Louvain

“ But in those fights there were no women or children, and the shells struck only vacant stretches of veldt or uninhabited mountain sides.
At Louvain it was war upon the defenceless, war upon churches, colleges, shops of milliners and lace-makers; war brought to the bedside and the fireside; against women harvesting in the fields, against children in wooden shoes at play in the streets.
At Louvain that night the Germans were like men after an orgy. ”

“ The whole beautiful city may be in flames, the whole population murdered. There is no one who can stop the Germans if they decide to ruin Brussels before evacuating it. One can only trust in their common-sense—and their mercy!
And at thought of mercy the Bruxellois gazes away down the flat, dusty road—away towards Louvain!
The peasants are going backwards and forwards to Louvain.
Little carts, filled with beshawled women and children, keep trundling along the road. A mud-splashed rickety waggonette is drawn up in front of a third-rate café. ”

“ With this civil strife the importance and prosperity of Louvain declined. Many weavers fled to Holland and England, the duke took up his residence in the strong castle of Vilvorde, and Brussels prospered at the expense of Louvain. What it lost in trade it partially recovered as a seat of learning, for in 1423, Duke John IV. of Brabant founded there a university and ever since Louvain University has enjoyed the first place in Belgium. It has always prided itself most on its theological teaching. ”

“ The name of the Ursuline Convent acted like a charm, for Louvain was papist to the core in these days of Spanish dominion. It had been a city of refuge nearly a hundred years ago for all that was truest and bravest and noblest among English Roman Catholics, in the cruel days of Queen Elizabeth, and Englishmen had become the leading spirits of the University there, and had attracted the youth of Romanist England to the sober old Flemish town, before the establishment of Dr. Allan’s rival seminary at Douai, Sir John could have found no safer haven for his little ewe lamb. ”

“ It is necessary, however, to conclude this section, to say a few words about Louvain, which, lying as it does on the main route from Brussels to Liege, may naturally be considered on our way to the northern Ardennes.
Louvain, on the whole, has been much more modernized than other Belgian cities of corresponding bulk, such as Bruges or Malines. The road from the railway-station to the centre of the town is commonplace indeed in its lack of picturesque Flemish house-fronts or stepped, "corbie," Flemish gables. ”

“ We overtook a string of wagons fitted up as carryalls and bearing family parties of the burghers to Louvain to spend a day among the wreckage. There is no accounting for tastes. If I had been a Belgian the last thing I should want my wife and my baby to see would be the ancient university town, the national cradle of the Church, in its present state. Nevertheless there were many excursionists in Louvain that day.
The Germans had taken down the bars and sight-seers came by autobusses from as far away as Aix-la-Chapelle and from Liege and many from Brussels. ”

“ Do you know why there are four wonders in Louvain? No. I will tell you why. In the first place, because the living there pass underneath the dead, for the church of Saint-Michel is built close to the gate of the town. ”

“ Louvain is the seat of the well-known University and the headquarters of the Clerical party of Belgium. Once a most important industrial center with a population of 200,000, it has dwindled to 45,000 or thereabouts. ”

“ As he passed through Flanders, Louvain attracted him, and here, according to his first biographer, he took the degree of medical bachelor. This is likely enough. Certain it is he made some stay at Louvain, became acquainted with its professors, and informed himself of its modes of study. Some little time he also passed at Brussels. Undoubtedly he visited Antwerp, and he rested a brief space in Paris. He must have taken the lecture-rooms of Germany on his way to Switzerland. ”

“ I noticed the smell of fire already several miles from Louvain. On both sides of the road small mounds indicated the graves of soldiers who fell115 during the brave resistance of the Belgians before Louvain. A small wooden cross and some pieces of accoutrement were the only decorations. Carcases of horses were lying in the fields, from which came a disagreeable smell.
The town was on fire, and ruddy smoke hovered over it. Deserted like a wilderness, not a soul moved in the streets. The first street I entered was the Rue de la Station. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At 9 o'clock p.m. the General, the Chief of the General Staff, and I returned to Louvain by motor-car. The battle took place at Bueken, 7 km. north of Louvain. On returning to Louvain we already found in the villages situated between Bueken and Louvain regular troops (of the Landwehr) who declared that our men were being fired at in the surrounding villages. We saw ourselves how all the traffic was stopped in a village because firing from the houses had taken place. All troops warned the Commanding General from going into the town because street-fights were taking place there. ”

“ Ecclesiastics, of course, will still have to be sent abroad to develop in a purer atmosphere, and will continue to prefer Rome to Louvain; large numbers of them still receive their ordinary training in Spain or at Rome. Still Louvain could boast many nationalities amongst its 1,600 students.
The long struggle between Catholicism and Liberalism in Belgium has had the effect of marking off Louvain amongst its universities as distinctively Catholic. ”

“ Moreover, at Louvain, the people—always eager to resent injustice and to champion the cause of the weak, were directly and largely represented in the municipal senate, and a healthier, manlier, more independent spirit pervaded the whole town. Nowhere in the duchy of Brabant was John's unworthy conduct held in greater contempt, nowhere were men more firmly determined to deliver him from the evil counsellors who, for their own ends, had prompted it, and the burghers of Louvain, to their honour, took the first step in this direction. ”

“ Those who have resided at Louvain have observed, that its inhabitants are in general more polite than in most of the towns in these provinces; but my stay was not sufficiently long to enable me to form any opinion on the subject. The manners of the people do not seem to me very dissimilar from those of the French, but others think they most resemble the Dutch. In fact, the Netherlanders have no very peculiar characteristics, but partake, in many respects, of those which distinguish the various nations from whom they are descended. ”

