From Rags to Riches: 900–1128
The Flooded Fields of Flanders
It was as if the hammer of his legendary ancestor Charles Martel had struck him on the head with full force. King Charles the Bald momentarily looked incredulous, struggling to arrange his thoughts, his bloodshot eyes fixed upon the trembling messenger. Rage crawled up his spine and filled his booming voice. ‘How dare she disobey me! And with that little upshot swamp knight!’, he erupted, ‘Me, her father, Charlemagne’s grandson, King of West-Francia! If she weren’t my own blood, I would have her dancing on the end of a rope!’
Travelling to the origins of Flanders means getting your feet wet and muddy. To discover the source of the word ‘Fleming’, you have to navigate through etymological swamps and ancient marshes. In the Germanic language of the Franks, a Fleming was someone who lived in the ‘Flauma’, meaning flooded land or swamp. Flemings inhabited the swamps and marshland just behind the coastline around the little village of Oudenburg, a settlement dating back to a roman defensive outpost. The shire gradually became known as Flanders, an area sharing its moist roots with English words like flow and flood, and German words like Fluss.
The pagus Flandrensis, the shire of Flanders was an insignificant patch of land; its flat coastal plains were regularly flooded by the North Sea at high tides or during storm. The silty water made the land unsuited for agriculture. The harsh sea grass growing in the salty marshes was only good enough for grazing sheep. Nothing pointed towards future significance, let alone greatness. Since the Treaty of Verdun of 843 split the Carolingian Empire in an Eastern, Middle and Western part, the area belonged to West-Francia, the nucleus of the future kingdom of France.
The first Flemish ruler who dragged his muddy boots out of the realm of the legendary and the mythical and stepped into the domain of our historical knowledge was Baldwin with the Iron Arm. Since the shire of Flanders was part of West-Francia, he was a vassal of West-Francia’s King Charles the Bald. Baldwin was an ambitious man. While the Carolingian empire crumbled around him and Viking invaders plagued its coasts, he decided to exploit the weak position of King Charles the Bald. Central to his plan was Judith, the daughter of the French King.
Although Judith was only 19, she was a widow twice over. She had been married to the British King of Wessex and, after his death, to her stepson, who also died shortly afterwards. These two marriages were strategic. For Charles the Bald, the Kings of Wessex were useful allies against the Vikings. After the death of her second husband, Judith returned to West-Francia. As was customary for Carolingian princesses, Charles then sent her to a convent, until he needed her to cement another strategic alliance in the marriage chamber.
Baldwin decided to kidnap Judith. In medieval Europe, although illegal, the kidnapping of a prominent bride was not uncommon as a way to secure a prestigious marriage and furthering one’s social status. Curiously, Judith seems to have been an active participant in her abduction. Around Christmas of 861, she disguised herself, escaped from the convent and fled with the waiting Baldwin. We don’t know Judith’s motives, but since Baldwin had little to offer to the daughter of the King of France and the widowed former Queen of Wessex, it is very well possible that their relation was based on love.
King Charles the Bald might not have minded the disobedience of his rebellious daughter much if Baldwin were a big and important vassal or a strong ally. However, to Charles’ abhorrence, Baldwin was the exact opposite. Baldwin, the ruler of the small shire of Flanders was an absolute nobody[i]. It wasn’t the first nor indeed the last time that a teenage girl was swayed by the charms of a boyfriend who didn’t hold up to her father’s expectations, but King Charles seemed particularly displeased. He stripped Baldwin of his title and asked the French bishops to excommunicate Baldwin and Judith.
The young lovebirds took refuge with Judith’s uncle Lothar, the King of the Middle Empire, and Charles’ half-brother. Baldwin and Judith then successfully sought the Pope’s support. The Pope wrote to King Charles using a thinly veiled threat: ‘Because of your anger and indignation, it is to be feared that Baldwin will ally himself with the pagan Norsemen’[ii]. King Charles eventually caved in, forgave Judith and Baldwin and approved of their marriage[iii].
Not only did Charles consent to the marriage, he even gave Baldwin a wedding gift to increase the prestige of his new son-in-law; Charles granted him several other counties west of the river Scheldt, such as Ghent with its rich Saint-Peter’s Abbey and the area around Saint-Omer, probably with the assignment to protect them from the Viking intruders. The insignificant shire of Flanders suddenly expanded into a sizeable county, the county of Flanders.
