The Lion of Flanders and the Birth of Flemish literature
The Battle of the Golden Spurs is an important time as the history of Flanders in the Flemish spirit, so much so that it serves as a celebration of the Flemish Community. And is perceived as a true national holiday. Used
is given by the republication of the Lion of Flanders of Hendrik Conscience to return to the event and the symbols it carries today.
I. The battle of Kortrijk, a major event in the history Flemish
II. Hendrik Conscience and Flemish literature
III. Symbols, what is left.
I. The Battle of the Golden Spurs
A difficult political
France from the late thirteenth century, continues its expansion in coming up against England. Affront to the King of France that kingdom. Held by vassals of the crown of France, he became a serious competitor, even worse, the English king had many possessions on the continent.
This kingdom was then experiencing unparalleled economic growth, the English breeders provide the Flemish weavers whose sheets are world renowned. The transactions are done through traders who hold a monopoly in this gatekeeping role. Suffice to say that their fortunes are guaranteed!
Flanders head English bridge on the mainland, it is difficult, even impossible to accept for Capetians. Especially that Flanders is rich. The sheets are sold up in Kiev, his heavy soils harbor a large population, its cities are densely populated ...
The cloth towns experiencing unparalleled success. Cities like Bruges or Ypres saw the birth a powerful bourgeoisie that is needed in the alderman at the expense of the artisans and the nobility.
With a movement of franchises already old, the bell towers overlooking the city aldermen and the common run of equals with the Count of Flanders. As he said, Bourgeois arming militias to defend their walls, their families, but also and above all their rights, privileges and franchises.
Unfortunately, in 1294, Flemish alter their ways: the artisans can do without the medium of English wool traders in Flanders. Two years later, in 1296, Edward I imposed an embargo on exports of wool, plunging the Flemish cities in the financial doldrums.
The following year, Count Guy de Dampierre negotiates an alliance with the English to lift the embargo.
Philip IV of France, not wanting a growing English influence at the gates of the Kingdom, is attracting the Count of Flanders and imprisoned in Paris, replaces it with a faithful, Jacques de Chatillon, and combines the citizens who want their monopoly.
The bourgeois pro-French, "Leilaerts" ("men of the Lilies") then open the gates of their cities to the royal armies. France seems poised to annex Flanders
The Bruges matins
The blind weaver Pierre De Coninck and Jan Breydel butcher them are " Klauwaert" , the "men of the claw "followers of Count Guy.
Like other craftsmen, they revolted and under the leadership of De Coninck, revolt on the night of 17 to 18 May 1302, for the matins of Bruges, Bruges about 1600.
asked the French 's
Gilden Vriend? ", who knew that answer was a friend of Guilds was immediately passed to the sword. As in the Sicilian Vespers, the French are in an awkward position. It is estimated that the insurgency causes the death of a thousand French.
The vengeance of Philip the Fair
It is obvious that the king of France can not let the insult go unpunished: the Royal Ost is sent to Flanders.
With approximately 45 to 50,000 soldiers, among them, 10,000 knights, the French army is doing in front of 25,000 Klauwaert awaiting them in the plain of Groeninghe, near the city of Kortrijk, leaning against the castle, marshy ground and lined ditches.
is that the city fell into the hands of the Flemings of Gui de Namur and the French took refuge in the castle, waiting for rescue of the royal army. For
Flemings win to maintain their independence. Such as wearing the sword is reserved to the knights, the Flemish militias are armed with a spear ending in a sharp point, the
Goedendag . This is yet another way to combat ...
Posted on Mossemberg hill, the French took the initiative of the offensive. The Italian crossbowmen and archers mow the front lines mostly made up of Flemish peasants. Footmen French launches against the Flemings.
The French leader, Count Robert d'Artois is followed by his cavalry, despising the value of the rank and file of Flanders, hustle even own foot and hand are lost in a sodden ground or ends up in ditches filled with water behind which reconstruct the Flemish troops.
