scene in the Bourg on this momentous night. All that was left of the Erembald host was huddled up in the cathedral, too much shattered in mind and body to be a cause of present disquietude; their opponents were free to do what they would, and they were more eager for plunder than revenge. They had come to a conglomeration of palaces, to a region abounding in treasure, to a place where much corn and wine and oil were stored up; their mouths watered for these things, and the word was given to plunder, and like a flock of locusts they carried off everything. Charles’s palace, containing also Hacket’s apartments; the provost’s palace, and the palace of the canons of Bruges, all of them were stripped; from the bed and the underlinen in Bertulph’s sleeping apartment to the gridirons and saucepans in his kitchen, and from the mead and ale in his cellar to the leaden gutters of his roof. Nor had they any greater respect for the property which had once belonged to Charles. They carried off even the meat hanging up in his larder, and the bed on which he had slept. Disappointed at not discovering the much-coveted treasure in his strong-room, they consoled themselves by wrenching off the wrought-iron doors, and bearing them away on their shoulders, nor did they despise the chains and manacles and other instruments of torture that they found in the dungeons under the palace, though the rich hangings and tapestry which they tore from the walls of his state-room, and the great store of wheat heaped up in his granary were doubtless objects more to their taste. The canons’ dormitories in the cloister contained great treasure. So well stocked were they with rich and costly apparel, most likely ecclesiastical vestments, that though the marauders began to carry them off early in the morning, it was not until nightfall that the task was complete.

Galbert, who gives a detailed account of all this, concludes his observations with this quaint remark: ‘Our citizens,’ he says, ‘in acting thus, were fully convinced they were doing no wrong.’

Meanwhile the men of Ghent were secretly negotiating for Charles’s body; it was arranged that it should be handed out to them through one of the windows in the choir, and early next morning they proceeded to put the plan in execution. ‘Our burghers, however, got wind of it, and they being as keen to retain the relics as the Ghenters were to carry them away, infinite tumult ensued, which was only quenched by the stones and arrows and boiling pitch which the Erembalds, who had by this time shaken themselves together, were hurling down from the battlements. Thus rudely brought to their senses, the contending factions came to terms, joined forces, took the church, and drove their opponents into the tower. Fortune had once more almost smiled on the Karls, and again that day the cup of hope was destined to be dashed from their lips. It happened thus:—

When the Bourg was taken, Bertulph’s palace had been allotted to the Stratens as their share of the plunder, or rather they had allotted it to themselves, and that very morning had ‘insolently and vauntingly and vaingloriously’ run up their standard over the roof, at sight of which all were filled with disgust, for the provost and his household, before the betrayal, were in sooth devout and courteous men, held in high esteem by the whole city. ‘The hearts of our burghers swell against them and we lust for their blood, the more so as they are actually carrying off corn and wine which is our property, for it was we who bore the brunt of the battle whilst these men were snoring in bed. At all costs this pilfering must be stopped. We break into the courtyard, and one of us with his sword staves in a cask of wine—signal for infinite uproar. The Stratens take to their heels. Our men outrun them, and slam the gates of the city so that none shall escape. Hacket rushes out on his tower and frenziedly exhorts the mob to slay his foes—calumniators for whose sake Count Charles was slain. The market-place bristles with armed men, a waving forest of spears. All Flanders is in town to-day. Greed, vengeance, lust for relics, itching ears—a hundred wayward impulses have drawn them here, but one are they, at least, in this one sentiment—old Tancmar and his nephews merit hemp. Of all the blood and all the tears which have been shed these scandalmongers are the cause, these backbiters, these intriguers, these liars, who, with false, foul tongues, for sordid ends, moved Charles to spurn our noblest men and stung them on to slay him. Thus we murmur, thus we declaim, and the whole town roars with the thunder of our indignation, until pressing onward to the Bourg, where rumour says young Walter lies concealed, for we would fain have him out and hang him, there at the very gates, upon the bridge which spans the Boterbeke,[12] we meet our new-made châtelain Gervais Praet, who with his ready tongue doth still the storm. ‘Yon vaunting ensign shall be furled—see, friends, it is even now furled—nor shall this Tancmar lord it in your provost’s house; he and his kith and kin shall forthwith quit the town. I pass my word, and as for the liquor and the grain, the men who took the citadel shall have the eating and the drinking of it.’ So we disperse, and whilst old Bertulph’s choicest wine is gurgling down our parched-up throats or we are hurrying on to grab what share we may of his great store of wheat—in this pinched time of dearth no little boon—the trembling Tancmar and his nephews skulk away, each one of them empillioned behind a stalwart knight, so timorous are they of the men of Bruges; and darkness falls upon the town, shrill with the blaring trumpets of the Erembalds, who all night long sound signals of distress, for this day arrows winged with lying script have brought to them assurances of help.

The day before the Bourg was taken Bertulph managed to effect his escape. He was let down by a cord from the battlements, and safely conducted by a friend in the Isegrin camp, whom he had heavily bribed, out of the town and three leagues further into the open country beyond. Here left to his own devices, walking by night and sleeping where he could by day, he at length reached the manor of Alard van Woesten, who had married one of his nieces, and was lord of the little town of Woesten on the French frontier in the neighbourhood of Ypres.

In this stronghold he lay in hiding for about three weeks, after which time, the rumour of his arrival having somehow or other leaked out, it presently reached the ears of William of Löo, who was keeping his Easter in the city hard-by. Upon receipt of this important news William at once took horse, and with ‘much noise and great expedition’ began to make inquiries concerning the provost’s whereabouts.