Whether Baldwin kidnapped Judith, or if they romantically eloped, cannot be decided on the basis of the historical sources. But there is no doubt that Baldwin opportunistically exploited the weakness of the king to increase his own prestige and power basis. The shabby ruler of some muddy marshland had transformed himself into a prestigious Count. The seeds of the future Flanders had been planted, but it was far from sure it would ever prosper. A first threat was already on the horizon.
A River of Corpses
Against the backdrop of the romance of Judith and Baldwin, Viking ships have sailed into our story and up Western Europe’s major rivers. Since the time of Charlemagne, Vikings had been looting churches, abbeys and villages on the British Islands and in mainland Europe. The Viking armies were not fully-fledged invasion forces. They relied on their superior ships, which could easily and swiftly navigate the rivers. Most of the time, they could only field small bands of warriors, so they avoided open combat. Instead, they targeted soft spots, like abbeys, where they encountered weak resistance, but rich rewards.
In the first part of the 9th century, the part of the Low Countries we now call Belgium was relatively unaffected. Nearby cities along the Meuse and the Rhine, such as the important trading hub Dorestad, were not that lucky. In the second part of the 9th century, Danish and Norwegian Vikings shifted their focus to the lands along the Scheldt river. In 850, they wreaked havoc in the Saint-Bavo’s Abbey in Ghent. Ten years later, the Saint-Bertin’s Abbey in Saint-Omer was plundered. Horrified witnesses talked of ‘massacres, acts of pillage, devastation and burnings’[iv]. In 864, the Flemish Count Baldwin successfully repelled a Viking army, so they simply tried elsewhere and laid devastation on both banks of the Rhine[v].
The real onslaught, however, was yet to come. In 879, Alfred the Great[vi], King of Wessex had won a decisive victory over the Vikings. Most Vikings left England, turned south and sailed up the river Scheldt. Count Baldwin had just died and his heir Baldwin II was underaged [vii]. This left the Scheldt area largely unprotected. The Vikings turned Ghent’s Saint Bavo’s abbey into their headquarters for the winter. The next summer, they laid waste to Flanders, forcing the Flemings to flee from their villages[viii]. During the following decade, the whole area between the rivers Somme and the Rhine was ransacked. A monk from Arras recounted that ‘on every street there were corpses of children, noblemen and commoners, women, children and infants’[ix].
After a decade of horror, the Vikings’ luck finally turned in 891. They had set up camp near the town of Leuven on the river Dyle. Here, they were surprised by the army of the German Emperor Arnulf of Carinthia. The Vikings quickly constructed a makeshift palisade in front of their position, with the Dyle river protecting them against any attack from the rear. When the German troops overcame the palisade, the river became the grave of the fleeing Vikings, drowning while they tried to escape by swimming across the river[x]. According to legend, the current red-white-red flag of Leuven derives its colours from the red blood on both sides of the glistering river.
After the Battle of Leuven, the Vikings would still return sporadically, but the battle marked the beginning of the end for the age of the Viking invasions in the Low Countries[xi].
The destruction brought on by the Vikings had long-lasting consequences. The old cities closer to the heartland of the Carolingian dynasty, the Rhine-Meuse valley, such as Dorestad, Aachen, Liège were utterly devasted. At the same time, destruction was not all the Vikings brought. They traded with locals and brought about a trading network across the North Sea. The most evident proof of this is a small village with a landing place where the Vikings traded their spoils and their own products such as amber, furs, skins and walrus ivory. This town received a Norwegian name: Bryggja[xii] which later evolved into Bruges. The Norwegian name foreshadowed the strong commercial ties Bruges would later develop with the trade network of cities of the Hanseatic League around the North Sea and the Baltic, and especially with its namesake Bryggen, the harbour of the Norwegian town of Bergen.
Some of the Norwegian Vikings eventually became Flanders’ new neighbours. During peace negotiations between King Charles The Bald and the Viking leader Rollo the Walker — thus nicknamed because no horse could support his weight — Rollo made clear that peace could be bought with land where the Vikings could settle. Charles tried to put in a low-ball offer. What if, he proposed, the Vikings would settle in Flanders? The Viking leader immediately refused, quoting Flanders’ ‘extreme marshiness’[xiii]. The Vikings knew Flanders well from their looting raids and weren’t interested in some swamps.
