Chapter VI: Belgium (1)

BRUGES[A]

[Footnote A: From "Cities of Belgium."]

BY GRANT ALLEN

The Rhine constituted the great central waterway of medieval Europe; the Flemish towns were its ports and its manufacturing centers. They filled in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries much the same place that Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, and Birmingham fill in the nineteenth. Many causes contributed to this result.

Flanders, half independent under its own counts, occupied a middle position, geographically and politically, between France and the Empire; it was comparatively free from the disastrous wars which desolated both these countries, and in particular it largely escaped the long smouldering quarrel between French and English, which so long retarded the development of the former. Its commercial towns, again, were not exposed on the open sea to the attacks of pirates or hostile fleets, but were safely ensconced in inland flats, reached by rivers or canals, almost inaccessible to maritime enemies. Similar conditions elsewhere early ensured peace and prosperity for Venice.

The canal system of Holland and Belgium began to be developed as early as the twelfth century (at first for drainage), and was one leading cause of the commercial importance of the Flemish cities in the fourteenth. In so flat a country, locks are all but unnecessary. The two towns which earliest rose to greatness in the Belgian area were thus Bruges and Ghent; they possest in the highest degree the combined advantages of easy access to the sea and comparative inland security.

Bruges, in particular, was one of the chief stations of the Hanseatic League, which formed an essentially commercial alliance for the mutual protection of the northern trading centers. By the fourteenth century Bruges had thus become in the north what Venice was in the south, the capital of commerce. Trading companies from all the surrounding countries had their "factories" in the town, and every European king or prince of importance kept a resident minister accredited to the merchant republic.

Some comprehension of the mercantile condition of Europe in general during the Middle Ages is necessary in order to understand the early importance and wealth of the Flemish cities. Southern Europe, and in particular Italy, was then still the seat of all higher civilization, more especially of the trade in manufactured articles and objects of luxury. Florence, Venice and Genoa ranked as the polished and learned cities of the world. Further east, again, Constantinople still remained in the hands of the Greek emperors, or, during the Crusades, of their Latin rivals. A brisk trade existed via the Mediterranean between Europe and India or the nearer East. This double stream of traffic ran along two main routes--one, by the Rhine, from Lombardy and Rome; the other, by sea, from Venice, Genoa, Florence, Constantinople, the Levant, and India.

On the other hand, France was still but a half civilized country, with few manufactures and little external trade; while England was an exporter of raw produce, chiefly wool, like Australia in our own time. The Hanseatic merchants of Cologne held the trade of London; those of Wisby and Lübeck governed that of the Baltic; Bruges, as head of the Hansea, was in close connection with all of these, as well as with Hull, York, Novgorod, and Bergen.

The position of the Flemish towns in the fourteenth century was thus not wholly unlike that of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston at the present day; they stood as intermediaries between the older civilized countries, like Italy or the Greek empire, and the newer producers of raw material, like England, North Germany, and the Baltic towns.

In a lost corner of the great lowland flat of Flanders, defended from the sea by an artificial dike, and at the point of intersection of an intricate network of canals and waterways, there arose in the early Middle Ages a trading town, known in Flemish as Brugge, in French as Bruges (that is to say, The Bridge), from a primitive structure that here crossed the river. A number of bridges now span the sluggish streams. All of them open in the middle to admit the passage of shipping.

Bruges stood originally on a little river, Reye, once navigable, now swallowed by canals; and the Reye flowed into the Zwin, long silted up, but then the safest harbor in the Low Countries. At first the capital of a petty Count, this land-locked internal harbor grew in time to be the Venice of the North, and to gather round its quays or at its haven of Damme, the ships and merchandise of all neighboring peoples. Already in 1200 it ranked as the central mart of the Hanseatic League.

It was the port of entry for English wool and Russian furs: the port of departure for Flemish broadcloths, laces, tapestries, and linens. Canals soon connected it with Ghent, Dunkirk, Sluys, Furnes and Ypres. Its nucleus lay in a little knot of buildings about the Grand Place and the Hotel de Ville, stretching out to the Cathedral and the Dyver; thence it spread on all sides till, in 1362, it filled the whole space within the existing ramparts, now largely abandoned or given over to fields and gardens. It was the wealthiest town of Europe, outside Italy.

The decline of the town was due partly to the break-up of the Hanseatic system; partly to the rise of English ports and manufacturing towns; but still more, and especially as compared with our Flemish cities, to the silting of the Zwin, and the want of adaption in its waterways to the needs of great ships and modern navigation. The old sea entrance to Bruges was through the Zwin, by way of Sluys and Kadzand; up that channel came the Venetian merchant fleet and the Flemish galleys, to the port of Damme. By 1470, it ceased to be navigable for large vessels.

The later canal is still open, but as it passes through what is now Dutch territory, it is little used; nor is it adapted to any save ships of comparatively small burden. Another canal, suitable for craft of 500 tons, leads through Belgian territory to Ostend; but few vessels now navigate it, and those for the most part only for local trade. The town has shrunk to half its former size, and has only a quarter of its medieval population.

