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 thrown themselves upon the support of the French Crown (leliaerts), the massacres known as the mette (matines) of Bruges began the great democratic revolution which triumphed in the utter overthrow of the chivalry of France on the field of Courtray (1302). The honours of that day belonged to the trades of Bruges, assisted by those of Ypres and Ghent in defiance of the prohibitions issued by their patrician authorities. And during the entire epoch of the political ascendency of the communes, their self-government was striving to establish itself on broad popular foundations. The elder Artevelde was the Pericles of Ghent, whose extraordinary self-confidence was mainly due to the hope of an effective political alliance with England, based on free commercial intercourse with her, as the chief provider of the raw material of Flemish industry. After his death evil times began for Ghent, which had become the chief of "the three members of Flanders" (de dry leden), and had charged itself with the executive on behalf of the towns and other districts of the country at large. The visitations of Heaven seemed to descend upon the land in the form of tempests and inundations and the Black Death. The Anglo-Flemish alliance was a thing of the past. Bruges, whose jealousy of Ghent was ineradicable, was inclined to support the manoeuvres of the territorial prince; and in many of the communes a reaction set in towards oligarchical government. But Ghent stood firm, and when the banners of her crafts had been unfurled for the critical struggle, and the Whitehoods once more streamed forth from her gates, Bruges, Ypres, Courtray, and all the other Flemish towns once more fell into line for the final struggle. With their overthrow at Hoosebeke (1382) the political greatness of the communes came to an end; but the resistance of Ghent was only slowly extinguished.

Yet to Philip the Good, as to his father (notwithstanding the part which he played at Paris) and to his grandfather before him, and his son after him, the Flemish communes were, as Commines says of Ghent in especial, a thorn in the flesh. Not that he was unaware of the fact that his European position depended upon the prosperity of the Flemish towns even more than upon that of the Dutch, who always regarded the ally of the Kabeljaauws as their friend, or upon that of Brussels, his favourite place of residence. He sought to arrest the decay of Ypres, and his commercial policy towards England was dictated by the interests of Flanders. But he was resolute in asserting his political supremacy at any cost; and the first occasion, on which he showed himself conscious of the fact that the destruction of his subjects was his own loss, was when he had crushed the last resistance of the Ghenters at Gavre (1453). Until the Peace of Arras he mainly (though not entirely, as Ypres learnt to its cost) confined himself to sowing discord between the towns; but afterwards, when the communal militia had deserted him at the siege of Calais, the conflict first broke out between him and