Robert d'Artois, identified, offers to go against ransom but the Flemings, angry or ignorant of the laws of chivalry, the kill immediately.
His knights, too heavy, bogged down.
The load is a disaster for the French knights are baffled and massacred.
The Count of St. Pol, seeing the bad turn of events, still prefers turn and flee to France. It is believed that only 3,000 French have escaped the massacre.
After the battle, the Flemish collect 500 gold spurs on the corpses of the knights, the same day that decorate the vaults of Notre Dame. They are not only to celebrate the victory on the evening of the battle, for among them, found many of Brabant and Namur came to lend a hand.
Valuable assistance forgotten today in the context of the political use of the battle but in his time, the historian Henri Pirenne was described as first manifestation of the unity of Belgium.
Kortrijk is a success. At the edge of Groeninghe, militias have carved pieces the flower of French chivalry, lion crushed the lily of France wins ...
important for Flanders sees Jacques de Chatillon replaced by Robert de Bethune, the son of Guy de Dampierre. The counts are restored in their rights ...
Kortrijk, it is especially the brilliant victory of the little people against the political powers and economic elites.
From that date, the liberation movement is spreading to other cities.
As for Philip the Fair, he lost more than a battle: first prestige, much of his knighthood and especially his illusions about the value of the Flemings.
The case is of such importance that Pope Boniface VIII made himself even wake up at night to hear the story of the Flemish feat ...
Peace
The French take their revenge in 1304 in Mons-en -Pévèle. Besides, there beats the king at the forefront ...
Charles VI wash the insult in blood at West Rozebeke in 1382: he comes back spurs, joining a church in Dijon ... and fire the city.
June 23 1305, by the Treaty of Athis-sur-Orge, Philippe le Bel annex the cities of Lille, Douai and Bethune and sets the border that still exists today.
First, charge the Bruges Matins and Philippe le Bel is authorized to deport sees Bruges 3000, a tenth of the population to force them to repentance and pilgrimages. A chance to Bruges is that which would have ruined the economy of the city in 1307 was commuted to a fine of 300,000 pounds?
In cities, jobs are needed to power the communal and cities thrive, is still populated. Growth that lasts until the insurgency against Maximilian of Austria, widower of Mary of Burgundy, in 1482, failing which began the decline of Bruges.
Other revolts
is that Flanders still has the capacity to revolt. A few decades later, who knows Ghent popular emotion. His
Governor Guy Nevers makes the mistake of making an alliance with France declares war against England. The Hundred Years' War had begun.
Obviously, the English stop 1336 from the wool trade with the Flemish cities. Ghent, derives most of its revenues, the entire region known ruin. Jacques van Artevelde saves the day by signing a new alliance with England by Edward III meeting in Antwerp in 1339 but more importantly, he signed with other provinces " Treaty of 1339 " in which the provinces have promised assistance and currency policy ... without the backing of the king of France.
However, repudiating his count, offering the king of England to France to offer his son the future Black Prince, he continues to accumulate hatreds and resentments and was assassinated in July 1345. Independence Ghent is over, the city falls into the arms of the king of France. However, the misfortunes of time ruin these efforts, especially with the disasters of the Great Plague epidemic of the mid-fourteenth century ...
II. The Lion of Flanders and Hendrik Conscience
Hendrik Conscience's book partakes of the same context as the book Decoster, Till Ulenspiegel , a time when Belgium was young, though still not where the Flemings are poor and without real
political clout ... Son of an immigrant
Hendrik was the son of Peter Consciousness, a native of Besancon came as head of the Wheelhouse in Napoleon's navy, and became deputy director of Port of Antwerp in 1811.
The city lost by France did not lose consciousness, which the family decides to stay. Peter buys ships unserviceable, dismantles them and sells marine objects in a small shop where many novels feed on the dreams of Hendrik.
His mother died in 1820 but his father remarried in 1826 with a widow younger than him. Shortly after marriage, her father decided he no longer supports the city, sells his business and withdrew from Antwerp Venloo.