Having searched Alard’s house, and the house of his daughter hard-by, and not finding the object of his quest, he was beside himself with rage, fired both houses, seized the girl, swore that he would put her to torture if Bertulph were not produced before the morrow, and rode off. Alard, therefore, having to choose between his daughter and his uncle, revealed the place where Bertulph was concealed, and he was at once taken prisoner by William’s officers.

Well knowing that his days were numbered, and that he had nothing to hope from the gratitude of the man for whose sake he had risked so much, and at whose hands he had received so little, the aged prelate prepared himself to face death with what courage he could. He was a dying man, he said, and he wished to see a priest. His captors granted the request, ‘and there, in the sight of all men, he confessed his sins, and prostrate on the ground smote his breast and prayed God to have pity on him.’ Next morning they would have taken him on horseback to Ypres, but he refused to ride, and though it was freezing hard persisted in walking there barefoot. ‘This soft, luxurious prelate,’ comments Walbert, ‘who in the days when fortune smiled on him used to shrink from a flea bite as from a dagger thrust!’

A certain priest from whose lips Walter learned the details here noted down, walked by Bertulph’s side and, as they went, they intoned alternately verse by verse the Lady Office and the Te Deum. Thus, martyr-like, with a song of triumph on his lips, this staunch old man went forth to die. ‘As they drew near to the gates of the city a great multitude came forth to meet them, crying aloud and clapping their hands and leaping for joy, and they struck the provost with their fists, and beat him with staves and pelted him with the heads of sea-fish (of which very many are taken in these parts), and heaped every kind of insult upon him, all of which he bore with patience, speaking never a word.’ This was all the more remarkable, says Walter, because the provost was naturally a proud man who could ill brook ridicule or insult of any kind; and he adds:—Apropos of this, I remember a story which was told me by one of his own servants. Upon a certain occasion when the provost was seated before the fire in his great hall, with his household around him, the discourse turned to the Passion of Our Lord, and of the insults which He suffered with so much meekness in the house of Caiaphas. ‘For my part,’ quoth the provost, ‘I can never understand that portion of Scripture. If low fellows of that kind had struck me I would at least have spat in their face.’

The remaining portion of the story of Bertulph’s execution is told for us by Walbert. It reads like some breviary legend of a martyr’s death.

There he stood in the midst of the market-place, surrounded by a ribald, jeering throng, with countenance unmoved and eyes turned heavenward as though invoking God’s pity. Then one of those who were standing by struck him on the head, saying, ‘O thou proud man, why dost thou not deign to sue for mercy, seeing that thy life is in our hands?’ but the provost opened not his mouth. And for his greater ignominy they stripped him of his clothes and hanged him naked on a cross in the midst of the market-place, as if he had been a thief or a robber.

Then drew nigh unto him William of Löo, and thus addressed him, ‘Tell me, O provost, I conjure thee, on the salvation of thy soul, in addition to those whose names we already know, who are they who are implicated in Count Charles’s death,’ and Bertulph made answer, and said before all those present, ‘Thou knowest, O Burgrave, as well as I.’ William, hearing those words, was transported with fury, and commanded stones and mud to be cast at the provost and that he should be put to death. Then those who were assembled in the market-place to sell fish, tore his flesh with their iron hooks and beat him with rods, and thus they put an end to his days.

‘William at once sent a herald to Bruges to inform the Isegrins of what he had done, and we in our turn,’ says Walbert, ‘handed on the news to the Erembalds in their tower, whereat terror and despair pressed them closer than the generals of our army, and naught was heard but the sound of their lamentations.’ Thus Walbert. Nevertheless, they held out bravely until the 20th of April, and that, notwithstanding that they were besieged by Louis the Fat and a great army of French knights; by William Cliton, the newly-elected count, and a horde of Normans; by almost all the chivalry of Flanders, and a host of burghers from Ghent, who still hoped that they would be able to obtain Charles’s body for Blandinium.

The great army, which six weeks before had taken refuge in the Bourg, was now reduced to a mere handful. Of the rest not a few must have died in battle, others perhaps of wounds and wretchedness and want, but in all probability the vast majority had made their escape, hoping perhaps that they would be able to raise a sufficient force to effectually succour those of their comrades who remained in Bruges, and afterwards place on the throne a sovereign who would respect their liberties. Be this as it may, by the 20th of April but thirty worn-out men remained in St. Donatian’s, who continually straining their eyes over the vast expanse of flat country surrounding them, descried there no token of hope. Moreover, the Isegrins were battering in the tower—at each thrust of the ram it trembled to its base. Instant surrender or instant death was the only alternative, the Karls chose the first, and young Robert cried out, in the name of the rest, that if his personal liberty were guaranteed they would lay down their arms. Louis accepted the condition and they prepared to descend. One brave fellow indeed, preferring death to disgrace, would have leapt over the ramparts had not his comrades held him back. ‘At sight of which,’ says Walbert, ‘our burghers shed tears,’ but their sympathy led them no further.

One by one the little band of heroes came forth, the lean men through a narrow aperture giving on the stairs, those who were too corpulent through a larger window near the summit of the tower, and these men let themselves down by ropes.

‘Pale they were,’ says Walbert, ‘and livid and ugly with hunger, and they bore on their faces the stigma of their crimes; but our citizens wept when they saw those who had once been their leaders led away to prison.’ No wonder; the dark fetid hole into which they were huddled was of such narrow dimensions that the inmates were not even able to sit down, and after a few days’ detention there, only three or four of them had strength to stand.