The warring parties eventually reached a deal. In return for peace, the Vikings settled in the region still named after their Norwegian provenance: Normandy. They converted to Christianity and swore allegiance to the French King. Within one generation, the Normans spoke French. Within a couple of generations, the Duke of Normandy, Willem the Conqueror, invaded England, while his Flemish wife Mathilda ruled on his behalf in Normandy.
The Norman settlers soon got to know their new Flemish neighbours, because the Counts of Flanders constantly sought to expand their lands to the west and to the south. The Flemish and Normans inevitably came into conflict over the strategically important town Montreuil-sur-Mer. Montreuil now lies far to the west of Belgium, but in 942, the town was at the centre of a border dispute between the Flemish Count Arnulf and the Norman leader William Longsword.
The Flemish Count Arnulf was defeated. Afterwards, he was invited for peace negotiations on neutral ground, on an island in the Somme. Rather than swallowing the bitter pill, Arnulf decided to ambush his opponent. He attended the peace talks, but after he left, he sent four assassins back. Under the pretext of bringing a message from Arnulf, they approached William Longsword and stabbed him to death.[xiv]
The ambush demonstrates the ruthless political opportunism of the Flemish Counts to expand their power and territory. They displayed the same behaviour towards their liege lord, the French King. The other mighty regions in France, such as the Dukes of Anjou, Aquitaine and Normandy and the Count of Blois were all playing the same power game to expand their territories. All of these duchies and counties were the product of a dog-eat-dog process, absorbing weaker and smaller counties, while they made sure the King didn’t expand his power to their disadvantage.
By 1000 A.D., Flanders had established itself as one of the mightiest counties in France. Flanders, however, wasn’t the Flanders we know now. On the one hand, of the current five Flemish provinces, only West-and East-Flanders resided within Flemish territory. On the other hand, large parts of North-western France at one point or another belonged to Flanders. These areas between the Flemish and the French heartland would be the object of a tug-of-war between Flanders and France for centuries to come. However, hidden behind the clamour of the weapons on the battlefield and the scheming of the nobility, ordinary people’s lives were starting to change profoundly.
Masters of the Land
Imagine you were a commoner, an ordinary person living in the year 900. In all likelihood, you would have been a farmer connected to the estate of a local lord. Your entire horizon barely reached beyond the confines of the domain. The domain itself consisted of some fields, surrounded by marshes and woodlands.
Life for you would have been hard. With primitive tools, you worked your small allotment for most of the week, while on the other days you served the local lord as a form of tax payment. You wouldn’t have much to show for your hard labour; for each grain sown, you could’ve expected to harvest just three; that is if the harvest was successful in the first place. Starvation would be an experience you were all too familiar with; just as the hardship of carrying your children to an early grave.
We always think that History with a capital H takes places on blood-soaked battlefields. But most of the time, what matters to ordinary people happens in the privacy of the farmer’s stomach, the merchant’s purse and in children’s cradles.
Around the turn of the millennium, a silent, but profound revolution took place in Western Europe. It changed who you were, what you ate, where you lived, what your options in life were — that you had options in the first place — which work you did… In short, it fundamentally altered the way the very fabric of life was woven.
Some revolutions start with the sword in a clenched fist; others start with the plough in hand. Around the year 1000, technological and agricultural innovations, such as the introduction of the iron plough and a greater diversity in crops, started to increase agricultural productivity exponentially: one grain sown would eventually yield up to 14 grains harvested. These agricultural innovations triggered a chain reaction that would alter society dramatically[xv].
The availability of more food opened the way to demographic growth. As malnourishment dropped, more infants survived childhood and the population grew. Since the agricultural production resulted in food surpluses, these could be sold. For the first time in centuries, local but also international trade flourished, centred around abbeys and castles. Around these commercial centres and already existing settlements, new cities gradually developed, such as Saint-Omer, Douai, Lille, Bruges, Ypres and Ghent. The Counts of Flanders, and later the Dukes of Brabant, supported the rise of the cities in exchange for the income from taxes and the recourse to experienced and trained city militias. Already by 1040, a monk praised Bruges ‘for both the number of merchants residing there, as well as the abundance of anything one could wish for’[xvi].
