Why is the Battle of Golden Spurs the Flemish ‘national’ Holiday?
The 11th of July is the Flemish counterpart to the 4th of July and the Bastille day, the Quatorze Juilliet. On the 11th of July, The Flemish community commemorates the Battle of the Golden Spurs, fought over 7 centuries ago. But if Belgium and Flanders are the ‘battle field of Europe’, why exactly do the Flemish celebrate this specific battle? What really happened on the 11th of July? And does it make historical sense to elevate that day from the mist of time to celebrate the Flemish ‘nation’? It’s a long story, and maybe the best place to start is with an unhappy queen.
In 1301, the French King Philip the Fair visited Bruges together with his wife, queen Joan of Navarre. The rich pro-French patricians of the city had turned out in numbers to festively welcome the royal pair. The royal visit, a so-called Joyous Entry, had inspired them to put on their best dresses and lavishly decorate every street and square. In short, no expense had been spared to impress. The French King and Queen, who most have been used to the luxury and extravagance of the Parisian court, couldn’t believe their eyes at the display of wealth before them. Queen Joan, feeling humiliated, snubbed her husband: ‘I thought I was the only queen, but I see hundreds of them around me!’. This one envious remark encapsulates you all you need to know to understand the relation between the French Crown and its Flemish fiefs at the start of the fourteenth century.
Flanders at the time was not the Flanders of now. Flanders was a county, a fiefdom of the French crown since its very inception. In today’s terms, it consisted of the provinces West-Flanders, East-Flanders and part of what is now Northern France (Frans-Vlaanderen). Brabant, with cities such as Brussels, Mechelen and Antwerp, and Limburg belonged to a different realm, the Holy Roman Empire.
The medieval towns of the Low Countries were a veritable crucible of clashing interests. Each town was a dog-eat-dog microcosmos where struggling proletarians, ambitious artisans, rich patricians and arrogant noblemen were entangled in a continuous struggle. The advent of a proto-capitalist, proto-industrial production and trading system had broken the feudal mould. New social groups had to find their place in society and old existing groups had to learn to share their power. The fourteenth century is the violent story of radical social change.
Rulers throughout the Low Countries had long realised what a formidable source of income their textile-producing and mercantile cities were, and had stimulated their development by granting them privileges and ratifying their charters. Privileges are basically exemptions from the law or certain types of taxes. Charters are acknowledgements of a town’s rights, such as the right to levy their own taxes. Legally speaking, the privileges and charters were the foundation of the city, as much as the cloth was its commercial foundation. It was no coincidence, therefore, that some cities built large, military towers, the now UNESCO-recognized belfries, to store their charters and treasuries safely right next to the cloth halls. The belfry and the cloth hall together were like the two chambers of the beating heart of the town, regulating life itself within the confines of the city walls. The sound of the belfry even became the sound of time. Its bells announced the beginning and ending of every working day, a time schedule the guilds strictly adhered to. As more and more different messages were spread through the ringing of bells, the belfries started to contain big installations full of different types of bells. These installations would eventually turn into the famous carillons.
The Flemish cloth was traded widely, from Novgorod in Russia over the English markets to the Italian city states. While Ghent and Ypres focused more on production, Bruges gradually became a trade town. Everyone came to trade whatever they had on offer in Bruges.
Bruges turned into a melting pot of traders from all over Europe, selling products from even further afield. First-time visitors who roamed its narrow streets and alleys must have been as overwhelmed by the explosion of colours from the merchants’ clothes and their wives’ show-off dresses as by the olfactory cocktail of exotic spices and local shit and manure.
For traders wanting to catch the latest rumours about the trade war between France and England, the inn of the Van Der Beurse family would have been the place to go. Exchanging gossip with their colleagues on the small and overcrowded square in front of the inn, they couldn’t possibly have imagined that the inn would lend its name to the word for stock exchange in most European languages. Beurs, bourse, Börse, bolsa, … they are all etymologically indebted to a small inn in Bruges.
Cities had grown steadily and continuously from the turn of the millennium until the arrival of the plague. In Flanders and Northern Italy, especially, cities boomed throughout the region. London and Paris, as capitals of incumbent nations states, also were focal points for urban demographic growth. Ghent was the third most populous city to the north of the Alps in 1300. More important Ghent’s third place in the ranking was the urban density of Flanders. In Flanders, you were never more than five hours walk from a city. This meant that as a farmer, you always had somewhere to bring your goods to the market. So why would you produce cheap grain, if you could produce expensive flax? Gone were the days where the economy was mainly about subsistence, profit was the name of the game now.