The commercial decay of Bruges, however, has preserved its charm for the artist, the archeologist, and the tourist; its sleepy streets and unfrequented quays are among the most picturesque sights of bustling and industrial modern Belgium. The great private palaces, indeed, are almost all destroyed; but many public buildings remain, and the domestic architecture is quaint and pretty.

Bruges was the mother of arts in Flanders: Jan van Eyck lived here from 1428 to 1440. Memling, probably from 1477 till 1494. Caxton, the first English printer, lived as a merchant at Bruges, in the Domus Anglorum or English factory, from 1446 to 1476, and probably put in the press here the earliest English book printed, tho strong grounds have been adduced in favor of Cologne. Colard Mansion, the great printer of Bruges at that date, was one of the leaders in the art of typography....

The very tall square tower which faces you as you enter the Grand Place is the Belfry, the center and visible embodiment of the town of Bruges. The Grand Place itself was the forum and meeting place of the soldier citizens, who were called to arms by the chimes in the Belfry. The center of the place is therefore appropriately occupied by a colossal statue group, modern, of Pieter de Coninck and Jan Breidel, the leaders of the citizens of Bruges at the Battle of the Spurs before the walls of Courtrai in 1302, a conflict which secured the freedom of Flanders from the interference of the Kings of France. The group is by Devigne. The reliefs on the pedestal represent scenes from the battle and its antecedents.

The majestic Belfry itself represents the first beginnings of freedom in Bruges. Leave to erect such a bell-tower, both as a mark of independence and to summon the citizens to arms, was one of the first privileges which every Teutonic trading town desired to wring from its feudal lord. This brick tower, the pledge of municipal rights, was begun in 1291, to replace an earlier one of wood, and finished about a hundred years later; the octagon, in stone at the summit, which holds the bell, having been erected in 1393-96.

It consists of three stories, the two lower of which are square and flanked by balconies with turrets; the windows below are of the simple early Gothic style, but show a later type of architecture in the octagon. The niche in the center contains the Virgin and Child, a group restored after being destroyed by the French revolutionists. Below it on either side are smaller figures holding escutcheons. From the balcony between these last, the laws and the rescripts of the counts were read aloud to the people assembled in the square.

The Belfry can be ascended by steps. Owing to the force of the wind, it leans slightly to the southeast. The view from the top is very extensive and striking. It embraces the greater part of the Plain of Flanders, with its towns and villages. The country, tho quite flat, looks beautiful when thus seen. In early times, however, the look-out from the summit was of practical use for purposes of observation, military or maritime. It commanded the river, the Zwin, and the sea approach by Sluys and Damme; the course of the various canals; and the roads to Ghent, Antwerp, Tournai, and Courtrai. The Belfry contains a famous set of chimes, the mechanism of which may be inspected by the visitor. He will have frequent opportunities of hearing the beautiful and mellow carillon, perhaps to excess. The existing bells date only from 1680: the mechanism from 1784.

A PEN PICTURE OF BRUGES[A]

[Footnote A: From "The Paris Sketch Book."]

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

It is the quaintest and prettiest of all the quaint and pretty towns I have seen. A painter might spend months here, and wander from church to church, and admire old towers and pinnacles, tall gables, bright canals, and pretty little patches of green garden and moss-grown wall, that reflect in the clear quiet water. Before the inn-window is a garden, from which in the early morning issues a most wonderful odor of stocks and wallflowers; next comes a road with trees of admirable green; numbers of little children are playing in this road (the place is so clean that they may roll on it all day without soiling their pinafores), and on the other side of the trees are little old-fashioned, dumpy, whitewashed, red-tiled houses.

A poorer landscape to draw never was known, nor a pleasanter to see--the children especially, who are inordinately fat and rosy. Let it be remembered, too, that here we are out of the country of ugly women; the expression of the face is almost uniformly gentle and pleasing, and the figures of the women, wrapt in long black monk-like cloaks and hoods, very picturesque. No wonder there are so many children: the "Guide-book" (omniscient Mr. Murray!) says there are fifteen thousand paupers in the town, and we know how such multiply.

How the deuce do their children look so fat and rosy? By eating dirt-pies, I suppose. I saw a couple making a very nice savory one, and another employed in gravely sticking strips of stick betwixt the pebbles at the house-door, and so making for herself a stately garden. The men and women don't seem to have much more to do. There are a couple of tall chimneys at either suburb of the town, where no doubt manufactories are at work, but within the walls everybody seems decently idle.

We have been, of course, abroad to visit the lions. The tower in the Grand Place is very fine, and the bricks of which it is built do not yield a whit in color to the best stone. The great building round this tower is very like the pictures of the Ducal Palace at Venice; and there is a long market area, with columns down the middle, from which hung shreds of rather lean-looking meat, that would do wonders under the hands of Cattermole or Haghe.

In the tower there is a chime of bells that keep ringing perpetually. They not only play tunes of themselves, and every quarter of an hour, but an individual performs selections from popular operas on them at certain periods of the morning, afternoon, and evening. I have heard to-day "Suoni la Tromba," "Son Vergin Vezzosa," from the "Puritani," and other airs, and very badly they were played too; for such a great monster as a tower-bell can not be expected to imitate Madame Grisi or even Signor Lablache. Other churches indulge in the same amusement, so that one may come here and live in melody all day or night, like the young woman in Moore's "Lalla Rookh."