The value of land increased, simply because it could produce more. The labour-intensive cultivation of hereto unused lands, such as marshes and woodlands, therefore became a sound investment. Counts, farmers, and religious orders actively encouraged the cultivation of new lands. The Cistercians were at the forefront of land development in the Low Countries. Their abbeys such as the magnificent abbey of Villers-la-Ville and the now disappeared abbey of Koksijde functioned as giant land cultivation machines.
The communities in the Low Countries fought and won the battle against water, although flash floods still occurred during the Middle Ages. New diking and draining techniques were developed and the sea was pushed back 15 kilometres. Flanders was famous for its diking techniques, which the Dutch would perfect centuries later. The Florentine poet Dante Alighieri even conjured up the image of the Flemish dikes in his Divina Comedia:
Quali Fiamminghi tra Guizzante e Bruggia
temendo ‘l fiotto che ‘nver’ lor s’avventa
fanno lo schermo perché ‘l mar si fuggia.
When the Flemish between Wissant and Bruges
In fear of the waves against their shores
Built dikes to drive away the sea[xvii]
The land won over the water needed to be populated and the towns needed a workforce. The old system where commoners were tied to the lord’s domain was therefore under pressure. Farmers fleeing their lords’ domains sought refuge in the cities, because ‘city air made free’. Pastures, fields and small cities started to replace wilderness and emptiness. The flooded fields of Flanders were no more. A new, urban era had dawned, and with it, an era of urban power struggles.
Strangled with a Dog’s Bowels
Spring was in the air, but Bruges’ chilly morning fog penetrated the count’s cloak. He shivered as he walked the short distance from the castle to the Saint-Donatian’s Cathedral. He routinely distributed some coins amongst a few waiting widows. Once inside, he headed straight for the altar and sunk to his knees. As he prayed, the sound of squeaky hinges resounded, replaced by the echo of hurried footsteps along the stone floor. Count Charles, kneeling before the cross on a cold tombstone, vaguely registered the noise, but paid little attention to it. He concentrated on his prayers.
We don’t know what Charles prayed for. Maybe he asked the Almighty to lessen the famine that was keeping Flanders in a stranglehold after the failed harvest. Perhaps he paid penance because he sought and found a scapegoat for the famine in the Jews. Did he ask forgiveness for his sexual preferences? Did he maybe try to enlist God on his side in his battle against the patricians who were speculating on the grain prices? If he prayed for the latter, his prayers came too late. His assassins were already standing right behind him, swords unsheathed. The Count glanced up and knew that even the sanctity of Bruges’ Saint-Donatian’s Cathedral couldn’t protect him. His final thoughts were for his father, who had been murdered in a church in Denmark. Like father, like son.
When he was born in Denmark, Charles was predestined to become king of Denmark. He was the son of the Danish King Canute IV and Adela of Flanders, daughter of a Flemish count[xviii]. With the support of Flanders, Canute prepared an invasion of England, but he was killed in a church during an uprising before the expedition ever set off.
Canute’s wife Adela fled Denmark, grabbing her five-year old son Charles (but leaving behind her daughters) and returned to Flanders[xix]. The young Charles therefore grew up at the Flemish court, first that of his grandfather and later his uncle. When the latter died childless in 1119, Charles, once destined to become king of Denmark, became count of Flanders instead.
Charles showed himself an able ruler, but faced a big challenge in 1125–1126. After a harsh winter and an abundance of rain, the harvests had failed. The population had been growing for decades and there wasn’t enough grain to feed everyone. Speculation and hoarding by the local nobility only aggravated the food shortages. Charles first tried to deflect attention by falsely accusing the small Jewish settlement of somehow organising the speculation and he expelled them from Flanders. This obviously didn’t help, but Charles eventually took effective measures, from forbidding the brewing of beer for which grain was used, over the diversification of crops, to forcing the local lords to organise food hand-outs. Bruges’ trade in luxury items meant that grain could also be imported from overseas.
