We have long
historical poems of little interest, arranged without
order,--interminable productions of thousands and ten thousands of
lines of uncertain date, didactic and encyclopedia-like, besides
unmistakable remnants of a Netherlandish theatre.
The battle of Roosebeke, where the second Artevelde and his companions
succumbed to superior numbers, was the last great enterprise of the
Flemings against the French. Half a century earlier, a strong league
had been formed against these powerful neighbors. In the interior, the
country was divided into factions,--the partisans and enemies of
France. Prominent were the _Clauwaerts_ and the _Leliarts_, from the
lion's claw and the _fleur-de-lis_ which they respectively wore on
their badges. The country, which has ever been one of the
battle-fields of Europe, was abandoned to all the horrors of civil
war. The Duke of Brabant was childless. The Count of Flanders gave his
daughter, his only legitimate child, in marriage to the Duke of
Burgundy; and the provinces soon came into the hands of those
ambitious and restless enemies of the Court of France. It may easily
be imagined that these events were not without their influence on a
language deteriorated on the one hand by constant contact with a
Romanic idiom, and in Holland by the transmission of the sovereign
crown to the House of Avesnes.
The "Chambers of Rhetoric," an institution peculiar to the Low
Countries, reached their highest point of prosperity under the
Burgundian rule.
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