From this wretched fate young Robert alone was exempted, but Louis thought that his promise not to cast him into prison was sufficiently respected by giving him into the custody of a citizen of Bruges. Of Robert’s entire innocence there can be no doubt. Even Walbert, the enemy of his race, bears testimony to his noble qualities. He was most popular, not only in Bruges, but throughout Flanders. Again and again the burghers had petitioned Louis in his favour. Even some of the Isegrin leaders had followed their example, but for all of them the French king had one answer. He had sworn to take no step without the consent of his Council, and Robert remained in custody.

As to the other prisoners, their captivity lasted only a fortnight. It was then (4th May) determined that they should be thrown from the tower which they had so bravely defended, and the same day the sentence was carried out.

The soldiers entrusted with this odious task had received strict orders to complete it with as little noise as possible, and with brutal levity they told their victims that the King was about to give them proof of his mercy.

The prisoners were then led one by one to the scene of execution, not by way of the Place du Bourg, which then, as now, was open to the public, but secretly through the Loove and across the covered bridge uniting it to the cathedral.

On more than one occasion the townsfolk had shown marked sympathy for the Erembalds, and Louis feared that if his project was generally known, or if the victims were afforded an opportunity of appealing to them, an attempt at rescue might be made, which would perhaps end in revolution.

The first to suffer was Wulfric Cnopp, the brother of Bertulph and Hacket. Until a few moments before his death he was ignorant of the fate in store for him. He had just time to take one last look at his beloved city, and then with a mighty effort, for Wulfric was a man of gigantic stature, the executioners threw him over the ramparts. There is reason to believe that this man was really guilty of the crime imputed to him.

Then came young Walter, the son of the Châtelain of Ardenburg, a noble and a comely youth. ‘For the love of God,’ he cried, when he reached the summit of the tower and the executioners were about to complete their task, ‘for the love of God let me say a prayer first.’ They granted him a moment’s respite, and then like a flash of lightning he fell down headlong and dashed all the life out of his beautiful body.

The next to die was one Eric, a knight of noble birth. Though he had been hurled from so great a height, and though in the fall his body had crashed against a wooden staircase with such violence that a step secured by five nails had been thereby wrenched off, he was still breathing when he reached the ground—had strength even to make the sign of the Cross. Some women of the people would have staunched his wounds, but one of the King’s household heaved a great stone and drove them away. Better so—‘the little life that was left in him was but a lingering and a cruel death.’

The rest suffered in like manner. Some were innocent, some were guilty, seven-and-twenty of them all told. Their names are not recorded—this only we know of them. They faced death without flinching, and died like Christian men. His Saviour’s name was the last word which passed the lips of each of them, and each of them made the sign of the Cross before he fell. By a refinement of barbarity they were not permitted to receive the consolations of religion under pretext that they were excommunicated. This was in direct contravention of Charles’s own ordinance concerning criminals. Their bodies were denied Christian burial. They were thrown into a marsh beyond the village of St. André, and for years afterwards no man after nightfall would willingly pass that way.

‘On Friday, May 6, King Louis resolved to go back to France, and the same day he left Bruges, carrying away Robert with him.’ Great was the lamentation of our citizens when they saw him depart, for this noble youth was beloved by all of them, and they knew he would never return. “Good friends,” said he, on seeing their grief, “my life is not in your hands. Pray God to have pity on my soul.” Louis did not dare to execute his victim at Bruges, nor indeed here offer him any indignity, but no sooner had they quitted the outskirts of the town than he gave orders that his legs should be tied under his saddle, and when they reached Mont Cassel he cut off his head.

Burchard too had paid the penalty of his crime. The Karls said that, having quarrelled with Robert, he had been slain by him in a duel, during the time when they were besieged in the tower, but Walter and Walbert affirm that in this they lied, and that in reality he had made his escape, and that he was afterwards captured and executed; and there is also a tradition that he succeeded in escaping altogether from his native land, and after many wanderings at length found refuge in the south of Ireland.

Be this as it may, he had disappeared from Flanders, and thus the great house of Erembald was all but wiped out. Of those who traced their descent in the direct male line to its mighty founder, only Hacket and his little son Robert, a child of tender years, remained alive. The châtelain made his escape from the tower a few days before the surrender. Whether he purchased the good will of one or other of the Isegrin leaders, or whether he had succeeded in hoodwinking them, is uncertain. All we know is that he escaped from Bruges, and, wandering alone across the great salt marsh at the north of the city, presently reached the impregnable stronghold of his son-in-law, Walter Cromlin, the mighty Lord of Lisseweghe, a mere village now, but in those days an important sea-coast town. Here he lay concealed until Dierick of Alsace, more than a year later, brought peace once more to Flanders.

Hacket was shortly afterwards placed on trial, and the fact that he succeeded in clearing his character is proof presumptive that Bertulph, who like his brother Hacket had all along protested his innocence and his capability of proving it, would have likewise been able to make his words good.[13] Immediately after the trial Hacket was restored to his former rank and possessions, we hear nothing more of the charge of serfdom, and for many generations his descendants were mighty men in Flanders. Amongst them note the magnificent Louis of Gruthuise, Peer of Flanders, France and England to boot—Edward IV. created him Earl of Winchester—who in the fourteen hundreds lived in royal state in the beautiful palace on the banks of the Roya, which still goes by his name.

Of Hacket’s subsequent history little is certainly known, but if the conjectures of Olivier de Wree are well founded—and the evidence which he adduces in their support is surely worthy of consideration—the life and career of Desiderius Hacket was indeed a strange and chequered one.

Briefly the facts are as follows. In 1135 Rodolphe of Nesle, a scion of the house of Erembald, was appointed Châtelain of Bruges; the name of Hacket does not cease to appear at the foot of official documents until nearly fifty years later, but whereas previous to 1135 the writer of this signature invariably describes himself as châtelain, subsequent to that date he signs as Canon of St. Donatian’s, later on as Dean of the same church, and later still as Abbot of Dunes.

