This was in 1599. Though happier times followed
under the moderate rule of Albert and Isabella, war continued to
be the incessant scourge of Flanders, and during the marching and
countermarching of armies across this battlefield of Europe, Ypres
scarcely ever knew what peace meant. Four times besieged and four
times taken by the French in the wars of Louis XIV., the town had
no rest; and for miles all round it the fields were scarred by the
new system of attacking strong places which Vauban had introduced
into the art of war. Louis, accompanied by Schomberg and Luxembourg,
was himself present at the siege of 1678; and Ypres, having been ceded
to France by the Treaty of Nimeguen in that year, was afterwards
strengthened by fortifications constructed from plans furnished by
the great French engineer.[*]
[Footnote *: Letter from Vauban to Louvois on the fortifications
of Ypres, 1689; Vereecke, pp. 325-357.]
In the year 1689 Vauban speaks of Ypres as a place 'formerly great,
populous, and busy, but much reduced by the frequent sedition and
revolts of its inhabitants, and by the great wars which it has
endured.' And in this condition it has remained ever since. Though
the period which followed the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714, when Flanders
passed into the possession of the Emperor Charles VI.
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