Brabantio

“ 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. ”

“ The dwellings of warrior tribes and the castles of the mighty Dukes of Brabant are supplanted by the substantial buildings of a center of present-day life. For the well-kept beauty of its streets and open spaces, for its air of solid content and well-contained vivacity, for its handsome store-houses of ancient and modern art, its massive but harmonious architecture, its tempting shops and markets, and the alluring grace of its medieval roofs and towers, Brussels exacts universal admiration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE SAVIOUR OF MONT CÉSAR Rain fell softly, as it frequently falls in Belgium, drenching the ripening fields of Brabant and the ghosts of ruined towns. By six o’clock in the evening we had reached Louvain. My motor-car rolled through the porte de Bruxelles and down the narrow, slippery Flemish streets into the heart of the city. From a sentry box marked with barber-pole stripes in the German colours—black, white, red; black, white, red again—a bearded Landsturm man leaped out, wearing a helmet like a Yohoghany miner’s cap, a faded gray-green service uniform, and high, mud-coloured boots. ”

“ The making of the great commercial and manufacturing centres of mediæval Belgium was for the most part and generally speaking in this wise, but they did not all of them come into being at the same time—not even in the course of the same century. As a rule the towns of Brabant are less ancient than the towns of Flanders, and most of them owe their development less to the river than to the road. It was so with Brussels and Louvain, and, to a certain extent also with Mechlin. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Brabant was thought to have given birth to a new Homer. His praises resounded in verse and song, and the young girls of Brussels crowned him with laurel.
The government of the Duke of Alva, and the succeeding years of revolution, were a period of desolation for Flanders. The Guilds of Rhetoric were dispersed; town after town was depopulated; Ghent, the loved city of Charles V., lost six thousand families; Leyden, Amsterdam, Haerlem, Gouda, afforded refuge to the emigrants. The golden age of literary activity is about to dawn in the Dutch republic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here we have no mere fragment, more or less defaced, but something complete in itself, something which has never been tampered with, something older, too, than any of the buildings of which we have just spoken, older, indeed, for the matter of that, than any other building in Brabant. In a word we have here an antique jewel of rare beauty, which has never been re-set nor re-cut: the subterranean Church of Saint Guy at Anderlecht remains to-day what it was when the builders planned it. ”

“ Many of these monuments have perished, but such of them as remain, though they have suffered much at the hands of enemies and of friends, bear witness alike to the genius of the artists who created them and to the public spirit and the devotion of the burghers and craftsmen who provided the funds with which they were built, and who, hard-headed, close-fisted, cautious men, as many of them were, counted it no loss to have invested so much of their capital in these unremunerative securities. In those days Brabant was rich and free, and possessed of the faith which removes mountains. ”

“ All that was best and all that was noblest in the three estates of Brabant had joined hands against the Sovereign—a wanton boy led astray by evil counsellors, who were squandering his wealth and the wealth of his towns, and suffering the honour of Brabant to be dragged in the dust; and when all seemed lost, when Brussels, betrayed by false brethren, was filled with German mercenaries breathing out threatening and slaughter, the energy and daring of the despised craftsmen had turned defeat into victory. ”

“ That night the craftsmen of Brussels were in a wild frenzy of gladness—not only on account of their triumph, but because they knew that the wine for which they had so long thirsted, the glorious wine of liberty, would soon be gurgling down their throats; the fragrance of its bouquet already filled their nostrils and they were drunk in anticipation. Philip had hailed them as the saviours of Brabant, and he would never refuse to strong men flushed with victory the wages they had justly earned. Let patricians do what they would, self-government was now assured to them. ”

“ Brabant has more sun, more comfort and a higher type of humanity; Teniers, in consequence, is silvery and sparkling; the people he paints are fair specimens of a well built race. Holland, in the vicinity of Haarlem seems to have suffered much from war; the air is moist and hazy, and the people, as depicted by Ostade, are short, ill-favoured and marked with the stamp of adversity on their features and dress. Brouwer, who painted the Dutch boor in his frolics and passion, imported more of the spirit of Frans Hals into his delineations than his colleague; but the type is the same as Ostade’s. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As it was at Brussels so was it in the other towns of [Pg 68] Brabant, and notably at Louvain, the city, above all, where the aristocracy was the proudest and the most hated, and the proletariat the most turbulent and the most oppressed. In this hotbed of storm and suspicion, where class feeling ran the highest and class distinctions were the most sharply defined, it was in the ranks of the patricians that the people at last found a leader whom they trusted, and one who showed himself worthy of their trust. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A half a day, if time presses, will suffice to see Bois le Duc. After you have wandered about in its great Gothic cathedral of St. John, one of the largest and, by all odds, the fanciest church—if a church can be said to be fancy—in Holland, you will have done with the town. It holds nothing else of interest. Although of 32,000 population, and the capital of the Province of North Brabant, it is dull and unappealing to the tourist. There are few types and few distinctive mannerisms. ”

“ 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!” The long delay of the papal bull, which was kept back by a misunderstanding between the Romish and Spanish courts, gave the disaffected an opportunity to combine for a common object. In perfect secrecy the states of Brabant despatched an extraordinary messenger to Pins IV. to urge their wishes in Rome itself. ”

“ BATTLING FOR A KINGDOM
OF more interest than Philip the Bold or John the Fearless is the beautiful Jacqueline of Bavaria, who was married to John’s nephew, John of Brabant. According to tradition, Jacqueline, heiress to the counties of Holland and Hainault, was the most charming and gifted woman of her day. John, Duke of Brabant, was in no respect her equal. He subjected her to endless indignities and persecutions, and she at last fled from Brussels to the court of Henry V of England, where she found protection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What a difference between the modest procession of those suitors in Brussels, who prayed for a more humane treatment as a favor, and the dreaded majesty of a free state, which treated with kings as equals, and in less than a century disposed of the throne of its former tyrant. The unseen hand of fate gave to the discharged arrow a higher flight, and quite a different direction from that which it first received from the bowstring. In the womb of happy Brabant that liberty had its birth which, torn from its mother in its earliest infancy, was to gladden the so despised Holland. ”