THE place names of Flemish towns ring like bugles. They tell of bloody and costly battles in wars over the centuries: Courtrai, Passendale, Ypres ("Wipers" to the Tommy of World War I), and Armentiéres (whose "Mademoiselle" was invented to wipe out the memory of grimmer realities). In World War II, the tragedy and heroism of Dunkirk were played out on a Flemish beach.
Flanders is bloody ground, and its history a story of violence: for centuries the alien peoples of Europe have swarmed over her rich, open plain, to pillage, plunder and fight battles: Caesar's legions from the south; Viking raiders from the north, who left their word for landing-stage (bryggja) behind in the name of the Flemish city of Bruges; from the east fierce Germanic tribesmen, whose rough gutturals are reflected in the language of Flanders; from close at hand the troops of Louis XI, Napoleon, Wellington.
When their fellow Europeans left them in peace, the people of Flanders, Celtic in origin, were kept busy fending off the onslaughts of a still more implacable foe—the grey, pounding rollers of the North Sea, which time and again broke over Flanders' beaches to flood the low-lying flatlands behind. From earliest times the people of Flanders were forced so often to seek refuge with their northern neighbors, the Frisians, that they came at last to be known as Vlaming, the Frisian word for refugee. Their land was Vlandria, land of the refugees.
Neighborly Dependence. Yet, despite the violence through which they lived, no province in Europe today seems more blessed with tranquil beauty than Flanders. The soft greys and greens of sand dune, marsh and meadow blend imperceptibly with the pale blues of the sky's rim, along an endlessly level horizon. Ornate old cities, which have known and outgrown greatness, nurse their memories amid a neat patchwork of fields where golden wheat and rye shimmer at each passing breeze. Turning idly in the same soft breeze, the sails of windmills urge the sluggish water along a network of canals which are the province's vital arteries, moving its traffic, draining and feeding its rich black soil.
These canals, and the age-old necessity of keeping them well dug and free of snags, played a large part in introducing the democratic way to Europe, for from earliest times they made each Flemish peasant dependent on his neighbor. In the same way, the constant need to keep his dikes repaired against the attacks of the sea, and to fend off his many greedy enemies with unified effort, gave the Fleming a sense of community responsibility not yet shared by other Europeans. A hundred years before the signing of the Magna Carta in a tent on a British meadow, the burghers of Saint-Omer forced their feudal overlords to recognize the rights and privileges of individual citizens in that tiny Flemish town. Many other such charters were granted in Flanders during the Middle Ages and kept secure in strong boxes in town halls topped by belfries. The proudest possession of any Flemish town came to be its bell tower, where bronze voices hung always ready to clarion forth any abuse of local rights and privileges.