In the matter of art, the chief attractions of Bruges are the pictures of Memling, that are to be seen in the churches, the hospital, and the picture-gallery of the place. There are no more pictures of Rubens to be seen, and, indeed, in the course of a fortnight, one has had quite enough of the great man and his magnificent, swaggering canvases. What a difference is here with simple Memling and the extraordinary creations of his pencil! The hospital is particularly rich in them; and the legend there is that the painter, who had served Charles the Bold in his war against the Swiss, and his last battle and defeat, wandered back wounded and penniless to Bruges, and here found cure and shelter.

This hospital is a noble and curious sight. The great hall is almost as it was in the twelfth century; it is spanned by Saxon arches, and lighted by a multiplicity of Gothic windows of all sizes; it is very lofty, clean, and perfectly well ventilated; a screen runs across the middle of the room, to divide the male from the female patients, and we were taken to examine each ward, where the poor people seemed happier than possibly they would have been in health and starvation without it.

Great yellow blankets were on the iron beds, the linen was scrupulously clean, glittering pewter-jugs and goblets stood by the side of each patient, and they were provided with godly books (to judge from the building), in which several were reading at leisure. Honest old comfortable nuns, in queer dresses of blue, black, white, and flannel, were bustling through the room, attending to the wants of the sick. I saw about a dozen of these kind women's faces; one was young,--all were healthy and cheerful. One came with bare blue arms and a great pile of linen from an out-house--such a grange as Cedric the Saxon might have given to a guest for the night. A couple were in a laboratory, a tall, bright, clean room, 500 years old at least.

"We saw you were not very religious," said one of the old ladies, with a red, wrinkled, good-humored face, "by your behavior yesterday in chapel."

And yet we did not laugh and talk as we used at college, but were profoundly affected by the scene that we saw there. It was a fête-day; a work of Mozart was sung in the evening--not well sung, and yet so exquisitely tender and melodious, that it brought tears into our eyes. There were not above twenty people in the church; all, save three or four, were women in long black cloaks. I took them for nuns at first. They were, however, the common people of the town, very poor indeed, doubtless, for the priest's box that was brought round was not added to by most of them, and their contributions were but two-cent pieces--five of these go to a penny; but we know the value of such, and can tell the exact worth of a poor woman's mite!

The box-bearer did not seem at first willing to accept our donation--we were strangers and heretics; however, I held out my hand, and he came perforce as it were. Indeed it had only a franc in it; but "que voulez vous?" I had been drinking a bottle of Rhine wine that day, and how was I to afford more? The Rhine wine is dear in this country, and costs four francs a bottle.

Well, the service proceeded. Twenty poor women, two Englishmen, four ragged beggars, cowering on the steps; and there was the priest at the altar, in a great robe of gold and damask, two little boys in white surplices serving him, holding his robe as he rose and bowed, and the money-gatherer swinging his censer, and filling the little chapel with smoke.

The music pealed with wonderful sweetness; you could see the prim white heads of the nuns in their gallery. The evening light streamed down upon old statues of saints and carved brown stalls, and lighted up the head of the golden-haired Magdalen in a picture of the entombment of Christ. Over the gallery, and, as it were, a kind protectress to the poor below, stood the statue of the Virgin.

GHENT[A]

[Footnote A: From "Cities of Belgium."]

BY GRANT ALLEN

Flanders owes everything to its water communications. At the junction of the Schelde with the Lys and Lei, there grew up in the very early Middle Ages a trading town, named Gent in Flemish, and Gand in French, but commonly Anglicized as Ghent. It lay on a close network of rivers and canals, formed partly by these two main streams, and partly by the minor channels of the Lieve and the Moere, which together intersect it into several islands.

Such a tangle of inland waterways, giving access to the sea and to Bruges, Courtrai, and Tournai, as well as less directly to Antwerp and Brussels, ensured the rising town in early times considerable importance. It formed the center of a radiating commerce. Westward, its main relations were with London and English wool ports; eastward with Cologne, Maastricht, the Rhine towns, and Italy.

Ghent was always the capital of East Flanders, as Bruges or Ypres were of the Western province; and after the Counts lost possession of Arras and Artois, it became in the thirteenth century their principal residence and the metropolis of the country....

Early in the fourteenth century, the burghers of Ghent, under their democratic chief, Jacob or Jacques Van Artevelde, attained practical independence. Till 1322, the counts and people of Flanders had been united in their resistance to the claims of France; but with the accession of Count Louis of Nevers, the aspect of affairs changed. Louis was French by education, sympathies, and interests, and artistocratic by nature; he sought to curtail the liberties of the Flemish towns, and to make himself despotic. The wealthy and populous burgher republics resisted and in 1337 Van Artevelde was appointed Captain of Ghent. Louis fled to France and asked the aid of Philip of Valois.

