PART ONE

para. 5

The feudal lord …. The French suzerainty.

Morris had forgotten, or was not aware, that , when Charlemagne’s empire was divided among his grandsons in 843, the area that became the county of Flanders was assigned not like most of the future Low Countries to the eldest brother, the Emperor Lothair, which became the ‘Middle Kingdom’ long attached to the Holy Roman Empire, but was included in the share of the youngest brother, Charles the Bald, which developed into the Kingdom of France: its rulers were hus fully entitled to claim suzerainty over that county until 1529, when their sovereignty was finally ceded by the king of France to the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V. Until the late 12th century Flanders had in practice been an independent principality, but in the 13th and early 14th centuries the increasing power of the Capetian kings had enabled them to make their jurisdiction over it increasingly effective, culminating in the 1290s in an attempted annexation. That policy was supported by the oligarchies then ruling the Flemish cities, called ’lily-men’ (leliaerts) after the French royal coat-of-arms. The counts, however, when they tried to retain or recover a degree of autonomy, usually had the support of the craft gilds who soon after 1300 were obtaining the largest share in the government of those cities.

Forbidding the export of wool

This sentence suggests a strange misconception on Morris’s part. It was not the king of France, but the king of England who had the power to embargo the export to Flanders of the high-quality English wool needed for making the expensive cloth which was its industry’s main export and English rulers such as Edward III did impose such embargoes to induce Flanders to ally with England in its contest with France. The French kingsm might prohibit the import of English wool, but such orders would omly be effective in damaging the Flemish economy when they already had political control of Flanders.

para. 6

Edward III …. James van Artevelde … the Earl of Flanders

Edward III. at war with France from 1337, had enforced such an embargo until 1339, when its pressure induced the Flemish cities, led by Van Artevelde of Ghent, to rebel and drive their pro-French count, Louis ‘of Nevers’ into exile in France, and to enter into an alliance with England which lasted into the late 1340s.

Queen Philippa

Edward’s wife Philippa was living at Ghent in the winter of 1340–1 when James’s son (like her own son John ‘of Gaunt’) was born, and so could as his godmother give that son his rather unusual Christname.

p. 3 para. 6

The greater and the lesser crafts

In Flemish cities the greater gilds were those concerned with their principal industry, cloth-making. the lesser ones were, besides the shippers, those which practised all the other trades needed in a large city, such as food supply, wood-, metal- and leatherwork. They usually had a share in the craft-dominated city administration. but there was such antagonism between the weavers and fullers in mid-14th-century Ghent that only one of those crafts at a time could be admitted to take part in it. They sometimes even fought one another.

PART TWO

para. 2

The prince of Wales acknowledged as ’Lord and Herytour’ of Flanders

This refers to a proposal made in July 1345 [not 1346], during a brief visit of Edward III to the Flemish coast, that his son Edward, the future ’Black Prince’, should be substituted for the young son of the exiled count in the Flemish succession. Edward would have thought himself entitled to suggest this, being then recognised by the cities as their overlord, as king of France. It was too not absolutely implausible, for through his mother Philippa that prince was descended from another branch of the Flemish comital dynasty which had since the late 13th century been Counts of Hainault. But the proposal may have been intended primarily to put pressure on the exiled French-supporting Count to transfer his allegiance to the English. As Morris notes the Flemings refused to engage in such disloyalty.

Paras 3–4

The account given here of James Van Artevelde’s killing n 1345, and of the new, young Count’s evasion of the English marriage planned for him during Edward III’s siege of Calais, in 1346-7, is substantially based on Froissart’s narrative. A Flemish chronicle (printed, Nicolas, Med. Flanders, pp. 222-3) suggests that, following disputes between the crafts of Ghent James had already lost his authority there. As for the marriage, the young Count had, initially following an upbringing in France, French sympathies, but they did not persist, and a marriage to the Duke of Brabant’s daughter, a potential heiress to that duchy, was more advantageous. In the mid 1350s he claimed in her right, invaded, and annexed part of Brabant.