Bearing in mind the uncommonness of the name, and the fact that we lose all trace of Hacket the layman when Hacket the churchman appears, it would seem in the highest degree probable that the signatures before and after 1135 were the handiwork of one man. That this was certainly the case after that date the testimony of the monastic chroniclers clearly shows. They also tell us something more. The ecclesiastic in question, before he was appointed Abbot of Dunes, for a short time governed a branch house which he himself seems to have founded at Lisseweghe.[14] He was reputed in his day a famous preacher; he was living and signing documents in 1183, and died at an advanced age and in the odour of sanctity. It would seem then that the bellicose Châtelain of Bruges ended his days as a monk.

Strangely enough Hacket’s sworn enemy and rival, the man to whose enmity was due all the misfortune that befell his house, the treacherous Tancmar of Straten himself, towards the close of his life also donned the cowl. He became a monk in the great Benedictine house of St. Andrew hard-by his own estate, and tradition says that he too died a saint.

Surely it is not a little significant that three of the chief actors in this bloody drama should have been numbered by their contemporaries in the ranks of the blessed. Charles, that hero of blood and sentiment, of violence and delicate emotions, who firmly believed that he was dying for justice sake; Straten, the devotee, who for his own ends fanned the flame of his master’s wrath—and poor Hacket, who was accused of murder, escaped by the skin of his teeth, and at length proved his innocence, most probably by the rite of ordeal. The age in which these men lived was an age of contrasts, an age of clashing tones and inharmonious tints. In those days it was the fashion to be devout, and the shibboleth of the fine gentleman was the fervent expression of his unwavering faith.

CHAPTER VII

Bruges in the Days of Charles the Good, etc.

The débris of the cathedral was carried all over Flanders. A portion of it is said to have been used for the construction of a château which stands some little way off the high road on the right-hand side between Steenbrugge and Lophem, about three miles from Bruges. It is a pleasant enough place to look at in its beautiful wooded grounds, but the country folk will tell you that ill fortune has always followed those who have dwelt there.

Charles’s name is also associated with the beautiful Church of Notre Dame. Here, in 1091, a chapter of secular priests was installed, Charles provided for the endowment of half the canonicates, and when, in 1116, the building was destroyed by fire, it was he who restored it.

Tradition says that the main portion of the present church was constructed in 1180 or thereabouts by Gertrude of Alsace, the widow of Rodolphe de Nesle, Châtelain of Bruges, and curiously enough a scion of the house of Erembald, but as Charles’s church was only completed in 1120, and it is not likely that a comparatively new and probably magnificent structure would have been deliberately pulled down—and there is no record of its having been accidentally destroyed by fire or otherwise—it may well be that Charles in reality only built a portion of the new church, perhaps the nave and the adjoining aisles, and that what Gertrude did, sixty years later, was to complete his unfinished work. If this be so, the greater part of the present building owes its origin to Charles the Good.

In the Church of Notre Dame we perhaps also get a glimpse of the magnificent Bertulph himself. Of its chapter a certain Germanus was the first provost, who in all probability at the time of his appointment was quite a youth, for shortly afterwards he went to reside at Louvain, in order to complete his theological studies, and one Bertulph was appointed to act as superior during his absence. What we are told of the character and disposition of this ecclesiastic coincides so nearly with the character and disposition ascribed to the redoubtable Provost of Bruges, that, bearing in mind the identity of their name, not a common one in those days in Flanders, and the intimate connection which we shall see each of them had with Eeckhout Abbey,[15] it is difficult to believe that the Bertulph of Notre Dame and the Bertulph of St. Donatian’s were different persons. In each of them we find the same fiery temper, the same overweening pride, and the same indomitable will, the same exaggerated devotion and the same harshness in their dealings with their fellow-men. Walbert has left us a graphic picture of the receptions this ‘proud prelate’ held in the great oak-roofed hall of his sumptuous palace on the Bourg. Swelling with pride, there he used to sit on a stately throne placed underneath the huge beam which broke and fell with a mighty crash on the throne itself three weeks before his death—portent of coming ill, had he but taken it to heart, but Bertulph was too stiff-necked for that, says Walbert. There a crowd of knights and clerks and burghers were daily wont to jostle one another in their quest to pay homage to, or perchance seek favour from, the great man who was all-powerful alike in Church and State. When any one approached whom this proud prelate knew quite well but did not wish to recognise, he made pretence that he had never seen him before. ‘Who is this person?’ he used to ask of one of his attendants, and then, when he had been informed of the name and rank of his would-be interlocutor, if he were in the humour to do so, he would vouchsafe to salute him. And, blurts out Walbert with much feeling and inappositeness, ‘he was very hard on his clergy.’ Walbert was one of them, and he, if any one, should have known.

The canons of Notre Dame would certainly have given their Bertulph the same character.

Hardly had he been installed provost than he sent them all about their business and filled their places with monks. The irregularity of their lives, he alleged, was scandalous. Irregular lives in those days, if we may trust Walter, were far from uncommon alike amongst layfolk and clerics, and that was one reason why men thought so highly of Charles. Amidst so much wood, hay and stubble, Charles appeared pure gold. It is not unlikely then that Bertulph’s accusations were well founded. Radbode, Bishop of Tournai, presumedly thought so, for he had authorised what had been done. Not so Germanus. Immediately on his return to Bruges, he petitioned Bishop Baldwin, who meanwhile had succeeded Radbode in the See of Tournai, to revoke his predecessor’s decision, alleging that the changes at Notre Dame had been made without consulting him, the lawful superior, and in opposition to the wishes of the secular canons, and thereupon the bishop gave orders for their reinstatement.

