'L'Union fait la Force' is the motto of modern Belgium, but in the
Middle Ages there was no powerful central authority round which the
communes rallied. Hence the spectacle of Ghent helping an English
army to storm the ramparts of Ypres, or of the Guildsmen of Bruges
girding on their swords to strike a blow for Count Louis of Maele
against the White Hoods who marched from Ghent. Hence the permanent
unrest of these Flemish towns, the bickerings and the sheddings of
blood, the jealousy of trade pitted against trade or of harbour
against harbour, the insolence in the hour of triumph and the abject
submission in the hour of defeat, and all the evils which discord
brought upon the country. No town suffered more than Ypres from
the distracted state of Flanders, which, combined with the ravages
of war and the religious dissensions of the sixteenth century,
reduced it from the first rank amongst the cities of the Netherlands
to something very like the condition of a quiet country town in an
out-of-the-way corner of England. That is what the Ypres of to-day
is like--a sleepy country town, with clean, well-kept streets, dull
and uninteresting save for the stately Cloth Hall, which stands
there a silent memorial of the past.
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