Para. 4

A good old sea-fight

In 1370 delays occurred over ratifying a trade agreement between England and Flanders, and to put pressure on Flanders an English fleet attacked and captured Flemish ships fetching salt from the west coast of Poitou. The Count of Flanders then confirmed the treaty, assuring England of Flemish neutrality in the war with France: W. M. Ormrod, Edward III (Yale U.P. 2011), pp. 509–10. Morris will have been studying Froissart’s text carefully to catch this isolated chapter about An glo-Flemish relations.

Para. 8

John Lyon

This is Froissart’s French version of his actual Flemish name: John Yoens. Gilbert Mathews = Gilbert Mayhuis.

The Mariners

This term refers not the actual crewmen, but to the association of businessmen shippers, who ran the barges carrying goods along the canals. Each such gild was headed by a dean, sometiims called a ‘deacon.’

Families long at feud

The wealthier families of Flemish cities frequently engaged in feuds against one another, sometimes culminating in killing, often settled by paying blood-money.

Para. 13

White Hats

The White Hats or Hoods were a kind of urban militia used to enforce the will of the rulers of Ghent.

Para. 16 The Earl’s bailiff

Bailiff, from French ‘bailli’ was a regular medieval term for a man appointed to act on behalf of another: A manor was managed by a bailiff for its lord, while in Northern France bailiffs governed areas equivalent in status to English counties for the king. In England bailiffs controlled subdivisions of counties for the sheriff: the modern ’bailiffs’ concerned chiefly with collecting debts are in principle subordinates of sheriffs. Here, the ‘Earl’s bailiff’ is the official (of knightly standing) entrusted with enforcing his authority around Ghent. (Sir Charles Warren was the head of the Metropolitan Police in Morris‘s time).

Para. 20

A castle of the Earl’s newly built:

Morris probably misconceives the character of this ‘castle‘: it would rather be a substantial country mansion. (Froissart states that it had no ‘guards or defence’, but contained ‘jewels and clothes’ of the Count’s ‘wardrobe’.) There did stand within Ghent a 12th- century keep,, whose partly ruinous remains (it has since been handsomely restored) Morris might have noticed when he visited Belgium in 1854 or 1869..Its hostile Constable apparently garrisoned it in 1380: FJ. II. xlvii.

Para. 23

Poisoned

John Lyon fell suddenly sick after dining ‘with great revel with the damosels’ of Damme, and shortly died; Froissart reports, but does not endorse, rumours of poisoning.

Para. 24

A hundred thousand strong

The medieval chronicle’s usual exaggeration of numbers.

Para. 25

The duke of Burgundy

Philip ’the Bold’, husband of the Count’s daughter and heiress, Margaret.

PART THREE

Para. 1

The ’men of the Law’

Ghent, unlike other Flemish cites, did not have a single chief magistrate or burgomaster, but was governed in normal times, by two boards or ‘benches’ of aldermen. The two Law Aldermen, chiefy concerned with its legal business, ranked highest. In emergencies they were placed under the supreme control of a captain, the leader of five, the office to which Philip van Artevelde was chosen in 1382, as his father had been forty years before.

paras. 4–5

Dauternes = D’Auternes.

Johm Pruniiaux = John Parneeek. His delivery to his death was effected by the duke of Brabant, in whose land he was in exile; mot by the duke of Burgundy; but this erorr was not by Morris, but in Berners' text: compare FB. I. ccclviii; FJ II xlvi..

Para. 6

Peter du Bois

Peter van den Bossche of the Wood; a captain of the White Hoods, and a leader of the Ghent radicals throughout the Revolt, 1380–85.

Para. 7 Lysle = Lille; the chief city of French-speaking ‘Walloon’ Flanders. It adjoined the countty of Artois, a long detached southern part of the original county of Flanders. It had been annexed by the king of France in the late 12th century, and made in the mid 13th into an appanage for a younger brother of St. Louis. Artois had come in the 14th, through an heiress, to Count Louis’s mother, from whom he expected to inherit it, and it provided him with a convenient base outside his troublesome county.