If you lived in a city, you would have belonged to one of three social groups: in order of probability, you would have been a commoner, a member of an artisan guild, or a patrician.
Firstly, commoners had the highest headcount, but the least power. The population explosion was mainly fuelled by poor farmers who couldn’t find work in the countryside. They sought a better life in the city, where they ended up as poorly paid day labourers. Social mobility was limited, since the artisan guilds protected their trade.
Secondly, members of artisan guilds had learned a protected craft. Because of the ever-growing demand and the different skills needed for the production of the complex, high-quality cloth, different, specialised artisans soon took care of different parts of the production process. These specialised artisans would organise themselves in craft guilds. Tanners, dyers, weavers, butchers, bakers, knife sharpeners, … were only allowed to work in a city if they were a member of their respective guilds. The guilds were not just a social club: they organised life and work of their members by strongly regulating product standards, admittance, and even providing military training for the guilds’ own militias. As the guilds acquired more power over time, they stifled social mobility by making access to the master artisanship more difficult for outsiders. The sons of artisans followed in the footsteps of their fathers and the number of positions was limited. Ridiculously high membership fees were asked of outsiders to join. The guilds were therefore paradoxically both an instrument of social change — the rise of a middle class — and social conservatism.
The different guilds didn’t always get along amongst themselves. Competition for power between the guilds could be terribly violent. Several examples are known of outright urban battles between the fullers and the weavers on the streets of Ghent. In Flanders, the weavers’ guild mostly came out on top, with its members often taking up important positions in the city administration.
The third urban demographic group were the patricians. Patricians were either merchants or land owners. Traditionally all the members of the city administration had come from the patricians’ ranks, who thus formed a kind of urban nobility. They often held the rights on certain taxes, which meant that these taxes would flow straight into their own pockets. Over the course of the 13th and 14th century, their power was increasingly challenged by the artisan guilds. The artisans realised their products were the source of their cities’ wealth, and demanded political representation. Their demands can be seen as a far precursor of democratic movements, but given the limited number of people involved and their high social standing, this claim shouldn’t be exaggerated.
The tumultuous story of the Low Countries between 1300 and 1350 is the tale of the rise of the cities at the expense of farmers, kings and counts, and of the continuous struggle for power within the cities’ walls between commoners, artisans and patricians. In each city, these elements connected in a different way with the broader international situation — for or against the count, pro or against France, … — leading to unique tales of revolution, battle and death.
One such story was the Battle of the Golden Spurs. After the Battle of Bouvines the French crown had tightened its grip on Flanders until the end of the 13th century. For instance, higher courts in Paris had become competent for disputes between the count and the Flemish citizens. Flanders lost much of its political independence, but its economy flourished during this peaceful period. However, at the turn of the century, a new war between France and England spelled trouble for Flanders.
The government of the constantly cash-craving French King Philip the Fair would prove disastrous for Flanders. He levied all kinds of extra taxes, many of them directly targeting trade, and his monetary policy of deprecating the money led to a strong devaluation, decimating the economy in France and Flanders alike. Dante therefore called him the ‘plague of France’ and ‘the man who made the Seine weep by falsifying the money’[i].
Philip the Fair also gravely distrusted the Flemish count. Upon his coronation, he immediately sent two representatives to Flanders and made the local nobility and the cities swear that in case of a dispute between the King and the Count they ‘would be a faithful ally of our Lord the King against the Count’.
In 1294, long-lasting tensions between France and England finally resulted into an all-out-war. Both the English and the French king promptly prohibited all trade between France and England, thereby cutting off the supply chain of the Flemish cloth economy. The Flemish cities saw the disaster coming. No English wool meant no Flemish cloth.
The Flemish count was thus faced with an impossible conundrum. He owed loyalty to the French crown, but the livelihood and prosperity of his county depended on the English wool. The rich patricians in the cities sided with the French, whereas the guilds and the commoners looked at their blank order books, cashless purses and empty stomachs and chose for England.
On the 7 of January 1297, for the first time since the Battle of Bouvines three quarters of a century earlier, Flanders allied itself with England against the French. The Count had chosen — to his judgement at least — the lesser of two evils. Immediately afterwards, he sent representatives to the French royal palace at the Louvre, with a dramatic letter. The count ‘with a bleeding and weeping heart, and as someone who can endure no more’ renounced his allegiance to the French king in disappointed, emotional words. The bitterness flowed from his heart straight onto the page, as he told the French King not to be surprised, because the Count ‘never found in you, that I have always served loyally, friendship, nor reason, nor even the fulfillment of your obligations towards me’.