Thereupon, Van Artevelde made himself the ally of Edward III. of England, then beginning his war with France; but as the Flemings did not like entirely to cast off their allegiance--a thing repugnant to medieval sentiment--Van Artevelde persuaded Edward to put forward his trumped-up claim to the crown of France, and thus induced the towns to transfer their fealty from Philip to his English rival. It was therefore in his character as King of France that Edward came to Flanders. The alliance thus formed between the great producer of raw wool, England, and the great manufacturer of woolen goods, Ghent, proved of immense importance to both parties.

But as Count Louis sided with Philip of Valois, the breach between the democracy of Ghent and its nominal soverign now became impassable. Van Artevelde held supreme power in Ghent and Flanders for nine years--the golden age of Flemish commerce--and was treated on equal terms by Edward, who stopt at Ghent as his guest for considerable periods. But he was opposed by a portion of the citizens, and his suggestion that the Black Prince, son of Edward III., should be elected Count of Flanders, proved so unpopular with his enemies that he was assassinated by one of them, Gerald Denys. The town and states immediately repudiated the murder; and the alliance which Van Artevelde had brought about still continued. It had far-reaching results; the woolen industry was introduced by Edward into the Eastern Counties of England, and Ghent had risen meanwhile to be the chief manufacturing city of Europe.

The quarrel between the democratic weavers and their exiled counts was still carried on by Philip van Artevelde, the son of Jacques, and godson of Queen Philippa of England, herself a Hainaulter. Under his rule, the town continued to increase in wealth and population. But the general tendency of later medieval Europe toward centralized despotisms as against urban republics was too strong in the end for free Ghent. In 1381, Philip was appointed dictator by the democratic party, in the war against the Count, son of his father's opponent, whom he repelled with great slaughter in a battle near Bruges.

He then made himself Regent of Flanders. But Count Louis obtained the aid of Charles VI. of France, and defeated and killed Philip van Artevelde at the disastrous battle of Roosebeke in 1382. That was practically the end of local freedom in Flanders. Tho the cities continued to revolt against their sovereigns from time to time, they were obliged to submit for the most part to their Count and to the Burgundian princes who inherited from him by marriage.

The subsequent history of Ghent is that of the capital of the Burgundian Dukes, and of the House of Austria. Here the German king, Maximilian, afterward Emperor, married Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of the Netherlands; and here Charles V. was born in the palace of the Counts. It was his principal residence, and he was essentially a Fleming....

The real interest of the Cathedral centers, not in St. Bavon, nor in his picture by Rubens, but in the great polyptych of the Adoration of the Lamb, the masterpiece of Jan van Eyck and his brother Hubert, which forms in a certain sense the point of departure for the native art of the Netherlands....

Stand before the west front at a little distance, to examine the simple but massive architecture of the tower and façade. The great portal has been robbed of the statues which once adorned its niches. Three have been "restored"; they represent, center, the Savior; at the left, the patron, St. Bavon, recognizable by his falcon, his sword as duke, and his book as monk; he wears armor, with a ducal robe and cap above it; at the right, St. John the Baptist, the earlier patron.

Then, walk to the right, round the south side, to observe the external architecture of the nave, aisles and choir. The latter has the characteristic rounded or apsidal termination of Continental Gothic, whereas English Gothic usually has a square end. Enter by the south portal.

The interior, with single aisles and short transepts (Early Gothic) is striking for its simple dignity, its massive pillars, and its high arches, tho the undeniably noble effect of the whole is somewhat marred to English eyes by the unusual appearance of the unadorned brick walls and vaulting. The pulpit, by Delvaux (1745), partly in oak, partly in marble, represents Truth revealing the Christian Faith to astonished Paganism, figured as an old and outworn man. It is a model of all that should be avoided in plastic or religious art. The screen which separates the choir from the transepts is equally unfortunate. The apsidal end of the Choir, however, with its fine modern stained glass, forms a very pleasing feature in the general coup d'oeil....

The sixth chapel (of the Vydts family) contains the famous altar piece of the Adoration of the Lamb, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, to study which is the chief object of a visit to Ghent. See it more than once, and examine it carefully. Ask the sacristan to let you sit before it for some time in quiet or he will hurry you on. You must observe it in close detail. Taking it in its entirety, then, the altar-piece, when opened, is a great mystical poem of the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of the Lamb, with the Christian folk, both Church and World, adoring. The composition contains over 200 figures. Many of them, which I have not here identified, can be detected by a closer inspection, which, however, I will leave to the reader.

Now, ask the sacristan to shut the wings. They are painted on the outer side (all a copy) mainly in grisaille, or in very low tones of color, as is usual in such cases, so as to allow the jewel-like brilliancy of the internal picture to burst upon the observer the moment the altar-piece is opened.

Old Ghent occupied for the most part the island which extends from the Palais de Justice on one side to the Botanical Gardens on the other. This island, bounded by the Lys, the Schelde, and an ancient canal, includes almost all the principal buildings of the town, such as the Cathedral, St. Nicholas, the Hôtel-dé-Ville, the Belfry, and St. Jacques, as well as the chief Places, such as the Marché aux Grains, the Marché aux Herbes, and the Marché du Vendredi. It also extends beyond the Lys to the little island on which is situated the church of St. Michael, and again to the islet formed between the Lieve and the Lys, which contains the château of the Counts and the Palace Ste. Pharailde.