The Hase: in English the Hare

Para. 8 Hainault = Hainault: outside the borders of Flanders; and so they would not have been committing treason if they had fought against its Count. This summons was in respect of property these knight possessed in or around Ghent: FJ II. xlvii.

Para. 9 Coutray = Courtrai

Para, 10 Bloody Sunday: the conflict in Trafalgar Square on 13 November 1887, in which the police violently repelled the attempt of columns of Socialist marchers, with Morrison one of them, to reach the Square and hold a meeting.

Para. 11 Brussels … Liege

These were the leading cities of the neighbouring principalities to the east, the duchy of Brabant and the prince-bishopric of Liege, whose burghers naturally sympathised with their felow-townsmen of Ghent and were ready to smuggle supplies through the Count’s blockade.

PART FOUR

Para. 1

A man … not greatly taken heed of

Philip van Artevelde had not taken any substantial part in politics or administration in Ghent, having been in exile with others of his family in his youth (he was now about forty), and more recently had been receiviing a small pension from England. He was, as Froissart indicates, chosen for leadership because his name recalled the glory of the tome when his father had dominated Flanders; as Marcus Brutus was chosen to head the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, as Plutarch (and Shakespeare) report, partly because of his supposed descent from the (possibly legendary) Brutus who founded the Roman republic.

Para. 2 this little piece of drama

This episode will be the product of Froissart’s imaginative reconstruction, since Peter was apparently in prison at the relevant time. But doubtless some one put such arguments to Philip, though such a talk couid hardly be publicly known, before his supporters seized power in Ghent.

Para. 3 he is made captain

This was done on 24 January 1282, a day before the meeting described in the next paragraphs in which the Count’s terms for Ghent’s submission were to be laid before the city council.

Para. 4

Duke Aubert of Brabant

Morris probably made this mistake through haste. Aubert/Albert was not duke of Brabant, but had been ruling the county of Hainault since the late 1350s in place of his elder brother William, who had then gone mad. Albert, however, ranked as a duke, as a member of the Wittelsbach dynasty, who ruled in Bavaria from 1180, initially as dukes, from the 1620s as Electors, and after 1800 as kings, until 1918. Albert’s father, Emperor Lewis of Bavaria, had married Margaret, who on her elder brother’s death in 1345 became heiress to Hainault and the associated counties of Holland and Zealand, also now governed by Albert. In Part Five, pare. 4, Froissart describes him as ‘bailiff’ of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand’.

Harlebeke Haselbdeke, a village near Courtrai

Sir Guisebert Grutte … Sir Simon Bette

Gilbert de Grutere and Simon Bette were the two highest-ranking aldermen of Ghent.

Para. 9

The duchess of Brabant …. the duke of Brabant

The duchess was Joan, elder daughter and heiress of John, the last male of the line of dukes who had ruled Brabant (originally Lower Lorraine) since the late 12th century. She was married to Wenceslas of Luxemburg, who had received his unusual name from his father John (the notorious ‘blind King of Bohemia, killed at Crecy); John had obtained that kingdom by marrying the heiress of its native Slavonic dynasty, extinct in its male line about 1310. Joan’s sister Margaret had been wife of Count Louis: cf. Part Five, para. 4.

PART FIVE

Para. 3

Francis Atrerman

Francis Ackerman: the other leading figure in the radical party in Ghent.

Para. 5

All in their shirts… with halters about their necks

This was the attire that Edward III prescribed for the famous Burghers of Calais when that town surrendered in 1347, showing that those so dressed placed themselves utterly at his mercy.

Para. 5

If we die in this voyage at the least it shall be honourable

Some may find such an appeal to honour in a leader of citizens a little out of character for a townsman. In medieval times, however, such townsmen engaged among themselves in chivalric pursuits, such as jousts and tournaments in their squares, though in Flanders this was more common among the cities in the French-speaking parts than in those of Flemish speech.