Count Charles realised that the famine was worsened by the corruption within his own administration. At the top of the corrupt system stood the Erembald clan, one of the mightiest families in Flanders. The head of the family, Bertulf Erembald, was chancellor (head of the count’s administration), as his father had been before him[xx]. Through marriages, they were linked to most of the Flemish nobility and thus carried considerable clout. Count Charles decided he wanted them gone.
Charles covertly set up an inquiry, and quickly uncovered the Erembalds’ Achilles heel: their provenance. The family had once been serfs, unfree men who legally belonged to a lord, but over the course of a couple of generations, they had managed to climb the social ladder. All of their power, wealth and marriages, however, didn’t change their legal status one iota. They were unfree men, the lowest of the lowest. Charles had found a stick to beat the Erembalds with and set a trap in the form of perfectly staged pantomime.
During a public audience with count Charles, one of his knights provoked a member of the Erembald clan. The hot-blooded Erembald answered the insult by challenging the knight to a duel. The knight responded venomously that he couldn’t possibly accept the challenge, because that would mean fighting with an unfree man as if he were his equal[xxi]. The public secret was out, heard by all in the presence of Count Charles. The mighty Erembalds were mere serfs. The Count could pretend he only learned of this by coincidence and wash his hands in innocence.
Bertulf Erembald fought with all his power against the accusation. During a meeting with count Charles, Bertulf reminded him that he only became count because of his help. His eyes red with hatred, he pointed his finger at Count Charles, and proclaimed: ‘You enquire with the elders if we are serfs. You try to enslave me and my family. But you can keep looking, we are and will always be free!’
Charles was unimpressed by the venomous attack, but he still owed the Erembalds a fair hearing and trail. However, when Bertulf showed up to the trail with an armed escort akin to a small army, the judges felt threatened and quickly adjourned. The conflict now quickly escalated and a clan war erupted between the Erembalds and those loyal to the count. Before a new trial could even take place, the desperate Erembalds took a massive gamble: count Charles had to go.
Walter of Terwan, a contemporary chronicler, wrote down even the bloodiest details of what happened next. As the morning fog lifted on Wednesday, the 2nd of March 1127, Count Charles went to pray in the Saint-Donatian’s Cathedral next to his castle in Bruges. He distributed alms to the poor while he recited psalm 51 ‘Miserere mei, Deus’, ‘Have mercy upon me, O God’. After he entered the church, he went to pray before the altar. While he was kneeling down, a six men-strong hit squad approached him. Their leader quietly sneaked up behind the Count and touched him softly with his sword. The count looked up, only to face six swords raining down at him. The first blow cleft open his skull and his brains spilled onto the floor.
The news of the murder spread like wildfire and all those loyal to the count fled the town. For a short while, the Erembalds were master of Bruges and their gamble seemed to pay off[xxii]. They even found a straw man to replace the count, a certain William of Ypres. However, when the loyalist nobles returned to the city at the head of a sizeable army, Bruges’ citizens decided the Erembalds weren’t worth a civil war. They turned against their new masters, lynching a number of them. The 27 remaining members of the Erembald clan withdrew into the count’s castle, where they were beleaguered for a month and a half before they finally surrendered. Their punishment was as simple as it was cruel. The count’s men took them to the top of the castle tower and threw them off.
Bertulf, the head of the Erembald clan, had narrowly managed to escape the massacre in Bruges, only to be caught by his former ally William of Ypres. William of Ypres had understood the revolt had failed, and now wished to distance himself from the Erembalds by organising a public trail. During the trail, Bertulf openly accused William of being part of the conspiracy. Before he could reveal more, William[xxiii] quickly delivered Bertulf to the bloodthirsty crowd. The infuriated mob tore off his clothes and tortured him at the pillory. They beat his body with sticks and clubs. As he was dying, the crowd’s final degrading act was to decorate his face with a dead dog’s snout, just to underline ‘that he resembled a dog and had behaved as one’.
This bloody tale was only the start of the unrest in Flanders. Since the murdered count Charles didn’t have any children, the count’s seat was now vacant. The French King saw an opportunity to strengthen France’s position in its ongoing struggle against the King of England, who at the same time was Duke of Normandy.