The dice had been rolled, but immediately fell on the wrong side for the count. His allies from the Holy Roman Empire and Holland didn’t show up when France attacked Flanders in the summer of 1297. After some delays, the English king Edward did show up with a small army, only to learn of the insurgency of the Scots, led by William Wallace (as depicted in Braveheart). Edward, stuck in Ghent because of bad weather conditions, negotiated a truce with the French before finally leaving.
Without allies, Flanders was ripe for the picking. On the 24th of May 1300, the count and his sons surrendered officially to the French King Philip the Fair in Paris. The King remembered the Count’s venomous resignation letter, looked at him disdainfully, but didn’t say a word. The count was stripped from his titles, and he and his sons were imprisoned. Flanders was the victim of both the war and the truce between its two giant neighbours. The war had smothered its economy; the truce had strangled the little political independence it had left.
The French King didn’t nominate a new count and instead appointed a governor, Jacques de Châtillon. The new governor proved to be the proverbial bull in the china shop. Minor incidents were punished heavily, and display of military power was preferred over quiet diplomacy. Presented with the bills for the war and the King’s Joyous Entry, the discontent grew steadily among the guilds and the commoners.
The Flemish citizens became increasingly divided into two camps: the disgruntled commoners and guilds on the one side versus the pro-French patricians on the other side. The reintroduction of an unpopular tax on foodstuffs by the aldermen triggered a popular uprising in Ghent. The aldermen and the patricians sought refuge in the Gravensteen, but were forced to surrender. They had to leave the castle, wearing nothing but their underwear. As they marched out, the guildsmen lined up on both sides of the road and formed a threatening hedge of sharp swords above their heads as a sign of their up-and-coming power.
The news about the uprising in Ghent added fuel to an already blazing fire in Bruges, where Pieter De Coninck, an important member of the weavers’ guild had seized power. Fearing reprisals by the approaching troops of the governor, thousands left the city and fled to nearby Damme. Violating the agreed terms of surrender, the French army entered the city and was quartered with the population.
At the crack of dawn, those who had fled to Damme, returned. They were armed to the teeth and quietly made their way into the sleepy city. The guildsmen totally surprised the French soldiers and a true slaughter ensued. Those who couldn’t pronounce the battle cry ‘Scild ende vrient’ (Shield and Friend) without a French accent, were butchered where they stood. The Bruges’ uprising was later called the Matins of Bruges, after the early morning prayer time when the massacre took place.
As soon as news of the Matins of Bruges reached the French King, it became clear that there was no reconciliation possible between the French crown and the defiant Flemish cities. The anti-French coalition of guilds, commoners and those loyal to the family of the Count had to go to battle with the French. The Count of Namur, the nephew of the imprisoned Count of Flanders, was put in charge of the training of the troops. He was faced with the tasks of making warriors out of weavers, butchers, and peasants. Ghent, where the pro-French faction had retaken the upper hand, didn’t join the coalition, although a few hundred men joined at their own initiative. Some Flemish noblemen fought on French side, others on the Flemish. Brothers ended up in opposing camps. The troops of Brabant, such as Godfried of Brabant, the hero of the battle of Woeringen, fought on the French side.
The two armies met for battle on a field outside Kortrijk. For any observer, it must have seemed like an unequal battle. Although both armies numbered around 8000 troops, the French army had 2700 experienced knights in its ranks, compared to only 300 Flemish horsemen. The French commander Robert d’Artois burst with confidence: ‘We are on horse and they by foot; and a hundred horses are worth a thousand men’.
The Flemish army had only one advantage. They had chosen the battle ground. They had Kortrijk’s city walls in their back and the Leie river to their left. The rest of the relatively small, boggy terrain was broken up by small ditches.
The Flemish commanders had drilled their troops and instilled an iron discipline. The principle objective was to hold together the phalanx of troops. Strict orders were given and repeated like a mantra. Flemish troops who would try to flee were to be killed. No enemy would be taken prisoner during the fight. Looting was forbidden during the fight. Hit the horses, not the knight. In a theatrical scene, the Flemish commanders descended from their horses and joined their infantry. The battle could begin.
After the first skirmishes and exchanges between crossbowmen, the French commander noticed that the Flemish had retreated further away from the ditches. This gave his cavalry the opportunity to cross the ditches safely. He promptly ordered his knights to attack, before his infantry had even entered the fight.
Wave after wave of the French horsemen crashed into the Flemish battalions. It must have been a fearsome sight for those weavers, butchers, bakers and labourers to see the heavily armoured knights gallop towards their position. But against all odds, they held their ground, they kept the formation tight, hit the horses with spears, and then clubbed the French knights to death with the fearsome Flemish weapon, the goedendag, a spiked club which crushed the French armour and the skulls of those wearing it. The name Goedendag is a witness of the wry Flemish humour. The feared club and dealer of death was called ‘Good day’, a way to welcome the French noblemen.
