Nowadays everything is very quiet
and unwarlike. The bastions and lunettes, the casemates and moats,
which spread in every direction round the town, have almost entirely
disappeared, and those parts of the fortifications which remain
have been turned into ornamental walks.[*]
[Footnote *: The evolution of Ypres from a feudal tower on an island
until it became a great fortress can be traced in a very interesting
volume of maps and plans published by M. Vereecke in 1858, as a
supplement to his _Histoire Militaire d'Ypres_. It shows the first
defensive works, those erected by Vauban, the state of the
fortifications between 1794 and 1814, and what the English engineers
did in 1815.]
But while so little remains of the works which were constructed,
at such a cost and with so much labour, for the purposes of war,
the arts of peace, which once flourished at Ypres, have left a
more enduring monument. There is nothing in Bruges or any other
Flemish town which can compare for massive grandeur with the pile
of buildings at the west end of the Grand Place of Ypres. During
two centuries the merchants of Flanders, whose towns were the chief
centres of Western commerce and civilization, grew to be the richest
in Europe, and a great portion of the wealth which industry and
public spirit had accumulated was spent in erecting those noble
civic and commercial buildings which are still the glory of Flanders.
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