Civic unrest has been around for a long time. This fascinating fragment, taken from Froissart’s Chroniques, illustrates this by providing a very familiar scene: defiance of the ruler in the marketplace. The so-called ‘Ghent War’ (1379-1385) was the result. Both the behaviour of the citizens and the reaction of the count of Flanders may seem familiar to those who have been reading the newspapers of late.
Jan Parneele, Rasse van Herzeele, Pieter van den Bossche, and Jan Boele, the captains of the White Hoods, suspected that matters were about to be laid to their charge. They discussed together, then summoned several of their men, all of whom were the worst and most cruel in their company, and said to them,
“Listen up. Keep yourselves armed today and tomorrow, and do not take off your hoods, whatever you are told. Be all of you at the Friday Market at seven o’clock, but do not cause any trouble unless it is begun on you first. Tell this to your men, or let them know through another.”
They replied, “Gladly,” and so it was done. In the morning at eight o’clock they all arrived in the market place as they had been commanded. They did not gather all together, but groups of ten and twelve collected, for their leaders were in their midst. The count came into the market place on horseback, accompanied by his men, knights, squires and the town magistrates. Jean de la Faucille was with him along with forty of the wealthiest and most distinguished men of the town. The count, as he rode through the middle of the market place, cast his eyes generally on the White Hoods who were in his presence, and saw no other people there, as far as he was concerned, save White Hoods, which saddened him greatly. He dismounted from his horse, as did all the others, and went up to a high window, leaning out from it on the sill over which a crimson cloth had been spread for him; and there the count began to speak wisely. All were silent as he spoke. He showed them display in great detail the love and affection he had felt towards them before they had angered him. He showed them how a lord should be loved, feared, served and honoured by his subjects, and how they had done the precise opposite. He showed them how he had protected, shielded and defended them against every man. He showed them how he had kept them in peace, profit and prosperity since he had come into his lands, and had opened up communications by sea which had been closed to them before his joyous accession. He presented them with many considered arguments which the wise recognised and understood very well, knowing everything he said to be true. Many listened to him willingly, while others did not and called for defiance.
When he had been there an hour or more and had made his intentions loud and clear, but courteously so, he finished by saying that he wished to remain their good lord in the same manner as he had been before, and pardoned them for any contempt, hatred and resentment they had shown him and any wrongdoing, and he would hear no more of it. He wished to maintain them according to the law and as their liege lord as he had always done, but entreated them not to commit any new offence, and besought them to have the White Hoods disbanded. During the whole speech there was silence, as if there had been nobody present, but as soon as he mentioned the White Hoods a murmuring began, and he realised that that was the cause. He besought them then to return calmly and peaceably to their homes.
With that he came down, and he and all his men departed the market place and retired to their lodgings. The White Hoods, however, were the first to arrive and the last to leave. When the count passed among them they smirked and looked upon him malevolently, or so it seemed to him. They did not even deign to make obeisance to him, which caused him great distress. He said afterwards to his knights, when they had returned to their lodgings at La Poterne,
“I shall never readily achieve my aims with these White Hoods. They are a wicked and misguided people. My heart tells me that circumstances are yet to change; as far as I can tell there are yet more evils to come. Were I to lose all that I possess, I could not countenance their pride and their wickedness.”
And so the count of Flanders spent four days of that week in Ghent, and on the fifth day he departed and has not returned there since.
This event was followed by years of civil war and foreign invasions. The peace treaty essentially maintained the status quo. In popular history rebellions such as these are interpreted as democratic revolts. Jakob van Artevelde, the most celebrated of these ‘rebels’, even has a statue in same market square described above. He is seen as an early urban democrat, even though he excluded his enemies (who were numerous) and was deposed and killed when his bodyguard was destroyed in battle. More critical historians, like David Nicholas, view the Ghent War as a conservative backlash in which a minority managed to take control of the city and in which rivals and even entire guilds were excluded from government, even when they had been included prior to the revolt. It is to be hoped that such power-hungry individuals do not hijack the democratic movements presently rebelling in North Africa and the Middle East.
(This post made at all possible by the superb The Online Froissart Project.)