As the French started to realise that they were losing the battle, they surrendered, but the Flemish remembered their orders: no prisoners were to be taken during the battle. In a normal medieval battle, captured noblemen were worth a lot of money, for they would be ransomed afterwards. This battle between workers and knights, however, was no normal battle. The French knights, the ‘flower of Christianity’, were immediately killed. Two clerics managed to drag the French commander off his horse: The commander called out in French that he was the Count of Artois, thus signalling the value of capturing him alive. The two clerics replied in Flemish: ‘There is no nobleman here that could understand your language’. They clubbed him to death.
The Flemish victory was complete, and the French army fled. The Flemish started to chase them and kill as many as possible. Soldiers from Brabant, who had fought on the French side, tried to save themselves by repeating the Flemish battle cries, but were shown no mercy. This battle was later called the Battle of the Golden Spurs, because during the looting after the battle, the golden spurs of the French knights were collected. The spurs were triumphantly hung in the church in Kortrijk.
The Battle of the Golden Spurs was a sign of the times if there ever was one. A shockwave went through Europe. A contemporary witness and staunch patrician, the Florentine banker Giovanni Villani, could hardly believe what the Flemish rabble, those ‘rabbits full of butter’, had achieved. ‘This couldn’t have happened without divine approval, because it was a nearly impossible event. … This defeat destroyed the honour, the status and the glory of the old nobility, as well as the French bravery. The flower of the knighthood of the world was beaten and humiliated by her own subjects and by the lowest people in the world: weavers, fullers and other common craftsmen, that had no experience in warfare whatsoever, … and that because of this victory became so valiant and arrogant that one Fleming by foot dared to take on two French knights by horse’.
A hotchpot of city militias had defeated the glorious royal army of France. Infantry had defeated cavalry. The belfry had defeated the castle. The fabric of society was woven differently. The next 50 years in Flanders would be marked by social conflicts. Times were a-changin’.
The battle of the Golden Spurs might have been symbolic and meaningful, but for Flanders, it wasn’t impactful at all. The victory of the Golden Spurs is remembered fondly by Flemish nationalist, but they have largely forgotten what happened afterwards. Just two years after the battle at Kortrijk, the warring parties met again at Pevelenberg (Mons-en-Pévèle, now in France, notably on the circuit of the cycling classic Paris-Roubaix). The battle ended undecided, so both parties declared themselves victorious. This made clear that a peace had to be negotiated. During these negotiations, the Flemish noblemen were outsmarted by the French negotiators, who were professional lawyers. In the Peace of Athis of 1305, the noblemen agreed to huge war repairments to France, payable by the cities, as long as their own rights were preserved. In another interpretation, one might say that the Flemish noblemen ratted out the Flemish citizens.
It had not been all in vain, however. The French king seemed to realize now that he could never add the rebellious county of Flanders to the French crown domain, the lands that were under direct control of the French king. He therefore reinstated the position of Flemish count. Flanders thus preserved a modicum of political independence. In retrospect, this would prove to be a crucial decision for the future of Flanders and eventually Belgium.
If the battle of the Golden Spurs didn’t alter the course of history, then why is it remember so fondly by Flemish nationalists today? Why is the date of the battle, the 11th of July, the official Flemish holiday?
The surprising answer lies in Belgium’s independence. When Belgium was founded in 1830, the biggest threat for its independence was France. The young Belgium state needed to prove to its own citizens that it wasn’t France, that it had a long and honourable tradition in resisting the French ‘invader’. The Battle of the Golden Spurs was the ideal historical tale to bolster the Belgians minds. The writer Hendrik Conscience wrote a book in the romantic fashion of Walter Scott about the ‘Flemish Lion’. He hoped to raise the ‘Flemish patriotism’, but for him, this was in line with Belgian patriotism.
This therefore beckons the question: was the battle of the Golden Spurs an early manifestation of a Belgian or Flemish national consciousness? For anyone who’s serious about the historical facts, the answer can only be a resounding ‘No’. It wasn’t Belgian, because Belgium didn’t mean anything to anyone at the time. It wasn’t Flemish in the current meaning of the word because the county of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant were battling each other. Furthermore, Flanders didn’t fight alone. For instance, their commander was the Count of Namur, a Francophone nobleman. Above all, these notions of nationalism wouldn’t have meant much to any of the combatants. They were there because taxes were being levied, because their rights were being infringed upon, because the French king stood in the way of their trade. They wanted a voice and they would be heard.