In the later middle ages, however, the town had spread to nearly its existing extreme dimensions, and was probably more populous than at the present moment. But its ancient fortifications have been destroyed and their place has been taken by boulevards and canals. The line may still be traced on the map, or walked round through a series of shipping suburbs; but it is uninteresting to follow, a great part of its course lying through the more squalid portions of the town. The only remaining gate is that known as the Rabot (1489), a very interesting and picturesque object situated in a particularly slummy quarter.

Bruges is full of memories of the Burgundian Princes. At Ghent it is the personality of Charles V., the great emperor who cumulated in his own person the sovereignties of Germany, the Low Countries, Spain and Burgundy, that meets us afresh at every turn. He was born here in 1500 and baptized in a font, otherwise uninteresting, which still stands in the north transept of the Cathedral. Ghent was really, for the greater part of his life, his practical capital, and he never ceased to be at heart a Ghenter.

That did not prevent the citizens from unjustly rebelling against him in 1540, after the suppression of which revolt Charles is said to have ascended the cathedral tower, while the executioner was putting to death the ringleaders in the rebellion, in order to choose with his brother Ferdinand the site for the citadel he intended to erect, to overawe the freedom loving city. He chose the Monastery of St. Bavon as its site, and, as we have seen, built there his colossal fortress, now wholly demolished. The palace in which he was born and which he inhabited frequently during life, was known as the Cour du Prince. It stood near the Ancient Grand Béguinage, but only its name now survives in that of a street.

BRUSSELS[A]

[Footnote A: From "The Belgians at Home." Published by Little, Brown & Co.]

BY CLIVE HOLLAND

The great commercial and material prosperity of the place dates from the commencement of the rule of the House of Burgundy. It was then, in the fifteenth century, that the most beautiful of its many fine buildings were erected. The Church of St. Michael and St. Gudule has its great nave and towers dating from this period; the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame du Sablon, the Nassau Palace, the Palace of the Dukes of Brabant, and many other buildings were commenced then. Manufactures and commerce commenced to flourish, while the liberties of the municipality were extended considerably.

It was undoubtedly under the rule of Charles V. that Brussels reached its zenith of ancient prosperity. Then, with the era of Philip II. of Spain, came a long period of bloodshed, persecution, and misery. The religious disputes and troubles afflicting the Netherlands had their effect upon the life, prosperity, and happiness of the Bruxellois. The whole country was running with blood, and ruin stalked through the land. But during this tragic period of Netherlands' history Brussels saw several glorious events, and did as a city more than one noble deed. It was in Brussels that the compromise of the nobles took place, after which those who were rebelling against the cruelties of the Inquisition were given the name of "Gueux," which had been bestowed upon them contemptuously by the Comte de Barlaimont.... It was Brussels which led the revolt against the most bloodthirsty of the rulers sent to the Netherlands by Spain, the Duke of Alva, and successfully resisted the imposition of the notorious "twentieth denier" tax which it was sought to impose upon it, a tax which led ultimately to the revolt of the whole of the Belgian provinces.

Certainly this ancient capital of the Province of Brabant, containing nowadays with its suburbs a population of upward of 600,000, which has quadrupled in sixty years, has come to take its place among the most beautiful and charming capital cities of Europe. It is undoubtedly healthy, and there is an engaging air about Brussels which soon impresses itself upon the foreign visitor. Added to all its many attractions of interesting museums--the homes of wonderful and in some cases unrivaled collections of works of art--and of historical associations with the past, it possesses the charm of being modern in the best sense and of being a place where one may find much that is finest in art and music. As a home of fashion it bids fair some day to rival Paris herself, and the shops of the Montagne de la Cour, Boulevard Anspach, and contiguous streets are scarcely less luxurious or exclusive than those of the Rue de la Paix or Boulevard des Italiens in the French capital. Brussels is a city of shady boulevards, open spaces, and pleasant parks as is Paris; and the beautiful Bois de la Cambre on its outskirts compares very favorably with the world-renowned Bois de Boulogne as regards rural charm and picturesqueness.

One impression that Brussels is almost certain to make upon the visitor is its compactness. Its population, including the outskirts, is nowadays rather over 600,000; but it is almost impossible to realize that nearly one-eleventh of the whole population of Belgium is concentrated in this one city, or, as might be said, in Greater Brussels. Perhaps the real reason of this apparent lack of size is because there are in reality two cities, Brussels interior and Brussels exterior. The one with a population of about 225,000; the latter with one of about 375,000. It is with the former, of course, that the tourist and casual visitor are chiefly concerned.

The outlying suburbs are, however, connected with the city proper by a splendid system of steam, electric, and other trams. In fact, it may be said that Brussels is in a sense surrounded by a group of small towns, which tho forming part of the great city are yet independent, and are governed very much like the various boroughs which make up Greater London, Curhegem, St. Gilles, Ixelles, St. Josse, Ten Noodle, Molenbeek, St. Jean, and Schaerbeek, still further out, are all in a sense separate towns, seldom visited by, and indeed almost unknown to the tourist.