“ In the center of the city the sight is extraordinarily picturesque—gloomy, abominable, and more so in the evening when the full moon is shining over the mass of ruins, it is really fantastic, diabolical.
“The center of old Louvain, the old city of the Dukes of Brabant, exists no longer; a new city will have to be built in the center of the quarters spared by the torch. ”

“ The day before the Germans had sentenced Louvain to become a wilderness, and with German system and love of thoroughness they left Louvain an empty, blackened shell. The reason for this appeal to the torch and the execution of non-combatants, as given to Mr. Whitlock and myself on the morning I left Brussels by General von Lutwitz, the military governor, was this: The day before, while the German military commander of the troops in Louvain was at the Hôtel de Ville talking to the burgomaster, a son of the burgomaster, with an automatic pistol, shot the chief of staff and German staff surgeons. ”

“ It was an agreeable spot, this estate at Genappe. Louis's favourite amusement of the chase was easy of access. "The court is at present at Louvain," wrote a courtier9 on July 1st, "and Monseigneur the Dauphin likes it very much, for there is good hunting and falconry and a great number of rabbits within and without the city." With killing of every kind at his service, what greater solace [page 92] could a homeless prince expect?
From Louvain to Genappe is no great distance, and the sum of 1200 livres, furnished by Philip for the dauphin's journey to his new abode, seemed a large provision. ”

“ Some do, and some don't. What one ran into was largely a matter of luck.
For example: In Brussels on September 27, 1914, I fell in with a lieutenant of the British army. With an American passport he had made his way into the city through the German lines. We both desired to see Louvain, but all passage thereto was for the moment forbidden. Starting out on the main road, however, sentry after sentry passed us along until we were halted near staff headquarters, a few miles out of the city, and taken before the commandant. We informed him of our overweening desire to view the ruins of Louvain. ”

“ During the early Middle Ages, Louvain was also celebrated for its University, founded in 1426, and suppressed by the French in 1797. It was re-established by the Dutch in 1817, but abandoned by the Belgian Government in 1834, and then started afresh in the next year as a free private Roman Catholic University. Charles V. was educated here.
The modern town has shrunk far away within its ancient ramparts, whose site is now for the most part occupied by empty Boulevards. It is still the stronghold of Roman Catholic theology in Belgium. ”

“ No doubt they were smarting with humiliation that they had been so long delayed breaking through the stubborn opposition of the Belgians at Liège; but Louvain was an unfortified city and they were allowed to take peaceable possession of it. Nevertheless, on August 25th whilst the fighting round Mons was at its hottest and Russia was sweeping farther and farther over the frontiers of East Prussia, in some sort of burst of vengeful frenzy they laid one of the loveliest old cities of the world in ruins, burnt or shattered most of its priceless art treasures, and left its citizens homeless. ”

“ In the meantime, they induced the theologians of Louvain to procure the insertion of Robert’s Bible in an index expurgatorius which was at that time in preparation in Louvain. Du Chastel was directed to address a third injunction to the divines, and the King forbade the printing (at least in France) of the catalogue of Louvain. Finally, the Faculty submitted a list of fifteen passages which they claimed to contain dangerous heresies. ”

“ Louvain is, in a certain sense, the mother city of Brussels. Standing on its own little navigable river, the Dyle, it was, till the end of the 14th century, the capital of the Counts and of the Duchy of Brabant. It had a large population of weavers, engaged in the cloth trade. Here, as elsewhere, the weavers formed the chief bulwark of freedom in the population. In 1378, however, after a popular rising, Duke Wenseslaus besieged and conquered the city; and the tyrannical sway of the nobles, whom he re-introduced, aided by the rise of Ghent or, later, of Antwerp, drove away trade from the city. ”

“ For a little while there was calm at Louvain, calm before the storm, and the patricians had almost begun to hope that their trouble with Coutherele was over, when presently it was rumoured abroad that his nephews were tampering with the weavers. Employers of labour, comparing notes, called to mind that of late their men had shown themselves idle beyond wont, sullen, fractious, insolent ”

“ They do not boast themselves to be learned men, but, on the other hand, it is not they who have made Louvain a city of ruins. They fight fiercely against men who have arms in their hands, but they have not executed innocent hostages, nor have they used warships and airships to massacre women and children. ”

“ The importance of Louvain and Brussels dates from the twelfth century, when the Cologne-Bruges road brought commercial activity into the country and when the weaving industry began to spread in the duchy. As for Liége, which was a purely ecclesiastical town, where, for a long time, the number of priests and monks exceeded that of the ordinary citizens, it enjoyed a smaller share of local liberties than the other centres of the Meuse valley where industry was more developed, and the citizens never succeeded in freeing themselves completely from the bishop's authority. ”

“ Stapleton wrote from Louvain to Parsons at Madrid in 1597 that he was, and sincerely intended to remain, a true and trusty servant to the king of Spain ‘though I hap to live, and perhaps to continue, in the court of Rome.’ Stapleton intended to set out for Rome in August 1597, but, either from illness or some other cause, remained at Louvain. Dr. Humphrey Ely implies that there was some other reason, for he writes: ‘The first man you [i.e. Father Parsons] name is M. D. Stapleton “whom his Holiness purposed to prefer to higher dignity.” ”