This was on March 31, 1101. Bertulph was furious and appealed in vain to Rome. By letters, dated April 1102, Pope Pascal II. confirmed Baldwin’s decision, and presently Bertulph’s monks were forced to quit the canons’ cloister. After several peregrinations they at last built themselves a habitation hard-by the Church of Notre Dame in the great oak wood which at that time fringed the left bank of the Roya and stretched far away into the country beyond.

This was the origin of the Abbey of Eeckhout (oak wood) famous in the annals of Bruges.

This abbey was destroyed during the French Revolution, and only the gateway now remains—No. 40 rue Eeckhout. Part of the grounds are included in the gardens of the Convent of St. André in the same street; part in a lovely old kitchen garden and orchard at the back of the houses on the Dyver. As Eeckhout Abbey was associated at its birth with Notre Dame, so was it at its death.

At the time of the Revolution Notre Dame was dismantled—the pavement was torn up, the stained-glass windows were broken, and every kind of havoc was made, but the bare walls were left standing, and presently, when more tranquil times came, the old church was restored to public worship. As the beautiful flamboyant stalls which had once lined the choir had ere this been sold and carried away, it is said to England, it became necessary to procure new ones. It so happened that just before the French came, the monks of Eeckhout had ordered a new set of stalls for their abbey church. These, owing to the fact that they had not yet been erected, had escaped destruction, and by Napoleon’s orders they were set up in Notre Dame. The wood-carver, however, who had made them, had not received payment, and protested that the stalls were his, and by way of asserting his right, every Sunday and feast day, at High Mass and Vespers, until the day of his death some years after, he persisted in seating himself in the choir stalls at Notre Dame. Matter of little moment; after the Revolution there were no canons to occupy them.

From an artistic point of view there is nothing very remarkable about the stalls in question. They are sufficiently mediocre work of the period, but the hand of time has mellowed them, and their associations make them interesting. The carving of some of the miserere seats is very quaint, and is certainly ancient. Whether these formed part of the lost stalls of Notre Dame, or whether the redoubtable wood-carver employed some of the old Eeckhout work for his new stalls, it would be difficult to say.

CHAPTER VIII

William Cliton

Fortune had been singularly kind to him. He was the only representative in the direct male line of the dynasty of Robert the Frisian, he was the favoured candidate of the great house of Erembald; his aunt, the countess dowager, was his staunch adherent. He had the goodwill of her second husband, his next-door neighbour, the powerful Duke of Brabant, who had given him his daughter in marriage. In Henry Beauclerc, who had married his wife’s sister, and whose Norman duchy adjoined the realm to which he laid claim, he had a friend who knew how to back fair promises with English gold; and lastly, when Charles was slain, he was within a stone’s throw of the capital. But ‘William saw a meteor on the horizon: the sword of Gervais Van Praet,’ and he was too dazzled by it to summon up courage to help his nearest friends, and when the Erembalds fell, the grandsons and great-grandsons of Baldwin the Devout took heart to dispute his claim. The number of them was legion. There was Charles’s nephew, Arnulph of Denmark, and his first cousin Dierick of Alsace; Baldwin of Mons, the representative of the dynasty of Baldwin the Good; William Cliton; Stephen of Blois, and perhaps too Henry of England himself.[16]

The Burgrave of Löo had sat with folded hands when the tide was at the flood, and in doing so he lost his one opportunity. In vain he now posed as Charles’s avenger. All the world knew of his intrigues with the Erembalds, and it was more than suspected that his own hands were red with Charles’s blood. His treachery gained for him no new friends, and disgusted the remnant which in spite of all still clung to him.

On the very day when he was busy hanging poor Isaac of Reninghe[17] whom, in spite of a monk’s cowl, a long face and a book of psalms, his blood-hounds had smelt out the day before in the Abbey of Terouane, Louis the Fat disowned him.

‘Have nothing to do with William of Ypres,’ ran the French King’s letter to the barons and burghers of Bruges; ‘have nothing to do with William of Ypres, because he is a bastard, born of a noble father and a mother of vile birth, who all her life was a weaver of thread’ (it was the same charge that had stung the Erembalds to revolt; William’s mother was a Karline), ‘but come forthwith to Arras, and there choose in my presence a prince worthy of Flanders.’

II.—Genealogical Table of the Counts of Flanders from Baldwin V. to Baldwin VII.


II.—Genealogical Table of the Counts of Flanders from Baldwin V. to Baldwin VII.

Louis had already determined who should be the new count, but he was wise enough to gild the bitter pill, and when the barons reached Arras he adroitly persuaded them to elect William Cliton, and to secure also the acquiescence of the burghers. William was only fourth in the order of succession, but he and Louis had married two sisters, and the French Queen naturally enough desired to befriend a kinsman on whom fortune had never yet smiled. Besides, the arrangement fitted in exactly with Louis’s own views. The friendship of Flanders was to him a matter of far greater moment than the law of primogeniture, he had known William all his life, and he felt that he could trust him. His young favourite would doubtless, too, prove a dangerous rival to Henry Beauclerc, the one man whom Louis feared; with the aid of his Flemish vassals he would be able to wrest his Norman inheritance from the English King, and perhaps also the crown of England itself.

When the burghers of Bruges learned what had happened, they were cut to the quick. That Louis should have offered the communes of Flanders a voice in the election of their Count, and then presumed to foist on them the man of his own choice, was something more than injury—it was an insult. But the French King was backed by a great army; the burghers were shrewd enough to see that it was more politic to obey, and thus preserve the outward form of liberty, than to refuse to do so at a time when opposition was certain to be barren of profitable results, and on the evening of Tuesday (Easter Tuesday), the 6th of April, Louis and his nominee were permitted to enter Bruges.