The revolutionary years
Around the age of 17, Hendrik left home to Antwerp where he studied disrupted by the revolution of 1830. He enrolled in the new Belgian army until 1837, when he left the service with the rank of Sergeant Major. A
attend the Flemings, he decided to write in that language so despised in a country where only the French can social climbing. It
not only from elsewhere: in 1832, Blommaert had published his "Remarks on the disrepute
Dutch " in which he advocated the use of the Flemish government in the province and the official publications for the Dutch also access to the workings of the state.
His poems, written in the service, however, are all in French. Determined and desperate because of unemployment, he published his first book in Flemish but his father is so shocked that he throws him out.
One of his former classmates is collected and quickly becomes the darling of people of high society. King Leopold I had decided that his work would be in every school library, the royal patronage he succeeds. A post
provincial archives allows him to have regular income from 1837.
Recognition and prosperity In 1838 he published The Lion of Flanders, his most famous historical novel followed by several other novels ... Recognition arrives but not the fortune ... and we must wait many years before it can live on his art.
flamingant At a congress in 1841, his writings are presented as the germ of a national literature.
In 1845, Hendrik is a Knight of the Order of Leopold and begins to have imitators.
In 1867, the post of keeper of the Royal Museums of Belgium is created. To him they attributed the powerful function and continues to produce news with regularity. In total, he published 80. Celebrated by his city, he died in Ixelles in 1883.
III. Symbols that remain ...
The book is causing a vast movement of reconquest for the Flemish identity. As discussed above, it is the starting point for the recognition of the Flemish language, a factor of stagnation and even regression of society.
Flanders is poor, most of the farmers left the country for France as a result of crises in the textile's disease of potatoes to swell the ranks of the proletariat Lille.
This segregation is illustrated in the most terrible of the Yser trenches during the First World War. The officers gave their orders in French soldiers who do not understand ...
A myth
Romanticism of the nineteenth century is one of the founding myths of the Flemish nation.
What also show events that are created around the event. The movement flamingant evacuates the social benefit of the national dimension. It is true that the presence of mind Namur does not help to talk about a specifically Flemish revolt.
From the nineteenth century, the Battle of Golden Spurs is opposed as a model of resistance against imperialist designs of the French. Limit even in the cartoon, this identification of the Fransquillons Leilaerts Klauwaert and to allow flamingant to develop a simple theory:
- Belgium is and always will be a battleground between two communities even as the story requires,
- the Flemish have always been resilient in the face of the central government, French or Francophone who bullied or enslaves
- Those who keep in mind the social dimension of July 11, 1302 adds that during the industrial revolution, mines and industry in Wallonia, Flanders remains the poor relation, a more Flanders rural. With its economic power, the bourgeoisie Walloon confiscate power and strategic positions.
The choice of symbols speaks for itself: the French community has chosen to celebrate the days of September 1830 but the Flemings, communion in the celebration of the Golden Spurs.
Moreover, many observers thought that the more extremist parties would announce the split of Flanders July 11, 2002.
Nevertheless, the symbol remains the strongest because as history, it nonetheless reflects a reality: Flanders, which is considered or not the border with France has a strong story, a story and therefore a common mythology, with references simple and explicit that the Walloons are not. The Battle of the Golden Spurs therefore occupies a special place in memory as in the imaginary Flemish.
The struggle of common people against the people fat, what Michel Rouche qualified by taking the example of Italian minuto populo populo grosso against the known special resonance today with the economic crisis. The crisis of 1973 gave the Belgian cul-over-head. Wallonia, the old industry of the nineteenth century, is in deep crisis and saw a drip through Flanders. Social and political antagonisms of the Golden Spurs recover their strength. The formulation is simple but terribly effective and, ultimately, is the opposite of what was the revolt urban fourteenth century.
The Lion of Flanders was reissued Embanner Yoran, 631 pages, 2007, Fouesnant, ISBN 2-914855-44-3
