Brabant

“ Maastricht, Liége, Huy, and Namur; Dinant, Louvain, and Malines. None of them remains, for across Brabant runs the black scar that has transformed the cities of the Sambre and the Meuse into smoking anvils, where iron is hammered out into efficiency and coal is torn from the earth and burned in consuming fires to the same end; for across Brabant runs the red scar that efficiency has blazed like a trail of enduring flame, never to be forgotten or forgiven so long as man remains on earth ”

“ But a centime a day is a great deal in Brabant, when one has not always enough for bare bread, and when, in the long chill winter, one must weave thread lace all through the short daylight for next to nothing at all; for there are so many women in Brabant, and every one of them, young or old, can make lace, and if one do not like the pitiful wage, one may leave it and go and die, for what the master lacemakers care or know; there will always be enough, many more than enough, to twist the thread round the bobbins, and weave the bridal veils, and the trains for the courts. ”

“ Trade at once began to revive, and when the burghers had tasted the first-fruits of the harvest they dreamed that the Golden Age had returned, and forthwith determined to rebuild their church in such fashion that its splendour should dim the sheen of the noblest buildings of Brabant. ”

“ Men were by no means devoid of public spirit, nor were they unmindful of the poor; splendid as were some of their own habitations, their splendour was eclipsed by the greater glory of guild hall and market and church. Somehow or other, too, in spite of their revels, they found time for serious business: never were the towns of Brabant so ably administered or the affairs of the duchy in such capable hands. ”

“ The people of Brussels are very fond of jokes and fun. They always seem to be in good humour with each other and with themselves. The part of Belgium in which Brussels lies is called Brabant. In olden times it was spoken of as "gay Brabant," and so, indeed, it might be nowadays. Dull, pompous people are not liked there. You must be lively and amusing, like the town itself, of which the people are so proud that they call it the Little Paris. ”

“ Brussels sits like a holiday-attired princess, proud and elegant, on the table-land of Brabant, gazing out freely, on all sides, over flourishing, fertile fields. The new portion of the city, with its royal palace, its beautiful park and tree-planted boulevards, broad streets, large market-place, handsome, well-built houses, produced the most cheerful effect. Cleanliness and elegance prevail everywhere. Wealth and elegance are united with a certain character of permanence and strength. We are in the head-quarters of Brussels lace. ”

“ No inhabitant of Brussels need wander far to search for solitude; let him but move half a league from his own city and he will find her brooding still and blank over the wide fields, so drear though so fertile, spread out treeless and trackless round the capital of Brabant. ”

“ This fact encouraged the kings of France to seek to occupy in Belgian affairs the place formerly occupied by Germany. But although the dukes of Brabant maintained peaceful relations with France, they had no wish to become simply the instruments of French politics. They resisted every attempt at domination. Henceforth Brabant, thanks to its spirit of independence, the strong and able diplomacy of its rulers, and the growing spirit of patriotism that characterized its people, became more and more the bulwark of Belgian liberty. ”

“ On the extinction of the line of Anthony the duchy of Brabant became the inheritance of the elder branch of the house of Burgundy, in the person of Philip III., “the Good,” of Burgundy, II. of Brabant, son of John. His grand-daughter Mary (d. 1482) , daughter and heiress of Charles I., “the Bold,” (d. 1477) married the archduke Maximilian of Austria (afterwards emperor) and so brought Brabant with the other Burgundian possessions to the house of Habsburg. The chief city of Brabant, Brussels, became under the Habsburg régime the residence of the court and the capital of the Netherlands. ”

“ South of Flanders and Brabant, wide sea-freshened vistas give way to murky landscapes and cities that bristle with the spires of industry. Here, settlements of coal miners, steel workers, glass makers, cotton spinners, fill the foreground of the scene. Most of the factory people belong to the robust and spirited race of the Walloons, who live near the eastern and southern frontiers. ”

“ From 1815 to 1830, that is to say, during the existence of the kingdom of the Netherlands, Belgian Brabant was distinguished from Dutch by the employment of the geographical terms South and North. The surface of Brabant is undulating, and the highest points, some 400 ft. in altitude, are to be found at and near Mont St Jean. The province is well cultivated, and the people are well known for their industry. There are valuable stone quarries, and many manufactures flourish in the smaller towns, such as Ottignies, as well as in the larger cities of Brussels and Louvain. ”

“ I swear, on my soul, to give my suffrages to the best man, the wisest man, and in every respect the fittest man, the most devoted to Holy Church, to the Duke and Duchess of Brabant, the city of Brussels and the patrician order ”

“ Such were the men who owned the soil of the cities of Brabant, who had endowed them, often at their own cost, with magnificent public buildings,7 who had won for themselves free institutions, and who for the best part of two hundred years tyrannised over everyone else. ”

“ The personnel and the assets of Brabant Province shall be split between the Province of Walloon Brabant, the Province of Flemish Brabant, the Region of Brussels-Capital, the authorities and the institutions described in Articles 135 and 136, in addition to the federal authority, in keeping with the terms determined by a law adopted by majority vote as described in Article 4, last paragraph. ”

“ Flanders and Brabant were still the richest and most flourishing portions of the state. Some municipal fêtes given about this time afford a notion of their opulence. On one of these occasions the town of Mechlin sent a deputation to Antwerp, consisting of three hundred and twenty-six horsemen dressed in velvet and satin with gold and silver ornaments; while those of Brussels consisted of three hundred and forty, as splendidly equipped, and accompanied by seven huge triumphal chariots and seventy-eight carriages of various constructions—a prodigious number for those days. ”