The most fashionable quarters for residences of the wealthy classes are the broad and beautiful Avenue Louise and the streets and avenues of the Quartier Leopold. They in a sense correspond to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Avenue des Champs Élysées, and Boulevard St. Germain of Paris. There is another feature, too, that modern Brussels has in common with Paris of the immediate past and of to-day. It is being "Haussmannized," and the older and more quaint and interesting portions of the city, as has been and is the case in Paris, are gradually but surely disappearing to make way for the onward march of progress and expansion. Almost on every hand, and especially in the Porte de Namur Quarter, old buildings are constantly falling victims to the house-wrecker, and new, in the shape of handsome mansions and lofty blocks of flats, are arising from their ashes.

The last thirty--even twenty--years have seen many changes. During that period the sluggish little River Senne, which once meandered through the city, and upon whose banks stood many fine and picturesque old houses and buildings of past ages, has been arched over, and the fine Boulevard of the same name, and those of Hainaut and Anspach, have been built above its imprisoned waters. The higher portions of the city are undeniably healthy, and the climate of Brussels is less subject to extreme changes than that of Paris. It is not unbearably cold in winter, and tho hot in summer, is not so, we think, airless as either Paris or London, a fact accounted for by reason of its many open spaces, its height above sea-level, and comparative nearness to the North Sea.

Of its fine buildings, none excels the Hôtel de Ville, which is certainly one of the most interesting and beautiful buildings of its kind in Belgium. It is well placed on one of the finest medieval squares in Europe, and is surrounded by quaint and historic houses. On this Grande Place many tragedies have from time to time been enacted, and some of the most ferocious acts of the inhuman Alva performed. In the spring of the terrible year, 1568, no less than twenty-five Flemish nobles were executed here, and in the June of the same year the patriots Lamoral, Count Egmont, Philip de Montmorency, and Count Hoorn were put to death. This atrocious deed is commemorated by a fountain with statues of the heroes, placed in front of the Maison du Roi, from a window of which the Duke of Alva watched his orders carried out.

This most beautiful Hôtel de Ville, with its late Gothic façade approaching the Renaissance period, nearly 200 feet in length, was commenced, according to a well-known authority, either in 1401 or 1402, the eastern wing, or left-hand portion as one faces it across the Place, having been the first part to be commenced, the western half of the façade not having been begun until 1444. The later additions formed the quadrangle.

The Cathedral at Brussels is dedicated jointly to Ste. Gudule and St. Michael. The former is one of the luckiest saints in that respect, as probably but for this dedication, she would have remained among the many rather obscure saints of the early periods of Christianity.

It is to this church that most visitors to Brussels first wend their way after visiting the Grande Place and its delightful Flower Market, which is gay with blossoms on most days of the week all the year round. The natural situation of the church is a fine one, which was made the most of by its architects and builders of long ago. Standing, as it does, on the side of a hill reached from the Grande Place by the fine Rue de la Montagne and short, steep Rue Ste. Gudule, it overlooks the city with its two fine twin western towers dominating the neighboring streets. These towers have appeared to us when viewed up the Rue Ste. Gudule and other streets leading up from the lower town to the church, generally to be veiled by a mystic gray or ambient haze, and to gain much in impressiveness and grandeur from the coup d'oeil one obtains of them framed, as it were, in the end of the rising street.

WATERLOO[A]

[Footnote A: From "Les Miserables." Translated by Lascelles Wraxall.]

BY VICTOR HUGO

The battle of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blücher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter.

Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffing cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and the rout of war....

In this event, which bears the stamp of superhuman necessity, men play but a small part; but if we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blücher, does that deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither illustrious England nor august Germany is in question in the problem of Waterloo, for, thank heaven! nations are great without the mournful achievements of the sword. Neither Germany, nor England, nor France is held in a scabbard; at this day when Waterloo is only a clash of sabers, Germany has Goethe above Blücher, and England has Byron above Wellington. A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar to our age; and in this dawn England and Germany have their own magnificent flash. They are majestic because they think; the high level they bring to civilization is intrinsic to them; it comes from themselves, and not from an accident. Any aggrandizement the nineteenth century may have can not boast of Waterloo as its fountainhead; for only barbarous nations grow suddenly after a victory--it is the transient vanity of torrents swollen by a storm. Civilized nations, especially at the present day, are not elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain, and their specific weight in the human family results from something more than a battle. Their honor, dignity, enlightenment, and genius are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can stake in the lottery of battles. Very often a battle lost is progress gained, and less of glory, more of liberty. The drummer is silent and reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins. Let us, then, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides, and render to chance the things that belong to chance, and to God what is God's. What is Waterloo--a victory? No; a prize in the lottery, won by Europe, and paid by France; it was hardly worth while erecting a lion for it.