Next day, says Walbert, the King and the Count, with their knights and ours, our burghers and the Karls of the seaboard, assembled in the Sablon Field, and there the Cliton solemnly swore to respect the privileges of the city and of the Church of St. Donatian, and to abolish the house tax and market dues, so that the citizens of Bruges should be for ever free. At the same time he acknowledged their right to modify and correct according to circumstances their own laws and customs. Then the vassals of Charles paid their homage to William, the mightiest putting their hands in his, and receiving in return the kiss of investiture, those of less degree simply bending while the Count touched them with his sceptre. All the great officers were confirmed in their rights and privileges, save only the Erembalds, who were declared incapable of holding office or property in the county.

Although William Cliton was thus legally invested with the sovereignty of Flanders, his right to govern that province was far from being generally recognised, and the whole land was rent by factions. William of Löo was still Count for the men of Ypres; St. Omer acknowledged Arnulph of Denmark; Audenarde, Baldwin of Mons, to whose standard had rallied Dierick of Alsace, who for the time being seems to have relinquished his own claim, whilst the Erembalds, as we know, were still holding out in their tower at Bruges and still receiving from the great freeholders of the seaboard assurances of support and help.

Nevertheless, if William could have given his subjects good government, if he had known how to exercise his new functions with a little tact and discretion, above all, if only he had been true to his word anent the abolition of taxes, in all probability things would have gradually settled down, and little by little men would have acquiesced in his rule. But William was a Norman, and the Normans had now become more French and more feudal than the French themselves. A man of this stamp was little likely to find favour with the Flemish people, who still retained, along with their rude Northern speech, their ancestors’ love of freedom and justice, and the first incident of his reign was to them like salt on an open sore.

It happened thus. Shortly after the Count’s arrival at Bruges, a certain citizen, who had married a sister of one of the Erembalds, crept up secretly, as he thought, to the tower of St. Donatian’s, with a view to a little business talk with his brother-in-law, who owed him a considerable sum of money. One of Praet’s men saw him, and, as all communication with the besieged had been strictly forbidden, the fellow was arrested and brought before the Count.

The news of what had happened spread like wildfire, the burghers flew to arms, and crying out that they would suffer tyranny at the hands of no man, that the prisoner was a free citizen of Bruges, and that it was for them to judge him, made a rush for the Loove. Fortunately for William the doors and windows were barricaded before the mob had time to reach the palace, and all their efforts to batter them in were fruitless. At length, when the burghers had expended something of their energy in red-hot threats and curses, that crafty old knight, Gervais Praet, went down amongst them, made them a speech, called them friends and fellow-citizens, bade them bear in mind that it was at their own request that the Count had appointed him châtelain, averred that in the matter which had called forth their wrath he had only acted in accordance with the law, but if they were not satisfied with what he had done, he had no wish to exercise authority over them, and was quite ready to resign his châtelaincy. In a word, the oil of his eloquence soothed the burghers for the moment, and they dispersed to their several homes.

Similar disturbances, arising out of incidents as trivial, occurred shortly afterwards at Lille and at St. Omer, and in each case they were with difficulty suppressed after much blood had been spilt, whilst the heavy fines in which William by way of punishment mulcted those towns altogether alienated the goodwill of the citizens.

But this was only a beginning. After the conquest of the Erembalds and the capture of William of Ypres, the Cliton grew bolder. On September 16, one hundred and twenty-five burghers of Bruges and thirty-seven of Ardenburgh were condemned as Burchard’s accomplices. In vain they protested their innocence and demanded a legal trial before their own judges. William, in spite of his oath, refused to listen, and all who were suspected of having given assistance to Charles’s murderers were treated in like manner. Stronghold after stronghold was razed to the ground, and the Karls of the country-side and the free burghers of the Flemish cities went forth from the land in thousands.

William’s empty purse could not satisfy his rapacious followers. This was probably the cause of the violent measures he took to discover Charles’s treasure, and of his attempt to re-impose the house tax and the market tolls. From time immemorial these dues had been granted in fief to sundry great nobles, who were now clamouring for compensation; and hence the oath, which he had too inconsiderately taken when first he undertook the government of the country, only gained for him the ill-will alike of the knight and the burgher. Thus was he set betwixt two foes, without the means or the ability to withstand them. At Ghent the citizens and nobles joined hands, and with stinging words the great imperial vassal, Ivan of Alost, voiced their common indignation. ‘Sir Count,’ he cried, ‘if you had intended to deal righteously by this city and by us who are your friends, instead of authorizing the most odious exactions, you would have treated us justly and defended us against our enemies. But, on the contrary, you have violated all your promises and broken all your oaths, and every obligation arising from our common plighted troth is thereby cancelled. We know how you have treated Lille and we know how you have treated Bruges, and we know, too, in what manner you would like to treat Ghent. ‘Let the barons and the burghers and the clergy of Flanders judge betwixt us, and if it be found, as we allege, that you are without faith and without loyalty, a perfidious and a perjured man, then renounce the office you now hold, and we will choose a worthier Count to govern us.’ Cut to the quick, the Cliton sprang forward. ‘Hold,’ he cried, ‘I free you, Ivan, from the homage which you have sworn to me, and with my sword I am ready now to prove to you, my peer, that in all that appertaineth to the government of this realm I have acted righteously.’ But the voice of Ivan was the voice of the people, he refused the challenge, and it was at length decided that a great Council should be held at Ypres on the eighth day of the ensuing month, for the purpose of deliberating on the affairs of the country; and that all delegates should come unarmed. Meanwhile, determined to rid himself of his turbulent subjects by stratagem, William, before the appointed day, betook himself to Ypres accompanied by a large band of armed retainers, and an armed rabble of the lowest class, so that the town was filled with soldiers, purposing, when the delegates arrived, to take them all prisoners. But these last getting wind of the plot, halted at Roulers, and presently two heralds rode into the market-place at Ypres, and thus made proclamation:—

‘Be it known to you, Sir Count, that Ivan of Alost and the men of Ghent by our lips proclaim that henceforth they renounce that homage which hitherto they have faithfully kept to you, because they are well aware that you have come hither to destroy them by ruse and naughtiness.’