“ The men of Brabant with the Flemings, they of Holland with the Frisians, they of Westphalia with the Saxons came in crowds to study under him, and having borne themselves studiously in the school, returned with their learning to their native places, men of Treves and Cologne, Liege and Utrecht, Kleef and Geldria were found here; and youths that were apt for learning gathered together from other villages and castles and made great progress in knowledge. The richer paid their own expenses out of their sufficiency, the poor gathered in bands to beg, giving thanks to the hands that helped them. ”

“ At his instigation the people of Brabant petitioned the regent for an advocate and protector, since they alone, of all his Flemish subjects, had the misfortune to unite, in one and the same person, their counsel and their ruler. Had the demand been granted, their choice could fall on no other than the Prince of Orange. But Granvella, with his usual presence of mind, broke through the snare. "The man who receives this office," he declared in the state council, "will, I hope, see that he divides Brabant with the king!" ”

“ In the formerly busy and wealthy towns of Flanders and Brabant, Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges, members of noble families were seen to creep from their wretched abodes in the darkness of night to beg their bread, or to search the streets for bones and offal. ”

“ The women of Brabant and the Netherlands are all ugly to the eye after the piquant begins to pall, for there are no regular beauties or beauty of expression, except that levity which tells of lightness of cares and youth. ”

“ In Flanders and Brabant the country districts were in the hands of a powerful nobility, the cities inhabited by an industrial and turbulent people, controlled by opulent burghers. In the north, the democratic element predominated, more especially in the Frisian provinces, and the inhabitants spent their life either in fishing and commerce on the sea, or in saving their country from its inroads. ”

“ The gain would be the addition to the kingdom of a new and fertile province of the area of North Brabant, a saving of expenses on dikes, diminution of inundations, improvement of communication between the south and the north of the kingdom, protection of isles of the sea, &c. ”

“ The Last Lace Stronghold of Brabant In the court in front of the big brick convent building with its odd little steeple, two sisters, skirts tucked up, and pails swung over their shoulders, Chinese fashion, were about to begin the Saturday scrubbing. Madame Kefer-Mali and I were on our way to Liedekerke, the principal remaining lace center in Brabant, and had stopt in this less important village of Heckelgem for a look at the convent school opened nine years ago. ”

“ In Brabant, however, where there are chimneys, the farmer hangs his stores in them, so that when looking up through the wide opening to the sky beyond numerous tiers of dangling sausages meet one's admiring gaze. The living-room is a living-room in every sense of the word, for the family work, eat, and sleep there. ”

“ In this sense Flanders, Brabant, and Luxembourg are the three princes to whom was given the defence of the patrimony that has been theirs from the ancient times of the earliest beginnings of the house amongst the Gallic and Germanic tribes of the Rhine valley, the meadows{39} and uplands of the Scheldt and the Meuse and the Sambre, and in the Forest of Ardennes. ”

“ What would be termed provinces to-day were the duchies of Gelderland, Brabant, Limburg, and Luxemburg, the counties of Holland, Zeeland, Flanders, Namur or Namen, Hainaut or Henegouwen, and Artois, and the lordships of Utrecht, Friesland, Groningen with Drenthe, Overyssel, and Mechlin or Malines. ”

“ Liberty struggled on still with despotism in obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory, and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals for the coming century. A long, devastating war laid waste the open country; victor and vanquished alike waded through blood; while the rising republic of the waters gave a welcome to fugitive industry, and out of the ruins of despotism erected the noble edifice of its own greatness. ”

“ What we know of the antecedents of the man suggests an affirmative answer.
The famous road from Cologne to Bruges—that road on which, as we have already seen, the commercial prosperity of the cities of Brabant at this time wholly depended—before entering the duchy of Brabant passed through the Pays de Liége, and the bishop who ruled that little principality was thus enabled, whenever he would, to create a commercial crisis by closing up that portion of the great trade route which traversed his domains. ”

“ The country, as we approach the banks of the Meuse and the Sambre, becomes at every step more and more picturesque, and the dull monotonous plains of Brabant are exchanged for the woody hills and precipitous valleys of Namur. ”

“ Indeed, the Gothic architecture of Brabant of the fourteen, fifteen and sixteen hundreds, if it be equalled, is certainly not surpassed by the Gothic architecture of those centuries in any other land. So far as concerns civic buildings, Brabant certainly holds the palm. Neither France nor Germany nor England can show anything which can be compared, for example, to the Town Hall of Brussels or the Town Hall of Louvain, or even with the Gothic portion of the Town Hall of Ghent, which was designed by Brabant architects. ”

“ The States of Brabant, and the magistrates of Brussels, renounced their allegiance to King Philip. The principal towns of Brabant, and several places in Flanders, were immediately delivered up, and others surrendered on being summoned, or in a few days afterwards. Ostend, Menin, Dendermond, and Aeth were captured. Towns which had resisted numerous armies for months and years, and provinces disputed for ages, were the conquest of a summer. After sharing in these splendid achievements, the regiment was placed in garrison in Flanders. ”

“ Reform versus Revolution
When the revolution of 1360 broke out the city of Louvain was, in name and in fact, the first city of Brabant. The cluster of cottages around the church which Lambert Balderic had founded on the banks of the Dyle three centuries before had grown into a great industrial and commercial centre, with a population of something like 70,000 souls. In the number of its inhabitants, in the extent of its trade, in political influence, in social prestige, in the splendour of its public and private buildings, it eclipsed at this time every town in the duchy. ”

“ On the other hand, the estates of Brabant addressed an eloquent appeal to the states-general, reciting their wrongs, and urging immediate action. "'Tis notorious," said the remonstrants, "that Antwerp was but yesterday the first and principal ornament of all Europe; the refuge of all the nations of the world; the source and supply of countless treasure; the nurse of all arts and industry; the protectress of the Roman Catholic religion; the guardian of science and virtue; and, above all these preeminences; more than faithful and obedient to her sovereign prince and lord. ”