Waterloo is the strangest encounter recorded in history; Napoleon and Wellington are not enemies, but contraries. Never did God, who delights in antitheses, produce a more striking contrast, or a more extraordinary confrontation. On one side precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, reserves prepared, an obstinate coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy profiting by the ground, tactics balancing battalions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, war regulated watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to accident, old classic courage and absolute correctness.

On the other side we have intuition, divination, military strangeness, superhuman instinct, a flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, associated with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, and, to some extent, compelled to obey; the despot going so far as even to tyrannize over the battlefield; faith in a star, blended with a strategic science, heightening, but troubling it.

Wellington was the Barême of war, Napoleon was its Michelangelo, and this true genius was conquered by calculation. On both sides somebody was expected; and it was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon waited for Grouchy, who did not come; Wellington waited for Blücher, and he came.

Wellington is the classical war taking its revenge; Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met it in Italy, and superbly defeated it--the old owl fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only overthrown, but scandalized. Who was this Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus, who, having everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions, ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained impossible victories? Who was this new comet of war who possest the effrontery of a planet?

The academic military school excommunicated him, while bolting, and hence arose an implacable rancor of the old Caesarism against the new, of the old saber against the flashing sword, and of the chessboard against genius. On June 18, 1815, this rancor got the best; and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Marengo, and Arcola, it wrote--Waterloo. It was a triumph of mediocrity, sweet to majorities, and destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found a young Suvarov before him--in fact, it is only necessary to blanch Wellington's hair in order to have a Suvarov. Waterloo is a battle of the first class, gained by a captain of the second.

What must be admired in the battle of Waterloo is England, the English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood, and what England had really superb in it, is (without offense) herself; it is not her captain, but her army. Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declares in his dispatch to Lord Bathurst that his army, the one which fought on June 18, 1815, was a "detestable army."

What does the gloomy pile of bones buried in the trenches of Waterloo think of this? England has been too modest to herself in her treatment of Wellington, for making him so great is making herself small. Wellington is merely a hero, like any other man. The Scots Grays, the Life Guards, Maitland's and Mitchell's regiments, Pack's and Kempt's infantry, Ponsonby's and Somerset's cavalry, the Highlanders playing the bagpipes under the shower of canister, Ryland's battalions, the fresh recruits who could hardly manage a musket, and yet held their ground against the old bands of Essling and Rivoli--all this is grand.

Wellington was tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him, but the lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke. For our part, all our glorification is offered to the English soldier, the English army, the English nation; and if there must be a trophy, it is to England that this trophy is owing. The Waterloo column would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it raised to the clouds the statue of a people....

But this great England will be irritated by what we are writing here; for she still has feudal illusions, after her 1688 and the French 1789. This people believes in inheritance and hierarchy, and while no other excels it in power and glory, it esteems itself as a nation and not as a people. As a people, it readily subordinates itself, and takes a lord as its head; the workman lets himself be despised; the soldier puts up with flogging. It will be remembered that, at the battle of Inkerman, a sergeant who, as it appears, saved the British army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, because the military hierarchy does not allow any hero below the rank of officer to be mentioned in dispatches. What we admire before all, in an encounter like Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance. The night raid, the wall of Hougoumont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him--all this cataclysm is marvelously managed.

There is more of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which had the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon's three-quarters of a league. Wellington's half a league, and seventy-two thousand combatants on either side. From this density came the carnage. The following calculation has been made and proportion established: loss of men, at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent.; Russian, thirty per cent.; Austrian, forty-four per cent.; at Wagram, French, thirteen per cent.; Austrian, fourteen per cent.; at Moscow, French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russian, forty-four per cent.; at Bautzen, French, thirteen cent.; Russian and Prussian, fourteen per cent.; at Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent.; allies, thirty-one per cent.--total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent., or out of one hundred and forty-four thousand fighting men, sixty thousand killed.

The field of Waterloo has at the present day that calmness which belongs to the earth, and resembles all plains; but at night, a sort of a visionary mist rises from it, and if any traveler walk about it, and listen and dream, like Virgil on the mournful plain of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe seizes upon him. The frightful June 18th lives again, the false monumental hill is leveled, the wondrous lion is dissipated, the battlefield resumes its reality, lines of infantry undulate on the plain; furious galloping crosses the horizon; the startled dreamer sees the flash of sabers, the sparkle of bayonets, the red lights of shells, the monstrous collision of thunderbolts; he hears like a death groan from the tomb, the vague clamor of the fantom battle.

These shadows are grenadiers; these flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; this skeleton is Wellington: all this is non-existent, and yet still combats, and the ravines are stained purple, and the trees rustle, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the darkness, while all the stern heights, Mont St. Jean, Hougoumont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit, seem confusedly crowned by hosts of specters exterminating one another.

WATERLOO: A VISIT TO THE FIELD[A]

[Footnote A: From "Two Months Abroad." Privately printed. 1878.]

BY THE EDITOR

The French wished to call it the battle of Mont St. Jean, but Wellington said "The Battle of Waterloo." The victor's wish prevailed. I know not why, except because he was the victor. The scene of the battle is four miles from the village of Waterloo and, besides Mont St. Jean, several villages from any one of which it might well have been named, are included in the field. Before the battle, however, the village of Waterloo had been the headquarters of the Duke and there he rested for two days after the battle was won.