From that moment William’s cause was lost. On the 11th of March, Dierick of Alsace entered Flanders. The great imperial vassals, Daniel of Termonde and Ivan of Alost, at once rallied to his standard, Ghent received him with open arms; a little later (March 27), when he reached Bruges, Gervais of Praet declared in his favour, and three days afterwards the nobles and burghers assembled in the Champ de Sablon solemnly deposed William Cliton, and declared Dierick his successor, and he in his turn solemnly confirmed and increased the rights and privileges of the city, and made proclamation that henceforth no man should be condemned on suspicion and without trial for complicity in Charles’s murder.

By this just and politic proceeding he gained the goodwill of the Karls, and thus supported alike by the nobles, the burghers, and what we should call the yeomen farmers of the sea coast, nothing could arrest his progress. Neither the threats of the French King, nor the spiritual thunder of Archbishop Simon of Tournai, not even the victory which William and his Normans gained at Axpoel Heath, where so great was the slaughter that on Dierick’s return to Bruges the whole city was filled with lamentation.

Nothing shows more clearly the unpopularity of William than the barren results of this victory. Not a single city opened its doors to him. Presently, when he was laying siege to Alost, he received a mortal wound, and his death on August 4, 1128, left Dierick master of Flanders. The night that William died, says Ordericus Vitalis, Duke Robert (his father), who was in prison at Devizes, and had been there twenty-two years, felt in a dream his own right arm pierced with a lance, whereupon he seemed to lose the use of it, and when he awoke in the morning, he said to those about him, ‘Alas! my son is dead.’

Walbert, though he enlarges at considerable length on the iniquity of ‘our burghers’ in rebelling against their lawful sovereign, gives William but a poor character. In my opinion, he says, the Almighty removed this man by death from the county, because he had laid waste all the land, provoked the inhabitants thereof to civil war, and set at naught alike the laws of God and of man. Nor did God suffer him to go the way of all flesh until he had first endured the chastisement due to his misdeeds. For in sooth Count William will confess amongst the shades whom he sent before him to the Infernal Regions that, of all those things he possessed in life, this alone now remains to him—his military reputation.

Ordericus Vitalis, who represents the Cliton in much more favourable light, bears witness also to his prowess in battle. ‘Ad militare facinus,’ he says, ‘damnabiliter promptus.’

A Renaissance Gable

CHAPTER IX

Dierick of Alsace and the Precious Blood

The new Count was a Fleming of the Flemings. He had been brought up amongst them; their habits and customs were familiar to him, his speech was their speech, his thoughts were their thoughts, and his ways were their ways. ‘Men called him wise,’ says an ancient chronicler, ‘and he was all his life kindly, upright, loyal, brave, and great withal in the art of governing men.’ Indeed, his whole career shows what skill and tact he possessed alike in conciliating the goodwill of his own opponents and in settling the disputes of others.

As early as May 31, Arnulph of Denmark resigned his claims in his favour (see Wegener, note on p. 169), later on he purchased the acquiescence of another rival, Baldwin of Mons, by giving him his daughter to wife. Even William of Ypres in the end acknowledged his right to the throne, and was content to end his days obscurely as simple Lord of Löo. His first act as prince was to bring about peace between the Isegrins and the free landholders of the seaboard, and by his reconciliation with Hacket, whom he again reinstated in the châtelaincy of Bruges, the legal right of the Karls under his jurisdiction to the title of freemen was publicly acknowledged. Henceforth, until the Revolution, they were the Francq Hostes or Francons of the Liberty of Bruges. At his coronation, Dierick had solemnly sworn to respect the lawful rights and liberties of all his subjects, and he loyally kept his word. Throughout his long reign of forty years he always showed himself a good friend to commerce, a staunch upholder of popular institutions, and a generous supporter of the down-trodden and the oppressed. To him, says a Flemish writer, the greater number of the communes of Flanders are indebted alike for their origin and their development. During his reign were inscribed in the charters of the Flemish cities the germs of those rights and liberties which are to-day guaranteed by the Belgian Constitution.

Like all good and wise men of his day, Dierick was profoundly impressed with the truths of Christianity, and after the manner of his age, he on more than one occasion took up the sword of the Crusader. On his return from one of these expeditions, he brought back with him to Bruges a treasure which has had no little influence on the architectural, and artistic, and religious development of the city; a vial of dark, ruby-coloured fluid, which tradition said was some of the water in which Joseph of Arimathea had once washed the blood-stained body of Christ. The early history of this precious memorial of Our Lord’s Passion is veiled in mystery, but from the day when Dierick of Alsace brought the famous relic to Bruges the thread of its story is unbroken. The circumstances which led to his possession of it are well known. It was the time of the second Crusade. Dierick, roused perhaps by the preaching of St. Bernard at Furnes, or possibly moved thereto by reason of his kinship with Baldwin, King of Jerusalem—they had married two sisters—resolved to serve under the banner of the Cross, and in the month of June 1147, along with the Emperor Conrad and Louis VII. of France, set out for Palestine; but the campaign was almost barren of results. What with the perfidy of the Greeks, and the pettiness and jealousy of the European leaders, it could hardly have been otherwise. The little that had been accomplished, however, was due to the courage and perseverance of Dierick, and by way of recompense King Baldwin bestowed on him the relic in question.