For the French king, William Clito (not to be confused with William of Ypres) was the ideal candidate. He was in exile from Normandy and held a direct claim to both the title of duke of Normandy and king of England. As count of Flanders, William Clito would surely become a formidable ally for the French king. With the king’s support, William Clito was elected by the Flemish nobility. He immediately visited Bruges and Ghent, and — as a true politician — promised them a number of tax cuts and privileges.
Two further pretender contested Clito’s claim. With the support of the English king — who of course vehemently opposed William Clito — William of Ypres had renewed his ambition to become count, but was captured by French troops at Ypres. Another candidate, the count of Hainaut, had used the confusion to invade Flanders from the south and had captured Oudenaarde. The French army pushed him back, but to cover his retreat he set fire to the city. The 300 citizens who had sought refuge in the church burned alive. With the support of the French army, William Clito eventually defeated these two pretenders for the title of Count.
As Clito finally seemed to have secured his position as count, calm returned at the eye of the hurricane for the briefest of moments. But behind the walls of Flanders’ cities, the storm was already gathering momentum again. The Flemish cities were unhappy. The new count Clito had retracted his promises for tax cuts after he found out they directly impacted the finances of his own knights. He also infracted upon city laws by arresting unfree men within the walls of Lille and Saint-Omer. But above all, the Flemish textile economy had ground to a halt because of the trade embargo against England, their main supplier of wool.
For the first time since their inception, the cities put forward their grievances and demanded action from their count. In a bold and unprecedented speech, Iwein of Aalst, a nobleman representing the city of Ghent, addressed the count directly:
‘If you can keep hold of the position of Count without damaging the honour of the land, I wish for you to keep it. But if you are someone that is above of the law, a disloyal schemer, someone who breaks his oath, leave this county and we will entrust it to a decent man, who respects the law’[xxiv].
Some 80 years before the English Magna Carta was drafted, Iwein of Aalst already expressed the idea of the accountability of a ruler to his people and their right to depose an unworthy ruler.
Clito reacted furiously and even challenged Iwein to a duel. Iwein declined and instead proposed to hold a reconciliation meeting between the count and the Flemish nobility. When William Clito arrived to the proposed reconciliation meeting in Ypres with an entire army, Iwein — who was secretly supported by the English king — called upon another candidate for the countship, Thierry of Alsace. Once again, Clito would have to fend off another pretender.
Thierry of Alsace quickly gained the support of the cities. Military, however, he wasn’t a match for the French army. He lost battle after battle, until, almost at his wits’ end in the beleaguered town of Aalst, faith intervened on the 28th of July 1128. In an insignificant skirmish beneath the walls, William Clito was thrown of his horse and killed. Thierry of Alsace was the last man standing in the fight for the title of Count of Flanders. Growing weary of the episode, the French King soon recognised him as Count of Flanders[xxv].
The extra-ordinary story of the murder of Count Charles the Good and the following succession crisis is like a cutting through a layer cake of medieval Flanders and its rocky politics.
One layer of this cake was the societal level. The rise of cities changed society from within and brought new elements of instability. People whose ancestors were once serfs, like the Erembalds, now turned into ambitious citizens. Cities became incubators for revolutionary, proto-democratic ideas, as expressed in Iwein of Aalst’s demands for good government. Over time, cities would become the driving economic and societal force. If those in power didn’t respect this, like Clito did by arresting serfs within city walls, the consequences could be dire.
A second layer is composed of Flanders’ geopolitical situation. The succession crisis shows how Flanders’ loyalties were split between France and England. Politically, the Counts of Flanders were dependent of the French king, their liege lord[xxvi]. As the power of French Kings increased, their thirst after Flanders’ riches turned unquenchable and they wanted to encroach on Flanders’ autonomy. The appointment of William Clito as count clearly shows how the French king tried to ensure Flanders’ full cooperation. At the same time, trade with England and specifically trade in English wool was becoming more and more essential for the Flemish economy. The looms couldn’t produce cloth without their most basic raw material. If France was at war with England and either party used trade embargos, Flanders suffered most of all. The English crown saw a strong, independent Flanders as a way to defend its interests. England’s best defense was always to make sure none of its continental rivals became too strong. For England, the Low Countries were therefore vital as the pebble in the shoe of the continental powers. That is why they often supported Flemish counts, noblemen and cities who were eager to sail an independent course from the French crown[xxvii].
