In Bruges we think of
how the merchants bought and sold, how the gorgeous city rose,
clothed itself in all the colours of the rainbow, glittered for
a time, and sank in darkness. In the crowded streets of modern
Ghent, the busy capital of East Flanders, we seem to catch a glimpse
of bold Jacques van Artevelde shouldering his way up to the Friday
Market, or of turbulent burghers gathering there to set Pope, or
Count of Flanders, or King of Spain at defiance. Ypres and its flat
meadows suggest one of the innumerable paintings of the Flemish
wars, the 'battle-pieces' in which the Court artists took such
pride: the town walls with ditch and glacis before them, and within
them the narrow-fronted houses, and the flag flying from steeple
or belfry; the clumsy cannon puffing out clouds of smoke; the King
of France capering on a fat horse and holding up his baton in an
attitude of command in the foreground; and in the distance the
tents of the camp, where the travelling theatre was set up, and
the musicians fiddled, and an army of serving-men waited on the
rouged and powdered ladies who had followed the army into Flanders.
[Illustration: FURNES. Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice.]
Furnes, somehow, always recalls the Spanish period.
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