I am now on this memorable spot as the solitary guest of a small hotel at the base of the Lion's Mound, after having made a night of it in crossing from Aix-la-Chapelle to Brussels and thence, through a storm of mist and rain to the little station of Braine-l'Alleud, which is a good mile from the battlefield. The train reached Braine-l'Alleud long before daybreak. When the morn had really dawned, I left the little waiting room, a solitary loiterer, and set out to find the battleground. From the platform of the station the eye surveyed a wide, thickly populated but rural plain, and in one direction afar off, clearly set against the dark rain-dripping sky, rose in solemn majesty a mound of earth, bearing on its lofty summit an indistinct figure of a lion.

A small rustic gate from the station led in the direction of the Mound. From necessity, I began a tramp through the rain alone, no conveyance being obtainable. The soil of Belgium here being alluvial, a little rain soon makes a great deal of mud and little rains at this season (January) are frequent. Along a small unpaved mud-deep road, having meanwhile been joined by a peasant with a two wheeled cart drawn by a single mule, I was soon hastening onward toward the Mound which was growing more and more visible on the horizon. The road soon turned away, however, but a path led toward the mound. The peasant took the road and I the path, which led into a little clump of houses, where were boys about their morning duties, and dogs that barked vigorously until one of the boys to whom I had spoken silenced them.

Passing onward through streets not more than six feet wide, along neatly trimmed hedges and past small cottage doorways, I soon entered an open plain, but in a crippled state with heavy mud-covered shoes. Mud fairly obliterated all trace of leather. With this burden, and wet to the skin with rain, there rose far ahead of me that historic mound, and at last I stood at its base alone, there in the midst of one of the greatest battlefields history records, soon to forget in the momentary joys of a beefsteak breakfast that man had ever done anything in this world except eat and drink.

I must borrow an illustration--Victor Hugo's letter A. The apex is Mount St. Jean, the right hand base La Belle Alliance, the left hand base Hougoumont, the cross bar that sunken road which perhaps changed the future of Europe, the two sides broad Belgian roads, paved with square stones and bordered with graceful and lofty poplar trees, their proud heads waving in every breeze that drifts across this undulating plain. The Lion's Mound is just below the middle of this cross bar. Mont St. Jean, La Belle Alliance and Hougoumont, at the three angles of the triangle, are small villages--scarcely more than hamlets. All were important points in the fortunes of that memorable 18th of June, 1815. Hougoumont, with its château and wall, in some sense was like a fortress.

Go with me if you will in imagination to the summit of the Lion's Mound. A flight of 225 stone steps will take us there, a toilsome ascent in this chilling air and this persistent rain. Toward Mont St. Jean, the surface of the ground is rolling, the waves of it high enough to conceal standing men from view. Except the lofty poplars at the road sides, there are no trees. An admirable place for an army on the defensive, you will at once say, since reserves can be concealed behind the convolutions of the rolling plain. These convolutions may also serve in the fight as natural fortifications.

Here at Mont St. Jean, Wellington pitched his tent. Hougoumont lay far off in front of his center, and had that morning a small garrison. Napoleon, with his army, was a mile away, his line extending to the right and left beyond La Belle Alliance. We must turn squarely around as we stand alongside the lion if we are to see in the distance the ground he occupied. Our place is nearly in the center of the field. Hougoumont we realize to have been worthy of the prodigious struggle the French made to capture it. Half a fortress then, it provided an admirable stand for artillery. A few men might hold it against superior numbers.

At Waterloo the Duke had about 67,000 men--some accounts say 70,000--but many, perhaps 15,000, fled in desertion at an early hour of the day. With these figures correct, the fighting forces of the Allies later in the day, would remain little more than 55,000 men. The Emperor's army has usually been placed at 70,000. His soldiers were probably better trained than the Duke's and combined with long service an abundance of enthusiasm for their old general, now restored to his imperial throne and confident of victory.

The night before the battle had been wet and stormy, but the morning gave some promise of clearing; the sky, however, remained overcast and some rain continued to fall. The French were weary after a long march, and the artillery moved with difficulty across this wet and muddy plain. Altogether they were in poor condition for a battle, in which all their fortunes were at stake. It was just such a morning as ours, except that it was then June and is now January. If the battle began at 8 o'clock, as one account reads, we are here on the Lion's Mound at that same hour. Even if this be January, daisies are in blossom at our feet.

Jerome Bonaparte, leading the attack, moves on Hougoumont, where the Allies, who have come down from Mont St. Jean, repulse him. He renews the attack "with redoubled fury," and a gallant resistance is made, but he forces a way into the outer enclosure of the chateau that crowns the hill. British howitzers are at once discharged upon the French and compel them to retreat. New assaults are then made. Overwhelming numbers seem to bear down upon the Allies. The stronghold is more than once nearly lost, but it is defended with "prodigies of valor" and firmly held to the last. Had Hougoumont been taken, the result of the battle "would probably have been very different."