To top off these two layers of our cake, the recurring ingredient of medieval political crises throughout the history of the county of Flanders was the political power vacuum. Deliberate expansionist politics by sword and by marriage were the name of the game for dukes, counts and kings. But infertility, stillbirths, sudden disease, hunting accidents, small but gangrenous wounds, madness,… all played their part in the medieval lottery of feudal luck and mishap. If the result of this lottery was a dispute over who would be the next Count, different parties would always enter the arena to try to impose their candidate. The result was often a long and bloody conflict. Over the coming centuries, nothing would create more of these power vacuums than the religious zeal of the crusades, a whirlwind that devoured dynasties of counts and kings without successors.
[i] It is a matter of debate if Baldwin was the count of Flanders before he married Judith, or if he was named count afterwards.
[ii] Quoted in De Maesssachalk, E. De Graven van Vlaanderen, p. 43.
[iii] The Annals of St. Bertin, p. 110.
[iv] Quoted in Pye, M. The Edge of the World, p.92.
[v] The Annals of St. Bertin, p. 118.
[vi] Technically speaking, Alfred the Great is Judith’s stepson from her first marriage.
[vii] Baldwin II would find refuge at the English court together with his mother Judith, who was a former English Queen.
[viii] Annales Vedastini, quoted in De Maessschalk, E. De Graven van Vlaanderen, p. 49.
[ix] Annales Vedastini, quoted in De Maessschalk, E. De Graven van Vlaanderen, p. 63.
[x] Fulda Annals
[xi] Baldwin II, the new underaged count of Flanders, had taken refuge at the court of Alfred the Great, the stepson of his mother Judith. In England, he learned how the Vikings could be fended off. Upon his return to Flanders, he constructed round fortifications in the coastal area in imitation of the English boroughs. In the street pattern of some towns, the round shape of the fortification can still be distinguished today.
[xii] Incidentally also the name of an IKEA-cupboard.
[xiii] Dudo of Saint-Quentin. http://the-orb.arlima.net/orb_done/dudo/12-franco
[xiv] Dudo of Saint Quentin, History of the Norman, p. 208. (Translation: Eric Christiansen)
[xv] Faelter p. 67.
[xvi] Dumolyn, J. & Brown, A. (eds), Brugge. Een Middeleeuwse Metropool. 850–1500, p. 21.
[xvii] Dante, Inferno, Canto XV. Of the 7 non-Italian cities Dante mentions in the Divina Comedia, 4 were Flemish: Douai, Lille, Ghent and Bruges.
[xviii] Adela had been given into marriage to king Canute to seal an alliance between Flanders and Denmark against William The Conqueror, the duke of Normandy who had conquered England in 1066. As the duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror was the rivalling neighbour of Flanders. As the king of England, he was a usurper in Canute’s eyes. Canute felt the English crown was rightfully his because he was related to Cnut the Great, the triple monarch who had worn the triple crown of Denmark, Norway and England until 1035.
[xix] Adela had apparently acquired a taste for Scandinavian men and remarried to one Roger Borsa, the Viking-descendent duke of Apulia (Italy).
[xx] His father had pushed the previous chancellor of a boat to drown him, thus creating a vacancy.
[xxi] De Maessschalk, E. De Graven van Vlaanderen, p. 119.
[xxii] The oldest city walls date back to this time. Today, remnants can still be found in the Pottenmakersstraat.
[xxiii] William later made a name as a mercenary in the English army of King Stephen.
[xxiv] Quoted in De Maessschalk, E. De Graven van Vlaanderen, p. 197. (Kleine versie)
[xxv] Two details should still be mentioned about the new Flemish count Thierry of Alsace. First of all, he astonishingly married the ex-wife of his deceased rival William Clito (from a marriage which was annulled because of co-sanguinity). Secondly, he was an avid crusader, who supposedly brought the relic of the Holy Blood from the Holy Land to Bruges. Evidence suggests, however, that it was Count Baldwin IX who sent the relic to Bruges.
[xxvi] (Although part of Flanders lay within the Holy Roman Empire, the so-called Imperial Flanders)
[xxvii] This view of Britain’s policy across the Channel : Brendan Simms. Britain’s Europe. A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation.
