History. BRUGES. 3. Route. 25

Bruges (30 ft.), Flem. Brugge, the capital of W. Flanders and
the see of a bishop since 1559 (comp. p. xxiii), with 58,000 inhab.
(including a colony of 3000 English), lies on the little river Reie
or Roya, ('/y M. to the S. of its new harbour of Zee- Brugge (p. 2) by
the Canal Muritime. Small craft can reach it also by the Ostend
Canal, which has branches to Blankenberghe, Ypres, Nieuport, and
Furnes. Other canals connect Bruges with Ghent and Sluis. That
the industrial spirit of the town is reviving is proved by the large
market-gardens, a ceramic factory, and the making of lace.

Bruges (which in Flemish means bridges, a name due to the
numerous bridges crossing the canals) is mentioned as Municipium
Brugense as early as the 7th century. Margrave Baldwin I. of the
Iron Arm (d. ca. 879), founder of the powerful line of Counts of
Flanders, built a castle here in 865, and Robert of Friesland (d. 1093)
chose the thriving trading town as his residence. After the assas-
sination of Charles the Good (1127) the burghers, assembling in
the Marché du Vendredi, elected Count Theodoric of Alsace to be
Count of Flanders, and returned the following spirited answer to the
deputies of the king of France (Louis VI.), who had sent to object to
their choice: ‘Go, tell your master that he is perjured; that his crea-
ture William of Normandy (usurper of the sovereignty of Flanders)
has rendered himself unworthy of the crown by his infamous extor-
tions; that we have elected a new sovereign, and that it becomes
not the King of France to oppose us. That it is our privilege alone,
as burghers and nobles of Flanders, to choose our own master.’

In the 13th and following cent. Bruges, then connected with
the North Sea by means of the Zwyn (p. 43), ranked with Ypres
and Venice as one of the great commercial centres of Europe. As
the head of the ‘Flemish Hansa in London’ it practically mono-
polized the trade with England, especially the wool-trade which
was of s0 great importance for the Belgian cloth-factories, and at
the same time it was a ‘staple place’ for the cities of the German
Hanseatic League. Lombards and Venetians conveyed hither the
products of India and Italy, and returned home with the manu-
factures of Germany and the Baltic Sea. Factories, or privileged
trading companies, from seventeen different kingdoms, had settled
in Bruges. After its enlargement in 1297 the town was about A\/)M.
in circumference. The population is said to have been 200,000.
In 1302, when Johanna of Navarre, with her husband Philippe le
Bel of France, visited Bruges and beheld the sumptuous costumes of
the inhabitants, she is said to have exclaimed: ‘J imagined myself
alone to be queen, but I see hundreds of persons here whose attire
vies with my own.’ Dante (Inferno xv, 4-6) compares the barrier
which separates the river of tears from the desert with the embank-
ments erected by the Flemings under Count John of Namur (1300
et seq.), between Bruges and Wissant (beyond the French frontier),
to protect the coast against the encroachments of the sea,