A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [54]
The Count of Flanders, Louis de Nevers, and the Flemish nobility were pro-French, while the merchants and working class and all who depended on the cloth industry were oriented toward England in self-interest if not sentiment. The feudal and natural tie with France predominated. Flemish cloth and French wine were exchanged in trade, the Count’s court was patterned on that of France, the nobility intermarried, French prelates held high offices in Flanders, use of the French language was spreading, Flemish students went to schools and colleges in Laon, Reims, and Paris.
In Flanders at the beginning of the century, the despised commoners had inflicted upon French knighthood an unforgettable defeat. In 1302 the array of French chivalry in splendid armor rode north in support of Flemish urban magnates to crush a revolt of the workers of Bruges. In the clash at Courtrai, French foot soldiers and crossbowmen were about to overpower the Flemish workers—too soon. The knights, frantic for the charge and fearing to lose the honor of victory, ordered their own infantry to fall back, causing them to break ranks in confusion. Shouting their war cries and riding down their own men in wild disorder, the knights charged, ignoring the canals beneath their feet. Horses scrambled and fell, knights plunged into the water, a second wave piled upon the first. The Flemish infantry, armed with pikes, speared them like fish, and holding firm against all assault beat back the knights in a bloody massacre. Seven hundred gold spurs were stripped from knightly corpses after the battle and hung up in triumphant memorial in the church. The loss of so much French nobility caused royal commissioners afterward to scour the provinces for bourgeois and rich peasants prepared to pay for ennoblement.
The knighthood of France was not daunted by Courtrai nor was its contempt for the commoner-in-arms in any way altered. The battle was considered an accident of circumstance and terrain unlikely to be repeated. In that sense the conclusion was right. In another revolt and another clash 25 years later, the knights inflicted a terrible revenge at the battle of Cassel, where they butchered Flemish workers and peasants by the thousands. Yet the lost spurs of Courtrai were a valid omen of the rise of the common soldier armed with pike and a motive, and an omen, too, for the knights, which they ignored.
After the Count of Flanders had been re-established in power by French arms, Philip VI exerted pressure to tighten relations and isolate Flanders from England. Against this effort the industrial towns, led by Ghent, rose in revolt under Jacob van Artevelde, one of the most dynamic bourgeois figures of the 14th century. An ambitious merchant of the class that was pressing to take over political power from the nobility, he had noble pretensions of his own. His two sons called themselves messire and chevalier, and the oldest son and a daughter were married into the nobility. Gaining control of the insurrection, Artevelde defeated the Count’s forces and forced him to flee to France in 1339, leaving the country under Artevelde’s control.
Meanwhile Edward, as the supplier of wool for Flemish industry, was exerting pressure for an alliance that would give him a base from which to attack France. The Flemish cloth manufacturers favored the English alliance and Artevelde attached his fortunes to it. The obstacle of French sovereignty over Flanders was overcome when Edward assumed the title of King of France. In that capacity he signed a treaty with Artevelde in 1340 after the victory of Sluys, but the device was hollow and lasted only long enough to give Edward a springboard before Artevelde’s ambition brought him down in ruin.
Artevelde was a man of brutal action who once, when he and a Flemish knight disagreed, smote him to the ground with a blow of his fist under the eyes of the King of England. Besides using Flemish funds to finance