Nebuchadnezzarr

This story apparently ascribes to the historical king of Babylon who destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C., the earlier destruction of the Assyrians of Nineveh, historically achieved by his father Nabopollossar (not mentioned in the Bible).The destruction of Nineveh, exultantly described by the prophet Nahum, though not mentioned directly in the Old Testament historical narrative, is implied, and roughly dateable, by the replacement of Assyria by Babylon as Judah’s prime adversary and oppressor (2 Kings. Chs 23–24), in Nebuchadnezzzar's time.

Para. 15 artillery

The Flemings were already using gunpowder cannon in battle this period. In Part Six. Para. 6 Froissart mentions ’three hundred guns’ fired by the Ghent force.

Para. 12 bested = bestead

Para. 15 five hundred Read ‘five thousand’.

Para. 16

that day of custom they made procession

This was for the feast od the Holy Blood, of which there was an important relic at Bruges, in a chapel still standing next to its Town Hall. The festival was celebrated with much revelry, and the intocication of many of the armed twnsmen of Bruges probably helped produce their over-enthusiasm to start fighting (cf. Part Six, para. 6: ‘hot and hasty to fight’) and poor discipline in the battle that followed.

PART SIX

Para. 2

Outrage = excessive conduct

Para. 4

High stakes bound with iron

The men of Ghent may have remembered how a similar barricade of sharpened stakes was used by the infantry of the Flemish cities when they defeated the French cavalry at the battle of Courtrai eighty years before.

Para. 11 the men of arms = the armed knights and other cavalry.

PART SEVEN

Para. 1 cressets = torches

Paras 2 onwards

Since the Ghent commanders had ordered that the Count should be captured, not killed, presumably intending to treat him as a ‘puppet’ ruler, Froissart may be exaggerating his danger in this part of his narrative, but the Count would not have known of such orders.

Para. 4 plancher = floor

Para. 5 the straw: presumably covering the floor.

Rittters: riders

Para. 6

He escaped

After toilsomely struggling on foot over the fields outside Bruges. A knight of his found him hiding in a bush and guided him on a saddle less horse to Lille. The unaccustomed foot journey may have impaired his health: he died early in 1384, still in his early fifties.

The fate of the poor woman

Froissart does not report whether she survived to receive her promised reward.

Para. 8

No pillage of Bruges

Froissart reports that many houses were plundered and some men of Ghent returned home enriched. It was the goods of the foreign merchants that were spared.

Para. 11

a fool sat on her throne

In the early 1380s Richard II, though in his mid teens he had little control over policy, was already showing signs of that wilful and rather despotic style of governing which twice later provoked strong opposition among rhe English aristocracy. But although his eventual deposition in 1399 suggests some lack of political wisdom, he can hardly be reckoned a fool simply. The ‘factious nobles’ too were partly moved by a political principle. that rulers should acknowledge some responsibility to those they ruled.

The Host of the Mallets

The crowds at Paris, ,armed with lead-headed clubs, whose rioting backed the opposition of Paris and other northern French towns in 1381-2 to the continuance of the heavy taxation imposed by the later king Charles V (died 1380) to pay for his war with the English. They obliged the royal dukes, uncles of the new, young king Charles VI, who dominated his government,, to withdraw the court from Paris for a time; they did not venture to repress the resistance of Paris to the revival of indirect taxes until the royal army had returned victorious from Flanders.

para. 12

Peter du Bois had his usual luck

Peter had been wounded while the force he commanded was resisting, unsuccessfully, a French attempt to cross the river Lys, and had been carried back to Ghent before the defeat at Rosebeke happened. His colleague Francis Ackerman did not follow his prudent advice and example, but, relying on the promised amnesty, stayed in Ghent, where, having been induced to dismiss his bodyguard, he was shortly killed, as Froissart reports, ostensibly in revenge for a man he had had executed.