It was enclosed in a tube of crystal, with chains of silver and stoppers of gold, and Dierick received the gift on his knees from the hands of the Patriarch of

Hôtel de Ville and the Chapel of the Holy Blood

Jerusalem, but he said that a rough soldier like himself was not fit to be the bearer of so holy a thing, and hung it round the neck of his chaplain, Leo of St. Omer, who never parted with it, night or day, until on the evening of April 7, 1150, he returned with the Count to Bruges. Then, with much solemn pomp, the relic was consigned to the Court chaplains, who placed it in the old chapel which Baldwin of the Iron Hand had built, adjoining his palace in the Bourg, where it still remains, and is still preserved in the same crystal vial in which Dierick of Alsace received it. The burghers of Bruges have on more than one occasion been near losing their much-prized treasure, but somehow or other it has always come back to them.

During the troubles with Ghent in the days of Van Artevelde, the relic was one May morning being carried in solemn procession round the ramparts. Presently the band of monks and friars encountered a band of soldiers; the two processions became entangled, and during the confusion some one cried out, ‘the Ghenters are upon us.’ Panic followed, and when the panic was over the relic had disappeared. Three days later some nuns from the Beguinage saw something shining at the bottom of the stream which runs through their cloister. It was the reliquary of the Holy Blood. Then again, during the troublous times which closed the fifteen hundreds, when Calvinism triumphant held the town, and churches and monasteries were sacked, it was only through the prudence of Juan de Malvenda that the precious treasure was saved. Malvenda, who was one of the church-wardens of St. Basil’s, secretly conveyed the relic to his own house—an old-fashioned, red-brick turreted mansion, still standing in the rue aux Laines (No. 18), where he concealed it in the cellar till the storm had passed. Again, for over twenty years, from October 13, 1799, till April 20, 1819, the relic was hidden in the houses of various citizens, in order to preserve it from the fanaticism of the Jacobins. For the same reason the annual procession on the Feast of the Precious Blood had to be discontinued, and it was only resumed in 1819. This procession was first instituted in 1303, in memory of the deliverance of the town from the French by Breidel and De Coninck. At first it was of a grave and solemn character, the faithful of both sexes following chanting litanies and psalms. Little by little it grew spectacular. In 1395 the apostles and evangelists were introduced, the next year King Herod and his Court, in 1405 the Nativity, the tree of Jesse, and so forth. At length, in the fifteen hundreds, the profane and the sacred were mingled together, giants, clowns, jugglers followed, the corporation of Bruges thinking by this means to give the procession a popular character, and thus to draw visitors to their town.

The great procession of the Holy Blood has long since resumed its decorum, and thousands of strangers from all parts of Europe annually throng the town to witness it.

Like the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, and the old city church of St. Etheldreda (Holborn), the Sanctuary of the Precious Blood at Bruges consists in reality of two distinct churches, one set over the other. The lower storey, dedicated to St. Basil, was founded, as we have seen, by Baldwin, Bras de Fer, and is in all probability the most ancient building in the city. There can be little doubt that this chapel was originally the private oratory of the Counts of Flanders, adjoining their primitive palace. The four great columns which support the vault, the western and southern walls, and the annex, erroneously called the Baptistry Chapel, with the adjoining buildings,

The Minne Water Bridge and Round Tower

none of which were originally included in the chapel but formed part of the Count’s palace—these are the oldest portions of this most interesting structure. In 1095 Count Robert of Jerusalem, on his return from the Holy Land, placed here the relics of St. Basil which he had brought with him from Cæsarea in Cappadocia; hence the dedication. Later on, his nephew, Dierick of Alsace, in gratitude for some marvellous answer to prayer obtained through the intercession of the saint, restored and embellished the church; hence the erroneous tradition which makes him its founder.

Such as Dierick left St. Basil’s in 1150, so it is to-day. It has recently been carefully and conscientiously restored, and it is perhaps the most beautiful and perfect specimen of Romanesque architecture in Flanders. During the work of restoration, when the pavement was renewed, an interesting discovery was made:—the vault in which had lain, since 1412, the mortal remains of Ian Van Oudenaerde, the architect who restored the belfry in 1396 or thereabouts, and who added the four beautiful turrets at the angles of its second storey. The Porte de Ste. Croix and the Porte de Gand are also his work, as well as the massive round tower at the head of the Minne Water. The nave of St. Basil’s has from time immemorial been known as the Masons’ Chapel. Here, until the Revolution, the members of the Guild of Masons were wont to perform their devotions and to celebrate annually, with great pomp, the feasts of their patron saints, and it was doubtless on this account that Ian Van Oudenaerde, that great Master Mason, was laid to rest in St. Basil’s.

The upper chapel, which is probably the place where Dierick enshrined his priceless relic, was almost entirely rebuilt towards the close of the fourteen hundreds, and of the original Romanesque structure little now remains save the two round-headed bays which separate the naves. The work of reconstruction was not yet finished in 1482, but as during the following year the first stained window was put in, it would seem that it was at this time approaching completion.

Both the upper and lower chapel suffered much during the religious troubles under Philip II., and again at the time of the French Revolution. Indeed, when the Septembriseurs had sated their fury on the old building, there was little left but the bare walls, and into such a state of decay had it fallen that when Napoleon visited Bruges in 1810, the civic authorities were thinking of pulling it down.